No Other Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever-proper attorney, who had been informed by the president of
their Maryland bank that David had died of apparent heart failure in Baltimore
just two weeks ago. Henry hadn't mentioned anything then about a bride—for
either his father or himself. It appeared that this woman did believe she was
married to—or widowed by— his father. Yet she had said the name Andrew. His own.
    Just what exactly had gone on between this absurdly young
woman and his aging father? He couldn't begin to fathom it. David had always
been dignified to the extreme, a proud man, a wise one. He had deeply loved
only two women in his life; he had married them both. He had been in reasonably
good health when he had traveled east, in full control of all his faculties.
    Then how...
    The woman who lay before him must have been incredibly
persuasive. And yet, though she seemed convinced that she was the widow of Lord
Douglas, she apparently knew nothing about her late husband's life—or her late
husband himself, for that matter. She hadn't even known that his name had been
David, not Andrew.
    All she'd needed to know, he figured, was that his father was
titled with a British peerage and had obtained a land grant in the Black Hills,
in one of the few areas not considered Sa Papa, or Holy Land, by the Sioux, where he had also discovered gold.
    Again, he longed to shake her. How could anyone appear so
fragile and innocent, yet fight like a cougar and have the instincts of an
alley cat! She lay there, still silent, her breath barely causing a slow but
constant rise and fall of her breasts.
    She would come around all right. He rubbed his chin, feeling
his irritation grow along with an unbidden rise of desire within him. His robe
was not adequate cover for her. Whatever had he been thinking to strip away her
clothing and dunk her in the tub? It had been her insistence that she needed to
bathe that had triggered his action. And perhaps he'd been goaded by her greed,
which was so great that it had apparently led her into what was still—despite
the ever-encroaching army and the wave of white emigrants— basically Sioux
country where few men dared to tread. She'd come here, so she'd deserved to
discover the perils that awaited the unwary. Whites were often waylaid, robbed,
raped, abducted, murdered—scalped.
    And he hadn't taken it so far as to scalp her.
    Yet.
    All right. He wasn't going to scalp her.
    Yet no matter what his fury regarding his father, she
disturbed him, and he suddenly wished that he'd confronted her in a white man's
court of law. Once he'd seen her, however, at Riley's, where he'd been with his
cousins while her stagecoach was being repaired, his temper had taken control.
There she'd been, claiming to be Lady Douglas, when he'd never seen her before,
heard of her—or even imagined that a Lady Douglas could possibly exist. He'd
been so damned determined to torment such an impostor, show her the dangers of
the deceitful charade she played, force the truth from her. It seemed somewhat
ironic now. Had he been so convinced that he could certainly not fall for the
wiles of such a fortune hunter himself?
    Wiles be damned. She was simply a well-built female, and the
robe was falling open, allowing him far more of a view of her breasts than he
wanted. His own fault, however ...
    He'd have to be dead not to be attracted to her himself.
    He drew part of the robe over her breast. It fell back.
Something within him quickened, and he muttered a sound of self-disgust,
walking from the bedside to find the shreds of the black mourning dress she had
been wearing. He searched the skirt for pockets and found one. It contained
several gold coins, a small mirror, and a brush. He tossed those items
impatiently at the foot of the bed, then searched the skirt again. In another
pocket, he found what he sought.
    Papers.
    He drew them out, studying them with a fierce frown.
    She carried a marriage license. It appeared to be a proper
and fully legal document stating