He told her things then. Hundreds of details he expected her to commit to memory. She did so with determination; it temporarily prevented her from contemplating the full extent of her apparent insanity. She repeated each detail, each name, each memory that was not hers. From careful observation of her “father,” she was able to guess at many of the memories that had belonged to the woman whose identity she was now to assume.
And all the while a soft mantra hummed through the back of her mind. This cannot be happening. This is not possible. This cannot be happening. Yet in the forefront of her mind, realist that she was, she understood that the words can’t and impossible had no bearing when the impossible was indeed happening.
Unless she woke up soon from a nightmarish and vivid dream, she was in Scotland, the was year 1513, and she was indeed getting married.
CHAPTER 4
“SHE’S TALL AS JANET.”
“Not many as tall as she.”
“Hush! She is Janet! Else he’ll have our heads on serving platters.”
“What happened to Janet?” Adrienne asked softly. She wasn’t surprised when the mouths of a half-dozen maids clamped shut and they turned their complete attention to dressing her in stalwart silence.
Adrienne rolled her eyes. If they wouldn’t tell her a thing about Janet, perhaps they’d talk about her bridegroom.
“So, who is this man I am to wed?” Sidhawk Douglas. What kind of name was Sidhawk anyway?
The maids tittered like a covey of startled quail.
“Truth of it is, milady, we’ve only heard tales of him. This betrothal was commanded by King James himself.”
“What are the tales?” Adrienne asked wryly.
“His exploits are legendary!”
“His conquests are legion. ’Tis rumored he’s traveled the world accompanied by only the most beautiful lasses.”
“ ’Tis said there isna a comely lass in all of Scotia he hasna tumbled—”
“—in England, too!”
“—and he canna recall any of their names.”
“He is said to have godlike beauty, and a practiced hand in the fine art of seduction.”
“He is fabulously wealthy and rumors say his castle is luxurious beyond compare.”
Adrienne blinked. “Wonderful. A materialistic, unfaithful, beautiful playboy of a self-indulged, inconsiderate man with a bad memory. And he’s all mine. Dear sweet God, what have I done to deserve this?” she wondered aloud. Twice, she brooded privately.
Lisbelle looked at her curiously. “But the rumors tell he is a magnificent lover and most comely to look upon, milady. What could be wrong with that?”
Methinks you don’t understand this world, Janet Comyn. Perhaps he was right. “Does he beat his women?”
“He doesn’t keep them long enough, or so they say.”
“Although, I hear tell one of his women tried to kill him recently. I can’t imagine why,” the maid added, genuinely puzzled. “ ’Tis said he is more than generous with his mistresses when he’s done with them.”
“I can imagine why,” Adrienne grumbled irritably, suddenly impatient with all the plucking, fastening, adorning, and arranging hands on her body. “Stop, stop.” She lightly slapped Lisbelle’s hands from her hair, which had been washed, combed mercilessly, and teased torturously for what felt like years.
“But milady, we must do something with this hair. ’Tis so straight! You must look your best—”
“Personally, I’d prefer to look like something the cat dragged in. Wet, bedraggled, and smelling like a ripe dungheap.”
Gasps resounded. “Lass, he will be your husband, and you could do far worse,” a stern voice cut across the room. Adrienne turned slowly and met the worldly-wise gaze of a woman with whom she felt an instant kinship. “You could have mine, for lack of a better example.”
Adrienne sucked in a harsh breath. “The Laird Comyn?”
“Your father, my darling daughter,” Lady Althea Comyn said with an acid smile. “Begone—all of you.” She ushered the maids from the room with a regal hand, her eyes lingering overlong on Bess. “He’ll kill the lass one day, he will,” she said softly. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly for a long moment.
“He explained what you must do?”
Adrienne nodded.
“And you will do it?”
Again she nodded. The Lady Comyn expelled a sigh of relief.
“If there is aught a time I may repay the kindness—”
“It’s not a kindness. It’s to save my life.”
