Schulze, Dallas (7 page)

He’d accepted the challenge, drawing her into his arms and
waltzing her onto the ballroom floor. And, for a little while, the loneliness
was gone, driven away by the flirtatious mischief in her smile. From the moment
of his arrival a few days before the wedding, she’d made no secret of finding
him intriguing. Under other circumstances, Bishop might have been inclined to
give in to temptation and take her up on the invitation in her eyes. But
beneath the invitation, there was an innocence he couldn’t ignore, even if she
hadn’t been Douglas’s sister.

He’d left the ball soon after that dance, retreating to his room
with a bottle of whiskey he had every intention of draining. He’d worked his
way just far enough down the bottle to be feeling no pain when Lila knocked on
the door. She’d said that she wanted to make sure everything was in order. With
the servants so busy with preparations for the reception, she was afraid they
might have missed some item necessary to his comfort. But there had been
something in her eyes that said that it wasn’t concern for his comfort that had
brought her to his room.

He’d reached for her and she’d come into his arms as if coming
home. In some distant part of his mind, he’d known that he should stop. They’d
both had too much to drink. He had about as much business making love to Lila Adams
as he did jumping off a cliff and expecting to fly. But the taste of her had
drowned out the small voice of reason. For a little while, he hadn’t felt so
alone.

Bishop shook his head and started back to the house. He was paying
a hell of a price for a few hours of not being alone. They both were.

He’d stayed outside longer than he’d realized, and, by the time he
got back to the house, most of the lights were out. He’d assumed that everyone
had gone to bed but, as he stepped into the foyer, the butler rose from a chair
that sat in one corner.

“Were you waiting up for me, Thomas?” Bishop asked, feeling a
twinge of guilt. “You shouldn’t have. I can find my own way around.”

“I’m sure you can, sir.” An elderly black man with the erect
carriage of a general and an arrogance to match, Thomas had been with the
Adamses all his life, taking over the position of butler from his father. On
Bishop’s last visit, Thomas had treated him with a fatherly warmth, reflecting
his gratitude for Bishop’s saving Douglas’s life. Now the chilly disapproval in
Thomas’s voice was palpable.

“Allow me to take your coat,” he said, coming forward to take the
garment as Bishop shrugged out of it.

“Thank you. Do you know where my bag ended up?”

“Certainly, Mr. McKenzie. I had it put in Miss Lila’s room.”

“Lila’s room?” Bishop’s head jerked around in shock, his eyes
meeting Thomas’s.

“Mrs. McKenzie, I suppose I should have said.” Thomas draped
Bishop’s coat over his arm.

“Does she know it’s there?” Bishop asked, his mind boggling as he
tried to imagine Lila’s reaction to finding his things in her bedroom.

“I wouldn’t know but it seems likely that she saw it when she went
up to her room.”

“I guess she would have,” Bishop murmured, looking up the broad
staircase.

“I’ll say good night then, Mr. McKenzie. Unless you need me to
show you to Mrs. McKenzie’s room.”

Bishop winced at the subtle sarcasm that infused the last
sentence. Obviously, the servants had a pretty good idea of why Lila had
started out to marry one man and ended up married to another.

“I’m sure I can find it,” he told the butler.

“Then I’ll say good night, sir.”

“Good night.”

Bishop waited until Thomas had disappeared toward the back of the
house before he started up the stairs.
Mrs. McKenzie.
It wasn’t going to
be easy to get used to hearing Lila referred to that way. It had been a long
time since he’d heard that name used. Which brought up another problem, he
thought uneasily. His unexpected marriage could solve almost as many problems
as it was causing, although it was doubtful that Lila would see it that way.
He’d have to talk to her tomorrow before he left. There were things she needed
to be told.

Bishop reached the top of the stairs and turned down the hall that
led to west wing of the house. He was not nearly as familiar with Lila’s room
as Thomas had assumed but, as it happened, he didn’t have to rely on his memory
to find it. His steps slowed when he saw the familiar black bag sitting in the
hallway.

