Harvest of Fury (20 page)

Undressing, she stepped into the rippling little creek and waded out till it reached her waist. The coolness stung where she was tender, but gradually she seemed less enflamed and congested. There. At least she didn't stink of him. But it would be agony if he tried to have her again before she was over the results of his usage. It was the first time he'd ever really hurt her, and it was the kind of punishment she didn't mean to bring on herself if she could help it.

If only he'd tire of her.…

But that conjured up hideous thoughts of Cat, blossoming as she would be in a few years.
If he'll just get himself killed before that; or go off and never come back
.

She laughed aloud in harsh mockery. Those you wanted to return didn't. Those you hated stuck like burs.

It was sundown. Leaving the water reluctantly, she dripped off most of the water, wiped the rest on her skirt, and dressed. She moved through the sycamores and willows and was starting across the small meadow when a voice made her stiffen.

“Ma'am. Can I talk to you a minute?”

XI

She whirled in confusion. “Lonnie!”

“I never spied on you, ma'am. But when I saw you movin' like you was hurt …” He flushed till his freckles dimmed. “Well, I figgered I'd just wait and ask you.”

“Ask me what?” She eyed Lonnie warily. She was fond of him, felt almost as if he were a younger brother, but her experiences with Güero and Frost had made her quick to distrust men.

His Adam's apple bobbed. “Ma'am … Miss Tally … I wouldn't overstep for worlds. But the cap'n would want me to look after you. Somethin' don't seem right between you and your husband. When he's here, you never laugh. You have a hard time keepin' aholt of yourself when he touches you.”

There could be only one result if this boy tangled with an expert shot like Frost. Talitha managed a smile and shook her head. “Lonnie! What an imagination you've got!”

“Wisht I didn't have none.” His tone was somber. “But I'm not imaginin' this, and you know it.”

What to tell him? It was useless to deny his perceptions, but she had to keep him from challenging Frost. She put her hand on the young man's arm.

“Lonnie, I—I married Judah Frost for compelling reasons. You're quite right that I don't find it easy. But believe me when I say, this: If anything happens to him while he's at the ranch, I'd be blamed by his important friends. It would be disastrous.”

The young jaw hardened. “No one could blame you if I killed him and turned myself in.”

“You work for me. They'd think I gave the order.” She shook him. “Now, listen! I've seen Frost shoot. He's incredibly fast and sure. You wouldn't have a chance. Stay alive, Lonnie. Don't throw away the life Shea saved.”

With a crooked grin, Lonnie said, “I didn't exactly aim to fight him a fancy duel, ma'am. You got to remember I kept meat in the pot at home, huntin'. I've sneaked up on many a deer never did me a minute's harm and dropped them. Reckon I can, stalk a man.”

“Don't, Lonnie. I think he'll get tired of me before too long and stop coming to the ranch. If you really want to help me, don't do anything that would make us lose you.”

He scowled, considering, troubled. “I don't rightly know, ma'am. It sure goes against the grain to see you worried. The cap'n—”

“Wanted you to live,” cut in Talitha. “Give me your word not to start trouble, Lonnie, or I'll have to send you away.”

“Reckon you'd have a time runnin' me off.” He laughed, then watched her gravely. “Miss Tally, this place is the most home I've ever had. But even before I laid eyes on it, I'd promised the cap'n, wherever he is now, that I'd see you through to better times.”

She was able to smile again, comforted by his concern. Lightly touching his cheek, she said, “Thank you, Lonnie. Just be patient and those better days will come.” She hesitated. “I think it'd be wiser if you didn't walk back with me.”

He nodded. “If you say so, ma'am. But if things get to where you can't go on, tell me.”

As she walked to the house Talitha felt less alone, but she was also worried that Lonnie, who was very young—well, he seemed so, though in fact he was only three years younger than she—might decide to take Frost out of her life and be killed in the attempt.

She was glad, for more than escaping his arms, when her husband three days later said that he was going to check the operation of the Tecolote mine and come back by way of Tucson, where he also had business.

