Dark Fires

by Brenda Joyce

  And it was because of Jane. He knew that a year ago he wouldn’t have even considered a trip to Texas. A year ago had been before Jane. Before she’d given him her love and warmth and incredible courage, before she’d reminded him, shown him, what love meant, what a family meant. Now it was almost hard to believe that he’d put off this trip, this resolution with his parents, with his father, for so long. But in a way he understood. Before Jane, nothing had really mattered. She had changed all that; she had changed his life.

  The hansom stopped by the immense, flat tiers of pink granite steps leading up to the imposing teakwood front doors of the mansion. Nick paid and thanked the cabbie, and stepped out after his son. At that precise moment, Rathe came through the front doors, beaming and dimpled, his blue eyes dancing. Behind him, Nick saw a beautiful tall redhead, obviously his wife.

  “Nick!”

  The earl smiled a genuine smile, revealing his own dimples, so like his brother’s. The two men embraced, clinging for just a moment, then drew apart, embarrassed. The earl was blushing slightly. “God, it’s good to see you,” he said, smacking Rathe’s shoulder.

  Rathe punched him back. “My brother, the earl! And who’s this? No—this can’t be Chad? You said he was only six!”

  “Seven!” Chad cried, grinning. “Are you my Uncle Rathe?”

  “You bet!” Rathe swung him up into his arms and Chad squealed. “Want a ride, champ?” he asked. When Chad responded enthusiastically, he set him on his broad shoulders. “Nick, this is my wife, Grace.”

  Grace smiled with genuine warmth as Nick kissed her hand. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said softly.

  Nick studied her openly. “I’m so glad my hell-raising brother finally found his match,” he said at last.

  Grace grinned; Rathe groaned. “You don’t know the half of it!” he exclaimed. “How was your trip? Nick, we have some company, I hope you won’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Nick said easily, following his brother with his son on his shoulders into the house. His attention, however, was caught by Grace, who had given Rathe a warning look, her own gaze worried.

  “It’s someone you know,” Rathe continued easily, swinging Chad to the ground in the doorway of a small, intimate parlor and taking his hand.

  Nick’s smile died as he glanced past his brother. His heart actually stopped in midbeat, and he stared, stunned.

  Jane, impossibly beautiful and impossibly pale, sat alone on the sofa and stared back, equally shocked.

  54

  He had come to New York to find Jane, but he had never expected to find her in his brother’s house. For one long moment he could not speak or move, he could only stare.

  Jane rose nervously to her feet, clutching her gown in her fists, her eyes as big as saucers, her face whiter than a ghost’s. It was then that Lindley came forward from the tall, draped windows, his stride hard, his face set. He moved toward Jane, as if to protect her.

  The earl didn’t think. He rushed forward, swinging. Lindley ducked, and the earl’s blow, containing enough power to kill, merely glanced off his temple. But it knocked Lindley off balance and to his knees. The earl went after him like a maddened bull, dragging him up by his suit lapels. Grace cried out in protest clutching the wide-eyed Chad. Rathe was rushing to them, grabbing his brother from behind and trying to tear him from Lindley. “Nick! Damn it, stop!”

  Jane stood frozen, hands clutched to her breasts.

  Nick burst free of Rathe’s hold as Lindley backed warily away, panting. ‘I’ll kill you if you’ve so much as touched her, you son of a bitch!” Nick roared. His face was red, the veins standing out rigidly in his temples, his throat corded. “I will kill you, do you hear?”

  Rathe grabbed him again. Furious, Nick spun free. “Stay out of this,” he warned his brother, who instantly stepped back, not out of fear, but out of sudden understanding and respect.

  Chad broke free of Grace’s grasp to run to his father. “Papa! Papa!”

  The earl caught him. “It’s all right,” he said firmly. “Go with your aunt Grace. Jane and I have something to discuss.”

  Chad was reluctant, but Grace came forward to take his hand and lead him out, despite his many backward glances.

  The earl moved to Jane, fist raised with frustration, but clearly not raised at her. “Did he touch you? Are you sleeping with him? Are you?”

