Chapter 1 #2
“It definitely wasn’t your fault,” she assured Skylar.
“It just—happened.”
“Something must be done.”
“Nothing needs to be done!”
Skylar arched a brow, and Sabrina sighed with exasperation. “Please, Skylar, you can’t take care of this for me, you—”
“No, of course not. This is between you and Sloan, isn’t it?” Skylar inquired sweetly.
It was all so pathetic, and she absolutely despised her position now.
She’d had terrible times in her life, but she’d always felt the power to fight before.
Now it seemed that she was being beaten by sheer humiliation.
The thought of what had happened still seemed to make her blood boil, and a pounding began anew in her temples.
What in God’s name was she going to do? Just when she had envisioned a life of freedom, it seemed that new chains had been cast around her.
She tried so hard to pretend that it couldn’t have happened, but it had.
And he wasn’t like anyone else. He played no games but spoke the truth bluntly, whether she liked it or not.
He didn’t bend, break, or bow, or give in… even an inch.
Once upon a time, despite everything wrong in her life, she had been coveted in society.
Dillman had been a senator; she and Skylar had been window dressing, and she had been one of the elegantly gracious Connor girls, popular with Northerner and Southerner alike as the country healed its wounds.
Men had flattered her wherever she went…
Until now.
Sloan didn’t flatter or cajole. He moved straight forward, with single vision, demanding what he saw as right, accepting nothing less…
She shivered.
He was Indian, as well. Sioux. It was one thing to love Hawk as a brother. And quite another to realize that…
Sloan was one of the plains savages. His father’s blood had made him so. His blood was that of the red-skinned warriors who had terrorized the Whites migrating west, who had attacked without warning, with bloodcurdling cries, maiming, raping, slaughtering…
Sabrina turned from Skylar suddenly, brushing the mare again with a vengeance. She tried to remind herself that Sloan wasn’t a savage. He was a United States Cavalry officer.
With just a little bit too much savage bred into him.
She glanced toward the castle, wondering if Sloan had decided to explain the situation, and if so…
Just what was he saying about her?
“Just how did this happen?”
“How?”
“How? Hell! This is, of course, rather difficult and damned awkward,” Andrew—”Hawk”—Douglas said.
He stood pouring brandy in his father’s ancestral home, and it occurred to Sloan Trelawny that he and Hawk, two bronze men with their Sioux blood and straight black hair, must look peculiar sipping brandy in a castle in the Highlands.
Well, such was life, Sloan determined, standing by the mantel and accepting the snifter handed to him. Life certainly could be ironic.
“Nothing needs to be difficult,” Sloan said, lifting his brandy snifter. “Cheers.”
“Right, cheers! And since it’s not difficult, I would appreciate it if you would explain. The young woman is my sister-in-law, in my care now. And still, it just seems so—so impossible. I mean, are you certain that you’re the father—”
Sloan stared at him incredulously. “Am I certain? Of course I’m certain.”
Hawk remained perplexed. Well, it was natural, certainly. They knew one another well. They knew the prejudices that could arise against half-breeds.
Hawk’s father, a White man, had married his Indian love after the death of his first wife, but with or without that legal tie, Hawk would have been close with his elder brother, David, who had recently returned from the grave itself to take his rightful place as laird here.
Blood ties had brought both Hawk and Sloan across an ocean—and far from the tempest between the US government and the Sioux Nation, which they still couldn’t escape—to discover the truth regarding certain evil and criminal events that had recently taken place here in the Highlands.
Sloan was not actually related to David or Hawk, but in a different world, long ago, they had slashed their palms out on the plain and become blood brothers.
There was more, of course, that had contributed to Sloan and Hawk’s being friends: they shared the same dual heritage.
Sloan’s mother had been a White captive raped by her Sioux captor.
His father had fallen in love with his mother and made her his wife among the Sioux—his only wife.
He had made her a promise as well. When he died, she and her son would be able to return to her people, the Whites.
So Sloan had spent his formative years on the plains, learning what boys needed to know in order to survive there and becoming a Sioux warrior.
Then his father died.
And he had suddenly found himself in his grandfather’s house, and under the supervision of Lieutenant General Michael Trelawny, a Mexican War hero, a man powerful in both political and military circles.
He had gone from being an Indian to a cowboy; a Sioux—to the cavalry.
His grandfather’s prestige had been enough to get him into West Point; his service in the Civil War had earned him the respect of his fellow cavalrymen.
But nothing could buy him true legitimacy in the White man’s world.
Nor could he have ever turned his back on what was becoming the annihilation of the Sioux people. He didn’t believe that either the Whites or the Indians owed him acceptance; he had been determined to win the respect of both peoples.
He had forged his own world, straddling a fence; the position was precarious. Hawk lived in that world, too. They understood one another, as few men could.
Which was why they were in the Highlands now, half a world away from the plains. They shared a strange, divided heritage. When one was in trouble, the other stood beside him. They shared a great deal.
Which was, of course, why Hawk was so baffled. His sister-in-law had just arrived in the West when he and Skylar had decided to bring her here to the Highlands with them. And now she was in the family way. And Sloan had claimed her child as his own.
Because it was.
Hawk swallowed his brandy in a long gulp, then looked at Sloan, lifting his hands.
“This is truly bizarre. To the best of my knowledge, you met Sabrina in the midst of disaster, when her stepfather was trying to do away with us all. You didn’t seem to like one another much at the time, and you have been even more antagonistic to each other each time you’ve met since then.
I don’t begin to understand how this could have happened—”
He broke off as Sloan arched a brow, then exhaled on a long breath. “No, no, I know how it happened, I just don’t know how the hell it happened between the two of you.” He was quiet for a moment. “Or why I knew nothing about it.”
Sloan looked at Hawk evenly. “1 didn’t say anything to you or anyone else about what happened because I didn’t feel that it was my place to do so. Sabrina most fervently wanted to forget what had taken place, and until now, I respected her decision.”
Hawk arched a brow. “But—what the hell happened?”
What had happened? Despite the amount he had so purposely been drinking the night he had first met Sabrina Connor, Hawk’s sister-in-law, he remembered everything about it in minute detail.
And it hadn’t been his state of desperately sought near-inebriation that had created confusion regarding her identity. Sabrina herself had brought that about.
Sloan set his snifter on the mantel, a wry, humorless smile curving his lip. “Well, it seems that I acquired Sabrina much the same way that you acquired your wife.”
Hawk frowned. “If you’ll remember, I discovered that I had a wife after the deed had been done by proxy.”
“Brad Dillman,” Sloan said quietly.
“Dillman?”
Sloan nodded. “Skylar was tricked into your father’s proxy because she was so desperate to escape her stepfather—the man guilty of killing her father. Well, he was responsible for what happened between Sabrina and me as well.”
“How? When?”
“It was after the disastrous meeting at the Red Cloud Reservation, when it became evident to all involved that some Sioux—poor deluded creatures who seem to believe they have a right to their own way of life—were going to fight. And the army was going to annihilate them. I went to stay at the Miner’s Well and walked across to get a bottle of whiskey at the Ten-Penny Saloon.
My mood was dire, to say the least, and I wanted nothing more than to drink myself into one night’s oblivion.
Our friendly Gold Town madam offered me her new girl—on the house.
I declined. But shortly thereafter, a woman appeared in my room.
Now I do admit to having been around a bit, but in all my life, I had never seen anyone like her—so perfect a female form, in so sensual a mode of dress, obviously a lady of the night, yet behaving so very strangely—”
Sloan broke off, gazing into the flames again.
How?
Actually, it had been damned easy.