"You can't take everything."
He turned on his side, away from her. He felt her shifting in the bed, pulling her nightgown back down.
He wondered then what it was about her that could make him behave so irrationally, because her simple movement suddenly sent his temper soaring. He spun on her, drawing a startled gasp. "What in God's name ..."
With the same fluid movement he caught hold of the flannel garment he found so offensive and ripped it with the strength of a madman, not ceasing then, but tearing and pulling despite her ground-out curses and flailing protest. At last the remnants of the gown lay on the floor beside the bed.
"Damn you!" she gasped. "Just what is it that you seem to have against my clothing?''
"It doesn't belong in bed," he told her blandly.
"It was a nightgown!"
"For a schoolmarm. It doesn't belong in bed."
"Lots of women, lots of wives, wear nightgowns!"
"Not my wife."
He fell away from her, turning his back on her, feeling the shame creep over him again. In some things, perhaps, he was justified. Because she was full of secrets. And lies. And because she had made her own choices.
But still...
Why get so worked up about a nightgown? Because it came between them.
Along with what else?
Trouble. Have you legal title? Can manage no more than a few weeks. Help fast. Pray you're well.
If he confronted her now, she'd lie. Close more tightly against him. He'd have to find her out. Take what he wanted to know, because she'd give him nothing.
He closed his eyes. He needed to sleep.
His eyes flew open again when her fist slammed against his back with surprising strength.
"You son of a bitch!" she hissed, turning away from him once again.
He stiffened, then eased. A smile slowly crept into his lips. Fine. He'd had no right to rip up her nightgown. She could have the last word. Tonight.
The days that followed his father's burial were busy for Hawk. He would have to spend at least five to ten days away from the ranch if he was going to ride north and find Crazy Horse. The ride was a beautiful one, but he and Sloan meant to take cattle and presents, which meant pack mules and a slow-going route. The idea of leaving his mysterious wife behind did not appeal to him, but the current hostile Indian situation was so severe that it had to take precedence over her personal problems. And she would never actually be alone. Willow, Rabbit, and Jack Logan would be around to keep wary eyes on the new mistress, right along with Megan, and Henry Pierpont as well, should she threaten the estate in any way.
So far, she didn't seem to be intent upon doing any such thing, even though the telegram she had received continued to haunt his mind.
She gave no sign of having any interest in anything beyond Mayfair. By day, she was truly the model wife, lending a hand to whatever household tasks were on the calendar, be it candle making, washing, or bread baking. She managed to avoid him throughout most of the day, or perhaps, he managed to avoid her.
By night...
The first night he had come into her room after that of his father's funeral, he had found her cocooned in the covers. But when the lights had been snuffed out and he'd crawled in beside her, he'd been both pleased and amused to discover that she wore nothing beneath those covers.
"At least you learn quickly and have taken the vow of obedience to heart."
"I'll never be obedient."
"But you've obeyed."
"I'm merely trying to preserve my wardrobe. Though I should insist that you replace what you've destroyed."
"Buy you new outfits?"
"Pay me for them. I can replace them on my own."
"Ah. But, then, you don't need a nightgown replaced, do you?"
He waited. When was she going to ask him for the money she apparently needed. Send help. He was certain the words were a plea for financial assistance.
"You are exasperating."
"At this moment, I am distracted. Come here."
"If you want me—"
"Yes, I know. Take what I want. I shall."
"Are you always so wretchedly persistent?"
"Always."
But she was equally as stubborn. Every night, he made love to her. Every night, she held herself aloof. And the dissatisfaction within him grew along with his unease. She filled his thoughts when he was in the midst of payroll checks; haunted him when he rode with Willow, choosing cattle to be taken on his ride to see Crazy Horse. Determined to shake her hold on him, he spent a night in his own room.
Being away from her didn't help. He was not just disappointed or vaguely dissatisfied, he was in pain. It had been a fool's determination. He was about to leave her. The longing would intensify a hundred fold.
He'd be damned, of course, if he let her know.
The night before the morning he had planned to leave, he sat in his office, ostensibly going over accounts, in actuality asking himself if he felt safe leaving her. He heard a tap on his door. Sandra stuck her head in, smiling her exotic, catlike smile. "May I come in?"
"Please."
She came to his desk. Her smile faded. "I think that I must tell you about your wife."
"Oh?"
"She found her way to Gold Town today."
"What?" he demanded, startled.
Sandra nodded. "She has studied the maps in your library. She had no problem saddling a horse and slipping away. But I saw her, and I followed her."
He leaned back. Under normal circumstances, he shouldn't have said or done anything that might encourage Sandra to spy on her mistress.
But these weren't normal circumstances. "What did she do?"
"She went to see Mr. Pierpont."
"Ah." He wondered if Skylar had discovered that she would have inherited the houses and most of the surrounding property if he had sought an annulment.
"What then?"
"She went to the telegraph office. Then she rode home."
He nodded, tapping his pen against the blotter on his desk. "Thank you," he murmured absently.
Sandra nodded. "Do you want to know what she said?"
He frowned. "In the telegram?"
