Chapter 5 #3
Skylar had been sent to bed, but she’d known what was going on that night.
Her father and his best friend, Brad Dillman, were to take Robert to meet the Southerners.
They’d all act like drunks down by the docks, then Robert would be spirited away, and Richard and Brad would stumble back to the house, apologizing profusely to Jill and the girls and promising to mend their ways.
Skylar never knew what possessed her to sneak out of bed that night, dress up in shirt and trousers, and follow the men out. Maybe it was the excitement.
Maybe it was some strange trace of fear within her.
She hastily raced behind them, a scarf pulled around her throat and lower face, a cap pulled down low on her head. She twisted through the streets by the water. She followed the men into an alley and down the docks where a small ship waited.
She heard conversation.
The mist settled down more heavily.
Suddenly, she heard someone crying out. She realized that the ship was slipping slowly from its berth in the harbor. She raced down the dock, not seeing any of the men.
She tripped and nearly stumbled over a body lying on the dock. She fell down beside it and realized who it was. “Father?” she whispered. “Father!” She tried to wake him, turn him. She touched his back and drew her hand away, shrieking when she discovered that it was covered with blood.
“Father—”
“Skylar!” It was a broken whisper, hissed out sibilantly.
She didn’t care. She tried to hold him, turn him, help him, stanch the flow of blood.
He looked at her, but she didn’t think that he saw her.
But she felt the warmth of his bloody touch on her fingers, squeezing in turn.
“Love you, careful, baby, careful, be a good soldier. I—betray—”
“I’ll never betray you!”
“No, I was—”
“Father, shh, I’ll get help, I promise, don’t die, don’t you leave me—”
His hand fell from hers. Richard was staring up at her, eyes wide open but unseeing. And she realized that he was dead, and she started to scream.
She was found by a Union soldier on patrol, who took her to an army office, where men plied her with questions despite the fact her heart was broken, and she felt as if she had shed her life’s blood upon that dock as well.
They kept demanding to know what had happened.
Be a good soldier, he had told her. She’d never betray him, never…
They kept her all night. In the morning, her mother arrived, ashen gray with her grief, yet demanding her eleven-year-old daughter’s immediate return.
There was no proof that Richard Connor had ever been a Southern spy, and Jill Connor created such an uproar that the officers were forced to let Skylar go without finding out what had really happened.
That night, when her father’s body had been set out in the parlor for the wake, Skylar listened dully to the conversations in the kitchen.
Brad Dillman trembling, his voice broken as he told her mother how the filthy Rebs had repaid Richard’s kindness with bloody murder. She had listened to her mother sob.
A heavy mist lay close to the ground again. Deep, dense fog, rising, flowing. She needed to be back outside again, away. So she ran through it. Ran and ran. And finally, when she could run no more, she ran toward home again. But she didn’t want to see any more people. She still wanted to be alone.
It was by pure accident that she ran from the mist and into the stables to discover Brad Dillman, tall, handsome, with the well-built shoulders her mother had so recently cried upon, secretively wiping blood from a twelve-inch cavalry knife he had drawn from a sheath at his ankle.
Dunhill looked up from the bloody knife and saw her. “Skylar. Sweet, sweet little Skylar…”
He reached for her…
When fingers touched her cheek, Skylar shrieked, bolting up in the bed, fighting instinctively.
The lodge was cast in shadow. The fire had burned down to embers. She could scarcely see in the gloom of the cabin, but she was aware of the imposing figure first standing over her, then straddling her as he captured her arms and pinned them down, staring down at her.
“Is it just me? Or do you scream and attempt to pummel everyone who comes near you, Lady Douglas?”
It was him. The Indian was back. Atop her again. Mocking her again.
Perhaps even more bitterly now…
“You startled me,” she said.
“Oh, not quite as much as you’ve startled me!” he murmured.
“You’re—crushing me.”
“Am I?”
“Please…”
He released her and rose. He turned away from her, a large dark shadow moving in the hazy light of the lodge. It was morning, Skylar thought. Or else it was early evening once again. She had slept long and deeply, and still she was tired.
He stoked the fire with a poker and added a log. Sparks flew. The fire once again began to blaze.
