“Hawk, what will happen?” she asked suddenly, both her hands in his dark hair.
“Now? I’m going to kiss and lick you all over. You’re going to writhe in ecstasy and ask me to be with you forever.”
“No, no?—”
“Yes, yes!”
“With the Sioux, I mean.”
He sobered, lightly kissing her forehead and her lips. “I don’t know. The future will be painful. That I can see. Will you be with me, all the way through it?”
“All the way. Forever.”
“Even though you entered the West through a Sioux attack?”
“Especially because I entered the West through a Sioux attack,” she assured him softly.
He hesitated suddenly, strangely. “Even if we have to take a trip away?”
“A trip, away?”
“Even if I’m not—Lord Douglas?”
“What?” she gasped, leaping away from him, her eyes filled with alarm. “You—you mean after all this, you’re not Andrew Douglas. We’re not married?—”
He smiled ruefully, shaking his head, catching her hand, and drawing her back against him. “Come here, wench!”
“Now wait?—”
“We are really, truly, absolutely, irrevocably wed.”
“Then—”
“Then truthfully, we may not be Lord and Lady Douglas. In fact, I pray that we are not.”
She stared at him blankly. “Hawk?—”
“Skylar, I had a brother who died in Scotland years ago. Or so we thought. I’ve recently had a communication from someone supposedly in his employ.”
“Recently?”
“At Henry’s office, the day we went into Gold Town.”
“Oh! And all this time I thought Henry might have found out things about me to tell you!”
Hawk had to smile again. He shook his head. “No, my love, you made me discover all that I know about you the hard way.”
She was frowning. “Hawk, I’d hate for you to hope that your brother was alive if someone was playing a cruel trick for jest or gain. How can you think?—”
“This fellow had a family heirloom—a ring my brother David always wore—to give me, and I was asked to meet a man at a particular place on Douglas property. Yes, this could be a wretched hoax. It most probably is. But Skylar, I loved my brother. I have to find out.”
“We have to find out.”
“I’ve already dragged you through Sioux country?—”
“I shall gladly be dragged through Scotland.”
“Even to give up the title?” he queried lightly.
