“I’ll see Skye settled in her home tonight, and ride out in the morning.”
“The morning!” Skye cried.
Roc’s silver eyes fell to hers. “Yes. What is the matter with that?”
“Just that—just that you should leave earlier! You should leave today. Perhaps Logan takes Father further and further away. Time is of the essence—”
“Skye, they can only load and arm and supply the ship so quickly. I will see you safe this evening, leave by the dawn, and sail with the tide. It will be all right, I swear it.”
Food was brought to them. Spotswood began to question her sharply about the time she had spent in New Providence. There was little she could tell him. Her time there had been so brief. Yet both men listened to her with rapt attention, and when she caught her husband’s eyes upon her, they were bright with a startling fire.
What could she do? she wondered in dismay. If he would not leave, then she could not escape him to find the Silver Hawk!
When the day waned to twilight, Roc rose and told Spotswood that they would take their leave. Skye nervously arose with him. He took her hand and bowed to Spotswood. Skye murmured something, aware that the lieutenant governor was watching her. He thought that she should go for the Silver Hawk. That’s why he had told her what he had.
He would gladly hang the Hawk, but later!
She nibbled nervously upon her lower lip as Roc led her from the governor’s mansion and outside to the palace green. His hand was upon hers and she trembled, torn between guilt and a growing affection, and a slowly rising desperation that he should leave her.
“What is the matter with you?” he asked her suspiciously.
She shook her head, lowering it. “I am worried about my father.”
He paused, catching her shoulders, drawing her close. “You mustn’t worry!” he told her kindly. “You mustn’t. I swear that I shall not fail you.”
She smiled, startled to feel that tears were hovering on her eyes. He held her against him. She heard the sound of the children playing, of the leaves rustling over their heads. It seemed so peaceful, and he held her so gently. As a husband might. As a lover.
She inhaled and exhaled quickly, pulling away. “I’d like to get home. I’d like to have a bath.”
“Of course,” he told her.
By nightfall she was up in her own room and in her own deep tub with a froth of French rosewater all about her. She leaned back her head and breathed deeply and felt steam rise above her.
He was across the hallway from her. In one of the guest bedrooms. She had not told him that he must go there; he had chosen the room. He had said that he would not disturb her, and he was a man of his word.
A man of his word, and more.
The steam about her seemed to swirl within her. She remembered his whisper, and his touch, and it seemed that the very heat of the steam swept deep inside of her. She flushed, wanting to forget. It was so wrong to feel this way. It had to be, after what she had come to feel for the Hawk.
She was going after the man to help her—and never to come close to him again. She could not do so. She was married to Lord Cameron. Truth, whether she denied it or not.
And truth…because in the fireglow and green darkness of the forest, he had taken her into his arms, and their marriage had been consummated there. She would never escape it now.
Not her marriage…
She had to escape her husband. That night, she had to escape him. How? she wondered desperately.
She shivered, despite the heat of the water. She could not betray him so. He had been too decent to her.
She had to leave, and leave that very night!
She never quite knew her intention when she stood in her bath, the scented rosewater dripping from her, to reach for her bathtowel. It was a huge cotton sheet of material that smelled freshly of the sun. She wrapped it around herself and stepped into the hallway. Downstairs, she could hear Mattie humming softly. But no one would ever disturb her up the stairs. Mattie would come if she called. If not, Skye knew, she would be left undisturbed.
She clutched the towel to her breasts. For long moments she stared at the door, then she knocked upon it. She did not wait for an answer, but shoved it open and entered into his room.
He had been lying upon the bed. As she entered, he bolted up.
He had bathed, earlier, Skye knew. He had gone out to the barn, and they had brought him pails of warm water there. He was barefoot and bare-chested, and clad only in a pair of soft bleached buckskin breeches. He looked at her, startled, reaching for a linen shirt that lay across the bed. His action amused her somewhat. He had been so ready to touch her in the night, to make intimate demands upon her. Then he shielded his own chest with a startling modesty.
