Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  “No.”

  “Well, I didn’t either at first. But a few seconds ago I saw a look on your face, and I realized why it upset me that you scolded them for that. It was because you feel so guilty about never having loved me that you have to treat me like some goddess who must always be admired, never corrected or spoken about with anything less than perfect respect.”

  Samantha shook her head in denial.

  “No, dear, it’s true. I don’t hold it against you. I’m mentioning it merely so you will see the difference. If you truly loved me the way the others do, you would have smiled gently and condescendingly—and been one of them, one of the women who truly love me. But you’ve held yourself away from me just as you have from everyone except Lance. I don’t blame you for it, but I think I know why you’ve always been so daft for Lance. You transferred all your love and need onto him. I have no idea when or how it happened, but it won’t bring you happiness. And it may ruin your life—not to mention his and Angie’s.”

  Elizabeth pulled Samantha into her arms and hugged the stiff, stunned young woman. “You think about what I’ve said. And you take care of my grandson!”

  Samantha struggled to speak around the lump in her throat. “I thought…”

  “What dear?”

  “I thought you had enough girls to love you.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “God love your little heart. How we torture ourselves…”

  Tears streamed down Samantha’s cheeks. “I do love you, Aunt Elizabeth, I do.” And for the first time in her life, she felt that love welling up in her for the woman who’d raised her.

  Elizabeth recognized it in the girl’s eyes. Gently she pulled Samantha into her arms. “Yes, you do, child. And it’s about time.”

  Chane and Jennie were the last to go. Chane helped the children into the carriage. Nicholas climbed in with them to bounce on the heavily upholstered seats a moment.

  “Nicholas!” At her reprimand, he sat down properly.

  Samantha hugged Jennie. Chane put his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and looked at the house. “Well, you’ll be glad to know I’ve decided to forgive you for building a house without my advice or help.”

  “Chane!” Jennie said, halfway shocked.

  “Oh, Chane, I’m sorry,” Samantha said.

  “You should be. Fortunately, Sheridan did an excellent job. Otherwise I would have taken him to task. Any chance this thing with Sheridan could turn into something useful?”

  “No,” Samantha said, feeling heat come up into her face. “Steve’s a tumbleweed.”

  “Every tumbleweed finds a fence sooner or later.”

  “Well, he won’t,” she said.

  Chane noted the regret in her voice and was glad for it. “For a boy to grow into a man,” he said, “it helps to have a model to follow. Sheridan looks like he’d make a pretty fair model, if he survives,” he said, watching Samantha to see if Sheridan had a chance with her. She turned a little pink, but he couldn’t tell if it was worry over his condition, which remained serious, or unadmitted love. Unfortunately he’d never found a woman’s color to be a reliable barometer of anything.

  Jennie hugged Samantha again. Then Chane helped his wife into the brougham. Nicholas stood beside Samantha, waving until the carriage rolled out of sight behind the trees and abutting rocks on the curving mountain road.

  With her company gone, Samantha turned all her energies to nursing Steve. His fever seemed to come in waves, each cresting higher than the last. He was a stoic patient. The only way she knew his fever was rising again was that his teeth would start to chatter, and she would pile on blankets. When he kicked them off finally, she knew the fever had broken—for the moment.

  Samantha stayed at his side, praying Arden Chandler’s vile concoction and his paste were working. For the moment, Steve was between crises, his skin felt hot and dry. His face was unshaven, his eyes closed. He looked so weak and so dear that she felt tears welling up in her.

  Avoiding the paste caked on his throat, she leaned over, put her arms around him, pressed her face to his chest, and let the tears flow. She had no idea why she was crying. But the emotional events of the past few days had left her feeling like an exposed nerve.

  Steve woke slowly to the feel of her. He wanted to pat her soft hair, but his arms didn’t respond to his willed command. At first that frightened him, but there was something sweet and dark about being helpless in the arms of the woman he loved. She had fought like a tigress to save him from Chila Dart. Her struggles on his behalf had delayed Chila long enough for that stranger to intervene.