He didn’t bother with the leftover coffee. He took the whiskey bottle from the shelf and leaned an arm upon the mantel, staring at her for a moment, then gulping down large swallows of amber liquid from the bottle, then staring at her again.
“You are my wife!” he grated out, emphasizing the last word as if it were a loathsome thing.
Skylar sat up, trying to smooth down her hair, trying to hold her robe together with dignity.
“I’m—sorry,” she murmured coolly. She lowered her eyes, realizing the truth of her predicament. Yet, surely, there was some way out of it.
Except, she realized suddenly, if there were, she couldn’t take it! She didn’t dare accept any way out—and back east. No matter what, she had to stay here in the Dakota territory. She had to remain Lady Douglas. For the time being, at least.
He sauntered toward her, the whiskey bottle still in his hand. He paused before the bed, then hunkered down before her, his green eyes riveted on hers.
Apparently, he was having different thoughts.
“Something could be done about this. If you were to ask for an annulment, I could see to it that you were escorted back east as quickly as possible with—”
“No!”
“What?” he demanded.
He was too close. Almost touching her knees. He was dressed now, but she still wore only the robe. She leaped up, skirting around him, around the table. He stood, turning, watching her, his hands on his hips. She faced him from across the table. “I—can’t ask for an annulment.”
He arched a brow.
“Don’t you understand?” he demanded angrily.
“You’re not a widow. You haven’t”—he hesitated— “you haven’t just inherited my father’s estates.
I have been to his attorney, who was astonished I hadn’t given greater interest to papers when I put my name upon them.
My father was actually out looking for a bride for me when he stumbled upon you.
So, yes, you are Lady Douglas, but you don’t have to be.
You can file for an annulment. You can go home with money in your pocket—”
“No.”
“Dammit, what do you mean, no?” he demanded bitingly.
“No. I’m not going back,” Skylar repeated.
He just stood, staring at her. “I don’t want a wife,” he grated out.
The way that he had taunted her, half scaring her to death earlier, suddenly seemed possible to avenge in some small way.
“That’s your misfortune,” she said sweetly. Then she almost backed into the fireplace, she was so certain that he was going to come and do her bodily harm.
He did not, turning instead to slam a fist against the wall with such fervor that it seemed the entire place shook. “You intend to stay?” he roared.
“I have to stay!” she told him determinedly. He continued to stare at her with such leashed fury that she found herself hurriedly going on. “I will stay. I’ve come out here. I must stay. I won’t get in your way, I promise. I—”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“That you won’t get in my way?”
“Because I won’t. I—”
He strode toward the table, slamming the whiskey bottle upon it as he leaned toward her. “What if there are women I choose to have in my life?”
“Then—” She faltered, her eyes falling. She raised them, meeting his cleanly. “Then you must keep them in your life.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, looking as if he liked her all the less the more she spoke.
“If you’d been about to take a wife, surely your father wouldn’t have married you to me,” she said hastily. “And as to anyone else…I’ll stay out of your way.”
“Really?”
“Completely.”
He took a long swig from the whiskey bottle and leaned against the table again. This time his eyes looked as if they were on fire. “What if I wanted you in my way.”
“What?” she whispered.
“What if I wanted you to be a wife to me?”
“I—I…”
“I believe I could get either an annulment or a divorce on the grounds that you were denying me conjugal rights.”
The fire was hot behind her, but she knew that she flushed a crimson that was hotter than the blaze.
He started to smile. He was trying to unnerve her.
A strange trembling did seize her. Not because she was afraid.
But because of something that was compelling about him.
The way he moved, perhaps. The subtle scent of him, the hot gaze of his green eyes.
Don’t give an inch! she thought. For he would not.
She lifted her chin. Then she allowed her eyes to sweep over him in cold assessment. She shrugged.
“If you want a wife, you’ve got one,” she said evenly.
He was silent for a moment, watching her. He drew the whiskey bottle to his lips once again, his eyes never leaving hers. He lowered the bottle, placing it on the table, his hands on his hips.
“Lady,” he said very quietly, “you really are one gold-digging little whore!”
