Chapter 4 #2
As Sloan had noted the first time he had seen her, Sabrina was uncommonly beautiful with her dark-auburn hair, dazzling blue eyes, and classical features.
She hadn’t chosen a white wedding gown, but instead a gown with a sky-blue skirt and a royal-blue velvet bodice.
The gown brought out the color in her eyes and contrasted with the auburn of her hair.
As he watched her come to him—trembling though she was—he admitted to himself that morality and nobility weren’t the only reasons he was so motivated to marry her.
Lust, he reminded himself.
It was that, and more.
She fascinated him.
Innocence, he thought, had faded from her eyes long before he had met her.
There was skepticism in them, just as there was a certain wisdom etched into her beautiful features; she might have grown up with every luxury available to the stepdaughter of a wealthy senator, but she had spent years in hell.
And he knew from what Skylar had told him that she had fought back all those years.
She had raw courage and determination. She was accustomed to fighting; she had been doing so a long time.
But if this marriage was going to be a fight between them for all eternity…
Well, he had been waging war one hell of a long time himself. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t marrying her simply to be noble. He was marrying her because he wanted her.
Yet, as she stood by his side, seeming to loathe every second of the ceremony, he sensed that revealing his true feelings to her would not serve him well. At least, not yet. She needed time to get used to him and the unusual life he’d forged for himself.
At this particular time, seeking to offer Sabrina the least affection seemed rather like trying to cherish a porcupine.
Sloan was amazed himself at how quickly and surely his vows came to his lips.
Hers could barely be heard. It seemed that she couldn’t breathe. At one point, the reverend had to ask her to repeat herself. Yet the words she uttered were the right ones, and in a matter of minutes, Reverend Massey was pronouncing them man and wife—and instructing him to kiss his bride.
Sabrina’s eyes were closed, her face was pale, and her body appeared tense, as if she were bracing herself for a passionate kiss from him. He briefly brushed his lips against hers, which were as cold as ice.
When she opened her eyes and looked at him, she appeared startled and even a bit grateful.
But she didn’t look at him for long. Skylar rushed to her; Hawk was shaking his hand, David Douglas was clapping him upon the back, and David and Shawna’s young son was tearing down the aisle to reach them.
He’d just freed himself from the buxom cook, Anne-Marie, who was crying into her handkerchief.
“Weddings do make a body tearful!” she proclaimed, coming forward with her best wishes and the announcement that a light dinner would be served in the great hall.
Sloan turned then, offering his hand to Sabrina. “It’s done, then. Shall we?”
She nodded, her lips and cheeks still pale. He drew his eyes from hers, disturbed. He knew that she hadn’t wanted to marry him, but he hadn’t known how much until now. Although she said nothing in protest and behaved with all propriety, she couldn’t have appeared more distressed.
Sloan led her into the great hall and offered her a glass of champagne. She raised it to her lips as he raised his own. Hawk offered an eloquent toast, most of which Sloan missed because he was so distracted by his new wife, whose eyes glittered like sapphires against the paleness of her flesh.
She ate, she drank, she moved, she smiled; at one point, she even laughed at something Shawna Douglas said.
And yet…
She remained as pale as new-fallen snow.
Later in the evening, when she ascended the stairway with her sister and Shawna, the guests departed and the servants returned to their quarters. Sloan was alone with David and Hawk in the great hall, all of them before the fire, drinking brandy and staring into the flames.
“Well, the deed is done,” Hawk murmured.
Sloan arched a brow at him. Hawk shrugged. “The deed is done? Hmm. Sounds as if we have successfully captured a band of renegade Rebs—or Crow.”
“All right,” Hawk agreed, grinning. “Major Trelawny, perhaps among the three of us, your marriage was the most normal—”
“Considering yours was by proxy and David’s occurred only after he miraculously returned from the dead, I imagine that—among us—my marriage is the most normal. If such a thing can be said at all.”
“Well, you and Sabrina are, at least, acquainted,” Hawk pointed out. “Bear in mind, I discovered through my attorney that my father had acquired a wife for me just before his death.”
“Ah, but she does seem to like you now,” David teased his brother.
“There you have it!” Sloan said quietly.
“So you mean to say that you’ve done this—but you are sorry?” David queried.
