Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

  “Well? What did she say?” The Hawk’s grip tightened on his glass as he waited to hear who had done such terrible things to his wife that her mind had retreated into fantasy. The Hawk understood what was wrong with her. He’d seen battle-scarred men who had experienced such horrors that they had reacted in similar fashion. Too many barbaric and bloody losses made some soldiers spin a dream to replace the reality, and in time many came to believe the dream was true. As his wife had done. But, unfortunately, with his wife he had no idea what had caused her painful retreat into such an outlandish fancy that she couldn’t even bear to be called by her real name. And whatever had happened to her had left her totally unwilling to trust any man, but especially him, it seemed.

  The Hawk braced himself to listen, to channel his rage when it came so he could wield it as a cool and efficient weapon. He would slay her dragons, and then begin her healing. Her body was growing stronger day by day, and the Hawk knew Lydia’s love had much to do with it. But he wanted his love to heal her deepest wounds. And the only way he could do that was to know and understand what she had suffered.

  Grimm swallowed, fidgeted in his chair, tilted it at the sides like a lad, then got up and moved to the hearth to shift restlessly from foot to foot.

  “Out with it, man!” The week Grimm had been gone had nearly driven the Hawk crazy imagining what this Ever-hard man must have done. Or even worse, perhaps the Laird Comyn himself was to blame for Adrienne’s pain. Hawk dreaded that possibility, for then it would be clan war. A terrible thing to be sure, but to avenge his wife—he would do anything. “Who is this Ever-hard?” The question had been gnawing at his insides ever since the night he’d first heard the name emerge from her fevered lips.

  Grimm sighed. “Nobody knew. Not one person had ever heard of him.”

  The Hawk cursed softly. So, the Comyn was keeping secrets, was he? “Talk,” he commanded.

  Grimm sighed. “She thinks she’s from the future.”

  “I know Adrienne thinks that,” Hawk said impatiently. “I sent you to discover what Lady Comyn had to say.”

  “That’s who I meant,” Grimm said flatly. “The Lady Comyn thinks Adrienne is from the future.”

  “What?” Hawk’s dark brows winged incredulously. “What are you telling me, Grimm? Are you telling me the Lady Comyn claims Adrienne isn’t her blood daughter?”

  “Aye.”

  Hawk’s boots hit the floor with a thump as the latent tension charging his veins became a living heat.

  “Let me get this straight. Althea Comyn told you that Adrienne is not her daughter?”

  “Aye.”

  Hawk froze. This was not what he had expected. In all his imaginings he had never once considered that his wife’s fantasy might be shared by her mother. “Then exactly who does Lady Comyn think the lass is? Who the hell have I married?” Hawk yelled.

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “Does she have any ideas?” Sarcasm laced the Hawk’s question. “Talk to me, man!”

  “There’s not much I can tell you, Hawk. And what I know…well, it’s damned odd, the lot of it. It sure as hell wasn’t what I expected. Ah, I heard such tales, Hawk, to test a man’s faith in the natural world. If what they claim is true, hell, I don’t know what a man can believe in anymore.”

  “Lady Comyn shares her daughter’s delusions,” Hawk marveled.

  “Nay, Hawk, not unless Althea Comyn and about a hundred other people do. Because that’s how many saw her appear out of nowhere. I spoke with dozens, and they all told pretty much the same tale. The clan was sitting at banquet when all of the sudden a lass—Adrienne—appeared on the laird’s lap, literally out of thin air. Some of the maids named her witch, but it was quickly hushed. It seemed the laird considered her a gift from the angels. The Lady Comyn said she saw something fall out of the oddly dressed woman’s hand, and fought through the panic to get it. ’Twas the black queen she’d given me at the wedding, which I gave to you when we returned.”

  “I wondered why she’d sent that to me.” Hawk rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

  “Lady Comyn said she thought it might become important later. She said that she thinks the chess piece is somehow bewitched.”

  “If so, that would be how she traveled through”—he broke off, unable to complete the thought. He’d seen many wonders in his life, and was not a man to completely discount the possibility of magic—what good Scotsman raised to believe in the wee folk would? But still…

  “How she traveled through time,” Grimm finished for him.

