“I can,” she told him.
“Lady Douglas!” Sloan Trelawny said, tipping his hat to her. A bright light of amusement played in his eyes when they met hers. She determined he was as much of a scoundrel as her husband, and that still, he would be a daring and fierce defender of anyone within his fold.
His men politely bid her goodnight. She smiled pleasantly and started up the stairs. She listened as the men filed out of the front entry way. Hawk was going out with them, she realized.
She didn’t go immediately to the master bedroom but hesitated on the landing. When she was certain that Hawk had gone outside, she set out to explore the rooms upstairs. She opened the door opposite her own. She was disappointed to discover a bedroom, probably a guest room, for though it was handsomely furnished, it seemed devoid of personality. She wanted to find the late Lord Douglas’s office and try to discover if there were any papers that might have been returned to thehouse explaining just what her rights were, not as his widow, but as his son’s wife.
She tried a second room. Another bedroom. In the dim moonlight she could make out several framed pictures on the mantel. She walked over to take a closer look at them. One was of a slim, handsome man, wearing a kilt and standing in front of a stone wall on which hung a coat-of-arms. The picture beside it was a small painting of a very pretty, light-haired woman. Skylar studied the two and thought that she saw the late Lord David Douglas in both of the faces. The coat-of-arms on the wall was probably that of the Douglas family.
She opened the wardrobe in the room, but it was empty. Pensively, she left the room, closing the door behind her.
She opened another door, then hesitated. She’d come to a library. Bookcases lined three walls. In the moonlight she could make out books on every subject imaginable. Military manuals, almanacs, novels, books on animal husbandry, herbs, sheep, cattle, horses. More military manuals.
As she walked along the shelves, she suddenly froze, hearing a door close nearby. She turned around, realizing the library led into a bedroom. The door was wide open. When she turned, she saw that the girl, Sandra, had come into the room. She hummed as she turned down the sheets on a large, quilt-covered bed there. The girl ran her fingers over the pillow and bedding with a slow, sensual flair.
Skylar backed away, feeling as if she were intruding. She heard the door from the hallway to the bedroom open and close again, and she jumped. Hawk came into the room. He approached the girl, speaking a strange language.
Sioux? Skylar couldn’t understand a word of it. Apparently, the girl did because she gripped his hands, speaking earnestly to him in return. Hawk freed his hands and smoothed back herlong black hair. His words, unintelligible to Skylar, nonetheless sounded gentle.
The girl spoke in an anguished tone. Hawk took her face between his hands. He bent down and kissed her forehead. Feeling ill, Skylar silently backed out of the library into the hallway. She strode quickly to the master bedroom, slipped inside, and bolted the door behind her.
She leaned against the door, wondering at the tumult of emotions that raced through her. She should be glad. He wouldn’t be disturbing her tonight. He kept his own suite of rooms in this house. This was the master bedroom, but not the one he chose to use.
The bathtub was gone, she realized. As was the towel rack. Her trunk was gone as well. Frowning, she moved across the room, opening the wardrobe and the drawers within it. Someone had unpacked her belongings. Hung her dresses, skirts, blouses. Folded her undergarments, set them into the drawers. She turned around. Her brushes, combs, perfumes and toiletries were all arranged on the dressing table.
Had Sandra done this while she had been downstairs? She was startled by her sudden longing to slap the girl. She didn’t want Sandra touching her belongings.
She expelled a long breath, hating both Hawk and the girl. Then she plucked up her hairbrush, using it vigorously, taking her anger out on her long blonde tresses, burnishing them to a glow.
This was the master bedroom, but the master did not sleep here. Good. It was all very good for her. She had so much to work out. How to carry out her own desperate plans now that he stood in the way.
She set her brush down and threw open the wardrobe again. She found a nightgown. Soft white flannel with embroidery at the collar and cuffs. She slipped into it, thinking, Tell him thetruth? Ask his mercy? Never. He is more ruthless than any heathen on the warpath! He’s still convinced I did ill to his father. Imagine trying to explain…
No. And yet, she had to accomplish what she had set out to do. Oh, God, she had to!
Everything had seemed so simple at the beginning.
And now…
Now she was married to a man who despised her. One still convinced that she was a scheming adventuress at the very best. One she could only fight in return. One she would have to learn to get around somehow.
She pulled down the covers to her own bed and lay down. She watched the fire, then closed her eyes, but she could not sleep. Her thoughts kept running rampant in her head.
With a deep, exasperated sigh, she rose at last, thinking that since she had just seen Hawk upstairs and the rest of his household was surely asleep, she might pay her own last respects to Lord Douglas in the parlor. Despite everything that had happened and the way he had tricked her, she still missed him. His death hadn’t been the painful shock for her that it had been for Hawk. But she still had a few prayers of her own to say for the man who had apparently been even more of an admirable individual than she had ever known.
Maybe some answers would come to her again with him near.
She slipped out of her room, down the stairs, and into the parlor. She touched the lid of the coffin tenderly. “Well, Lord Douglas, just what do I do now?” she whispered fervently.
“You could begin by telling me exactly what went on between you and my father!”
She spun around, gasping at the sound of the deep, masculine voice behind her.
Hawk was no longer upstairs. His frock coat shed, his dark hair no longer neatly queued but falling free to his shoulders, he stood in the shadows by the mantle. He set down the brandy snifter he’d been holding and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do go on, Lady Douglas,” he said. “I am so eager to hear this story.”
CHAPTER 10
She simply wasn’t going to let him ridicule her, command her, demand his rights, sleep with other women, and emerge to threaten her anew. Skylar crossed her arms over her chest, facing him.
