Chapter 16
When they rejoined Willow, he had moved their camp farther northwest and alongside a different little stream. The eight Crow ponies they’d taken were tethered with their own, and the cattle were gathered in a makeshift corral.
The coffee was perking away. They had Meggie’s biscuits, along with a few waterfowl Willow had snared.
Skylar also took a huge sip from the bottle of brandy Hawk had handed her.
When they had finished eating, Willow on watch all the while, she realized that Hawk was staring at her, smiling slightly.
“Smudge on your nose,” he told her.
She lowered her lashes, biting her lip. Smudge everywhere, she thought. Her clothing was torn and dusty.
“Stream’s just about thirty feet down that way,” Sloan said.
“Want to wash up?” Hawk asked her.
She nodded, rising.
“Want some fresh clothes?” he asked her.
“I brought my own,” she told him.
“Ah,” he murmured, nodding. She thought that he was smiling again. She pointed to her blanket bundle, lying now near a tree next to her roan’s saddle.
“Allow me,” Hawk said, going for the bundle. He took her arm. Sloan, nibbling at a blade of grass, lay back against his own saddle, smiling slightly as they left.
When they reached the stream, Skylar knelt down, sliding her fingers into it. She shivered. The water was cold.
Hawk was behind her. “You don’t have to douse yourself in it,” he told her, handing her the bar of sweet-scented soap he’d taken from her bundle.
She shook her head strenuously. “I do!” She could still feel the touch of too many hands upon her. Maybe he couldn’t understand that. Maybe he could.
She stood, stripping quickly in the cool night, and plunged into the water. Gasping and shivering, she scrubbed herself with the soap. Hawk waited beside the stream with a blanket. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she rose.
He clasped her with the blanket, wrapping it around her and pulling her close to him. Despite the warmth and the comfort he offered her, she was shivering wildly.
“There were so many dead men!”
He sighed, running his fingers over her hair.
“We are warrior societies,” he told her.
“Crow boys grow up knowing that they will fight, that they might meet death in battle or on raids. They are a very brave enemy. Sioux children are also taught that they must fight their enemies. Neither are they afraid of death.”
“They are harsh societies.”
“It can be a harsh world, Skylar. I entered a white war where brothers fought brothers, fathers might have faced their own sons. Can our battles on the plains be any more harsh?”
She fell silent, then whispered, “I was so afraid.”
“It’s over.”
“The one with the black-painted face. He might have—”
“He wouldn’t have. Skylar, I was there. Yes, I was watching, taking care.
Assessing their strength and trying to give Sloan time to get the ponies.
But I was there. No matter when he might have tried to touch you, he couldn’t have done so.
He was doomed by his very interest. Come on, let me help you get dressed.
Sloan will take second watch, but I must take third. We need to get some sleep.”
She was still cold, but she managed to stop shivering long enough to let him help her slip into the new chemise, pantalettes, and dress. He noticed the red rings chafed into her wrists by the ropes. He pressed his lips against the pulse at one of her wrists and then at the other. “Do they hurt?”
She shook her head, pulling her hands back. “What about you—where I shot you?”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Flesh wound. You barely grazed me.”
“Let me see it.”
He sighed, pulling back the ripped flap of his shirt. She had just grazed him, but there was still a nasty gash on his arm.
“It doesn’t look good—”
“I washed it out with whiskey. It’s fine.”
“At least bandage it up!” she said, reaching into her blanket bundle for a cotton handkerchief. She soaked the material in the cold water before binding it around his arm. She didn’t meet his eyes as she went about the task. She was afraid he would try to stop her.
She tied the cotton securely around his arm and then started to turn back toward their camp, hoping that Willow had retrieved her shoes for her. She suddenly felt Hawk’s hand upon her shoulder, drawing her back around.
“Was it different?” he demanded.
She shook her head, at a loss.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
His tone remained somewhat harsh. “Was it different? You were hauled off by a brave before. Attacked.”
She tried to pull her arm free. He wouldn’t let her go. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Yes!”
“Yes?”
“Yes, it was different.”
“How?”
“Some—how. It was always different. You were different. Then you were speaking. And you—”
“I what?”
She looked up at him at last. “You gave me a choice,” she said.
He shook his head. “But it wasn’t really a choice for you, was it? You were staying here, no matter what. Because you weren’t going back.”
“But that was my choice. You—you were my choice!” she said, and she tried to wrench free from him once again. But he wasn’t letting her go.
