Blaze (53 page)

"For you," she replied briefly. "Not so well for me."

"You'll have your child."

"And you'll have my money."

"A fair trade."

In truth, Blaze didn't care much about the money. She had her trust fund, which even they couldn't touch, and it was more than enough to live on. It annoyed her, though, the extent of their greed. And frightened her a little too. How far would they go to ensure their claim to the twenty-two million? Wasn't Hazard's death answer enough?

If she turned over her inheritance to them, her child —Hazard's child—would lose. She wished he were here to talk to. Maybe he'd say none of the money mattered. Then again, maybe he wouldn't. Look how hard he'd been working to give a measure of security to his people.

Just that afternoon, she'd legalized the will she'd written on the train. Curtis had it in his files now. If she gave them power of attorney, her child would never gain its birthright. On the other hand, if she didn't, it might not live. A small child would be much easier to kill than Hazard. And if he hadn't been able to stop them, how could she? "I want to think about it," Blaze said evenly.

"Don't take too long," Yancy ordered.

"I've six months until you can implement your threat."

"In the meantime, we can make your life uncomfortable."

"Thanks for the warning."

"I'll give you three weeks," he said.

"I expect she'll be sensible, won't you dear?" Milli-cent murmured, languidly waving her feather fan.

"Three weeks," Yancy reminded her, moving toward the door to unlock it. Millicent followed him, and Blaze was left alone, as the door clicked shut locked.

Hannah was gone. That had been her first question. Hazard was dead. Curtis and her friends who came to call would be told she'd returned to Montana. And the servants thought she had a nervous breakdown and was being shielded from society's prying eyes. She and her child were alone… between Yancy, Millicent, and the twenty-two million they coveted. She hadn't liked the look in Yancy's eyes when he'd said "uncomfortable." She'd seen that look before in men's eyes who hadn't even been coveting her money.

She wished that night very hard, as a small child might, wished that Hazard wasn't dead, wished that he and she and their child could live together in the cloud-covered mountains, wished she'd met him without gold and greed coming between them.

And then, as if wishes came true, Yancy came in the following morning with her breakfast tray and with what he referred to as an interesting bit of gossip. "You might want to change your fantasy about returning to Montana," he said, lounging against the doorjamb, dressed to go riding.

"I'm supposed to ask why to that leading question, aren't I? All right, Yancy, I can be accommodating. Why?" And she closed the book she was reading, folded her hands atop it and gazed at him calmly.

"Because your lover found another bed."

"Is this some metaphorical allusion? If it is, I don't find it amusing." But her heart began pounding because Yancy wasn't subtle enough for that. When he said bed, he meant bed. She consciously willed her hands to unclench before Yancy noticed.

"The bastard lived somehow," Yancy churlishly said, "under a hundred pounds of black powder."

Joy, lately arrested by hopelessness, flooded back in one intake of breath. Blaze's spirits were singing wild songs of happiness while she casually said, "In that case, you'd best unlock that door permanently and slink off to Virginia. I don't think it'll be safe for you here."

"You didn't hear me, did you?" he silkily drawled, his raspy voice incongruously harsh. "He's not coming. He's in Confederate Gulch. He's in Rose's bed in Confederate Gulch. And he has been for almost a month."

The words turned her to ice. There had to be some mistake. She was his wife. He'd said so. They were going to have a child. He wouldn't have gone to Rose. He'd come after her.

"My offer stands, little rich girl. Three weeks. Sign over power of attorney then, or I'll have to resort to some ungentle persuasion."

Blaze rose from the loveseat and walked to the window before he saw how distressed she was, and he left when she refused to reply to his questions, but his parting words echoed gloomily in her mind: "Don't wait for him, little rich girl. All those Injuns love 'em and leave 'em, and Hazard, hell, they say he sets records."

But she did wait. Despite it all. Despite Yancy's vulgar assertions, despite the enormous distance separating them, despite the lingering uncertainty in her mind when she tried to think as Hazard might.

At the end of the third week, Yancy came to her room as promised. She hadn't signed in the interval. She'd held out. But when she saw him walk in that night, in his jacquard silk dressing gown, hand-braided ropes looped loosely over his arm, a hungry look in his colorless eyes, she'd half turned away and stared through the window overlooking the Charles River for a brief second. As she turned back, her small shoulders slumped a little. "That won't be necessary," she whispered. "I'll sign."

Yancy left with her fortune in his pocket.

And Blaze cried herself to sleep. Not tears for the loss of her inheritance, but tears for the loss of her love. He hadn't come for her. He didn't even care about his child. But then Jon Hazard Black had children already and lovers too. He'd probably even forgotten her name by now.

YANCY and Millicent were up most of the night toasting their newly acquired wealth with the late Colonel Braddock's rare, fine champagne.

"He may have been a peasant, my dear, but he knew his wines," Yancy remarked, uncorking another well-preserved bottle from the Colonel's perfectly stocked cellar.

"One positive quality in an otherwise flawed character is hardly enough to endear him," Millicent replied, loath, even though indebted to her husband's perspicacity in amassing a fortune she could now enjoy, to give him his due. "Peasant blood is peasant blood," she emphatically declared.

