Chapter 21 #3
She probably had wished at first that she might lose the child, and she was afraid of the fact that Sloan was Sioux.
She had wished that until she had so nearly died herself, and then the life inside her had become everything.
Yet she remained unnerved not just by what Sloan was, but who he was, the man who he was with the power both to infuriate her… and seduce her.
“Sloan, you don’t have to marry me. I—I don’t want to marry you.”
“You intend to hand over the child to me?”
One look in the dark mahogany of his eyes, and she knew that he was in deadly earnest.
“No! You—can’t take my child.”
“My child.”
She moistened her lips, thinking that she might try a new tactic. “You—you don’t know that. You can’t possibly—”
“Indeed, I know.”
The heat in his words silenced her. He turned away, walking back to the door. Leaning against it, he slid down the length of it to take a seat upon the floor. He lowered his plumed slouch hat over his eyes.
“Sloan, what are you doing?” she asked frantically. “Please go away! I—won’t marry you. I won’t.”
He lifted the brim of his hat, watching her. “You won’t marry me? Or you won’t marry a savage?” he asked her quietly.
“I—” she began and broke off. For her brother-in-law was a very unusual man, and he was married to her sister.
She couldn’t help how she felt toward the Indians in the West. She couldn’t help the fear at the pit of her stomach.
Sloan was one of them. Despite his charm, there was underlying fire with him. His exceptional good looks were…
Savage good looks. Good looks that seduced any number of women. He would always have a life she could never touch. He was amused by her, entertained by her. Frequently, she angered him. And he had wanted her…
But he would never love her.
“I—can’t—” she began.
“Finish what you’re trying to say.”
“I—can’t—”
“Marry a savage,” he suggested.
Her cheeks flamed.
Only the visible tick of the pulse at his throat betrayed his anger. He spoke quietly to her. “Actually, our marriage isn’t the primary focus at the moment.”
“Then you’ll—leave?”
He smiled, a curl of amusement in his lip. “I’m taking up position to guard you should any cloaked figures come your way.”
“Oh!” she gasped, and she was amazed to realize that she would sleep, and feel safe, because he would be at her door.
“And I’m sorry, Sabrina, but circumstances being what they are, you will marry a savage. Me.”
“Sloan, you can’t make me marry you unless I want to,” she whispered somewhat desperately.
He was silent a moment, then pulled his hat lower over his face.
“It seems, then, that I will have to make you want to,” he said.
And despite herself, a feeling of heat seemed to sweep through her, and though she could sleep safely…
It seemed that she lay awake for hours before she did so, she was so very aware of his being very close…
Fergus Anderson, filled, as was his custom, with plenty of whiskey, snored at his wife’s side when he was suddenly and rudely awakened by the sound of his flimsy door breaking in. He groaned, thinking one of the boys had got drunk and forgotten that they did not lock the door.
He sat up in his sweaty nightshirt, stroking his grizzled chin, and he shouted out, “I’ll beat the tar out of the lad who did such damage. I’ll beat y’to within an inch of your scurvy life, that I—will.”
He faltered in his speech, for he was suddenly aware of a massive presence filling his doorway. The chill November wind was blowing through the main room of his house and straight into the bedroom where he lay.
A man walked in.
Fergus gasped. “Nay, it canna’ be!” he cried.
But it was.
“Da?”
His children were awakening. Mary and Hamell crawled out of their mats in the main room. His sons Daryl and Cedric did the same. But though they came behind the towering dark man who had burst so violently into their home, they didn’t attempt to touch him.
He was dressed all in black, and he looked like the devil. He wore a sword in a scabbard at his left side. Twin pistols sat in holsters at his hip.
The devil indeed.
He was spawn up from hell.
“Get your stinking carcass out of bed, Fergus Anderson.”
“No!” Fergus gasped. “David Douglas-—it cannot be.”
“Laird Douglas it is, you lying, scurvy rot of humanity.”
Fergus didn’t move fast enough. His wife jumped up and shrieked, flying across the room to stand with her back glued to the wall as David Douglas wrenched Fergus from his bed by his nightshirt, dragging him to his feet and all but strangling him now.
“Me lads—” Fergus cried, seeking help from his sons.
“For once in your rotten life, Anderson, do something decent, and don’t get your boys killed.”
The lads, however, didn’t seem to wish to be killed in any fight for their father’s life and honor. They stood still, gaping.
“By all the Saints! It is you, Laird David!” Hamell said.
