Chapter 6
Everything that Doctor James McGregor had said held true. Sabrina was young and strong, and within a few days she felt fine, as if she’d never lost the child. As if she’d never been carrying the child.
Yet, oddly enough, it actually seemed painful not to be sick.
She longed for the queasiness that had been a part of expecting the baby.
It was an absolutely miserable feeling of loss, which she couldn’t quite explain since she’d never actually had the child, of course.
But though she was well and healthy and felt as if she could run a million miles, she felt as well an incredible, painful void.
And strangely enough, she felt terribly alone.
The world, she had realized while coming to Scotland, was immense.
But he had to go back to the Dakota Territory.
She sighed, leaning her cheek on her knee.
“Sabrina.”
She turned around and saw that David Douglas, kilted in his clan colors, had come to stand behind her. “You need to come back to the castle, lass. The wind is growing sharper; there will be some fierce cold here soon enough.”
She smiled at him, shaking her head. “I’m not cold. I love to watch the colors of the land and the water.”
He came around, taking a seat in the grass beside her, drawing a blade of it to chew on as he, too, stared out over the loch. “It’s beautiful land. Much like the land my father fell in love with when he went to America, exploring the West.”
She rocked slightly where she sat; the wind was growing colder, yet she liked the way it felt, and she smiled as she looked up at David Douglas.
He and Hawk resembled one another, and yet Hawk had definite Indian features as well.
How strange. Yet the brothers were approximately the same height; they had the same striking green eyes.
And somehow, with a world between them, they had maintained a strong relationship.
“So, lass, will you miss this country when you’ve gone home?”
She smiled. “My home is in Maryland.”
He shook his head. “Land can be much alike. My father fell in love with land in the West because it was rugged, like his Highlands. Home is where the heart and soul long to be.” He looked at her. “Where your husband awaits you.”
She looked back toward the loch.
“The Sioux are not all wild slaughterers,” he told her.
She shrugged, then looked at him again. “David, is it so strange that I should be afraid—and prejudiced? There have been awful attacks—”
“Both ways.”
“But I’m White, and naturally I see the destruction of a wagon train and the slaughter of women and children as savagery.”
David shook his head, gnawing upon his blade of grass. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Sand Creek Massacre. Soldiers rode into a Cheyenne village, killing infants, old men, and women…”
“Yes,” Sabrina murmured defensively, “but then I’m sure you’ve heard of the Fetterman Massacre, when an entire company of men was slaughtered—”
“Soldiers, out to do slaughter themselves,” David reminded her. “All right, aside from the fact that there are hostile Lakota Sioux who might well want to scalp you, are you worried about being accepted in society?”
She looked at David, smiling dryly. “I’ve admitted to the fact that I prefer the luxuries of the East, but I can honestly say that I don’t give a damn about society.
I grew up with the bastard who murdered my own father and yet managed to create a niche for himself in public life!
The opinions of society have very little sway with me. ”
“Bravo,” David told her simply. He lifted his hands.
“Well, then, I can honestly say as well that I wish you all happiness with Sloan. He is my blood brother. I do agree with you that he wages war within himself, but then most men do so at some point during their lives. James McGregor went to America at my bidding to find Hawk and reached Sloan instead, and Sloan came here—to help in whatever way he could. He has managed to straddle the fence between the Sioux world and the White world quite well. There was no more diligent a soldier in the Civil War than Sloan. And there is no better friend to the Lakota Sioux than Sloan—he doesn’t say what they want to hear; he tells the truth.
And they know it. His position is not quite as precarious as you think.
” He hesitated briefly. “Perhaps you should be forewarned, though, that…”
“That? Please, David!”
David shrugged. “Well, Sloan’s rank and position are quite unusual.
He’s considered a liaison, and he doesn’t actually have to answer to anyone other than General Sherman, who is the head of the entire military.
He somehow manages to get along with Phil Sheridan—who does believe that all Indians look for the first opportunity to rape, rob, and murder.
They probably despise one another personally, but they respect one another professionally, and Sheridan is a military man who goes by orders rather than his personal opinions.
