Color of the Wind Read online

  "Do with them?"

  China and Durban and Khy had always had an array of nannies and governesses and tutors, like all the children of their class. Ariel was supposed to have brought a governess to the ranch to see to the children's lessons while they were here. That Ardith had arrived without one presented a problem Baird had no idea how to resolve.

  "I want to know who's going to look after the children while you are—" Ardith hesitated. "What is it you do here?"

  Baird pushed up a little straighter in his chair. "I'm running the ranch."

  "Really? And just what does that entail?"

  He was too fuddled to give her a comprehensive answer. He'd been ignoring the ledgers and voluminous correspondence from London in favor of riding out with Buck Johnson to oversee the herd. He was good at that, and he'd discovered being out on the land was very satisfying.

  "Looking after the cows," he fumbled. "Preparing to take the steers to market. That's what ranchers do."

  "So you will have time to spend with the children, then."

  Baird scowled. "Why are you so concerned?"

  "Because if you can spare someone to accompany me as far as Rock Creek, I mean to leave as soon as possible," she answered. "But I can't do that unless I'm sure the children are provided for. You don't need me to stay on, do you?"

  "Good God! No!" Baird snapped at her. "We'll do without you—somehow."

  "How exactly?"

  "Well, we... I think the children should... Um..." Baird blinked at her. He didn't have the faintest idea how to provide for the children. He didn't even have the faintest idea what "looking after them" meant.

  Ardith pushed to her feet. "I can see we'd better discuss this tomorrow when your head is clearer."

  He looked up at her, a little ashamed that he'd drunk enough for her to notice. "Very well, then," he answered, trying to regain his dignity. "We'll discuss this in the morning."

  She started toward her room, then paused and looked back at him. "You disappointed her, you know," she said.

  "Who?"

  "Ariel. She'd hoped for so much more from you."

  Baird wasn't sure how Ardith knew that and was mortified that she did.

  "I shouldn't be surprised if she was disappointed," he acknowledged, instinctively tugging the shroud of his past mistakes around him. "Disappointing people has always been my special gift."

  Ardith's eyes went hard. "Don't disappoint the children, Baird," she warned him. "Don't waste the love they feel for you. It's far too precious."

  Without another word she moved beyond the arc of firelight. He heard the door to her room close behind her.

  "I won't disappoint them deliberately," he promised.

  Taking a deep breath, he set his empty glass aside and heaved to his feet. It was only a few yards to the door and the porch that ran along the back of the house. Baird shivered as he stepped outside, but he braced his hands against the railing and waited for the cold to clear his head.

  He could feel the foothills rolling up behind the house, see the shadowy ridge of mountains rising toward the sky. There was something about this place with all its grandeur and wildness that spoke to him. Just standing here in the thick of the night, a speck of a man amidst such vastness, soothed him.

  After talking to Ardith he needed soothing. She had ripped into him in her sly, superior way. She had forced him to see how much of a bastard he was, and just how good he was at wasting other people's lives. His negligence in Burma had cost Bram everything, and now he had Ariel on his conscience.

  He flexed his shoulders and looked up at the sky. All his life he'd been running from responsibilities, dusting them from his palms like so much dirt. But Ardith wasn't the kind of woman who'd let him get away with that—especially when it came to his children.

  Baird hurt just looking at them. China was so bright and fine and fragile that he could crush her with a word. Durban wore his hatred like a badge. Khy barreled through the world needing someone to protect him. Baird wasn't the kind of man to do that.

  He wasn't careful enough or patient enough or wise enough to raise these children. He knew he'd given them life. He knew he should accept responsibility for their welfare, but he didn't know how to be their father. And God knew, he'd made so many mistakes.

  Yet the children belonged to him now—only to him—and that scared the hell out of him.

  * * *

  Khyber looked up from his breakfast. "So, Papa, what's a half-sister?"

  Baird scowled down the length of the pine table at his younger son. "What do you need to know that for?"

