No Other Woman (No Other Series) (17 page)

She still questioned him with just a touch of jealousy.

He came down the steps to her, sitting at the foot of the bed and drawing her against him as he worked at the tiny buttons himself.

"Shawna is beautiful. She grows more lovely with age. Yet, even when she was just a babe, she was beautiful. Her eyes are so incredibly blue, her hair like ebony."

"So you have noticed this about her, of course," Skylar said. He realized she had ceased undoing her buttons and was now redoing them just as quickly as he was attempting to unbutton them.

"Naturally."

"Oh, God," Skylar groaned. "Was she a part of your past?"

He laughed, realizing that although Skylar had learned a great deal about his life in America and probably knew his soul better than anyone else alive, she knew little about this part of his past despite all that he had told her on the way to Scotland.

He met her silver eyes, drawing her closer against him. "I never slept with her, Skylar."

She frowned. "How curious that there was not... something."

He shook his head. "Not curious at all. She was infatuated with David when she was a child. He was amused by her at first, then..."

"Then?"

"Well, she grew up. And she was stunning and full of life and very proud, and she was charming and flirtatious and reckless. She drove him halfway insane, but I think that she really cared for him. And she taunted him so fiercely because she was jealous."

"Jealous?"

"David was his own man. He would not be tricked, coerced, or taunted. He had a place in the government waiting for him, he'd been in the military, he was welcomed in political circles in all of Great Britain and American. I think Shawna was always afraid that she'd give everything to him, then find herself rejected if he discovered himself falling in love with a young woman of greater sophistication elsewhere. But still..."

"Still?"

He grinned. "If anything, she's like a little sister to me, and I felt terrible for her after my brother's funeral. She was lost then, completely broken. She could barely talk, even to me. Maybe especially to me."

"She was very charming tonight."

"She was."

"Yet, it seems most apparent that there's some mystery involved in what happened the night your brother was presumably killed. Could the beautiful Lady Shawna have attempted to do away with your brother?"

Hawk shook his head slowly. "I think not."

"Why not?"

"Because I believe with my whole heart that she was in love with him."

"Then we need to look suspiciously at the MacGinnis men?"

"Whatever we need to do, we can do in the morning. Douse those lights. And come to bed."

"Demanding, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "For tonight, my love, I am the laird of the castle."

Skylar sniffed, then gasped slightly as he suddenly leapt past her, dousing all the lights within the room, then crashing upon her to land upon the bed. For the longest moment they lay together, entangled in silence as his lips found hers in a deep, slow, sensual kiss.

Then there was the strangest sound. A rasping so faint Skylar thought she might have imagined it.

But then, in the shadows of the room, so close to her she could almost feel his heat, she heard a muttered, "Damnation."

Skylar nearly shrieked aloud. Someone was in bed with them.

Then she heard her husband speak, his voice trembling. "David?"

"Hawk?"

Skylar had been about to scream. She leapt up instead, grasping a match and lighting it in the fire to set the candles aflame once again.

As the glow illuminated the room now, she realized that she wasn't Lady Douglas.

David did live.

As tall as her husband, as dark, as broad in the shoulder, as trim in the hips. Dark hair touched by auburn where Hawk's was black, his green eyes incredibly the same, his features equally handsome in their European planes and angles as Hawk's were with their Indian heritage. The two men stared at one another, then embraced warmly, and the seconds ticked by.

At last they parted. With no introduction, David Douglas turned to Skylar at last. "Dear God, I am sorry. I was most anxious to meet you, but I didn't intend to crawl into bed on you."

"Why on earth did you crawl into bed?" Hawk demanded.

David arched a brow. "Well, I—"

"You were expecting someone else?" Skylar suggested.

"Naturally," Hawk moaned, staring at his brother. "Shawna. So she knows you're alive."

"She does."

"My God, then... does she know what happened to you, where—David, where the hell have you been all this time?"