  So, he owed his life to this warm, sweet, trembling woman. He had realized on the long, miserable ride home, when he was so sick even his skin felt like vomiting, that he loved her the way he would love no other. Before, he had loved her a little and lusted after her a lot. In lust there was great excitement and sometimes great satisfaction, but it was only when he had truly surrendered to his love for her, as he had done on that ride, that he had felt a sense of joy and realized that love was a rare privilege. Every moment he had been conscious, his only desire had been to look at her, any angle of her.

  He had stored memories of her holding her sleeping son’s head against her breast. He remembered her profile as she gazed at the rock crushing her old house, and of her looking back over her shoulder at him time and again during that interminable ride, her lovely face expressing fear for his safety and frustration that they were moving so slowly.

  Those were sweet memories. But now he could tell the paralysis was deepening, soon to take his life. He needed to purge himself of his guilt and shame.

  “Samantha?” He licked dry, swollen lips. His voice was a hoarse croak. Samantha straightened.

  “Steve! How do you feel?”

  “Okay,” he said, lying.

  “You need to take a drink.” She reached for the water glass by the bedside.

  “No more of that stuff.”

  “Sissy. This is just water.” She held him and the glass. Steve took a swallow to please her and sank back on the pillow.

  “I need to tell you…that I was lower than a worm the other night.” He couldn’t remember how much time had passed since the party, but it didn’t matter. “You’re sweet and beautiful and perfect. I never should have touched you. I was furious, and I said things I shouldn’t have. You don’t belong to me. Or anyone, for that matter. You’re an angel, and I want you to know that it has been a privilege to know you and to love you. I’ll always love you. If there’s any way you can forgive me for what I almost did to you…I don’t deserve it…”

  “Hush!” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Save your strength for getting well,” she whispered. “I forgive you.”

  “You’re too easy on me…”

  “I take it back then, Steve Sheridan. I will forgive you only if you promise to get well.”

  Steve grinned weakly. “Bargain.”

  His eyes closed; he appeared to sleep. Samantha sat beside him for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest and the colors in the room fading as the sun left the sky. She checked his heart; the beat seemed more muted. Terror filled her, and she put her head down and cried softly and quietly. His hand twitched, as if he wanted to soothe her but lacked the strength.

  She cried bitter tears and realized that she would always love him, too. She didn’t know how this had happened to her, but she loved two men with equal desperation. And she realized that, even if Steve lived, she might never find happiness with either one of them, because her head didn’t seem to work right. She slept in the chair beside him. Every time she woke, she gave him the fever remedy.

  By the third night she began to have hope. Each time she checked his temperature it was lower than the last.

  The fourth morning his head was cool. Steve opened his eyes, and they were clear for the first time in days. “How’s Nicholas?”

  Samantha was so giddy to see him lucid, she laughed. “What about me? I�
��ve been the one running between the two of you.”

  “I can see how you are…mouthy.”

  “Nicholas is better. Rathwick knows Elunami is the Indian woman he’s been looking for. I have no idea what he will do about it, though. He looked like a man in shock. But if I know Matthew, he will come to his senses and be back, probably with an official warrant for her arrest, maybe even mine…”

  “I want to see Nicholas.”

  “You’re in no shape to be walking around.”

  But Steve would not be stopped. Samantha followed him into Nicholas’s room. The boy made such a small dent in the big feather mattress, Steve had to look twice to be sure he was there.

  “Sleeping,” Samantha whispered.

  Steve leaned down, kissed Nicholas’s forehead, and swayed. She grabbed him. “You have no business leaning over as weak as you are,” she protested, guiding him back to bed.

  Samantha spent that night in one of the spare rooms, but she couldn’t sleep. Finally she lit a candle and walked down the stairs and into the pantry. She stood staring at the box Elizabeth had brought with her. She had meant to open it sooner, but with all the excitement, she’d forgotten.