He stood in the hallway a moment, staring down at his bag and
feeling his temper edge upward. Knowing it was a waste of time, he reached out
to try the doorknob. Locked. Bishop drew a deep breath and considered his
options.

He was tired. He’d been traveling for days. He’d been punched,
lost a good friend, and married a girl he barely knew and wasn’t at all sure he
even liked. He hadn’t had a whole lot of time to contemplate what the future
might be like, but he’d always thought that it was a good rule of thumb to
start as you meant to go on. And one thing he knew for sure was that he did not
intend to let his new wife have everything her way. He had the distinct feeling
that she’d already had more of that than was good for her.

He knew, as surely as if he could see through solid wood, that
Lila was wide awake and staring at the door, wondering what he was going to do.
Reminding himself that it had been a difficult day for her as well, Bishop
grabbed a firm hold of his temper and tapped on the door.

“Open the door, Lila,” he said in as level a tone as he could
manage.

There was a lengthy pause and he wondered if she was going to
pretend to be asleep, but then she spoke, her voice muffled but audible.

“Go away.”

Without giving it a second’s thought, Bishop smashed the heel of
his boot against the door. The lock yielded and the door flew open, slamming
back against the wall with an echoing crash. He stepped into the doorway.

Lila was sitting up in bed, her green eyes huge and startled in
her pale face. Before either of them could speak, a door down the hall opened
and Douglas and Susan ran out of their room.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Douglas demanded.

Ignoring him, Bishop strode to the foot of the bed, his eyes on
Lila’s face. She watched him with the expression of a rabbit facing a
diamondback, her fingers wrapped around the covers, her knuckles white with the
force of her grip.

He let the silence build. Lila could feel her heart pounding in
her chest. When she’d put his bag outside the door, she hadn’t given much
thought to his reaction; she simply hadn’t been able to bear having it in her
room a moment longer. The last thing she’d expected was that he’d kick in her
door and stride into her room as if he had every right to be there. The
frightening thing was that he did have the right.

He loomed at the foot of the bed, huge and dark and angry. She was
suddenly, frighteningly, aware that, a few hours ago, she’d given herself, body
and soul, into his keeping. If he chose to beat her, the law would say he had
the right. Not that she thought he’d beat her. Not really.

He leaned toward her and she flinched back from the blazing heat
in his eyes. How could she ever have thought they were cold?

“Don’t ever lock a door against me again,” he said.

The soft order sent a shiver up Lila’s spine. She swallowed,
trying to think of something to say, something that would show him that he
couldn’t intimidate her. But Bishop didn’t wait for her response. Turning, he
strode back out into the hallway, nodding to Douglas and Susan as he scooped
his bag off the floor. Lila heard his footsteps going down the stairs and then
silence.

It took every ounce of courage she possessed for Lila to come
downstairs for breakfast the morning after her wedding. She had lain awake into
the early hours of the morning, her mind replaying the events of the day,
particularly the final scene with Bishop. She kept thinking of things she could
have said or done to show him what she thought of his barbaric behavior, to
make it clear that he couldn’t intimidate her. Except he had intimidated
her—quite thoroughly. Not even in her imagination could she conjure up a
picture of herself standing up to the man who’d loomed so menacingly over her
bed.

Feeling an uneasy mixture of bravado and trepidation, she entered
the dining room, prepared to greet her new husband with a show of calm. But
Bishop was not there, and Lila refused to acknowledge that there might be a
trace of disappointment mixed in with her relief. Douglas and Susan were seated
at one end of the table. They looked up as she entered, their self-conscious expressions
giving Lila a pretty clear idea of what they’d been discussing. Douglas, and
Susan, and everyone else in Beaton, she thought with a twinge of wry humor.

“Good morning.” She was pleased to hear how normal she sounded.

