God help her. She had to be either an impostor—or a murderess!
It had been easy enough for him and his cousins to slip away, change to breechclouts and leggings, paint their bodies and their ponies—and go after her.
What better way to challenge a white woman on the frontier than stage an Indian attack?
He’d even bribed old Sam Haggerty, the stagecoach driver, who hadn’t been happy about them frightening a “sweet young thing” like his passenger, but then, he’d been just as puzzled by her claim to be Lady Douglas as anybody else might be.
So Sam had helped them stage the attack. It was easy…
Except, of course, that he’d expected something more of a desperate surrender from his elegant blonde captive. She’d managed to give him a few good wallops, and with his own knife, she’d nearly managed to make herself a widow in truth. And he could still feel her teeth marks in his shoulder. Whatever else she might be, the woman was a fighter.
Which might stand her well out here, he thought grudgingly.
But then he wondered again what her relationship had been with his father, and his heart grew cold.
He didn’t know what had happened, but he was going to find out. David Douglas was dead, and she had made claim to the Douglas name, title, and property.
Well, fine. But she would find he meant to mete out his own justice—for every little clump of earth, for every single blade of grass and speck of gold dust she had come to take.
He left the fire behind and came around to stand beside her again. He’d left her in peace before, but he could no longer do so.
In fact, she continued to rest too damned long and too damned peacefully. He tapped her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. She didn’t move. He went for the whiskey, pouring a shot into a mug, sitting again, and lifting her head to force some of the liquor between her lips. She sputtered, choked, coughed, and opened her eyes.
She opened her mouth and shrieked at the sight of him, terrified, fighting him instantly with flying fists and limbs.
“Dammit!” he swore, wrangling her down to the bed again. “I warn you, I am growing weary of this!”
She blinked, staring at him. He realized that she had been completely out, that in waking her, he had made her think she was under attack again.
She went dead still, not fighting him, staring up at him with her eyes cool and crystal clear. “I still don’t believe you’re Lord Douglas,” she said. But she did know, he thought. She was staring into his eyes, which bore a strong resemblance to his father’s.
“You’re lying. You know damned well that I am exactly who I say I am, while you…well, we still have to decide about you, right? Where did you get that paper?” he demanded.
“What paper?”
“The wedding license.”
“You went through my things—” she began indignantly.
“Damned right. Where did you get it?”
“Baltimore,” she snapped.
“When you married Lord Douglas?”
She gritted her teeth together, staring at him. “Yes, when I married Lord Douglas.”
“You really went through a ceremony?”
She hesitated just a second. “Yes.”
“But you married by proxy? While Lord Douglas was there?”
“He—Lord Douglas—said he was not feeling well. Mr. Pike, the owner of Pike’s Inn, stood in as the groom. The magistrate informed me that it was perfectly legal, that the signature of Andrew Douglas on the paper made the ceremony binding once I had agreed to the marriage vows and signed the paper as well.” She flushed. “Lord Douglas insisted that the wedding take place that way. I could only agree to accompany him as a married woman?—”
“So you admit! You bribed and seduced him!” Hawk said softly.
Bitingly.