  Samantha put the candle down on a shelf and pulled the box out of the corner. The lid was nailed shut. Samantha found a crowbar and pried it free. Frames were separated by a heavy quilt. With difficulty Samantha lifted one of the heavy gilt-edged frames out of the box. She peered at it, but the candle did not give off enough light. She carried it into the kitchen and turned on the overhead light. From another part of the basement, she heard the generator kick on and hum quietly. Within a second the light flickered on and grew steady.

  The photograph was of a family. A young woman who looked a great deal like herself held a little girl on her lap. A handsome young man stood behind them in a traditional pose. Samantha looked at it for a moment and then walked back into the pantry. She pulled out another heavy frame and carried it into the light.

  This one was of a woman, smiling down at an infant cradled in her arms. It looked like herself and Nicholas, but she couldn’t remember posing for it. The gilt-edged frame was a neo-rococo, which had gone out of fashion in the seventies. With a start, Samantha realized it wasn’t herself in the picture but her mother, looking down at her as a baby. The look on her mother’s face was one of such love and tenderness and joy that tears filled her eyes. Her hands started to tremble, she had to put down the frame. Completely overwhelmed, she leaned forward and sobbed into her hands.

  When that spasm of emotion passed, she wiped her face, walked into the pantry, and pulled out another picture. In this one, her mother stood beside her father, smiling, holding a tiny bundle in her arms.

  “She was just a child herself,” Samantha whispered. Fresh tears, hot and flooding, blurred her eyes; she sagged against the wall, holding the frame and crying. But she couldn’t stop unpacking the box. Each picture caused her to tremble and cry. But she realized that something new and important was happening to her as she pored over each image. At last the box was empty.

  Exhausted, she sat down, surrounded by the portraits of her family, and let the tears come.

  Forgive me, Mother. Father. I didn’t mean to hate you, but I woke up all alone. I thought you had abandoned me. Then I needed you, and you didn’t come. I cried and cried, and you still didn’t come.

  The older I got, the more I blamed you. I didn’t realize how easy it is to get caught up in something that gets out of control. I blamed you for leaving me to grow up in the midst of a loving family—where I never once felt like I belonged.

  I always felt like an outsider, an imposter. I always knew I was just minutes away from overstaying my welcome, from being thrown out. It didn’t matter how wonderful Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Chantry were to me, how mean or how loving the Kincaid children were to me. And they were both. I had no birthright there, and I never once forgot it.

  As she sobbed, a terrible tightness around her heart eased. It felt as if a clenched fist had finally opened gently.

  Samantha dried her tears and carried the pictures, one at a time, up the stairs and laid them along the entry hallway, where she would have the workmen hang them. It took an hour to decide where they would go. When she felt fully satisfied, she turned out the lights and carried her candle back upstairs.

  In bed she cried again, but the tears didn’t hurt so much. They felt cleansing and necessary. Her parents had loved her. They had loved her every bit as much as she loved Nicholas.

  Rathwick knew he should go back to the Forrester house, but the truth he had learned from Ashland was barbarous. Knowing it had debilitated him to such a degree that he felt too sick at heart to face Elunami. It was a terrible thing to feel such shame for an organization he had devoted his life to.

  He sat for days, too dispirited to do more than eat an occasional meal. High government officials had tricked the Hopi. They had negotiated a new treaty with them, then substituted different wording in the document the Hopi elders had signed.

  Why kill her? Rathwick had asked.

  Because they don’t want her going back to her tribe and telling them they were tricked. The Hopi won’t sit still for it if she does that.

  They might not anyway.

  We have five hundred troops in Arizona Territory now. One hint of trouble and we’ll have five thousand. Ashland had looked as if he’d just realized something important. The Secretary might welcome an uprising…He had smiled suddenly. That would give him an opportunity to send in enough troops to finish off the Indians once and for all.

  You asshole!