  The two men stared at each other.

  Hawk shook his head. “Do you believe …?”

  “Do you?”

  They looked at each other. They looked at the fire.

  “No,” they both scoffed at the same time, studying the fire intently.

  “She doesn’t seem quite usual though, does she?” Grimm finally said. “I mean, she’s unnaturally bright. Beautiful. And witty, ah, the stories she told me on the way back here from the Comyn keep. She’s strong for a lass. And she does have odd sayings. Sometimes—I don’t know if you’ve noticed—her brogue seems to fade in and out.”

  Hawk snorted. He had noticed. Her brogue had virtually disappeared when she’d lain ill from the poison, and she’d spoken in an odd accent he’d never heard before.

  Grimm continued, almost to himself, “A lass like that could keep a man—” He broke off and looked sharply at the Hawk. Cleared his throat. “Lady Comyn knows who her daughter was, Hawk. Was is the key word there. Several of the maids confirmed Lydia’s story that the real Janet is dead. The gossip is that she’s dead by her father’s hand. He had to marry someone to you. Lady Comyn said their clan will never breathe a word of the truth.”

  “I guess not,” Hawk snorted. If any of this is true, and I’m not saying it is, the Comyn knows James would destroy us both for it.” The Hawk pondered that bitter thought a long moment, then discarded it as an unnecessary concern. The Comyn would assuredly swear Adrienne was Janet, as would every last man of the Douglas, if word of this ever got to the king in Edinburgh, for the existence of both their clans depended upon it. The Hawk could count on at least that much fealty from the self-serving Comyn.

  “What did the laird himself have to say, Grimm?”

  “Not a word. He would neither confirm she was his daughter, nor deny it. But I spoke with the Comyn’s priest, who told me the same story as Lady Comyn. By the way, he was lighting the fat white praying candles for the soul of the late Janet,” he added grimly. “So if there are delusions at the Comyn keep, they are mass and uniformly detailed, my friend.”

  The Hawk crossed swiftly to his desk. He opened a carved wooden box and extracted the chess piece. He rolled it in his fingers, studying it carefully.

  When he raised his eyes again they were blacker than midnight, deeper than a loch and just as unfathomable. “The Lady Comyn believes it brought her here?”

  Grimm nodded.

  “Then it could take her away?”

  Grimm shrugged. “Lady Comyn said Adrienne didn’t seem to remember it. Has she ever mentioned it to you?”

  Hawk shook his head and looked thoughtfully, first at the black queen, then at his brightly burning fire.

  Grimm met Hawk’s gaze levelly, and Hawk knew there would never be words of reproach or even a whisper of the deed, if he chose to do it.

  “Do you believe?” Grimm asked softly.

  The Hawk sat before the fire for a long time after Grimm left, alternating between belief and disbelief. Although he was a creative man, he was also a logical man. Time travel simply didn’t fit into his understanding of the natural world. He could believe in the banshee, who warned of pending death and destruction. He could even believe in the Druids as alchemists and practitioners of strange arts. He’d been raised on childhood warnings of the kelpie, who lived in deep lochs and lured unsuspecting and unruly children to their watery graves.

  But traveling through time?

  Beside
s, he told himself as he stuffed the chess piece into his sporran for later consideration, there were other more pressing problems to address. Like the smithy. And his willful wife, upon whose lips the smithy’s name sat far too often.

  The future would allow plenty of time to unravel all of Adrienne’s secrets, and make sense of the mass delusions at the Comyn keep. But first, he had to truly make her his wife. Once that was accomplished, he could begin to worry about other details. Thus resolved, he stuffed away the unsettling news Grimm had brought him, much as he had stuffed away the chess piece.

  Plans of just how he would seduce his lovely wife replaced all worries. With a dangerous smile and purpose in his stride, the Hawk went off in search of Adrienne.

  CHAPTER 13

  ADRIENNE WALKED RESTLESSLY, HER MIND WHIRLING. HER brief nap in the sunshine had done nothing to dispel her wayward thoughts. Thoughts like just how capable, not to mention how willing, the Hawk was of providing babies to fill that dratted nursery.

