“Marry a savage,” he suggested.
Her cheeks flamed.
Only the visible tick of the pulse at his throat betrayed his anger. He spoke quietly to her. “Actually, our marriage isn’t the primary focus at the moment.”
“Then you’ll—leave?”
He smiled, a curl of amusement in his lip. “I’m taking up position to guard you should any cloaked figures come your way.”
“Oh!” she gasped, and she was amazed to realize that she would sleep, and feel safe, because he would be at her door.
“And I’m sorry, Sabrina, but circumstances being what they are, you will marry a savage. Me.”
“Sloan, you can’t make me marry you unless I want to,” she whispered somewhat desperately.
He was silent a moment, then pulled his hat lower over his face.
“It seems, then, that I will have to make you want to,” he said.
And despite herself, a feeling of heat seemed to sweep through her, and though she could sleep safely…
It seemed that she lay awake for hours before she did so, she was so very aware of his being very close…
Fergus Anderson,filled, as was his custom, with plenty of whiskey, snored at his wife’s side when he was suddenly and rudely awakened by the sound of his flimsy door breaking in. He groaned, thinking one of the boys had got drunk and forgotten that they did not lock the door.
He sat up in his sweaty nightshirt, stroking his grizzled chin, and he shouted out, “I’ll beat the tar out of the lad who did such damage. I’ll beat y’to within an inch of your scurvy life, that I—will.”
He faltered in his speech, for he was suddenly aware of a massive presence filling his doorway. The chill November wind was blowing through the main room of his house and straight into the bedroom where he lay.
A man walked in.
Fergus gasped. “Nay, it canna’ be!” he cried.
But it was.
“Da?”
His children were awakening. Mary and Hamell crawled out of their mats in the main room. His sons Daryl and Cedric did the same. But though they came behind the towering dark man who had burst so violently into their home, they didn’t attempt to touch him.
He was dressed all in black, and he looked like the devil. He wore a sword in a scabbard at his left side. Twin pistols sat in holsters at his hip.
The devil indeed.
He was spawn up from hell.
“Get your stinking carcass out of bed, Fergus Anderson.”
“No!” Fergus gasped. “David Douglas-—it cannot be.”
“Laird Douglas it is, you lying, scurvy rot of humanity.”
Fergus didn’t move fast enough. His wife jumped up and shrieked, flying across the room to stand with her back glued to the wall as David Douglas wrenched Fergus from his bed by his nightshirt, dragging him to his feet and all but strangling him now.
“Me lads—” Fergus cried, seeking help from his sons.
“For once in your rotten life, Anderson, do something decent, and don’t get your boys killed.”
The lads, however, didn’t seem to wish to be killed in any fight for their father’s life and honor. They stood still, gaping.