"No, to Mr. Pierpont."
"You know what she said to him?"
Sandra smiled broadly. "I stood outside his window. She said she had come to find out if she could have some kind of allowance of her own. Mr. Pierpont told her that she had to speak to you. She said that she didn't really need very much. He said that he was truly sorry, but that she still had to speak to you."
"Well, good for old Henry!" Hawk mused. Henry had drawn up the papers for his father to arrange a proxy marriage for him. But at least now Henry seemed to have discovered a new loyalty.
Not that there was actually anything wrong with Skylar's receiving an allowance for her personal expenditures. He just wanted to know what she so obsessively needed the money for. It had something to do with someone back east. A lover? No intimate affair had been consummated, but that didn't mean that she hadn't been involved with someone else.
He looked up at Sandra, smiling. "Thank you again."
"It's important, the information I've given you."
"It may be."
She smiled again. "Then I'm pleased. I won't let her hurt you."
"Sandra—" He hesitated. He was aware that she cared about him. He had found her, orphaned as a girl, on the plain. She'd literally been alone, seated in the middle of a small Sioux camp after a Crow raid that had taken the lives of all the others in the band. His father had gladly taken her in, giving her small jobs at first and seeing that she was tutored in English and history. She had white blood, possibly Oriental as well, and David felt she should learn about a variety of cultures and make her own choice as to which she would like to live in. She had liked Mayfair, and as she grew up she had taken on housekeeping chores and became a part of the family. She'd loved his father and was equally fond of him, and he returned her affection. He was just
uneasy about the way her affection for him seemed to be shifting. "Sandra, she is my wife. She isn't going to—"
"You didn't want her. Your father found her because she's white. You can't trust her."
He hesitated in midbreath.
It was true that he couldn't trust Skylar. It was equally true that...
She was his wife. The wife he hadn't wanted. The wife who obsessed him. And somehow, he'd break down the barriers between them. Find out what had happened in the past. And just what the hell she was up to now.
Find the woman he had touched that first night he 'd made love to her...
"Sandra, Skylar is my wife."
Sandra smiled. "But you keep your own bed."
"Many white couples keep separate rooms."
Sandra smiled. "Because most white men tire of their wives."
"Sandra, you're mistaken."
She shook her head, as if she knew a secret truth. "I'll still keep her from hurting you. And I'm glad you keep your own room."
She left before he could say more. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head.
It was growing late.
Sandra might be mistaken about many things, but he did seem to have a serious problem with Skylar regarding the activities she chose to keep hidden from him. He didn't know how to solve that problem, but he couldn't spend much more time now pondering it. He needed to gather a few personal belongings if he was going to ride out tomorrow.
He left the office behind for his own bedroom. He pulled a bedroll from beneath his bed and gathered his razor, strap, and brush from the dresser. He mulled over the information regarding his wife's day, trying to determine just how to handle her. How to approach her.
How to leave her.
He realized he'd been fooling himself. He couldn't leave her.
Just as he reached that conclusion, he was startled by a soft tapping at his door.
He threw it open, amazed.
He wasn't going to have to approach his wife.
She had come to him.
Skylar stood there. She was wearing some kind of a night garment, but one quite different from what she had worn before. This was all silk. Deep blue, very low-cut in front and in back. Where it didn't blatantly hug her body, enunciating every perfect curve, it seemed to shimmer around her. Her hair was down, brushed to a flowing, golden sheen. She appeared elegant and soft. Dignified ... and sensual. The gown had been chosen with care. As had her perfume. It was musky and ... seductive.
Her smile was charming and hesitant.
The rapid rise and fall of her breasts and her labored breath belied the very lightness of her smile.
He could tell that she was appalled to be here.
But she wanted something. Yes.
He wondered just how far she'd go to get it.
Twelve
She hated being here. She wanted to crawl beneath the floor.
It was all the worse because she realized she might be attempting this course of action too late. It seemed he wearied of her at last. He hadn't come near her last night. Had he slept here with someone else who didn't mind that sometimes he slept elsewhere?
Was he perhaps expecting that someone now?
"Yes?" he inquired politely.
"May I... enter this sacred domain?" Skylar asked, wincing as she realized that her query had been half flirtatious and half very dry.
He stepped back mockingly. "Do come in. Indeed. I am stunned by the honor of your visit."
Skylar walked nervously past him, crossing her arms over her chest, then allowing them to fall as she realized it was a defensive gesture, hardly seductive. She forced a smile to her hps, turning to survey the room as she did so. She extended a hand toward the connecting doorway to the library. "What a wonderful place."
"I'd give you a tour, but it's evident you've taken one on your own."
"I never actually took a tour," she said pleasantly.
"What do you want, Skylar?"
She grated her teeth together beneath her smile. Hating him. This was sheer misery to begin with, but he was making it immeasurably harder.
"I just heard this evening from Megan that you are planning to leave in the morning."
"I am."
Skylar stood at the foot of his bed, curling her fingers around the bedpost. "You hadn't said anything to me," she said very softly.
He studied her for a moment.