He swept her up. She struggled briefly against his hold, then met his eyes. She ceased to struggle.
“Feet still hurt?” he asked.
She nodded.
“We’ll hurry home then. My aunts will have salves to heal them.”
We’ll hurry home…
He said nothing more as he carried her back to camp. He laid out their blankets by their saddles. He rested his head upon the seat of his. His chest was her pillow. He wrapped his arms around her protectively. He smoothed back her hair. His touch was almost…
Tender.
She was exhausted. And despite the trauma she’d suffered earlier in the night, she began to drift.
We’ll hurry home…
Home.
Home to him was still among the Sioux.
She wondered a little bit wistfully if home to him would ever mean her.
She was riding with Sloan the following day when he suddenly turned and told her, “There are good things about the Plains way of life as well, you know.”
Startled, she looked at him.
“Few people make better parents than the Sioux,” he continued, gazing her way. “They are generous to a fault, finding the only good in collecting material possessions to be in the act of giving them away. We cherish the wisdom of our aged and take the greatest care of them.”
“We care for our aging people!” she protested.
He looked at her.
“Most of us do,” she said.
He smiled.
“You said ‘we,’ you know,” she told him. “A cavalry officer who considers himself one with the Sioux.”
He shrugged. “Striped like a zebra. What can I say? I’m telling you this because you seemed so appalled last night. Glad to be rescued—yet almost as horrified by your rescuers as you were by your kidnappers.”
“That’s not true at all,” she protested. “I just—Sloan, I’ve just never seen such bloodshed.”
“I’m afraid there will be a great deal more of it on the plains,” he said matter-of-factly. “Bad things happen.”
“I didn’t say that I’ve never seen bad things happen,” she murmured. “Sometimes I think that I’ve seen the worst. Just not so much…blood.”
He glanced back at her again sharply. “So life in the East was wretched, eh?”
She smiled slowly. “We were talking about the West.”
“But we can talk about the East. How did you and Hawk wind up married? I hadn’t heard a word about it. And suddenly, a bride appears. A stunning beauty, at that, like a princess out of a fairy tale.”
“Hawk hasn’t told you?”
With a devilish grin he leaned toward her.
“There were rumors, you know. Tales about a woman arriving claiming to be Lady Douglas yet seeming to have no idea that there was a Lord Douglas, or at least a live one. Now, one could think that you might have been an impoverished beauty, cast upon hard times, seeking whatever fortune the wind might blow her way.”
“I see. You think, too, that I somehow took advantage of Lord David Douglas?”
“Not in the least,” Sloan said, and she was surprised to realize that he was speaking honestly.
“David might have been ill, and we might not have realized it. He was a man of great strength. If he chose not to reveal a weakness to others, then no one would know about it. But he was no fool. No young woman, no matter how lovely, could have taken advantage of him.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to be insulting.”
“I really meant ‘thank you.’ I didn’t take advantage of him, nor did I ever try to.”
“Agreed.”
“Between us.”
“Ah! You think your husband assumes otherwise.”
“I know so.”
Sloan was quiet for a minute. “He loved his father, you know. In a way you may not even be able to understand. Hawk judged David wrongly for a very long time. When a man has done that, he owes a great deal to the man he has misjudged. In David’s final years, they were very close.
If he judges you harshly, it’s most probably because of the pain he feels himself. Then again…”
“What?”
“Well, what is your story, Lady Douglas?”
She smiled because he could so charming. He was a hard man, almost ruthless at times, yet he could be so kind when the occasion demanded it.
And damned persistent and cunning when he chose as well.
“Long and complicated,” she said simply. “Let it suffice to say for the moment that I meant Lord Douglas no harm, that he was my dear friend, and that I cared for him deeply.” She felt herself blushing. “Not in that way,” she amended.
Sloan laughed. “I imagine David took one look at you and knew that you’d be just right for his son.”
“But I’m not, am I?”
Sloan reined in his horse suddenly, facing her squarely.
“More right than you may ever realize. You haven’t passed out on us once yet, have you?”
“Well, once.”
“And when was that?”
“When Hawk told me that he was Lord Douglas.”
Sloan laughed, then laughed harder. He nudged his horse, cantering on ahead of her. When he had gone, she rode a few steps in puzzlement until she realized that Hawk had come from behind to ride with her.
Sloan, apparently, meant to keep his laughter to himself.