She hastily raced behind them, a scarf pulled around her throat and lower face, a cap pulled down low on her head. She twisted through the streets by the water. She followed the men into an alley and down the docks where a small ship waited.
She heard conversation.
The mist settled down more heavily.
Suddenly, she heard someone crying out. She realized that the ship was slipping slowly from its berth in the harbor. She raced down the dock, not seeing any of the men.
She tripped and nearly stumbled over a body lying on the dock. She fell down beside it and realized who it was. “Father?” she whispered. “Father!” She tried to wake him, turn him. She touched his back and drew her hand away, shrieking when she discovered that it was covered with blood.
“Father—”
“Skylar!” It was a broken whisper, hissed out sibilantly. She didn’t care. She tried to hold him, turn him, help him, stanch the flow of blood. He looked at her, but she didn’t think that he saw her. But she felt the warmth of his bloody touch on her fingers, squeezing in turn. “Love you, careful, baby, careful, be a good soldier. I—betray?—”
“I’ll never betray you!”
“No, I was?—”
“Father, shh, I’ll get help, I promise, don’t die, don’t you leave me?—”
His hand fell from hers. Richard was staring up at her, eyes wide open but unseeing. And she realized that he was dead, and she started to scream.
She was found by a Union soldier on patrol, who took her to an army office, where men plied her with questions despite the fact her heart was broken, and she felt as if she had shed her life’s blood upon that dock as well. They kept demanding to know what had happened. Be a good soldier, he had told her. She’d never betray him, never…
They kept her all night. In the morning, her mother arrived, ashen gray with her grief, yet demanding her eleven-year-old daughter’s immediate return. There was no proof that Richard Connor had ever been a Southern spy, and Jill Connor created such an uproar that the officers were forced to let Skylar go without finding out what had really happened.
That night, when her father’s body had been set out in the parlor for the wake, Skylar listened dully to the conversations in the kitchen. Brad Dillman trembling, his voice broken as he told her mother how the filthy Rebs had repaid Richard’s kindness with bloody murder. She had listened to her mother sob.
A heavy mist lay close to the ground again. Deep, dense fog, rising, flowing. She needed to be back outside again, away. Soshe ran through it. Ran and ran. And finally, when she could run no more, she ran toward home again. But she didn’t want to see any more people. She still wanted to be alone.
It was by pure accident that she ran from the mist and into the stables to discover Brad Dillman, tall, handsome, with the well-built shoulders her mother had so recently cried upon, secretively wiping blood from a twelve-inch cavalry knife he had drawn from a sheath at his ankle.
Dunhill looked up from the bloody knife and saw her. “Skylar. Sweet, sweet little Skylar…”
He reached for her…
When fingers touched her cheek,Skylar shrieked, bolting up in the bed, fighting instinctively.
The lodge was cast in shadow. The fire had burned down to embers. She could scarcely see in the gloom of the cabin, but she was aware of the imposing figure first standing over her, then straddling her as he captured her arms and pinned them down, staring down at her.
“Is it just me? Or do you scream and attempt to pummel everyone who comes near you, Lady Douglas?”
It was him. The Indian was back. Atop her again. Mocking her again.
Perhaps even more bitterly now…
“You startled me,” she said.
“Oh, not quite as much as you’ve startled me!” he murmured.
“You’re—crushing me.”
“Am I?”
“Please…”
He released her and rose. He turned away from her, a large dark shadow moving in the hazy light of the lodge. It was morning, Skylar thought. Or else it was early evening once again. She had slept long and deeply, and still she was tired.
He stoked the fire with a poker and added a log. Sparks flew. The fire once again began to blaze.