"Shawna knows only that I'm alive. She refuses to see that someone in her family intended to kill me, and is trying to kill her now. And as to where I've been..." He glanced at Skylar. "It can be a long tale."

"By God! Then the MacGinnises are guilty!" Hawk exploded. "And Father and I handed everything over to them—"

"Hawk, wait. I don't believe that the entire family is guilty of evil. Oh, they will protect one another—they are Highlanders. But though I'm sure the entire family was trying to protect Alistair from the possibility that I might bring charges against him for tampering with the books, I'm equally certain that they are not all so callous as to ignore an attempted murder."

"Alistair! I should slit his throat!" Hawk said passionately.

"Wait, now, I'm not at all certain that Alistair was guilty of anything more than being young and careless. From what I've discovered since I've returned, Alistair appears to have become a fastidious, hardworking businessman. And one willing to risk his own life for others."

"Then who is guilty?" Skylar asked softly.

"I don't know, but I will find out the truth. It's a long story, but I'll make it as short as possible. I met Shawna at the stables that night because she wanted to talk. Someone knocked me out before the fire started; yet someone dragged me from it alive, allowing everyone to believe that I was dead. I was given the identity of a Glasgow murderer and sent off on a ship bound for Australia. When I first woke up aboard the ship carrying me to Australia, I fought to convince the ship's master that I was David Douglas, but I was nearly killed for my efforts. I'm not sure it mattered who I was once I came aboard that ship; the man whose identity I had been given was supposed to have been hanged. The captain of the ship thought himself God's vengeance, I believe, while he sold men into virtual slavery in a manner that was not quite legal, making escape all the more difficult. I worked as a convict in Australia for more than four years before finally escaping with a friend, Dr. James McGregor, the little fellow I sent to America with my ring. We escaped with nothing and began working our way across the seas as sailors. In all that time, I'd never been able to convince anyone—other than Jamie McGregor—that I was David Douglas, and not the murderer, Collum MacDonald." David hesitated a minute. "It didn't help matters that we had finally managed our escape because I killed the guard on duty, a vicious fellow determined on whipping another man to death on the rocks. I had to get out of Australia quickly, and I knew that I was going to have to come back to Scotland in person to prove who I was, yet it was a long journey and my friend Jamie was not well. When I heard from some Scottish sailors we encountered that Father had died, I sent Jamie to you while I came here as quickly as possible, took up residence in the caves, and began to keep watch at Craig Rock."

"You've indeed been through hell, but you should know that Father died of natural causes," Hawk assured him. "Skylar was with him," he added.

"It was his heart," Skylar said quietly.

David's fists clenched at his sides. "So he died, and I never saw him again, and he endured the pain of believing until the last day he drew breath that his eldest son had burned to death."

"Father was a fighter, remember that," Hawk told him. "He was busy manipulating my life with his last breath, so he was assured that his line would continue, at the very least."

"He didn't stay here," David said grimly. "He chose to live more completely in America—and since then the MacGinnises have ruled here."

Hawk set a hand upon his brother's shoulder. "David, we will find out the truth." He hesitated. "Is Shawna guilty in this?"

"Shawna was guilty of bad judgment."

"No more?"

"She's yet to prove her complete innocence."

"But she's part of this now, she knows you're alive, and she has kept the secret?"

"So I believe. I've managed to keep an eye on the MacGinnises when they don't know I'm about."

"We'll find the truth," Hawk repeated determinedly.

"Aye." David clasped his brother's arm. "Aye, that we will, and yet I am nearly sorry that I sent for you. I didn't know at the time that you had a wife, or that you would bring her here. I pray that I haven't put you in danger."

"He is forever determined to put himself in front of someone's gun or bow," Skylar commented about her husband. "He can surely be in no greater danger here than at home."

David smiled at her. "But what of you, Skylar?"

"I shall be careful, I swear," she promised.

"And that you will be," Hawk warned.