  Jane shrank back. “No.” It was a barely audible whisper.

  “You’ve done enough,” Lindley shouted from behind them. “Leave her alone—can’t you see that you’ve practically destroyed her?”

  The earl whirled, but Rathe was between the two of them before further violence could erupt. Jane swallowed. “He is only my friend,” she managed, her voice quavering.

  Jealousy was red and hot, a haze blinding him now that he had found them together. “How good a friend, Jane?” he demanded. “How good?”

  “He is not my lover!” she cried, a flush rising to her face. “How dare you even ask! How dare you —when you have Patricia running your household and warming your bed!”

  That froze the earl, and he stood there panting, his shoulders straining the seams of his jacket, sweat beading at his temples. Jane was panting too, facing him, her breasts rising and falling rapidly above the low, lace-edged bodice of her gown.

  “Jon,” Rathe said quietly, yet there was authority in his tone, “let’s leave them alone.”

  “You knew he was coming,” Lindley hurled. “Yet you didn’t tell us!”

  “He is my brother—and the father of Nicole.”

  “I am not moving,” Lindley stated. “Jane, we don’t have to stay here and take this abuse. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  Jane bit her lip, tears coming to her eyes, and she nodded. But she only took a step before the earl grabbed her, hauling her to him. “You lied to me! You told me you were going to the house on Gloucester Street

  ! Instead you left me!” His voice broke, agonized. “Damn you, Jane, how could you?”

  “How could I not?” Her voice quavered. “How could I not? You expected me to remain with you as your mistress and send you home to Patricia every night? This I could not, and cannot, do!”

  He stared, then he shook her. “Did I ask you to be my mistress?” he shouted. “Did I?”

  “You said there was an obvious solution!” she cried back. “You said you would take care of me! Did you or did you not?”

  He released her, incredulous. “You fool! Do you know me so little? Jane, I—” He stopped, unable to continue. He wrenched away and wiped the sweat from his brow. And Jane stared at his back, hope so plainly etched on her face that Lindley allowed Rathe to lead him from the salon, closing the doors on them both and leaving them alone.

  Jane waited, unmoving.

  He turned to face her. There was a suspicious film on his eyes. “I didn’t just come here to bring Chad to his grandparents,” he said, low.

  She swallowed. She gulped down tears.

  “I cannot let you go from my life, Jane. I cannot.”

  “I will not be your mistress,” she said, and then her face collapsed and she moaned. “Oh, damn you, Nicholas! Why couldn’t you let me go? Why?”

  She sank onto the couch. “Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but staying with you will surely kill me, a little bit every day.” She stared at him out of glazed eyes. “But you know what?” Her voice quavered. “I would rather die a little bit every day with you than live without you in a world that would be frozen and barren and lifeless.”

  She closed her eyes, his widened. “All right,” she said heavily, her voice breaking. “You win. I love you too much, you see. I will return with you, I will be your mistress. For as long as you want me, I will be yours.”

  He cried out and dropped down beside her, wrapping her in his arms. She began to cry. So did he. “Jane, you fool! I am getting a divorce! How could you think anything otherwise?”

  “What?” She pushed a bit away, blinking,
cheeks tearstained and nose as red as a cherry.

  “It will be final very shortly. Patricia already knows. How could you not have understood what I meant when I said there was an obvious solution?”

  “A divorce?” She gasped.

  “Jane—did I hear you right?” He brushed hair from her cheek. His hand trembled. His own cheeks were as damp as hers. “Did you say you love me?”

  “I’ve always loved you, Nicholas,” she said simply. “From that first moment when we met in the parlor with Aunt Matilda.”

  He crushed her to him, hard, his power raw and agonized and so immense, Jane knew, in that moment, that he loved her too, with an intensity she had never dreamed of.

  “Will you marry me?” he whispered humbly. “Jane, please, will you be my wife?”

  “Yes, Nicholas, oh, yes.” She wept, clinging.