  Instinctively she avoided the north end of the bailey, unwilling to confront the smithy and those unnerving images still fermenting in her mind from when she’d been ill.

  South she strayed, beckoned by the glimmer of sun off a glass roof and curiosity deep as a loch. These were no barbaric people, she mused. And if she didn’t miss her guess, she was walking right toward a hothouse. How brilliant was the mind that had fashioned Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea. It was impenetrable on the west end due to the cliffs, which presented a sheer, unscalable drop to the fierce ocean. Spreading north, south, and east, the keep itself was sealed behind monstrous walls, all of seventy to eighty feet high. How strange that the same mind which had designed Dalkeith as a stronghold had made it so beautiful. The complicated mind of a man who provided for the necessity of war, yet savored the times of peace.

  Careful, getting intrigued are you?

  When she reached the hothouse, Adrienne noticed that it was attached to a circular stone tower. During her many hours of surfing the Internet she’d been drawn time and time again to things medieval. The mews? Falcons. It was there they kept and trained falcons for hunting.

  Drawn by the lure of animals and missing Moonshadow with an ache in her chest, Adrienne approached the gray stone broch. What had Hawk meant about treating her like one of his falcons? she wondered. Well, she’d just find out for herself, so she’d know what to avoid in the future.

  Tall and completely circular, the broch had only one window, which was covered by a slatted shutter. Something about the dark, she remembered reading. Curious, she approached the heavy door and pushed it aside, closing it behind her lest any falcons be tempted to escape. She wouldn’t give the Hawk any excuse to chastise her.

  Slowly her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and she was able to make out several empty perches in the dim light. Ah, not the mews, this must be the training broch. Adrienne tried to recall the way the trainers of yore had skilled their birds for the hunt.

  The broch smelled of lavender and spice, the heavy musk from the attached hothouse permeating the stone walls. It was a peaceful place. Oh, how easily she could get used to never hearing the rush of traffic again; never having to look over her shoulder again; never seeing New Orleans again—an end to all the running and hiding and fear.

  The walls of the broch were cool and clean to the touch, nothing like the stone walls that had once held her prisoner in the gritty dirt of a New Orleans prison cell.

  Adrienne shuddered. She’d never forget that night.

  The fight had begun over—of all things—a trip to Acapulco. Adrienne hadn’t wanted to go. Eberhard had insisted. “Fine, then come with me,” she’d said. He was too busy, he couldn’t take the time off, he’d replied.

  “What good is all your money if you can’t take the time to enjoy life?” Adrienne had asked.

  Eberhard hadn’t said a word, he’d simply fixed her with a disappointed look that made her feel like an awkward adolescent, a gauche and unwanted orphan.

  “Well, why do you keep sending me on these vacations by myself?” Adrienne asked, trying to sound mature and cool, but her question ended on a plaintive note.

  “How many times must I explain this to you? I’m trying to educate you, Adrienne. If you think for a moment that it will be easy for an orphan who has never been in society to be my wife, think again. My wife must be cultured, sophisticated, European—”

  “Don’t send me back to Paris,” Adrienne had said hastily. “It rained for weeks, last time.”

  “Don’t interrupt me again, Adrienne.” His voice had been calm; too calm and carefully measured.

  “Can’t you come with me—just once?”

  “Adrienne!”

  Adrienne had stiffened, feeling foolish and wrong, even though she’d known she wasn’t being unreasonable. Sometimes she had felt like he didn’t want her around, but that didn’t make sense—he was marrying her. He was preparing her to be his wife.

  Still, she’d had doubts….

  After her last trip to Rio, she’d returned to hear from her old friends at the Blind Lemon that Eberhard hadn’t been seen in his offices all that much—but he had been seen in his flashy Porsche with an equally flashy brunette. A twinge of jealousy had speared her. “Besides, I hear you don’t work too hard while I’m gone,” she had muttered.

  The fight had begun in earnest then, escalating until Eberhard did something that so astonished and terrified Adrienne that she fled blindly into the steamy New Orleans night.

  He hit her. Hard. And, taking advantage of her stunned passivity—more than once.