“—you need only ask. For it saves mine own.”
Adrienne stood tall before the man of the cloth, fulfilling her part of the farce. “I am Janet Comyn,” she proclaimed loudly. God’s man paled visibly and clutched his Bible until his knuckles looked to split at the seams. So he knows I’m not, she mused. What on earth is really going on here?
She felt a presence near her left shoulder, and turned reluctantly to face the man she was to wed. Her eyes met the area slightly below his breastbone and every inch of it was encased in steel.
Adrienne started to rise and look her fiancé in the face, when she realized with horror that she wasn’t kneeling. Beyond chagrined, she tipped her head back and swallowed a thousand frantic protests that clotted in her throat.
The giant stared back with an inscrutable expression, flames from flickering candles dancing in the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
I can’t marry him, she screamed silently. I can’t do it!
Her eyes fled his countenance and chafed lightly across the audience in search of someone to save her from this debacle. Bess sat in the rear pew, eyes closed in supplication.
Adrienne flinched and closed her eyes in kind. Please God, if I’ve gone mad, please make me sane again. And if I haven’t gone mad and somehow this is really happening—I’m sorry I wasn’t grateful for the twentieth century. I’m sorry I did what I did to Eberhard. I’m sorry for everything, and I promise I’ll be a better person if you just GET ME OUT OF HERE!
When she opened her eyes again she could have sworn the man of the cloth had a knowing and rather amused gleam in his eye.
“Help me,” she mouthed silently.
Quickly, he lowered his eyes to the floor. He didn’t raise them again.
In spite of herself, Adrienne dragged her reluctant gaze to the midsection of her bridegroom, then upward even farther, to his darkly handsome face.
He arched a brow at her as the flutists piped away, the rhythm increasing in gaiety and tempo.
She was rescued from the stress of his regard when a ruckus erupted and she heard the furious voice of her “father” carrying to the rafters.
“What say you he couldna come himself?” Red Comyn shouted at the soldier.
“ ’Twas a bit of a problem in North Uster. The Hawk had to ride out in haste, but he hasna forsaken his pledge. He does no dishonor to the clans.” The soldier delivered his rehearsed message.
“He dishonors the troth by not being here!” Lord Comyn roared. Then he turned to the man at Adrienne’s side. “And who are you, to come in his stead?”
“Grimm Roderick, Hawk’s captain of the guard. I come to wed your daughter as his proxy—”
“A pox on proxy! How dare he not come to claim my daughter himself?”
“It’s perfectly legal. The king will recognize it and the troth is thus fulfilled.”
Adrienne couldn’t prevent the joy that leapt into her face at his words. This man wasn’t her husband!
“Am I so offensive then, lass?” he asked, smiling mockingly, not missing one ounce of her relief.
About as offensive as a platter of strawberries dipped in dark chocolate and topped with whipped cream, she thought wryly.
“I’d sooner marry a toad,” Adrienne said.
His laughter teased a miserly smile from her lips.
“Then you’re definitely out of luck, milady. For the Hawk is no toad for certain. I, lass, standing next to the Hawk, am truly a toad. Na
y—a troll. Worse still, a horned and warty lizard. A—”
“I get the picture.” Dear heaven, deliver me from perfection. “Where is he, then, my unwilling husband?”
“Managing the aftermath of a serious problem.”
“And that might be?”
“A grave and terrible uprising.”
“In North Uster?”
“Close.” The man’s lips twitched.
Adrienne was seized by a fit of urgency. No matter how she dragged her feet, this deed would be done. If she had to face the unknown, she’d like to tackle it now. Waiting only made it worse, and Lord Comyn’s shouting combined with the wild cacophony of floundering flutists was flaying her nerves. Mad, am I, Janet? Works for me. Straightening to her full five and half feet, she sought the still bellowing form of her “father” and shouted into the melee.
“Oh, do shut up, Father, and let’s be on with it! I’ve a wedding to be about and you’re only delaying it. So what if he didn’t come? Can’t say that I blame him.”