He returned at the end of August, produced a letter, and handed it to Talitha, who frowned at its neatly slit top. “Of course I read it, my dear,” drawled Frost. “It's a husband's duty to protect and guide his wife. But I'd expect you to be pleased to hear from an old friend. Open it, do. I'll excuse you.”

She knew that firm, deliberate script. Marc Revier, after all, had taught her to read and write. Her fingers shook. She turned her back to hide them from Frost and drew out the rumpled sheets of paper. Her heart was beating so hard that blood thundered in her ears and head.

Dear Talitha
,

I have written to you several times but fear the letters never reached you. In case this one does, I can sum the last two years up by saying briefly that, having no taste for Carleton's mode of Indian fighting, I joined with a Colorado battalion and have seen service with them in Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. Though plagued with dysentery and once with pneumonia, I got never a scratch till a battle at Honey Springs close to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory. We fought the Confederates alongside Negro soldiers and “pin” Cherokees, which must have mightily wounded Southern pride, for our mixed-up aggregation won
.

However, I took a ball in the knee. It's healing clean, thank the good God, but the surgeon insists I'll never be fit to soldier again, and my discharge should be through shortly
.

I could not have quit while I was able-bodied, Tally, but I tell you freely I'm glad to be out of it. Glad to be coming back to Arizona. I hope Shea is well—that perhaps he, too, has found an honorable way to come home and will be at the ranch when I come by
.

How good it will be to see you again. I have dreamed of you amidst the nightmares. My best greeting to all at the ranch and kisses for the little girls
.

As ever, yours
,

Marc

“Touching, isn't it?” Frost's amused tone knifed into her relief that Marc was alive, her joy that he was coming, that she'd see him again. “A dream among nightmares. Apparently his baptism of fire has moved him to feel magnanimous should Shea have returned to claim you, but will he be so gracious when he knows you've married me?”

Hatred of this pitiless, conscienceless man burned her throat, left a metallic taste in her mouth. She couldn't trust herself to speak but felt as if loathing and contempt blazed from her like heat from a fire.

“Ah,” mused Frost. “So you would have taken him since your adored Irisher is dead. Poor Talitha, thwarted twice. Would you rather not see him?”

See him, knowing that they could be nothing to each other? She didn't think she could bear it, after the cruelty of Shea's death, the bitterness of her forced marriage. Yet—She had a flash of his broad, strong face, the frank, kind eyes. She wanted to see him again, hear his voice, reach out to him with her spirit though she couldn't with her hands. How bad was his injury? He would be crippled in some measure, but he must be able to travel.

“I'm surprised you're willing to have him visit,” Talitha said to Frost. “He knows all the things you've done—”

“Not all, sweetest. Not even I remember them all.”

“He joined Shea and Pete Kitchen's men when they rode after you and you tricked them with that poor prospector's corpse.”

“Yes, I suppose it will be a shock to my onetime employee to find me alive. But Marc's seen a lot of blood in the last two years. I doubt he'll want to reopen the past, especially when he sees us so happily married.”

“Happily!”

“It had better look that way to him. How sad it would be if the wounded hero came home only to lose his life.”

“It could go the other way.”

“Marc never saw the day he could shoot with me. And with that game leg, he can't even run away.” Frost smiled. “No, Talitha, you'll show Marc how content you are with me. He'll nobly put your welfare' above his possessive male instincts.”

“You swear you won't hurt him?”

Frost's dark brows drew together. “He's the last man I'd wish to harm. I need him. The superintendent I installed at the Tecolote proved to be a drunken thief. I'm prepared to offer Marc an attractive percentage on top of salary if he'll manage the mine and any others I start in the vicinity.”

That relieved Talitha. Frost was capable of great charm and restraint when his self-interest was involved. He needed Marc's skills, so there'd be no sly baiting, no provocations. And even though she might not see him for year upon year, still, if Marc were at the Tecolote, she'd have news of him. There'd be the knowledge that he was a hundred miles away, not thousands. In spite of her shame that he'd think she'd freely married Frost, the thought of seeing him again made her feel alive as she hadn't in months. Blindly, irrepressibly, hope began to grow in her. Marc was alive. She would see him again.