The words seemed to lash out at her with greater violence than any of the actions he had taken against her.
No matter how the force of them hit her, she willed herself to remain perfectly still, returning his stare.
She weighed her reply carefully, speaking in an equally soft tone, “And you are a selfish, self-righteous, judgmental ass with all the manners of a sniveling piglet. You’ve no right—”
“You’re giving me every right in the world, aren’t you, Lady Douglas?”
She narrowed her eyes on the whiskey bottle. “You’re drunk and insulting.”
“I’m trying very hard to get drunk, and I’m calling a spade a spade. Besides, I would think ‘drunk and insulting’ an improvement over what you considered my previous potential for being murderous and scalp-taking.”
Skylar knew she tread upon very thin ice. His temper was explosive—and he was convinced she had hastened his father’s death.
She wondered if anything she could ever say would change his conviction.
There had to be a way to fight him. A place to strike.
“If I’m not mistaken,” she murmured, meeting his eyes once again, “hasn’t whiskey led to the downfall of a number of Indian tribes?”
He stared at her, smiled slowly, and came forward.
“Yes, it has. But I’m not a tribe. Just one Indian.
Who also happens to be the son of a misguided English lord who discovered himself in love with a landscape and a people.
Who also happens not to want a wife! Ah, but it seems that I have one, right?
Drink with me then, my dear. Let’s celebrate making each other’s acquaintance! ”
Suddenly he was in motion again, coming around the table. Skylar quickly circled away from him. The table wasn’t big enough. She wasn’t fast enough. His fingers caught her wrist, and he drew her around to crash against his body.
“Baltimore, eh? Tell me, Lady Douglas, do you come from a family deeply Southern at heart? Have I come upon a belle who wouldn’t dream of swilling whiskey straight? I don’t believe so. I think you’re tough as nails. Have a swallow.”
She closed her eyes briefly. She could be done with this. She could agree to his annulment, give him no more reason to taunt her.
She took the bottle from him. Took a sip. She wasn’t used to straight liquor. She coughed and wheezed but quickly gained control of herself and slammed the bottle back into his chest. “We’ve celebrated,” she said coolly.
“Have we?” He set the bottle on the table.
His hands were suddenly upon her cheek and throat, his long fingers splayed along her chin, lifting it.
His breath just fanned her lips, then his mouth touched down upon hers, forcing a full, open-mouthed kiss, his tongue plunging deeply into her, liquid fire, decadent in the extreme.
His fingers slipped beneath the robe, touching her collarbone and throat.
She was drawn inexorably nearer. His hand slipping down to cup her breast, his palm moving over her nipple.
She was startled by the lightning rip of sensation that tore into her from the touch.
Such shocking warmth, so mercurial, so sweeping, touching where he touched, touching where he did not.
She brought her hands between them to protest, to push away. But his lips had moved just a breath away from hers.
His fingers then threaded through her hair, and his whisper was soft and taunting against her ear.
“What if I wanted a wife, eh, Lady Douglas? Then I’d have a wife, so you say.”
She went still, her heart pounding, hating him, hating herself. She wanted so badly to pull away.
Because she was so appalled by the feelings that engulfed her.
At the simmering warmth that filled her.
At the way she felt when he touched her, brushed her nipple, forced his tongue into her mouth, stroking with a strange insinuation that seemed to leap inside her as well as without…
oh, God, she needed to be free from him!
But she didn’t need to pull away. He suddenly thrust her from him.
“You are for sale to the highest bidder, aren’t you, Lady Douglas?” he demanded.
She stared at him, shaking, realizing her robe hung open. She raised her fingers to her damp, swollen lips, drew the robe more tightly against her.
“You have his eyes but nothing else,” she said. “There is nothing else of your father about you at all,” she told him heatedly.
“Don’t you tell me about my father,” he warned her.
“I might have known him better than you.”
“One has the feeling you’ve known many men. But now that we are wed, thanks to my father’s efforts on my behalf,” he said sardonically, “the only man you’ll know is me.”
“You bastard!” she hissed.
But he didn’t hear her. He had turned away and slammed out of the lodge.
And once again, she was alone.