The chapel went deathly still. Adrienne could have sworn she felt the man beside her tremble with suppressed laughter, although she dared not meet his gaze again.
Whispers of “Mad Janet” rebounded through the chapel, and Adrienne felt a surge of relief. This fame for being mad could be useful. So long as she obeyed the Comyn’s orders this one day, she could be as odd as a square ball bearing and no one would find it unseemly.
Adrienne had been worried that she wouldn’t be able to remember all the details the Comyn had told her; that she would slip up and someone at her new husband’s home would discover she was an impostor. Once she was uncloaked as a charlatan, the Comyn would make good on his threat to kill her.
Suddenly that pressure vanished in a puff of smoke. In the here and now (if she was really here and now) she was crazy Janet Comyn. How could she be held accountable for anything she said or did that didn’t make sense? Madness was a license to freedom.
A license to do and say anything she wanted—with no repercussions.
No Eberhard, no guns, no bad memories.
Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.
CHAPTER 5
ADRIENNE HAD BEEN WANDERING THE GROUNDS OF DALKEITH for several hours when she stumbled upon the smithy. After a grueling two-day ride from Comyn Keep to her new home—Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea—by cantankerous steed, she’d planned to collapse in the nearest soft bed, sleep for days, and then when she woke up (if she was still here) find a good bottle of Scotch and drink herself into oblivion. And then check again to see if she was still here.
Not only hadn’t she been able to find a soft bed in the riotous castle, but there had been no Scotch, no sign of a husband, and everyone had summarily ignored her. Made it awfully hard to feel at home. Grimm had made haste from her company the moment they’d entered the pink granite walls of the Douglas keep, although he’d seemed quite the gentleman during the journey.
But she was no fool. She didn’t have to be hit in the head with a stick to figure out that she was definitely not a wanted wife. Wed by proxy, no welcome, and no sign of a husband. Definitely not wanted.
Adrienne gave up her fruitless search for husband, bed, and bottle and went for a stroll to explore her new home.
And so it was quite by accident that she stumbled through the rowan trees and upon the forge at the edge of the forest. Upon the man, clad only in a kilt, pumping the bellows and shaping the steel of a horseshoe.
Adrienne had heard that her husband by proxy was too beautiful to be borne, but this man indeed rendered the magnificent Grimm a veritable toad.
There just wasn’t this much raw man around in the twentieth century, she thought in helpless fascination as she watched him work. To see this kind of man in the twentieth century, a woman had to somehow gain entry to that inner sanctum of dumbbells and free weights, where the man was defining his body in homage to himself. But in this century such a man existed by simple force of nature.
His world demanded that he be strong to survive, to command, to endure.
When the smithy twisted and swooped to switch hammers, she saw a rivulet of sweat which had beaded at his brow run down his cheek, drop with a splatter to his chest, and trickle, oh, so slowly along the thick ridges of muscle in his abdomen. To his navel, to the top of his kilt, and lower still. She eyed his legs with fascination, waiting to see the drops of sweat reappear on those powerful calves, and wondering deliriously about every inch in between.
So intense was the shimmering heat from the forge, so strange her need, that Adrienne didn’t realize he had stopped for several moments.
Until she raised her eyes from his chest to meet his dark, unsmiling eyes. She gasped.
He crossed the distance and she knew she should run. Yet she also knew that she couldn’t have run if her life depended on it. Something about his eyes….
His hand was rough when it closed upon her jaw, forcing her head back to meet him eye to flashing silver eye.
“Is there a service I might perform for you, my fair queen? Perhaps you have something in need of a heated shaping and molding? Or perhaps I might reshape my steel lance in the heat of your forge, milady?”
Her eyes searched his face wildly. Composure, she commanded herself.
He shook her ruthlessly. “Do you seek my services?”
“It’s the heat, nothing more,” she croaked.
“Aye, ’tis most assuredly the heat, beauty.” His eyes were devilish. “Come.” He took her by the hand and started off at a fast pace.