  Crying, she flung herself into the Mercedes that Eberhard leased for her. She stomped the accelerator and the car surged forward. She drove blindly, on autopilot, mascara-tinted tears staining the cream silk suit Eberhard had chosen for her to wear that evening.

  When the police pulled her over, claiming she’d been driving over one hundred miles an hour, she knew they were lying. They were Eberhard’s friends. He’d probably called them the moment she’d left his house; he knew which route she always took home.

  Adrienne stood outside her car with the policemen, her face bruised and swelling, her lip bleeding, weeping and apologizing in a voice that bordered on hysteria.

  It didn’t occur to her until much later that neither of the policemen had ever asked her what had happened to her face. They’d interrogated an obviously beaten woman without showing an ounce of concern.

  When they’d cuffed her, taken her to the station, and called Eberhard, she wasn’t surprised at all when they replaced the receiver, gazed at her sadly, and sent her to be locked up.

  Three days she’d spent in that hellish place, just so Eberhard could make his point.

  That was the night she’d realized how dangerous he really was.

  In the cool of the broch, Adrienne hugged her arms around herself, trying desperately to exorcise the ghosts of a beautiful man named Eberhard Darrow Garrett and the foolish young woman who’d spent a lonely, sheltered life in an orphanage. Such easy prey she’d been. Did you see little orphan Adri-Annie? Eberhard’s little fool. Where had she heard those sneering words? On Rupert’s yacht, when they thought she’d gone below for more drinks. She shivered violently. I’ll never be a man’s fool again.

  “Never,” she vowed aloud. Adrienne shook her head to ebb the painful tide of memories.

  The door opened, admitting a wide swath of brilliant sunlight. Then it closed again and blackness reigned absolute.

  Adrienne froze, huddled in on herself, and forced her heart to slow. She’d been here before. Hiding, waiting, too terrified to draw a breath for fear of alerting the hunter to her exact location. How she’d run and hid! But there had been no sanctuary. Not until the streets of obscurity she’d finally found in Seattle, and there had been an eternity of murky hell down every winding backroad between New Orleans and the haven of the Pacific Northwest.

  Bitter memories threatened to engulf her when a husky croon broke the silence.


  The Hawk? Singing? A lullaby?

  The Gaelic words tumbled husky and deep—why hadn’t she suspected he would have a voice like rich butterscotch? He purred when he talked; he could seduce the Mother Abbess of Sacred Heart when he sang.

  “Curious, were you? I see you came of your own accord.” His brogue rolled through the broch when he finished the refrain.

  “Came where?” she asked defiantly.

  “To be trained to my hand.” His voice sounded amused, and she heard the rustle of his kilt as he moved in the inky darkness.

  She would not dignify it with a response.

  A long pause, another rustle, then, “Know you what qualities a falconer must possess, my heart?”

  “What?” she grumbled in spite of herself, moving slowly backward. She stretched out her hands like little makeshift antennae in the darkness.

  “’Tis an exacting position. Few men can be quality falconers. Few possess the temperament. A falconer must be a man of infinite patience, acute hearing, and uncanny vision. Possessed of a daring spirit, and a gentle yet forceful hand. He must be constantly attuned to his ladybird. Know you why?”

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Because falcons are very sensitive and excitable creatures, my heart. They are known to suffer from headaches and all manner of human ailments, so sensitive are they. Their extreme sensitivity makes them the finest and most successful huntresses of all time, yet can make them most demanding as well. And the haggard … ah, my sweet haggard, she is the purest challenge of all. And by far the most rewarding.”

  She would not ask what a haggard was.

  “‘What is a haggard,’ you ask, deep in that stubborn, silent soul of yours, my heart?” He laughed richly and it echoed off the stone walls of the suddenly balmy broch.

  “Quit ‘my hearting’ me,” she muttered as she moved back oh so cautiously. She had to find a wall. The broch was round, so a wall would guarantee a door at some point. She may as well have been blind in the abysmal blackness.

  She heard his footfalls upon the stone floor. Dear heavens, how could he see her? But he was heading straight for her! She backed away slowly, stealthily.