"Which brings to mind," Yancy pointedly said, "a proposal to terminate said peasant blood."

Millicent laughed a trill little ripple. "You're too late, Yancy. He's been cold-dead these many weeks."

"I had in mind," he paused, "his grandchild. Insurance," he said, "against some future claim."

Millicent sat up from her lounging ease, perplexed. She set her champagne flute down. "How do you propose to do that?"

"There's a specialist in New York who takes care of girls in trouble."

"She'll never agree to an abortion."

"She doesn't have to agree. We have the power of attorney, now; we can tell her what to do, not ask."

"Where and when?" Millicent asked, immediately recognizing the future security in such an action.

"The one everyone here goes to—Madame Restell's21 in New York. There's even a possibility," Yancy added, "Venetia may not survive the abortion." His brows rose suggestively.

"That's enough, Yancy. I don't want to hear any more."

"As long as you don't hear it, then?"

"I refuse," she replied, not at all flustered, only cautious, "to listen to any more."

"I know, love, you hate the details. Well, never mind, I'll handle those."

"Better, I hope, than you did in the case of the Indian."

Yancy shrugged, nonchalant after three bottles of champagne. "Impossible to kill like a normal man… but two small claims don't matter now, do they?… not with the millions we have."

It was easy to shrug off Hazard since he was two thousand miles away, but Millicent disliked loose ends, loose ends so close to home, so she inquired with a significant emphasis on each word, "When will you take care of our present detail?"

"Tomorrow," Yancy said with a smile. "First thing tomorrow."

HAZARD stayed with Rose for slightly less than a month, and in that time summer slipped into autumn. Yancy had been right about Hazard sharing Rose's bed, but implication and circumstance weren't the same. Hazard could have made love to Rose, and once his arm began to heal, she'd said as much in an offhand, casual way, "No strings, Hazard, same as always. If you want. If you don't, I understand too." Years ago she'd given up the luxury of illusion.

They'd been lying in bed when she brought it up. It was a warm, sunny late-summer morning and Hazard was fighting down memories of Blaze under the sun-dappled willows. "You're too damned good to me, Rose," he ruefully acknowledged. "The guilt is mounting." He hadn't touched her and his broken arm wasn't an excuse anymore.

She rolled over on her elbow, at the courteous de-dining, and looked him straight in the eye. "Why don't you go after her, dammit?"

"She doesn't want me to," he replied as plainly as she, "that's why."

"How do you know?"

"A note I found made it pretty clear."

"You think she knew of Yancy's plans?"

"Apparently." The date on the note was etched on his liver. It preceded the invasion by a day. "She must have known about it somehow. Don't ask me how."

"She didn't really think you'd survive to read it. What was the point?"

"I don't know. Best I can figure, it would absolve her of any implication in my death. A gratuitous gesture out here where people die unnoticed every day. But they were probably operating under eastern rules of judicial procedure. It never hurts to be safe, especially if she was interested in having our child inherit the claim."

"Does it bother you? Having your child raised out there?"

He allowed the anger to show for the first time, and Rose unconsciously sat up, retreating from the cold fury. "It outrages me if I allow it to," he said tersely. "She told me she wanted to stay here, have the baby born in the mountains. I've never viewed myself as gullible, but damned if I wasn't, Rose. Like a wet-behind-the-ears adolescent."

Rose touched him gently on the shoulder, her fingers warm and soothing. "You couldn't have known."

"But I should have, Rose, dammit. I lived in that phony Boston society. I should have known better."

WHEN Hazard returned to his people, the comfort he sought never came. He saw Blaze in his memory wherever he turned: wearing her elkskin dress, trying to learn the Absarokee words, touching him when he sat in council, warm against him in the coolness of the night.

He was alone, preferred it that way, so people talked. But never to his face. He didn't sleep with any women. He didn't go on the raids. When he hunted, he hunted alone. They worried, his clan and relatives and friends. It was as if the living spirit had left him. But he didn't want help and he didn't want advice. Then his evening visit to Bold Ax soothed the alarm. He was coming out of his black spell. Those sorts of negotiations were a good sign.

It had been protection, rather than emotion, prompting his marriage proposal to Blue Flower. He needed a solid barrier, an unassailable fortification against the insidious, powerful yearning. Blue Flower was his fortification, marriage the final defense against his wanting Blaze. Blue Flower had said yes with joy that evening, and Hazard kissed her cheek lightly like a monk.

The first frost colored the cottonwood trees and quaking aspen all along the creek, the fragile leaves ablaze with emerald and crimson and gold. Wild rosebushes and kinnikinnick were like splashes of fire against the mountainsides. Hazard, looking bronzed and rested, was lounging under a shimmering mass of saffron-tinged cottonwood, half leaning against the tree trunk, seeking some peace of mind. The warm autumn afternoon was glorious, the tinted leaves above him shimmering in a light breeze.

Two small children were playing near their mothers, who were preparing food for the evening meal. The children were two, probably less, because they toddled still on pudgy, unsteady legs. They were playing with soft toys made by their doting parents, vocalizing in their abbreviated version of Absarokee, giggling at their mother's occasional nonsense chants. They were healthy, happy, loved, and playing under a sun shining on tribal lands fought for and defended under sixteen chieftainships.