No Other Man (7 page)

He would be sent west, he knew. To fight the Indians.

He resigned his commission. Worn and weary from the years of
bloodshed, he went first with his brother to his father's ancestral home. But
he was restless. David decided one day it was time to return to the raw Dakota
territory, and they traveled together back to America. Hawk realized later that
it had been his brother's way of sending him back, because David couldn't stay
long. The Douglas lands in Scotland were a small empire. For Hawk, the
mountains and wilderness were home. David belonged in the ancestral castle.

Hawk was glad to return to his father's Dakota house, where
he could ride the open plains, the sacred Black Hills. He was glad to sit with
his grandfather again and listen to his wisdom. He was glad to remember that he
was Sioux. Many things had happened in the years of his absence. While he had
been engaged in the eastern theater of war, Minnesota Sioux had gone on the
warpath, killing settlers, destroying everything in their wake. The army had
come after them, and the Minnesota Indians had traveled west for help from
their cousins. The army now said that the Indians must live on the reservations
the whites had set aside for them.

Still, they refused to do so. As yet, in the north, the army
hadn't a strong enough presence to force its edicts upon the Indian populace. A
brief time still remained with them.

But
every day, more stakes were driven into the ground for the railroad to cross
the country. More emigrants teemed west. The war in the East was over. The army
was now free to fight the Indians.

Aside from his joy at being among his mother's people again,
Hawk was happy to get to know his father. Proud to be his son. His father had
created a cattle empire. Together they worked a vast estate. In turn, Hawk was
able to see to his family, his band, and his tribe. When hunting was poor, Lord
Douglas brought the family cattle. When the wars began to break out and
escalate, Hawk found himself a mediator.

Then came word that his brother had been killed in a fire.

He had traveled with his father to Scotland, stared numbly at
his brother's coffin, watched as it was set upon the slab within the ancient
Douglas vault beside their grandfather's coffin. He had attended the inquest
with his father; he had demanded full knowledge of his brother's demise; he had
been the power and the fury when his father had not had the strength. All of
his rage, however, could not change what had happened: the stables had caught
fire. David had died. Lord Douglas had been too broken to remain in Scotland.
The estates had been left in the care of Lord Douglas's distant kin, and father
and remaining son had returned to Sioux lands.

Hawk had never imagined the grief that seized him at his
brother's death. Yet, that did not seem to compare with his father's loss.

He had respected his father. His pride had made him
determined to be a model son. He had even admired his father.

Yet now, finally, for the first time, he realized he loved
him.

Watching his father grieve, Hawk thought that at last he truly
understood the man who'd been a Scottish peer, yet had the courage to tell the
world he had taken an Indian bride as his legal wife and would raise an Indian
son along with a properly bred heir. And yet, in David's pain, he never grieved
for his elder son as his properly bred heir— he grieved for him as his child,
for flesh and blood, for laughter, for love. Lord David Douglas, for all his
wealth, position—and white skin—was a good man. A father who deserved the love
Hawk had withheld from him while giving it first to his mother, then his
brother. In trying not to become too white, Hawk realized, he had betrayed all
that his grandfather had told him was important about being Sioux. He had given
up the generosity that was demanded by his Sioux heritage. No matter what a man
had, he shared. Hawk had failed to share the emotion his father needed most.
Now he learned to do so.

He fell in love. She eased the pain of his loss. Her name was
Sea-of-Stars, and she was so named for her eyes, which were brilliantly blue
and very beautiful. Her mother was a white woman who had been captured at a
very young age. Her father was the war chief Burnt Arrow. Her brother was Black
Eagle, an old friend and companion who helped explain to him everything that
had happened between the whites and the Sioux and the other Indians in the time
that he had been gone.

Hawk married Sea-of-Stars and divided his time between his
father's home and his wife's. They had a child, a son, and the boy was the
delight of his life. Little Hawk, the Indians called him. The future Lord
Douglas, another Andrew, Hawk's father insisted with pleasure.

Hawk wondered about that future for his Indian son, and for
himself as well.