  "Well," the boy began, "yesterday Aunt Ardith told Mrs. Johnson she was Mama's half-sister, but Aunt Ardith doesn't seem like half of anything to me."

  Baird took a swig of his coffee and wished there was someone else to answer Khy's question. He wasn't feeling his best this morning, though if he had been trampled by wild horses, he didn't remember it. Nor was discussing family matters his long suit.

  "Half-sisters," Baird began, "have one parent the same and one parent different."

  Khy blinked at him, not the least bit enlightened.

  Durban looked up from dabbing jam onto one of Myra Johnson's feather-light biscuits. "What Aunt Ardith meant is that she and mother have the same father but different mothers."

  Something about the precision of the boy's explanation made Baird's teeth itch.

  "Can people do that?" Khy demanded, clearly horrified.

  "Obviously they can," Baird answered. "When Aunt Ardith's mother died, your Grandfather Arthur married your Grandmama Sarah. They are your mother's parents."

  Khy's eyes widened with understanding, then clouded with tears. "You aren't going to marry someone else now that Mama's dead, are you?"

  Baird choked on his coffee. "I certainly don't plan to."

  "Don't plan to what?" Ardith asked, emerging from the bedroom where she'd been plaiting China's hair.

  Baird preferred that Ardith not be privy to this particular conversation and spoke up before either of the boys could answer. "I don't have any plans at all," he assured her.

  China strolled out of the bedroom, bussed Baird's cheek, then swooped into the place beside him.

  "Since you don't have plans," Ardith said, settling down across the table, "you should be able to show us the ranch."

  Baird glared at her over the rim of his cup. He didn't want to show them the ranch. He didn't want Ardith and the children dogging his footsteps. He wasn't ready to reveal his feelings about the ranch to anyone.

  "I don't think that would be a good idea."

  "Oh, Papa, why not?" China cajoled. "I'd love to see the place!"

  "It's cold out," he hedged. "It looks like snow." And I don't want to have to look after you.

  "We've been traveling across open country for four days," Ardith pointed out. "A little cold isn't likely to hurt us."

  "Oh, Papa, please!" Khy piped up. "Please, show us the horses and the cows."

  Ardith smiled and spooned sugar into her coffee with studied nonchalance. She'd known damn well he'd have no choice about showing them the ranch if she mentioned it in front of the children.

  "Some of these are special cows, too," Durban put in around a bite of biscuit. "They're a mix between Texas Longhorns and Herefords brought from England."

  Baird stared at his elder son. He had been at the ranch a full week before he's discovered that. "How did you—"

  "I went out to the corral this morning. Mr. Johnson told me," Durban volunteered, looking smug.

  "Well, if you want to tour the ranch you'll have to ride," he warned them, "and there's only one lady's saddle with the tack."

  "That will do us well enough," Ardith assured him. "China can use the sidesaddle. I ride astride now and then, though it always causes a sensation in Concord."

  Baird registered his opinion with a raise of his eyebrows. "I can just imagine!" Feeling thwarted, he pushed to his feet. "Come out to the barn when you've finished breakfast."
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  Khy was at his heels before he reached the door. Durban came straggling out to the corral a few minutes later. By then Baird had ordered a gentle, white-stockinged roan for China and had a leggy buckskin named Primrose tacked up for Ardith. He'd resigned himself to taking Khy up on Dandy with him, since the horses at the ranch were too unpredictable for a six-year-old.

  He came to where Durban was perched on the corral fence watching the ponies run. "Is there a horse you particularly fancy for yourself, Son?"

  "Oh, I won't be going with you."

  "And why is that?" He had expected the boy to be as eager to see the ranch as the others.

  "I don't ride."

  Baird turned to look at his son. "What do you mean you don't ride?"

  "I don't ride," Durban enunciated, as if Baird's hearing were defective.

  "But I left specific instructions with the stable master at Heatherleigh to teach you."

  Durban gave one of his contemptuous shrugs. "I never learned."