  They rocked each other for a long time, his lips pressing against her cheek and temple and hair again and again, until she turned her mouth up to his, and blindly, their lips met in mad desperation. It was a long, hot, hard kiss filled with the power of love.

  “I love you,” he finally said. “Jane. Jane, God, I love you.”

  She understood what it cost him to say it, she could hear it in his low, barely audible, strained tone. He cupped her face to look at her. “Jane, I’ve never said it before, not to Patricia, not to anyone.”

  “I know,” she said, attempting to stall the tears.

  He fought himself too. “I—I never felt this for her, it wasn’t like this. What I feel for you—I can’t live without you,” he managed, raw.

  She sniffed, brushed a tear from his eyes, while finally letting her own flow unchecked. “Does this mean you forgive me for my stupid impulsiveness once again?”

  He laughed through the blur of his vision. “Darling , I can forgive you anything—as long as you never stop loving me.”

  She smiled then, impishly. “Stop loving you? That, Nicholas, would be impossible.”

  55

  West Texas

  Jane had never quite had a ride like this before.

  Dust filled the coach, and she’d long since given up holding a kerchief to her nose. She’d grown used to the thick taste of grit on her tongue. If the carriage had springs, they were broken. She was jarred by every rut and pothole, which meant that despite Nicholas’s supporting arm around her, she was tumbling around like a pair of straight die. Chad clung tenaciously to the seat opposite where he sat, his eyes wide and round as saucers as he stared at the rugged passing landscape. “Papa,” he asked again, for the dozenth time, “are you sure there are no Indians?”

  Beside her, just for a moment, the earl relaxed, and a hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Well,” he said levelly, “maybe just one or two renegades hiding up on that ridge.”

  If possible, Chad’s eyes grew larger. “Wow!”

  Nicole was the true trooper, enjoying the madcap ride, shrieking with delight every time they all went into the air, as if it were nothing more than being tossed by her father. Molly was a distinct shade of apple green, nearly oblivious to her charge’s howling pleasure.

  No, she had never had a ride quite like this one. Jane was gripping the earl’s palm as she rode the bucking stage. And he was clenching her hand back just as tightly.

  His face was taut, as taut as his grip on her. Jane knew he was filled with anxiety, in the clutches of his own inner turmoil. She leaned close to kiss his cheek. Briefly he smiled at her, squeezing her hand. And then his gaze turned out the window, his jaw so tight he surely must be grinding down his teeth one by one.

  “I’m sorry about this, Jane,” he said. “Soon the railhead to the D and M will be completed, probably in the spring. But until then, the only way to my parents’ ranch is via stage from San Antonio.”

  “It’s all right,” Jane said softly, covering his palm in hers with her other gloved hand. “At the least, this is a unique experience, especially for the children. And the country is magnificent.”

  It was. A sage- and mesquite-studded vista rolled away from them in shades of purple and green. In the distance, jagged mountains etched a mauve line across the bluest sky Jane had ever seen. Never had Jane had the feeling before of being so insignificant, or of being in the midst of God’s land. The power and majesty of this huge, raw, wild country stretching before her was overwhelming and scintillating.

  And her husband was a part of it.

  “D ‘n’ M just up ahead,” yelled the driver from outside, above them.

  Eagerly Jane and Molly and Chad all rushed to peer out the windows for a glimpse of the Bragg ranch. Only the earl sat unmoving. Jane was disappointed when what looked like a small but busy town greeted her. They roared down a wide dirt street, and she glimpsed brick storefronts and homes with gardens and white picket fences. Then they pulled to a stop in front of a small shop. Its sign, hanging lopsided from a chain, said JOE’S POSTE STAGE STOPS HERE.

  Jane looked at the earl, who was rigid and still. “Why, this isn’t a ranch, it’s a town!”

  Nick could not manage a smile. He looked at her numbly. He was sweating. “Rathe said the ranch had grown. None of this was here when I left in sixty-five.”

  Jane was worried by his tone and his expression. She took his hand again. “Darling, it will be all right.”