But he didn't have to wonder long.

Smallpox killed Sea-of-Stars, his father-in-law—and his son
before the boy had been a month old.

Again, Hawk grieved. The pain had been so great that he had
been blind to all else, even his father's concern.

But he had been among his wife's people when word had come
that the white army was about to attack the Indian village along the river.

That day, he had fought the soldiers. He had been numbed and
cold with his grief, ruled by fury, determined only that no one else in the
village should die. He didn't care if he was killed in battle, and he was reckless
in the extreme. The soldiers were turned back.

He collapsed. He had lost more blood than he had imagined.
When he awoke, he was in his father's house. David had sat by his bed, nursing
him, demanding to know, "My son, you have experienced the grief of a
father for his child. How could you wish that pain upon me?"

David had been right. Hawk had healed, a wiser, graver man.
He spent long hours with his father, learning to deal with the grief for his
own wife and son. Time passed, never erasing Hawk's loss but easing his pain.
Gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and one of David Douglas's expeditions
claimed one of the most productive veins.

More settlers—miners, sutlers, shopkeepers, wives, dance-hall
girls, and the assorted children of one and all— began to move into what had
been Sioux country.

When the seriousness of the situation escalated, Hawk found
himself in an extremely troubling position. Boyhood friends were among the most
violent of the hostiles, men he knew well. As a boy, he had ridden with Crazy
Horse, who was near his own age. He had listened to the wisdom of Sitting Bull,
who was considered not just a great war chief but a very great holy man as
well.

He knew them; he understood them.

Such had been the situation when his father had gone east.

David had not yet come home. His body was due soon. In fact,
Hawk had gone to Riley's Trading Station early that afternoon with three of his
Lakota cousins to find out when his father's body would be arriving for burial.

And that was when he had first seen her. The stagecoach
should have been long gone with the first of morning's light, but a broken wheel
had waylaid it.

He'd seen a vision of golden beauty and radiant youth
bedecked in black and heard her claiming his inheritance.

She'd spent the night at the station, and she'd come
downstairs into the kitchen when he'd been sitting at a back table with his
cousins, talking with Riley about the army movements and the danger to hostiles
that was forthcoming. He'd seen the coachman, Sam Haggerty, come in; heard him
addressing her as Lady Douglas. Then she'd asked him how long it was going to
take to reach Mayfair—the Douglas home in a valley off the Black Hills. And
she'd very sweetly told him that she meant to keep the mine working, to live in
the estate, to make it a home. And no, she wasn't afraid of Indians. Lord
Douglas had told her that she wouldn't need to be afraid.

When old Riley himself would have stood and told her that
she'd best be looking out for Lord Douglas, Hawk had dragged him down and
hushed him.

One look at her, and he'd been determined to find out for
himself just what trick she thought she played to call herself Lady Douglas.

And just what games she might have played upon his father. By
God, she was young: a third his father's age if that! He tried to tell himself
that David Douglas had been no man's fool. Yet it plagued and goaded him that
the elegantly beautiful young blond woman might have seduced David into
marriage and then ...

Killed him.

Not with a gun or a knife but with those heavily lashed
silver eyes. That perfect oval face, ruby lips, breathy laugh. Flashing smile.
Perfectly rounded breasts. Supple, graceful, seductive movements.

She might well have caused him to have a heart attack. God
knew, the mere sight of her could cause a heart to beat way too hard, cause a
man's breath to catch, the whole of him to harden like quickening steel off a
blacksmith's fire.

If she'd been about to claim to be his stepmother, he was
damned determined she'd have other thoughts. And if she had somehow hastened
David to his death, then ...

God help her. She had to be either an impostor—or a murderess!

It had been easy enough for him and his cousins to slip away,
bribe old Sam, change to breechclouts and leggings, paint their bodies and
their ponies—and go after her.

What better way to challenge a white woman on the frontier
than stage an Indian attack?

He'd even bribed old Sam Haggerty, the stagecoach driver, who
hadn't been happy about them frightening a "sweet young thing" like
his passenger, but then, he'd been just as puzzled by her claim to be Lady
Douglas as anybody else might be.