Then her heart leaped as he took a few steps toward her. Coming around behind her, he lifted the heavy fall of her hair, placing his lips against her nape, then her shoulder. His breath was warm against her ear as he murmured, "You were concerned. You would have noticed that I was gone."
"Obviously, I would have noticed," she murmured.
He lingered behind her. She couldn't see his face. Her pulse raced, and she prayed that she was doing the right thing. Her pride seemed to be suffering an almost mortal blow, but she couldn't let that matter at the moment. She had to get her hands on some money. And it was true that he was leaving. She'd have to endure one wretched night of giving away everything, but then he'd be gone. And she'd have days in which she could prepare for the next battle.
• He moved away from her, striding toward the brandy decanter on a side table near his wardrobe. "May I pour you a drink?"
"Were you going to have one?" she asked in what she hoped was a soft and seductive tone.
"Now that you've chosen to honor me with this visit, of course."
Despite her best efforts, she spoke before she thought. "You're not honored in the least. If you'd wanted to see me, you'd have done so."
He glanced her way briefly as he poured an inch of brandy into each of two snifters. "Perhaps," he agreed, bringing the brandy to her. "But it's quite different to have you here."
She accepted the snifter from him and felt his gaze so intently that for a moment, her eyes fell. She could not meet his. She took a sip of the brandy, then tossed back her head and swallowed it all. It nearly choked her. It was wonderful. It warmed every part of her body.
"So," he murmured, still very close. "You're concerned that I'm leaving. Why?"
The abrupt question startled her. "I..."
"I mean, frankly, you came this great distance, into the wilderness, land barely known to whites until a little more than a year ago, assuming you'd be on your own, taking charge. Staking claim," he said politely. "You're suddenly afraid?"
"No, I'm ..." She pushed away from the bedpost, easing a small distance away from him. She set her brandy glass down, running her fingers idly over the handsome crystal carafe that held the brandy. "Perhaps I hadn't realized quite how hostile the territory can be. The army forts are much farther away than I had imagined."
"There's a company of men who were sent to keep the peace around Gold Town, which isn't that far from here."
"That, of course, is reassuring. It's just that when you're gone..."
"Yes?"
She hadn't heard him move. He was behind her again. He set his own brandy glass down. She realized he had barely taken a sip from it. He took the carafe from her fingers and poured more brandy into her snifter, raising it before her. She took it from his fingers, turning away, lowering her head. "Well, it's quite unnerving."
"How so?"
"I understand you will be going into hostile territory." She gulped down the brandy and once again a flood of warmth and conviction filled her.
"And you're concerned?" he inquired. Once again, he was behind her. The glass was plucked from her hands. She felt his hands on her shoulders.
"Well... naturally."
He turned her around, lifting her chin. "But you said you would gladly see me slain and scalped by my own kind or any other."
She wanted to lower her chin. He wasn't going to allow
it.
"We all say things in anger," she murmured.
She saw a slight smile upon his lips. Skylar exhaled and was afraid for a second that she wouldn't be able to catch her breath again. He seemed e
ven more formidable than usual this evening: taller, his body more tense.
"So you actually are concerned."
"Yes."
"But surely I am a hostile myself in your eyes."
"Your charade when we met was cruel," she told him, forcing the words to be a reproachful whisper and nothing more.
"But it wasn't really a charade. You quickly saw all that I am."
"Perhaps that's true," she murmured. She lifted a hand in a helpless gesture. "I just... I was surprised that you would leave without saying a word. I didn't want you to leave with—with so much hostility between us."
"Ah!" he murmured. He was behind her again, his fingers on her shoulders moving lightly beneath the straps of her silk gown. His husky whisper was warm against her ear. "Then, could it be that you missed me last night?"
One of the straps fell from her shoulder. He pressed his lips against her bare flesh. She closed her eyes, stunned by the sensations that such a simple touch could create within her. Something hot and powerful seemed to race through her body. She gritted her teeth together very hard. In all the time that she had fought the arousal his touch created, she had never felt quite so swiftly inundated with desire.
Tonight, when it mattered most that she take the greatest care...
"I..." It was difficult to speak. She had come here to seduce him. To tantalize him, elicit promises from him. But his arms had slipped around her from behind. The searing brush of his mouth moved against her shoulder. His right hand stroked down her side, over her ribs, cupped her breast through the silk, his thumb and forefinger rubbing her nipple erotically through the thin fabric. She began to ache, burn, long ...
For more.
"Did you ... miss me?" he whispered against her flesh.
She had to remember why she had come. "Yes, I did. I will miss you. Must you ... go?"
For a moment, he stopped caressing her.
"Yes, I must," he told her.
"If you must leave me ..."
"Yes?"
"Would you please make arrangements so that I can be more independent from the household?"
There was silence, just his touch, then a murmur.
"Ummm..."
He agreed, did he?
He shifted the other strap of the gown from her shoulder, pressing his lips once more where his fingers had been. She was vaguely aware of the sultry feel of the silk as it slid down over her breasts and her hips to the floor. Both of his hands were upon her breasts, encircling them, palming them, the touch almost unbearably erotic.
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