  He held her gaze. They hadn’t discussed the situation between him and his father again, not once in the past two weeks since their reconciliation. Nick had not brought up the topic, and Jane, although wanting to, was afraid it was too sensitive for her to mention. But now she saw the naked worry in his eyes, and her heart wept for him. She touched his cheek as the door opened and Chad bounced out. “Darling, everything will be fine, you will see.”

  Molly exited with Nicole, who was having a temper tantrum because the ride had ended.

  Nick gripped her hand hard. “Do you think so?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I’m sure,” she managed, unnerved by his fear and anxiety.

  And then from outside a voice boomed: “Are you Chad Bragg?”

  “No, sir,” Chad piped. “I’m Chad Bragg, Lord Shelton.”

  “Lord! No—I don’t believe it!”

  “It’s the truth—you can ask my papa!”

  Suddenly Chad shrieked, and Jane saw through the window a big leonine man in his early sixties lifting the boy high in the air. “I am Grandpa Bragg!” he shouted.

  “Derek! You’ll frighten him to death! Put him down and introduce yourself properly!” a woman cried in affectionate exasperation.

  Jane twisted to face her husband. He was still clinging to her hand, and he was as pale as she had ever seen him. “They’re here,” she said simply.

  He took a deep breath. “I know.”

  He couldn’t stay in the coach forever. Not that he wanted to. It was just that he was feeling so choked with emotions—ones he hadn’t quite expected—that he was paralyzed. He hadn’t seen his parents in more than ten years. Love and joy were washing over him in incredible proportions, but so was fear. Raw, bitter fear. For even as he was reunited with his family, there was the knowledge of the confrontation he would instigate—immediately. And then he would learn the truth he had avoided so desperately for so long.

  He tried to tell himself it no longer mattered. He was an adult, not a child, and he had Jane and his children and Dragmore. So it didn’t matter that he was not Derek’s son. It didn’t matter that Derek’s real children were Rathe and Storm, that he loved them, and not him, Nick. Nick knew Derek cared, of course, but he couldn’t possibly love the child of a man who had raped his wife. The problem was that no matter how hard he told himself he did not care that Derek did not really love him, the truth was he still loved Derek as a father—for the man was his father in his heart.

  Slowly he climbed out of the coach.

  Derek barely looked a day older than when Nick had last seen him. He was as tall as Nick, and once he’d been as broad or even broader with thick, powerful mus
cles. Now he’d slimmed down a bit, but he was still an unusually powerful man. With his typical unrestrained, uninhibited exuberance (Derek always did what he felt like when he felt like it, Miranda often scolded), he was staring incredulously at the delicate gloved hand Jane had offered him.

  “What’s this?” he roared, laughing, revealing white, even teeth. He turned to grin at his wife who held Chad’s hand, a petite, slender, elegant woman in her early fifties. “My God, Miranda, does she remind you of someone?”

  Jane turned to look at Miranda, confused.

  Miranda took her hand. “Forgive him, he’s overcome. But it was a compliment—I think he was comparing you to me when I first came to the frontier.”

  Jane took the woman’s hand, then was embraced in a light hug. A moment later she was enveloped in a bear hug that could easily squash her—and she was lifted off her feet. When Derek put her down, she was blushing beet red.

  Nick almost grinned. Derek liked his wife, and eventually Jane would get used to his enthusiasm. Then his father saw him, and Nick froze.

  But Derek didn’t. “Son!”

  When his father reached him to embrace him, hard, Nick closed his eyes and fought the childish urge to cry. His father released him. “God, look at you.” Impulsively Derek clasped his shoulder. “Look at you! You were a man when you left, but not like this.”

  “Hello, Father.” The word just popped out. Nick felt himself blushing.

  Derek threw his arm around him, and tears filled his eyes. “Shit!” He roared. “I’m like an old woman. God, son, you’ve done well for yourself— two beautiful children and a beautiful wife …”

  “Derek!” Miranda reproved, but she was weeping and she threw herself at Nick. She clung to him, a tiny woman, and Nick clung back until it was unseemly and he forced them to separate.

  “Hi, Mom.” He managed a grin. He hoped his own eyes weren’t tearing.