So Sam had helped them stage the attack. It was easy ...

Except, of course, that he'd expected something more of a
desperate surrender from his elegant blond captive. She'd managed to give him a
few good wallops, and with his own knife, she'd nearly managed to make herself
a widow in truth. And he could still feel her teeth marks in his shoulder.
Whatever else she might be, the woman was a fighter.

Which might stand her well out here, he thought grudgingly.

But then he wondered again what her relationship had been
with his father, and his heart grew cold.

He didn't know what had happened, but he was going to find
out. David Douglas was dead, and she had made claim to the Douglas name, title,
and property.

Well, fine. But she would find he meant to mete out his own
justice—for every little clump of earth, for every single blade of grass and
speck of gold dust she had come to take.

He left the fire behind and came around to stand beside her
again. He'd left her in peace before; he could no longer do so.

In fact, she continued to rest too damned long and too damned
peacefully. He tapped her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. She didn't
move. He went for the whiskey, pouring a shot into a mug, sitting again, and
lifting her head to force some of the liquor between her lips. She sputtered,
choked, coughed, and opened her eyes.

She opened her mouth and shrieked at the sight of him,
terrified, fighting him instantly with flying fists and limbs.

"Dammit!"
he swore, wrangling her down to the bed again. "I warn you, I am growing
weary of this!"

She
blinked, staring at him. He realized that she had been completely out, that in
waking her, he had made her think she was under attack again.

She
went dead still, not fighting him, staring up at him with her eyes cool and
crystal clear. "I still don't believe you're Lord Douglas," she said.
But she did know, he thought. She was staring into his eyes, which bore a
strong resemblance to his father's.

"You're
lying. You know damned well that I am exactly who I say I am, while you ...
well, we still have to decide about you, right? Where did you get that
paper?" he demanded.

"What paper?"

"The wedding license."

"You
went through my things—" she began indignantly.

"Damned right. Where did you get it?"

"Baltimore," she snapped.

"When you married Lord Douglas?"

She
gritted her teeth together, staring at him. "Yes, when I married Lord
Douglas."

"You really went through a ceremony?"

She hesitated just a second. "Yes."

"But
you married by proxy? While Lord Douglas was there?"

"He—Lord
Douglas said he was not feeling well. Mr. Pike, the owner of Pike's Inn, stood
in as the groom. The magistrate informed me that it was perfectly legal, that
the signature of Andrew Douglas on the paper made the ceremony binding once I
had agreed to the marriage vows and signed the paper as well." She
flushed. "Lord Douglas insisted that the wedding take place that way. I
could only agree to accompany him as a married woman—"

"So
you admit! You bribed and seduced him!" Hawk said softly.

Bitingly.

Her
eyes glittered like silver blades. "You go to hell. I seduced no one, and
you weren't there, and you don't know—"

' 'I
know that you thought that you married an old man who died of a heart attack on
the same day you thought you'd married him."

She
jerked up, heedless of his stare, and of his words, grasping the robe to her as
she leaned against the headboard. "I repeat. Go to hell."

He
rose, plucking up the fallen license. "It looks legal."

"It is legal! But—"

"You thought you married an old man. Right?"

Her eyes rose to his. Her lashes fluttered. "I—"

"Yes?"

"Yes, damn you! But if—"

"My father's name was David."

"Those men called you Hawk."

"Yes,
they did. It is what I'm called, but my Christian name is Andrew."

She
stared at him as if he weren't just an Indian but perhaps the devil himself. As
if he had sprouted horns and a tail.

He
laughed softly, feeling a strange sense of bitter justice. "My dear, dear
Lady Douglas! You sought to take advantage of an old man. Charm, coerce,
seduce, marry. Excite him to death, play the lovely, grieving widow and take
over all his vast holdings! Well, it appears my father played a trick on you
instead. You're not a wealthy widow. You're the wife of a savage. A savage who
is very much alive. And in full possession of all that you came out here to
acquire."