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that Skylar Connor had been wed, by proxy, to
Lord Andrew Douglas by the Right Honorable Magistrate Timothy Carone in
Baltimore a little more than two weeks ago.
    The exact date of his father's death.
    He stared at the marriage license in his hand and then at the
appendix behind it. His own signature was scrawled upon it. He frowned, reading
further. The appendix was a proxy agreement. He didn't remember signing the
paper— didn't even remember seeing it before—but it was indisputably his
signature upon the paper.
    But then he had been so impatient and irritable right before
his father had started on his journey back east. When something pertained to
the Scottish estates or Maryland property, Hawk had told David he must do as he
saw fit because the property was his own. He was aware that his lather had put
many of his holdings into their joint ownership, determined there would never
be any doubt that his Sioux son was now his legal heir. It was quite ironic.
One i>l the first things his father had ever taught him was to read every
word of a written contract.
    He never read through a paper when his father asked for his
signature. He'd still considered his father's property to Ik -
just that and had thought that David should manage it is he saw fit.
    Too late, he realized now that such an attitude had actually
been selfish on his part. He had cared when it came to the Black Hills or their
home here on the Western frontier,
    But he had not been able to see beyond the Black Hills and
the surrounding countryside because the situation here had been growing more
and more tense since the end of the war.
    So did this mean that the wily vixen on the bed was indeed
Lady Douglas? Had he—taken a wife?
    Could it be legal?
    He groaned softly. Lately his father had been urging him to
marry again. Insisting he needed a wife. A white wife. Hawk had had long, passionate discussions with his father regarding the
future of the red man in the West, but indisputably, no matter how
passionately he had argued against his father's statements, he'd known they
would eventually prove true—as true as the endless tide of white settlers and
army who continued to come west in wave after land- hungry wave. David had not been
without some influence in Washington, and even before his most recent trip, he
had wearily assured his son that in the end the government would not honor any
treaty. Whatever lands the Indians were given, the whites would take back.
Americans considered it their "Manifest Destiny" to move from
"sea to shining sea," to occupy the whole of the North American
continent. If they could, they'd push back the Mexicans and the British in
Canada. That might be difficult to do in light of world opinion. But to exterminate
Indians... red men...
    It was a damned frightening possibility. Coming closer and
closer.
    Hawk knew that it had been his father's love for him that had
convinced his father he must marry a white woman. Live a white life. So what
had David done? Pretended to a young gold digger that she was marrying a man
on his last leg only to fall prey to her before bringing her west?
    Because he hadn't wanted to see his son exterminated.
    Except that David Douglas hadn't been on his last leg when he
had gone east. He hadn't looked any different than he had looked all his life.
A tall man, lean, white-haired, aging, still handsome with his extreme dignity,
eyes that seemed to see and know everything, and understand. He had been
healthy all his life. He had constantly endured the rigors of travel. He had
lived among the warriors of the Sioux nation, he had withstood tests of
endurance with the heartiest of them. Of course, that had been many years ago.
But still, when he had left here, he had seemed fine.
    I should have gone with him! Hawk thought, pain and guilt returning to tug upon
his heart. I couldn't have gone, not the way thai matters between
the army and the Indians have been escalating here.
    But this . . . could it be real?