She sensed or saw something in his eyes. For a long moment, she stared at him, then seemed to draw her gaze from his and clear her throat. "So this is where you sleep as well. We shall have to make some arrangement—"

"No arrangement, Skylar. I apologize again for so rudely interrupting you. I've business elsewhere tonight."

"But—I believe others may still be about. You can't just walk out if you wish to keep yourself hidden—"

"The castle is riddled with secret passages, Skylar," Hawk told her.

"Oh!" Skylar said.

Hawk studied David. "You've business with Shawna?"

"I keep an eye on her. The night I returned, she was hunted by a man, and nearly killed."

"What man?"

"I didn't know him, and I was forced to kill him."

"What did the constable say?"

"I didn't leave the corpse to be found."

"But Shawna refuses to see that she's in danger."

"She refused to admit a MacGinnis could be involved. Now that you are here, however, I will have even greater freedom to search both castles and try to discover what was done." David studied his brother, drawing in a long, deep breath. "I've kept up with the newspapers. I know what is happening in America. And I thank you for coming here. When this is solved, if I can be of any help, I will gladly go to your Sioux lands with you."

"I might let you do that," Hawk said. His voice lowered, and, trembling slightly, he added, "And I thank God, brother, that you're alive."

The two brothers embraced again. Then David turned, smiled at Skylar, and kissed her on the cheek. "Do forgive me, lass."

Skylar gasped softly as he turned again to the wall by the side of the bed, touched a stone there, and caused a small doorway to open into a black void.

He disappeared into that void, and with the same faint rasping sound she had heard earlier, the stone closed back into a wall, and the passageway might never have been.

"My God!" Skylar breathed. "Your brother is alive. And something horrible is going on here."

"It is. Thank God we've come, though David would have prevailed on his own, I am certain."

"He seems very assured, and powerful."

"He is. More so now. He must have suffered greatly. He has hardened."

"He bears a slight scar. But he is still..."

"Still?"

"Extraordinarily striking. He is a handsome man, despite his hardness."

"Really?"

"Indeed."

"So he's quite good-looking—and not even a savage."

"Something tells me he is quite capable of being very savage."

"Should I be jealous?"

"It would definitely serve you right."

"I'm afraid I can't be jealous."

"Why is that?"

"I trust my brother."

"But not me?" She hit him with a pillow.

He laughed, catching her, kissing her. The desire that had been so abruptly cooled burned through him once again. Yet she pulled away from him.

"You mean that the castle has these passages... everywhere."

"Many of them. We were Jacobites, in days of yore."

"Jacobites?"

He smiled. "The Scottish Stuart line ruled Scotland and England. The line came down to James II, and for his second wife, James took a Catholic princess. The English people, and many of the Scots, refused to accept their son as an heir to the throne. James II himself was forced to abdicate when his daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, William of Orange, came to England to claim the Crown. James fled to France; his son became the 'Pretender,' then eventually, when he had his own son, he became 'the old Pretender.' None of James's descendants ever did reclaim the throne, but many Highland families supported the Stuart efforts for years. Stuart supporters, priests, and others often had to be hidden. In places like Castle Rock,
they
could easily hide. The passages were a godsend."

"Ah, but how very... disconcerting they might be now!" Skylar said.

Hawk grinned, pulling her back to him once again. "Don't worry. David will not be back." He left her by the bed, turning to extinguish the lights once again.

Skylar heard him returning. Then he paused and laughed softly in the darkness.

"What is it?"

"Disconcerting..." he repeated. "Come to think of it, Shawna did look a bit on edge tonight. Quite disconcerted."

"And what does that mean?"

"It means that my brother does not completely trust Lady Shawna MacGinnis. And it also means that..."

"That?"

"Whether he trusts her or not, he is seeking something from her."

"Revenge?"

"Perhaps."

"Poor girl."

"It's a problem they'll have to work out themselves."

"I'm simply familiar with Douglas tempers."

"Don't you dare take her side, my love."

"I'll dare what I choose."

"We'll see, won't we?"

He didn't give her a chance to argue any further.

* * *