“David has gone?”
“Aye, and ye’ll not stop him this night, Lady. Trust me. I know him well.”
“You’ll protect me—and you’ll not let me leave this room as well, I imagine?”
“M’lady, you do not want to leave your room. Evil is most assuredly afoot.”
Indeed, she was a prisoner. David’s prisoner. She nodded to the little man, stepped back in the room, and allowed the bedcover to fall from her shoulders. She ripped away what remained of her ruined clothing. For long moments she stood, shivering. Tears dripped down her cheeks, and she allowed herself the luxury of sobbing like a child.
But the tears only shook her so long, and she realized that she was standing naked in her bedroom, shaking. She donned a nightgown and a laced and ribboned robe, then went back to the hallway where James McGregor remained.
“Come in,” she told him. “Come tell me just how well you know Laird Douglas. And if you know,” she whispered, “for the love of God, please tell me where he’s had Danny taken.”
Sabrina feltas if she were on fire.
Life was not fair in any way, shape, or form.
She had just come from a tomb, for God’s sake. She deserved some reprieve. She needed peace and quiet, healing time. She needed to elude Sloan, but now, Shawna and David—having tossed Sabrina’s world into chaos— had gone to fight their own battle, and Skylar and Hawk had deserted her as well.
The others had just left. Sabrina stared at the closed door, painfully aware that Sloan was behind her.
“How can you be here?” she whispered, leaning her forehead against the closed door.
He didn’t reply to the question. “Sabrina, get back into bed before you fall down, will you. Please?” he added.
She didn’t move. She should have. She felt his hands upon her shoulders. His grip seemed as hard as steel. There was no way to escape it.
Just as there had been no way to escape Sloan at the inn when she had inadvertently discovered his room while trying to hide from her stepfather, just as there had been no way out of playing the role that was to doom her to him tonight. It was all laughable, really. Upon just which occasion—out of two—had they managed to bring about her condition—the first time when she’d been so afraid, realizing far too late that she should have just told him the truth?
Or the second time, the following morning, when she had awakened, seduced? In no pain whatsoever, other than that of all but dying of humiliation.
“I’m all right.”
“Indeed?” he queried, his voice husky at her earlobe. “It appears that you are trying to claw your way out of this room. The door opens freely enough, but there is really nowhere for you to go.”
He suddenly swept her up into his arms.
“I can walk!” she cried in alarm, meeting his fathomless, dark mahogany gaze.
“You could fall.”
“I won’t.”
“You could hurt yourself.”
“But I won’t.”
“You could hurt our child.”
“But—” Staring into his relentless gaze, she fell silent. They had already come back to the bed, and he set her down upon it, her back against the pillows plumped up at the headboard.
“Are you so terribly dismayed?” he asked her, sitting by her side. His hand lay upon the whiteness of the sheet, seeming very darkly bronzed. She felt a flush of fever within her. His fingers were very long. His hands were rough and calloused from the days he spent on horseback riding across the plains. But she knew their touch could be oddly gentle and rough…
“Dismayed?” she repeated in an incredulous whisper.
Was she so dismayed? In the endless hours in the tomb, she had prayed to live. Because of the child.
“Sabrina, we have to discuss this situation.”