“Even though Sloan keeps quarters at Fort Abraham Lincoln, he doesn’t get along at all well with George Custer, who is head of the Seventh Cavalry there.
Fortunately, Custer is not always in residence at the fort.
Sloan and Custer rode together in the Civil War; they were both very young—hotheads who could ride circles around a lot of other men.
Anyway, Custer ordered some of Mosby’s guerrillas to be hanged, but Sloan happened to be the officer in charge of the prisoners and he managed not to carry out the orders.
He considers Custer to be vain and pompous, though he does like Custer’s wife, Libbie, very much.
Custer considers Sloan to be stubborn, volatile, and determined.
They manage—lots of military men who can’t really abide one another manage.
But if you encounter some tension once you arrive at the fort, maybe now you’ll understand it a bit. ”
Looking at him, Sabrina nodded.
David patted her knee. “Good. My brother says that you’re heading home tomorrow!”
David rose.
“Home? Tomorrow?”
It hadn’t been much more than two weeks since Sloan himself had left.
They wouldn’t be at all far behind.
“So Hawk has said,” David informed her. “He’s been worried about you, but James says that you’re really quite healthy, and sea air will do you good. You’ll take an easy carriage ride down to Glasgow, spend a day there, and then start your voyage home on the Lady Luck, due out the next morning.”
Home.
Home now meant Sloan. A new life on the edges of the wilderness, in a land where people braved the elements—and the savages—to find adventure, or simply to make a better life for themselves and their families.
Far away from the society of the East. She closed her eyes.
She could remember the majesty of the Black Hills, rising in the distance, “black” because of the heavy growth of pine upon them.
Staggeringly high at some points, they were far more than hills, and sometimes, when dew settled on the ground, it seemed that horses rode on air. The land was wild, but exquisite.
She touched her lips with her fingertips and felt the strange sweet fire of Sloan’s last kiss sweeping through her again, and she realized that to her amazement…
She didn’t know what the future held. She didn’t know her own place within it. She had made a promise to Sloan that she would return to the Dakota Territory. And she would keep her promise. Yet by then…
Would he still be so determined on their marriage?
Maybe, back where he belonged, busy with his life, he wouldn’t be so determined on keeping their marriage intact.
He might have discovered that he didn’t want her.
And she could remain in the West with Skylar until her sister’s baby was born, and then head back east. Where there were no Indian attacks.
Where there were no powerful, compelling, half-breed Sioux to both infuriate her and…
And seduce her. Into a life of danger and fear.
She wanted him to release her. Certainly. Didn’t she?
She didn’t know anymore. Because, despite herself, she wanted to see him again.
Sloan reached Georgetown on a cold day in January.
Myra answered the bell and enthusiastically asked after his welfare as she took his overcoat.
With iron-gray eyes and hair and a handsome face, she looked like the perfect austere housekeeper, except that she had been with the family since she had emigrated to America from Ireland nearly forty years ago and had become a part of it, and she wasn’t austere in the least. “Ah, you’re looking fine, lad, and that’s a fact!
” she told him, then added in a whisper, “and ‘the dictator’ in there is well and good, just the same, healthy as a horse—even if he is getting on in years! Sloan, he has been anxiously awaiting your arrival for weeks now, since you wrote saying that you were leaving the country and would stop here on your way back home.”
“I’m anxious to see Grandfather as well,” Sloan told Myra, plagued with a sense of guilt. “I’m afraid I don’t get east very often.”
“No, you don’t, and you should be ashamed,” Myra agreed sternly, but then she took him by the upper arms and smiled and kissed his cheek, looking him over from head to toe.
“Sloan, you have grown into an impressive man; we’re all quite proud.
And certainly, you leave the ladies breathless.
One would think, however, that by this time, you’d have had enough of them casting themselves down at your handsome feet—and chosen a wife from among them. ”
“Now, Myra, behave. I’ve not really played so hard and fast, my good woman, because you are forgetting the circumstances of my birth—which my handsome bronze feet never allow me to do. Some young ladies might have been intrigued, but they didn’t dare face the wrath of their papas. But—”