Frost sensed the glow within her. Watching her with narrowed eyes, he said mockingly, “I thought, after Shea, you had nothing left for any other man. Apparently you do. That should make me hate Revier, but I find myself oddly grateful.”

“Why?” she asked distrustfully, on guard at once for any threat to Marc.

Frost took her in his arms, kissed the pulse that leaped and hammered in her throat. “Because, though I must have you however I can, I much prefer a live woman to a sleepwalker.” He lifted her, bent his shining head to her breast so that his breath was moistly hot on her flesh. “You bloom for another man, my darling, but the perfume entices me.”

After that, she tried to be cool and circumspect around her husband, but either his appetite was whetted by knowing that he possessed what Marc could only desire, or he detected the brighter flow of blood in her, her quickened awareness and responses. He never seemed to have enough of her.

And then in October, right after the twins' fifteenth birthday, Marc Revier rode in.

Talitha would have given much if Frost hadn't been at the ranch. As it was, after the alert, as soon as Marc came close enough to be recognized, Frost put aside his rifle and hurried out, drawing Talitha with him.

“Marc!” Frost shouted genially. “It's good to see you, man. Since your letter came, we've been expecting you daily!”

Marc reined his claybank to a halt. Slowly, as if dazed, he took off his hat. Gray showed at his temples. The old scar across his left cheek and eyebrow was a pale seam in his tanned face, and the crow's-feet at the corners of the dark blue eyes were deeper.

“What are you doing here?” he asked bluntly of Frost. “We thought you were dead.”

“There was good reason for the mistake,” Frost said gaily. He was obviously determined to take no offense. “I was out in California helping Carleton raise troops and came back to Arizona with the California Column in May of '62. Naturally, my first concern was for Talitha, for, as you may know, Apaches and bandits had cleaned out the whole Santa Cruz Valley region except for the Patagonia mine and Pete Kitchen's place.” He drew her into the circle of his arm and smiled fondly down at her, but she saw the warning in his eyes. “It was the happiest day of my life to find her alive and well.”

And the darkest day of mine
—
except when I learned Shea was dead
.

“What about Shea?” Marc's tone rasped huskily, as if he could scarcely get the words out.

“Heroically dead in Sibley's retreat. The young man he died for brought the news and has stayed on at the ranch. Why don't you ask him for particulars, Marc? It distresses Talitha to dwell on it.”

Deliberately, Frost raised Talitha's hand, held it so her wedding ring flashed fire, and kissed her fingers.

Talitha seemed to feel Marc's shock within herself as his breath caught audibly. She couldn't look at him. Why couldn't she at least have seen him alone for a while before he had to know the truth? The truth that was a lie. But which, for his own sake, she must make him believe.

“Are you married?” Marc asked.

“Talitha did me that honor.” Frost added with engaging honesty, “I know, of course, that Shea's enshrined in her heart, but I'm grateful for her sweet company.” His hand tightened on hers, sending the jewels biting into her flesh. “And I think I may truthfully say, may I not, my love, that I haven't disappointed you?”

Masking the hate that swelled within her, she said quietly, “You've done everything you promised.” Turning to Marc, she was stabbed by the pain in his eyes. “But we mustn't keep you waiting there. Give your horse to Patrick and come in.”

He looked weary enough to fall out of the saddle. “Thanks, but maybe I'd better push on. I can make Cap Tubac before dark if I hurry;”

“Marc!” Talitha came forward and put a hand on his reins. “You can't just go off like that!”

“You come in, Uncle Marc!” commanded Cat. “You look awful tired, and Anita has tamales for supper!”

After a moment's hesitation during which he searched Talitha's eyes, Marc threw back his shoulders. “If you're sure I don't intrude …”

“Nonsense!” said Frost heartily. “We're all mightily glad to see you! Of course you'll stay with us while you get your bearings, decide what you're going to do. I've got a bottle of Scotch I've been saving for an occasion, and you're it!”