She frowned, realizing that she could see another establishment just across the yard. She could dimly hear the sounds of laughter and music coming from it. A window on her own level was open. A brunette in nothing but a corset and in the altogether was leaning out the window, laughing delightedly, calling out to a man below. A man who had just stepped out of the saloon next door to the inn and was now lighting a slim cheroot.
Skylar looked down. Her heart skipped a beat. Blood rushed to her face. The man was Hawk. He was staring back up at the whore, smiling, saying something in return.
The woman suddenly stared across the way at Skylar. She laughed harder.
Skylar let the drapes fall. She turned away from the window, incredulous. How long had he been gone? Had he been with the woman? Did he really think that he could just waltz from one woman to the next, from a whore to a wife? A wife he didn’t want. Good God, when she’d been threatened with being forced away, it hadn’t mattered what she had said to him. She’d told him that he could have whatever woman he desired, hadn’t she?
But good Lord, she hadn’t meant it! Well, perhaps she had at the time, but then she’d never imagined a marriage as intimate as the one they were sharing.
He could move quickly when he chose. Damned quickly. The door opened, and he walked in. He’d cast away the cheroot somewhere and entered, closing the door with a shove of a booted foot, folding his arms across his chest, his head cocked, green eyes on fire as he stared at her.
“Spying?”
“Spying!” she gasped out incredulously.
“Watching? I hadn’t imagined you as the voyeuristic type, my love, but then, if there is a different entertainment that might amuse you…”
“It would amuse me to see you hanged and scalped!” she hissed. She wanted to walk out. He barred the door.
“What happened to ‘thank you?’”
“I already said it.”
“I thought you meant to show it.”
“You shouldn’t think.”
“You shouldn’t talk.”
“It seems to me you’ve found appreciation elsewhere.”
He arched a brow very high, then strode across the room to her. She looked for a way to avoid him. There was none. She backed herself to the window, then there was nowhere else to go. He kept coming. If the window hadn’t been closed, she might have fallen right out of it. His hands fell upon her shoulders.
“Do you immediately think the worst of every man?” he demanded. “Or is it only me?”
She gritted down hard on her teeth. She shouldn’t be goading him. He’d seemed in a strange mood since he’d left his private meeting with Henry Pierpont, yet she didn’t think he’d learned anything about her. Still, he seemed dangerously tense. And still,she couldn’t seem to control her own tongue. “I just saw you talking to a naked whore,” she told him matter-of-factly.
“She wasn’t exactly naked.”
“She wasn’t exactly dressed.”
“Did you care?”
“Perhaps we are in the age of an industrial revolution, but I do not care to be part of an assembly line!” Skylar assured him.
He shook his head, laughing suddenly. “You want to be believed all the time, taken at face value! I don’t know a damned thing about you or what really went on between you and my father, but you tell me that you cared for him, and I am simply to believe it. Well, my dear wife, I took our horses to the stable, I talked with old Jeff Healey, and I passed by the Ten-Penny Saloon to come here. You are now free to believe me, or not, as you choose.”
“What if I choose not to?”
“It will make no difference to me.”
She stared back at him, wondering in what way it would make no difference. Would he stay with her anyway—or would he choose to spend the night elsewhere?
Did the threat matter? She did believe what he was saying.
She simply wasn’t convinced he cared enough about her or her feelings to lie.
“Do you know the naked whore leaning out the window?” she asked politely.