  Baird stared at the boy in disbelief. Horses were the only thing he'd cared about when he was growing up. They'd been his sustenance during terms at school. How could his son not share that interest? How could Durban defy his forebears, men who'd hunted with Henry VIII and charged to their deaths at Balaclava?

  "I don't like riding," Durban declared. "And I don't think I care to see any more of the ranch!"

  He jumped down from the fence and darted past Ardith and China on his way to the house.

  Ardith sized up the situation in a glance. "What did you do to upset him?"

  "Did you know that Durban doesn't ride?" Baird demanded.

  Ardith nodded as if it were a matter of no consequence.

  "All Northcrosses ride!"

  "Ariel never rode," Ardith reminded him. "Perhaps Durban takes after her."

  Damn the boy, Baird seethed, disappointment and incredulity chewing at his insides. And damn Ardith for defending him.

  He clung to his exasperation until everyone had mounted up, until they had turned to the wide, rolling fields that lay off to the south. Only when the plains and sky opened before him in all their splendor could Baird put his frustration with Durban aside.

  He led his little party south along the base of a towering ridge and up a trail that rose and rose. They dismounted when they reached a broad, flat clearing at the top of the first rocky crest and stood with the snowcapped Big Horns at their backs and the expanse of the Powder River Valley falling away before them.

  "It's so big," China said in a very small voice.

  "So vast," Ardith echoed, her tone tinged with awe.

  Baird smiled with pride, as if he'd had something to do with creating all of this.

  When he glanced across at his sister-in-law, he saw that she was standing with her head high and her face turned into the wind. Tendrils of her tightly pinned hair had unfurled and were fluttering against cheeks scoured red by the cold. Her pale eyes glowed as if she were as touched and exhilarated by the primal scope of this land as he was.

  "I can breathe out here," she whispered in astonishment.

  Baird shivered in recognition. He had been stirred by the same stark, unexpected beauty. Had sensed the echoing harmony of earth and sky. He had tasted freedom in the wind.

  He saw the transformation in Ardith's face and suddenly wished he hadn't brought her here. He didn't want his own fierce enchantment with this place diluted by Ardith's appreciation. He didn't want to share it, didn't want to feel kinship with her, especially when they'd all but declared themselves enemies the night before.

  As he turned away, leaving Ardith and his daughter to contemplate the vastness of the Wyoming prairie, Baird realized Khy was no longer beside him.

  "Khy?" he murmured and wheeled around. "Khy?"

  The boy was nowhere in sight.

  Concern wiped the exhilaration from Ardith's face. Something in her expression made Baird's heartbeat pick up speed.

  "Where did he go?" he demanded. "How could he have disappeared so quickly?"

  "Oh, Papa!" China answered with a hint of exasperation. "Khy heads off exploring all the time."

  Ardith cupped her hands to her mouth. "Khy!" she shouted. "Khyber Northcross, can you hear me? Where are you, child?"

  All they could hear was the roaring of the wind.

  Baird turned on Ardith. "If you knew he might run off like this, why didn't you keep an eye on him?"

  "You're his father," she snapped back. "Why didn't you?"

  "Khy! Khy!" The rising note of anxiety in his daughter's voice reminded Baird their first priority was finding his son.

  He strode toward the edge of the clearing. Beyond a scattering of rocks and some twisted pines, the cliff side dropped away. He hadn't realized how high they'd climbed until he stared down at the cluster of aspens a hundred feet below.

  "Khyber Northcross," he shouted, trying to ignore the way his stomach dipped. "You come back here this instant!"

  "He won't just come," China offered with authority. "Not until he's ready."

  Baird swore under his breath. "Well, we can't just stand here and wait. Too much could happen."

  He chose not to elaborate. The precipitous drop was the obvious danger, but there were animals a boy could encounter in the woods. He could break a leg in this treacherous terrain, or lose his way in the trees. It was beginning to snow.

  "We need to find him," he declared and began giving orders. "Ardith, take the trail up the south side of the ridge behind us. I'll move around to the north and meet you on top."

  "Let me help," China offered.

  "I want you to stay with the horses."