  The words had just slipped out. Rathwick had been a military man for twenty years. With two words, he had destroyed himself. The icy gleam in Ashland’s eyes had told him that quite clearly. There was no turning back then. He had stood up, ripped off his captain’s bars, and dropped them on the desk.

  So he was a civilian now. He would tell Elunami the truth. He rented a horse at the livery stable.

  Steve slept all that day and night. The next morning he looked different. Samantha tried to decide what it was. With his left hand resting in the white cotton sling she had made, his shoulders propped against two pillows, and with a real breakfast inside him for the first time in days, he looked handsome and pale above nearly a week’s growth of black beard. His skin seemed to glow with an inner fire. His eyes followed her everywhere.

  “What happened to Chila Dart?” Steve asked, as if he had just remembered.

  “Rathwick’s men took her to jail. Daley sent a messenger out just this morning to say that they’d had to take her to the insane asylum at Prescott. She’s no threat to you anymore, I’m sure of that.”

  “How’s Nicholas doing now?”

  “I don’t know…” She felt so frustrated. “He doesn’t seem sick exactly, but he’s listless. He sleeps too much. It isn’t like him to sleep so much.”

  Steve got out of bed and walked into Nicholas’s room. Inside the door, he sniffed the air. Usually a sickroom had an odd smell, no matter how careful the nurse. Nicholas’s room smelled fine.

  Steve walked to the bed and leaned close to the boy, who appeared to be feigning sleep. He waited until the dizziness passed. “I know you can hear me, Nicholas,” he said quietly. “I also know you’re a smart boy and that you blame yourself for what happened to Young Hawk—”

  “Steve!” Samantha hissed from behind him.

  Steve glanced back at her. She looked scared.

  “You think Nicholas doesn’t know or suspect? I was seven years old when my adopted brother died. I knew damned good and well I’d had something to do with that. Adults think kids don’t know what’s going on. But generally it’s the other way around. The kids know, and the adults don’t.”

  “Nicholas is just a baby…”

  “He’s six years old. At some point in a boy’s life he has to decide if he’s going to be a man or not. At seven my foster father saved my life, literally pulled me from the jaws of death. A sha
man isn’t supposed to show off his mystic powers in that fashion. The next day, his own son was killed in an accident. He knew he’d done something wrong, but he chose to blame me. Being a kid, I took the blame on myself for a long time, but at some point I had to decide if I was going to be crushed under it or throw it off. Nicholas is making that decision now, whether we pretend to notice or not.”

  “But what if he…”

  “…isn’t?” Steve finished for her. “Then he’s stupid, which I know damned good and well he’s not.”

  Steve sat down on the bed and took Nicholas’s hand in his. “Your mother doesn’t want me to, but I’m going to tell you what your choices are as I see ’em.” To Samantha’s surprise, Nicholas opened his eyes and looked at Steve, who nodded his satisfaction and continued.

  “A man by the name of Pasteur discovered what he called germs a while back. And ever since he did that, people have been thinking that everything that happens to them comes from germs. Some folks are even saying that people spread the germs. Maybe you’ve heard some of that talk, I don’t know.”

  “I’ve heard it,” Nicholas said solemnly.

  “Most of us have. The Indian woman who taught me most of what I know about life says germs, if they exist at all, are like buzzards. They go where the dead or dying tissue is.”

  Steve paused. Samantha breathed for the first time since he’d started speaking. Perhaps he wouldn’t say what she’d feared he was going to say.

  “You may see other options, but as I see it, you can either stop punishing yourself and get well, or you can die.”

  “Steve!”

  “Or you can come out of this sicker than you went into it. If I were you, I’d get well.”

  “You don’t think I killed Young Hawk and his family?”

  Nicholas’s voice was thin.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “But I heard that Indians catch white people’s diseases easier because they don’t have any—any…”

  “Immunity against them? I’ve heard that, too, but I think they got the cart before the horse again. According to my theory germs are like a flock of hungry buzzards who recognize the Indians as a breeding ground.”