Sloan hesitated. “No, I was quite determined to marry Sabrina…and yes, I suppose I am sorry in a way. Only because of who I am, what I am, and what we will be facing when we return home.”
“There is the possibility of your not returning,” David reminded him. “You’ve more than done your duty as a soldier; no man can be expected to fight his own kind. You know that you are welcome to stay here. And there is good land to be bought; you’ve a fair-sized inheritance from your mother.”
“That is a tempting proposition,” Sloan told him, glancing at Hawk.
“There can be no good solution in the West, not with Sherman and Sheridan heading the armies. They’re talented generals, but they’re damned rigid men with set ideas.
We were at a social once, soon after Lincoln had been killed, and strangely enough I wound up spending half the evening with Mrs. Sherman.
She was enthusiastic about the fact that, with the Homestead Act in full force and the war over, men would be looking westward again.
So many soldiers suddenly without jobs—and Southerners with nothing but burned fields left!
People would be hungering for new lives in the West. And she was so proud of her husband because, way back in the late thirties and early forties, when he’d spent time in Florida during the Seminole War, before they were even married, he’d written to tell her how glad he was of his duty in Florida because he was certain that the Indian would figure prominently as a key enemy to be fought in the years to come.
Why Mrs. Sherman chose to tell me this—since it’s obvious I’ve got Indian blood!
—I don’t know. Unless she was trying to be friendly and make sure I knew that she didn’t consider me to be one of the savages with whom her husband was so determined to deal swiftly. ”
“And Sherman and Sheridan will deal with the Indian question,” Hawk said. “We’re both well aware of their policies. And, for that matter, we’re both aware that they are usually fairly intelligent and just men.”
Sloan nodded. “General Sherman loved the South, remember? He thought that some of the most beautiful land in the country lay in the South. But that didn’t stop him from decimating everything in his path on his march through Georgia!
And even if Sherman does understand a lot about the Sioux, and even admires some of the Sioux warriors, it isn’t going to change his determination to carry out policy. ”
“Policy comes from Washington,” David said.
“Interpretation of policy comes on the battlefield,” Hawk pointed out. He shrugged. “Since I’m not cavalry anymore, I’m not as involved as Sloan. But we’re both going home, and we know it.”
“Like moths to a flame,” Sloan said dryly.
“I’ve got to go back; I’ve got to do what I can to keep communications open between the hostile Sioux and the White government, and pray that there will eventually be a peaceful—if damned sad!
—settlement. Because there is no way out of the American ‘Manifest Destiny’!
Settlers will keep coming west, and Americans are going to claim Indian lands.
By sheer force of numbers and superior weaponry, they will eventually win—even if the poor farmer in the path of Indian retaliation can’t possibly see such a picture now.
I’m sorry to drag a wife into this; that is all. ”
But equally, he was sorry to cause Sabrina more distress. She hadn’t lived an easy life thus far, which was why, perhaps, she was such an elegantly beautiful porcupine. Ever wary, ever careful, and ever defensive.
“Well,” David murmured, lifting his brandy glass, “to the best possible solution, the very least bloodshed.”
The three finished their brandies, and Sloan set his snifter on the large table in the great hall. “David, my thanks for your hospitality and, naturally, for being the laird of the manor and so swiftly and smoothly arranging the marriage.”
“My pleasure,” David told him. “I can promise you, Major Trelawny—my brother in blood—that few lairds would have so good a friend as to cross the Atlantic to come to their aid when they had supposedly been buried for a good five years.”
“Well,” Sloan replied quietly, smiling slightly, “that, Laird Douglas, was my complete pleasure. Good night, then, gentlemen.”
He left Hawk and David in the hall and mounted the stairs to Sabrina’s room on the second floor. She was alone, sitting at the dressing table, and though she had surely expected him, she jumped when he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
She looked very much like a typical bride; her lustrous auburn hair was loose, cascading down her back.
She had been brushing it with such great industry that it shone almost as brightly as the fire that burned in the hearth.
And though she had eschewed white for the wedding, her nightgown was an elegant white creation of cotton and lace and silk ribbons that covered her from throat to toe.
“Well,” she murmured, meeting his eyes in the dressing table mirror, “the deed is done.”