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wished that she’d given in to him, but that was unseemly, unladylike, and totally impossible. She couldn’t encourage him. A widower like Thorn Vance would certainly want more than she was prepared to offer, and he was hardly likely to offer her marriage. He was something of a ladies’ man, she gathered from their conversation, and he seemed already to think her a woman of loose morals. She had no thought of ending up a scarlet woman because of her body’s helpless reaction to him. She’d simply have to keep her distance from now on.
    “Look at her,” Lou bristled minutes later when Thorn took her onto the dance floor. She was glaring toward Trilby, who was still standing beside Curt. “Has she no shame?”
    “I’ll take care of it,” he told the woman, who was dark and much older than Trilby. “Don’t worry.”
    “So blatant,” she choked. “He’s got two children, and he doesn’t care how much gossip he stirs up. It isn’t only her. Now there’s some woman down in Del Rio.” She dabbed at her eyes miserably. “I wish I’d never met him.”
    “What do you mean, some woman in Del Rio?”
    “A pretty little Mexican peasant girl whose father owns a taverna,” she said huskily. “He spends all his time down there.”
    That struck Thorn as odd. If Curt were having a madaffair with Trilby, why was he seeing another woman as well? And a poor Mexican girl, at that?
    “He likes to see me humiliated,” she whispered, glaring at her husband’s back. “He enjoys hurting me.”
    “Why should he want to do that?” Thorn asked gently.
    Lou blushed. “I was…in the family way when we married,” she said, faintly resentful. “He’s never let me forget it. He didn’t want to marry me.”
    It began to make sense. “Are you certain that he’s seeing Trilby?” he asked her.
    She shrugged. “He disappears every other night. Maybe he’s seeing them both. How should I know? I hate him!”
    “No, you don’t.”
    She sniffed. “No, I don’t. I wish I could.” She leaned her head against him. “Why couldn’t I have loved you, Thorn? You’d never cheat on your wife.”
    “It’s not my way,” he agreed.
    “Look at her,” she muttered, glaring at Trilby. “So cultured and citified and elegant. She’s nothing to look at, though. All bones and a face that no man could call pretty. I’m much better to look at than she is!”
    “Now, Lou,” he said gently.
    She stumbled and had to regain her balance. “I’m being spiteful, I know. Why don’t her people control her? If she’d been raised right, she wouldn’t be carousing around with my husband!”
    The question made Thorn thoughtful. Mary and Jack Lang were moral people. They hadn’t raised Trilby to be licentious. Surely if they knew she was seeing Curt they’d stop her. Of course, he rationalized, they might not know about it.
    Minutes later he approached her where she stood with Curt and slid his hand down to capture hers.
    “Excuse us, won’t you?” he told Curt, and he didn’t smile. His cousin’s eyebrows arched in surprise.
    Thorn led her onto the floor, where several people were doing a lazy waltz to the music of the live band he’d hired.
    “I think it’s time Curt spent just a little time with his wife,” he said icily.
    Trilby flushed with anger. She smiled coolly. “How kind of you to sacrifice yourself on her behalf.”
    He shifted his eyes to where Lou was coaxing a reluctant Curt to dance with her. The whole situation made him angry.
    His arms contracted around Trilby, and she stiffened. “I might as well dance with a slab of lumber,” he remarked as they went around the floor for the second time. His hand gripped her slender waist hard and he shook her gently. “Will you relax? ”
    She was stiff in his arms, because she was angry at the remarks he’d made and frightened of how he made her feel. Her hand in his was cold and nervous, more so when his fingers began sliding in and out between her own, making her