  The girl drooped in disappointment. "I want to do something important!"

  "That is important, China. We'll be in real trouble if the horses wander off. And besides, I'm leaving my pistol here with you," he said, slipping the gun from the holster at his hip.

  "Baird," Ardith said in a warning tone.

  "If Khy comes back," he went on to spite her, "I want you to fire a single shot."

  "Baird!"

  "Do you know how to do that?"

  China shook her head, fear replacing the eagerness in those wide blue eyes.

  "I don't think that's wise—" Ardith warned him.

  Baird turned on her. "Just what the hell do you know about finding someone in the woods?"

  "Not much," she admitted without backing down. "But I do know that children have no business handling firearms."

  "We need a way to signal if Khy comes back, or if either of us finds him. I'll show China what she needs to know."

  Ardith curled her fingers around the girl's arm. "Do you really think you can do this, China?"

  "I'll be careful," she promised.

  With a reluctant nod, Ardith turned and started up the trail she'd been assigned to search.

  Once he was sure China understood how to cock, aim the pistol, and pull the trigger, Baird scrambled up the opposite side.

  He swept quickly through banks of cedars and pines, calling Khy's name. The snow was falling more steadily when he came out of the trees, and all he could think about was his son being lost up here. Khy wouldn't last the night if a storm closed in.

  When the trail branched, Baird set off to the right, wondering if a child Khy's age could have come this far. Still, he knew how distances disappeared in curiosity over a bird's abandoned nest, a scurrying animal, or a rock that seemed to be streaked with gold. He walked a good distance and was looping back when the report of a pistol boomed through the hills.

  The tightness that had been building in Baird's chest drained away. "Thank God!" he murmured and retraced his steps.

  Ardith came skidding down the path on the far side of the clearing just as he reached it himself. He took one look around and his relief evaporated. The children were nowhere in sight.

  "Where have they got off to now?" he demanded, though Ardith clearly had no more idea where China and Khyber were than he did.

  "Oh, Baird," she
gasped. "Do you think something could have happened to them both?"

  He snatched the pistol from the rock and felt the barrel. It was still hot. "They can't have gone far."

  "Khy? China?" Ardith shouted, and the tremor in her voice set something inside Baird quivering.

  He added his voice to hers. "China! Khy!"

  "Here, Papa!"

  Baird spun around just in time to see Khy and China round a boulder at the lip of the ridge. Ardith ran toward them and snatched Khy up in her arms.

  China grinned and scrambled the last few steps, sending a trickle of stones skittering down the trail and into the trees at the base of the cliff.

  Anxiety sparked up a firestorm in Baird's chest. "Where the hell have you been?"

  China lost her smile. "Khy dropped the whistle Mrs. Johnson gave him onto that ledge," she explained, pointing, "and went down after it. But once he got down there, he couldn't get back. All I did was go after him."

  Baird stalked past her to the head of the trail and saw that his children had been following a path that clung to the face of the cliff like cobwebs to a dusty wall. His stomach pitched, and his knees nearly went out from under him.

  He turned to his daughter, breathing hard. "I don't ever want you doing something so foolhardy again," he told her savagely. "I don't ever want you taking that kind of chance."

  "But I rescued him!" she shouted. "I fired off that beastly gun just like you said, and then I went and brought him back!"

  Baird's heart was beating like he'd run a footrace, and his hands were shaking. He couldn't seem to rein in his temper.

  "Baird, for God's sake," Ardith admonished him, lifting Khy against her hip. "She did well. Khy's all right. It's fine now."

  But it wasn't fine. Khy shouldn't have gotten away from them. His daughter should never have been dancing along the edge of that cliff. Baird shivered, not able to let it go.

  Ushering the children toward their mounts, Ardith glanced back and must have read his expression.

  "Baird," she spoke sharply. "Baird!" Not trusting his voice, he acknowledged her with a jerk of his head. "That snow you were so worried about seems to have started."

  Flakes the size of silver dollars were drifting around them, and the mountains that had been so visible half an hour before were disappearing in veils of white.