“No!” She swatted at his arm.
“Come,” he ordered, and she suffered the uncanny sensation that he was reaching inside her with those eyes and reordering her will to match his will. It terrified her.
“Release me!” she gasped.
His eyes searched deeper, and although she knew it was crazy, Adrienne felt as if she was fighting for something terribly important here. She knew she must not go with this man, but she couldn’t begin to say why. She sensed danger, dark and primeval. Unnatural and ancient danger beyond her control. If he opened his cruelly beautiful mouth and said come one more time, she might do just that.
He opened his mouth. She braced herself for the command she knew would follow.
“Release my wife,” commanded a deep voice behind them.
CHAPTER 6
SO THIS MAN AT THE FORGE WAS NOT HER HUSBAND. DEAR God in heaven, what was she going to find when she turned around? Dare she?
She turned slightly, as if a small sidewise peek might be safer. Might minimize the impact. Adrienne soon discovered just how wrong she was. Nothing could minimize that man’s impact.
Valhalla on the right. Paradise regained on the left.
Stuck between a Godiva truffle and a chocolate éclair.
Between a rock and a very hard place. Two very hard places from the looks of it. I hate beautiful men, she mourned soulfully. Hate them. Hate them. Hate them. Yet to resist….
Hands clasped her waist from behind as the smithy pulled her back against his sculpted body.
“Let go of me!” she cried, the strange fog lifting from her brain.
The smithy released her.
And that very big, beautiful man facing her—the legendary Hawk—was glaring like Odin preparing to zap her with a thunderbolt. She snorted.
“Don’t glare at me. You didn’t even bother to show up at our wedding.” Adrienne started pacing. If she really was Janet, how would Janet have felt? How terrible to be wed away like a piece of property and then be treated so shabbily by the new in-laws! “I spend two miserable soggy days on the back of a nag and does it ever stop raining in this godawful place? Two days it took us to get here! Gracious Grimm dumps me the minute we set foot on Dalkeith. You don’t even bother to greet me. Nobody shows me to a room. Nobody offers me anything to eat. Or drink for that matter.” She paused in her litany and leaned back against a tree, hands on her hips, one foot tapping. “And then, since I can’t find anyplace to sle
ep that I’m not afraid doesn’t belong to someone else, I go off wandering until you finally bother yourself enough to show up and now you glare at me? Well, I’ll have you know—”
“Silence, lass.”
“That I am not the kind of woman that one can push to the side and have her take it docilely. I know when I’m not wanted—”
“You’re most assuredly wanted,” the smithy purred.
“I don’t need to be hit over the head with a ton of rocks—”
“I said be silent.”
“And I didn’t get even one wedding present!” she added, proud that she had thought of that. Yes, Janet would certainly have been offended.
“Silence!” Hawk roared.
“And I don’t take orders! Ummmph!” Adrienne grunted as her husband lunged the distance separating them and tumbled her to the ground. Once she hit the earth with what felt like a small rhinoceros on top of her, he rolled her over several times, locked in the curve of his arm. She could hear the blacksmith cursing softly, then the sound of running feet, as she struggled mightily against his steely embrace.
“Be still!” Hawk growled, his breath warm against her ear. It took her a few moments to realize that he was holding her almost protectively, as if shielding her with his body. Adrienne raised her head to see his dark eyes scanning the forest’s edge intently.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, her heart hammering. From being tumbled so roughly, she assured herself, not from being cradled in this man’s powerful arms. She squirmed.
“Be still, I said.”
She wriggled, partly to spite him and partly to get his leg out from between her thighs, but she only succeeded in ending up with her tush pressed against his—oh dear—surely he didn’t walk around like that all the time! She jerked sharply at the contact and heard a muffled thud, the sound of bone hitting bone when her head struck his jaw with a thwack. He cursed softly, then the rumble of his husky baritone laughter vibrated as his arms tightened around her.
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