“How are you this morning?” Susan asked, her expression anxious.

“I’m fine.” Lila lifted her brows in faint surprise, as if she
couldn’t imagine why Susan was asking. Thomas slid her chair out for her and
she sat down at the table, casting him a quick smile. “Are there any muffins left
or did Douglas hog them all, as usual?”

“I think Cook held back one or two just for you, Miss Lila.”
Thomas’s smile was affectionate.

“See if you can sneak them in past my brother, please, Thomas.”
They’d had variations on the same conversation many times over the years.

“He doesn’t have to sneak them past me,” Douglas protested
automatically. “You’d think I stole the food right off your plate, the way you
talk.”

“Well, I did notice you eyeing my bacon this morning, dear,” Susan
said.

The light conversation was strained. Too much remained unspoken
for it to be otherwise, but Lila was grateful for its normalcy. For a little
while, it almost seemed possible that she’d imagined everything that had
happened—that yesterday had never happened.

But the fragile illusion was destroyed a moment later when Bishop
walked into the room. Lila didn’t need to see the sudden stiffness in Douglas’s
expression to tell her that Bishop had arrived. Even with her back to the door,
she knew he was there. She could feel him, as if something in the very air
changed when he entered a room. There was a tense moment of silence, broken by
Susan.

“Good morning, Bishop.”

“Morning.” Bishop nodded to Douglas before walking to the
sideboard to pour himself a cup of coffee. He’d spent a damned uncomfortable
night sleeping on a sofa in the library, and his mood was about as warm as the
ache in his neck. At that, it was warmer than the atmosphere in the dining
room.

He leaned one hip against the sideboard and studied the three
people before him. Douglas was wearing a dark, tailored suit, sober as a judge
and about as friendly. Susan, in a dress of her favorite soft blue, was casting
worried looks from him to Lila, who seemed to be utterly fascinated by the
floral pattern on her plate.

“Good morning, Lila.” For a moment, he thought she was going to
ignore him, but he should have known better. Hearing the soft challenge in his
voice, her chin came up, her green eyes meeting his coolly.

“Bishop.” She nodded her head as regally as a queen greeting a
subject—a not terribly important subject, at that, Bishop thought.

He was torn between annoyance and admiration, a combination that
was rapidly becoming familiar. He took a swallow of coffee, watching Lila above
the rim of the cup. She was studying her plate again, her head tilted slightly
downward, revealing the soft curls that fell against her nape. The sunlight
that spilled in through the tall windows turned her hair to pure fire and
highlighted the milky softness of her skin.

Bishop wondered idly if he would have found her easier to deal
with if she hadn’t been so damned beautiful. She was wearing another gray
dress, this one a deep, dusty charcoal, trimmed with ivory lace at the neck and
wrists. A row of buttons marched down the front of the gown with military
precision. The effect was austere, aggressively restrained. The severity of the
garment all but shouted at a man to keep his distance. Yet Bishop found himself
wondering how long it would take to open that prim little row of buttons.

Not that he was likely to get a chance to find out. She’d made it
pretty clear that she had no intention of letting him close enough to touch her
buttons—or anything else. The thought did nothing to improve his mood.

“I’ll be leaving this afternoon,” he said, directing the comment
at no one in particular.

Lila’s head came up, her eyes startled. “I can’t be ready that
soon. I’ll need at least a week to pack.”

It was Bishop’s turn to look surprised. “Pack for what?”

“To go ... wherever we’re going. Where
are
we going?”

Bishop stared at her a moment.
“I’m
going to Colorado.
You’re
not going anywhere, at least not with me.”

“Of course I am. I’m going with you. Where else would I go?”

“You’ll stay here.”

“Here?” Lila felt as if the wind had just been knocked from her.
He expected her to stay here? After the scene in the church yesterday? Had she
made him so angry that he felt the need to punish her so cruelly? “I’m going
with you.”