A sick ache in the pit of her stomach, Heather unwillingly followed the two brothers upstairs to her bedchamber. She lit a lamp on the dressing table and turned it down low while Jake settled Sloan heavily on the bed.

“Thank you,” she said tightly. “I’ll take care of him now.”

“If you’re sure,” Jake replied skeptically.

“I’m sure.”

When he had gone and shut the door quietly behind him, Heather stood over the sleeping Sloan, not wanting even to touch him. He was lying on his back, fully clothed, on top of the covers, one arm draped over his face. Her mind felt numb, but as she regarded him, her despair grew into a hard, bright little kernel of anger. After his betrayal of her, his peaceful slumber infuriated her.

For a moment she was gripped with a strangling rage so powerful she wanted to scream. She wanted to strike him, to wail and pound her fists against the hard wall of his chest. She wanted to bury her face in his shoulder and sob out her anguish.

She did neither. Instead, she gritted her teeth and bent to tug off his right boot. She let it drop to the floor with a thud.

Sloan stirred with a groan. He blinked when he spied Heather and turned his head on the pillow to peer around the room in confusion.

“What’m I doing here?” he asked in a rasping voice.

“I asked Jake to put you here. I didn’t want Janna exposed to her drunken father.”

He squinted at her. “You mad at me?”

Heather reached for his other boot, struggling against feelings of fury and pain. “Whyever should I be mad? Simply because you come home completely inebriated, stinking of smoke and liquor and cheap perfume, making a fool of yourself and mortifying me in front of your brother and your friend?”

“In-ee-brated.” He slurred the word, then gave a snort of harsh laughter. “Why d’you always have to use such highfalutin’ words? Why doan you jush say drunk?”

“All right, drunk then.”

She moved around the bed and leaned over him to unbutton his shirt.

He caught her wrist. “Doan be so prudish, duchess.”

Wrenching her arm away, she fixed him with a steely glare. “I’ll thank you not to touch me.”

His mood suddenly seemed to sober as he eyed her narrowly. “I got every right to touch you. You’re my wife. I paid for you, remember?”

Her eyes blinked with the pain he’d given her, yet she kept her spine straight. “You did not pay me enough to associate with a drunken boor who betrays his marriage vows by consorting with saloon women! I’ve had enough. In future, you can find someone else to sleep with.”

She started to turn away, but Sloan’s hand captured her wrist once more. When she tried to pull from his grasp, he only held on more tightly.