“Aye,” David said, turning his attention back fully to Fergus. “There’s only one thing I want from you, but I swear, if I don’t get it, I’ll leave your entrails draped across this room.”
“Aye, aye, what—”
“The boy. Where did you get the boy, Danny?”
“Why, ’twas my daughter, Gena—”
“You lie!”
The sword was out, its point at Fergus’s throat.
Gena let out a cry, racing forward. “The girl from the castle brought him to us. We were told that it must appear that he was one of ours and that it would be deeply appreciated if we were to keep the secret.”
“What girl from the castle?” David demanded.
“The girl—woman—who has worked for Lady MacGinnis forever. The lady’s maid.
She brought the child, brought him while Lady MacGinnis was still away, and it seemed all of the place was in mourning.
He came with gold coins, Laird Douglas,” Fergus sputtered out at last. “And when he come so, we knew that we must keep the secret, as we were told. We knew who it was who really wanted the secret kept, of course.”
“Who?”
Fergus, though terrified, was honestly puzzled. He cringed, very afraid that David Douglas’s sword might well rend him in two at any minute. “Why—why, Lady Shawna, of course.”
Stretched out in the master’s chamber of the castle, arms folded behind his head, Hawk watched as his wife paced back and forth before the door. Though he had eaten fairly heartily of the fine venison stew Anne-Marie had brought on a tray from the kitchen, Skylar hadn’t touched their food.
He watched another few minutes, then grew impatient. “Skylar, come to bed.”
She kept pacing. He might have been no more than a bee buzzing on a spring day.
“Skylar! Quit that and come to bed.”
She turned to him at last, silver eyes wide, blonde hair streaming brushed and beautiful down the length of her back.
“Hawk, your brother is in grave trouble—”
“And is seeing to things in his own way. Skylar, I would do anything for David, my god, I risked your life today, which I never intended, but what lies between him and Shawna now, I cannot solve. And you should quit bringing it up. I’m incensed each time I think of you assuming that I was spilling children about the world without a care. ”
Skylar flushed. “I didn’t really think—”
“Then you spoke with careless haste.”
She arched a brow, nearly replied, then thought better of it.
“So—is it my brother’s fertility we’re discussing here—or your sister’s?”
“Well, she is my sister. Hawk, there is such friction between them! What I can’t fathom,” she said, “is how it could have possibly happened.”
Hawk patted the bedsheet. “Come on over. I’ll show you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Neither of us knows what happened. And for tonight, Sloan has asked to speak with Sabrina himself.”
“We should be demanding to know—”
“Skylar, we need to be grateful tonight that Sabrina is alive and well and with us again!”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, yes, but this on top of the other—’’
“Skylar, if Sabrina claims that she carried Sloan’s child, and he denied it and all responsibility, I’d have to take a shotgun to a very good friend. He has denied nothing. She has denied nothing. He has said that he will marry her. What would you have me do?”
“Nothing.”
“You want Sabrina to tell you what happened. Not how it happened, of course, you do know that. But you’re eaten alive with curiosity to discover when and under just what circumstances.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. I’m sure you’ll tell me when you find out.”
Skylar cast him a murderous glare and began pacing the floor once again.
“What about that precious little child? Hawk, you’ve a nephew! They have a little boy, Hawk, and they didn’t even know it. And now your brother…”
“My brother what?”
“Has taken the child away.”
“Skylar, there is some group within Craig Rock apparently trying to kill off the Douglases—and Shawna as well. That boy is the child of David Douglas, and if David were in truth dead, he would be Laird Douglas. And if his mother were to die, he would be laird of the MacGinnis holdings as well. He is only safe away from the castle.”
“But where is he?”
“James McGregor saw to it that he was taken safely south.”
“How can he be certain that the child is safe?”
Hawk arched a brow. “Do you doubt me again, my love?”
Skylar flushed. “Hawk—”
“The lad was taken to McGregor’s mother.”
“Oh!”
“Now, come to bed. We’re all going to have to be alert tomorrow, even though I will cease to play at being Laird Douglas.”
Skylar came to their bed, slipping between the covers. She sighed, laying her head upon the pillow and closing her eyes.
Hawk rose on an elbow, watching her. “It’s your last night to sleep with a laird,” he reminded her. “My brother will take back his wretched title come tomorrow. And then again, you did ask me how Sabrina might have come about being with child.”
She opened her silver eyes to his. “I know how she did it. But you may feel free to refresh my memory.”
Smiling, he did so.