Free Susan Johnson by Silver Flame (Braddock Black) Page A

night.

“I need my saddlebags,” Empress had said quietly in response to Hazard, and a servant had taken off at a run down the hall.
    All the rest she required—the boiling water; clean bandages; crockery to mix her medicines and poultices; the bizarre request for a dozen eggs beaten into a froth with cream and vanilla—had appeared in Trey’s room within minutes. Stripping off her damp jacket and pulling off her wet boots, she’d said as politely as possible to the crowd of family, friends, and servants assembled in the room, “I prefer working alone.”
    All the faces registered differing combinations of shock and wariness, but Hazard and Blaze, standing at their dying son’s bedside, never questioned her motives. Trey’s breathing was no longer apparent. Only by carefully watching his chest could the faintest motion be detected. And at terrifyingly long intervals. As if his brain, still marginally functional, would occasionally remind the lungs that they needed air. And when the message slowly arrived through shattered and damagedroutes, the lacerated remains of Trey’s body would attempt to follow the instructions.
    Hazard squeezed Blaze’s hand.
    She looked up at him, her faced wet with tears, and it took every ounce of strength he possessed to keep his voice steady. He had always been her rock; he couldn’t let her down now, although his heart was breaking. “She’s going to take care of Trey now,” he said, and tugged gently on her hand.
    “He can’t die, Jon. Tell me he won’t die.” Her plea was a desperate cry for assurance.
    Hazard looked at their last surviving child. Their firstborn, who represented so many memories of their love—the baby who could have been killed by the Lakota but wasn’t; the strong, plucky child who had survived all the feared childhood diseases that had taken their other four children. Their only child they hadn’t had to wrap in white velvet and lay in a small coffin with their favorite dolls or toys or warm, soft blanket.
    Hazard’s eyes turned back to Blaze, and he answered in the only way that wouldn’t break her spirit. “He won’t die,” he said, thinking that if Trey did, he’d feel like dying himself. He wondered if it was a penance for having too much—the deaths of all their young children. An austerity bred in him by his Absarokee upbringing at times questioned the necessity for all this material wealth.
    They had had too much, he sometimes thought. Life was too rich. Their love too grand. Five beautiful children, and power and land and wealth. Then, one by one, the children had been taken from them. One son dead of diphtheria. Another two years later with the same strangling illness, although they’d fought it with every remedy, every prayer, doctors brought in from Chicago. Then, five years later, when Chloe and Eva had died within hours of each other, after they had survived the pneumonia and were seemingly on the mend, he’d feared for Blaze’s sanity. He’d held her for two days, afraid he’d lost her, too, terrified at the blankness in her eyes. He’d talked and soothed and cajoled, promising the world to her, not letting her know their two daughters had been buried, desperate with his own fear.
    It was Trey who’d finally broken through the barriers. He’d been away at school and had been sent for when Chloe andEva became ill. When he’d come into the room, Blaze looked up, and tears ran down her cheeks. They’d been the first sign of emotion Hazard had seen in two days.
    “I’m home, Mama,” Trey had said, and held out his arms.
    So, if there was a balance in the natural order of things, if gains required loss, he and Blaze had paid dearly for their wealth. And if Trey died this stark winter night because of the enemies out for his blood, he felt a terrible gut-wrenching need for vengeance. Jake Poltrain wouldn’t live out the day.
    The anger mitigated the vast, empty helplessness. He’d known when the doctor took too long to