Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

But she didn’t answer, and her eyes remained shut.

  Hawk groaned and kissed her again anyway, losing himself for a moment in the texture and taste of her sweet lips. But doubt hammered at him. He was aware that if he didn’t push the issue, he might yet carry her to his bed tonight in her sensual, drunken arousal. But he didn’t want Adrienne incoherent. He wanted her wide-awake, fully aware and asking him to touch her. He wanted her to meet his gaze levelly with honest, unabashed hunger, and say the words. Hawk tore his mouth from hers, panting hard.

  “Open your eyes, Adrienne.” He forced himself to lie still, his hips rigid against the seductive arch of her body.

  A wordless moment of shallow breaths passed, their lips inches apart.

  “Look at me. Say my name. Now,” Hawk commanded.

  Adrienne’s eyes opened just a sliver. Don’t make me acknowledge this … don’t ask so much! they pleaded. And again, her body quested upward, begging him to move atop her, to seduce her in her drunken arousal so that tomorrow she could pretend it hadn’t been her choice.

  “Look at me and say my name.” His voice broke harshly on the words. His beautiful, chiseled mouth hovered only a whisper away from hers.

  Adrienne stared up at him mutely. Tears stung her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks.

  “Why can’t you do it?” he demanded, his brogue rough velvet over broken glass. “Is it so impossible? Sidheach. That’s all you have to say. Or James, even Lyon. Laird Douglas would do!” Anything but Adam.

  Adrienne stared, revulsion at her own weakness choking her. She’d learned nothing! One more inch, one scant movement, and she would be lost as never before. Where the body goes … the heart will follow … say his name and kiss him again, then you can just kiss your soul goodbye. This man has the power to destroy you in ways Eberhard never could.

  “What will it take to make you forget him?”

  And he thought it was Adam, but it wasn’t Adam. It was Eberhard. And there would be nothing left of her this time if she played the fool again.

  “Say my name, lass, for the love of God!” Hawk roared. He was shaking with a mixture of barely restrained passion and disbelief that she could respond to him so erotically, so completely, yet still withhold his name. “If there is any chance for me at all, Adrienne, call out to me! If you can’t even say my name, then I stand no chance of ever gaining your love!”

  His last plea was the agonized cry of a wounded animal; it laid open her heart.

  A pulse throbbed in his neck and she raised her hand to place trembling fingers against it. Harder and harder she steeled her heart, until it was safe again behind a glacier of remembrance and regret.

  He pushed her hand away.

  “Say it.” He forced his demand through gritted teeth.

  “Now isn’t this just sooo touching. I’ll help her.” Olivia’s voice dripped venom. “Just call him the king’s whore,” she purred. “That’s all we ever called him.”

  The storm raging in him stilled at precisely that moment.

  “Is it true?” Adrienne finally whispered, her eyes wide and deep with hurt. Hurt and something else. Hawk saw the unspoken cry in her slate depths. He wanted to deny it, to explain the nightmare away. But he would not lie to this lass. She would have to take him in full truth or not at all; when she accepted him, if he even had any chance left, she would possess him entirely. Bitterness welled up, cloaking him in a despair so complete he almost cried aloud with the agony of it.

  “I was called the king’s whore,” he replied stiffly.

  Shadows leapt and flickered in her opalescent silver eyes. Darkness he had vowed to ease, he had fed with his own hands.

  He rolled from her and rose slowly, then walked away into the night as silent as a wolf, leaving her on the edge of a precipice with his vengeful ex-mistress. He hoped she’d simply push the spiteful Olivia over the edge, but he knew it was not going to be that easy. For if he judged rightly, his wife would be in Adam’s bed in no time now.

  She was lost to him.

  Better that he had never met this lass so that he might never have known the sweet rush of emotion, the absolving passion, the freeing wings of what love might have been.

  He wandered that night, lost in memories of that time when he had been commanded by his king. All for Dalkeith and his mother, for Ilysse and Adrian. Aye, and fair Scotia from time to time when his king had been wildly foolish. Nay, there had never really been any choice.

  Hawk’s eyes searched the night sky for yet another falling star. He intended to wish upon every one for the rest of his life if necessary. Surely ten thousand wishes could undo one. But the cloud cover had returned and there wasn’t one flicker of a star to be seen in the absolute darkness that surrounded him.

  CHAPTER 17

  “OH MY DEAR, I THOUGHT YOU KNEW!” OLIVIA GUSHED.

  “Go to hell,” Adrienne said softly as she forced herself to her feet.

  “I’m trying to help you—”

  “No you’re not. The only person you’re trying to help is yourself—to a heaping helping of my husband.”

  “Ah, yes. Your precious husband. Have you no curiosity about his time at court?” Olivia purred invitingly.

  “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe you would tell me any truth about him? A woman like you?”

  Olivia stopped midsentence, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  Adrienne’s slate-gray eyes coolly met Olivia’s heavily kohled ovals. “Just that you’re the kind of woman who measures her success by the men she beds and the women she bites and one day soon, and not too far off from the look of you, you’re going to be nothing but a plump, unwanted old woman with no friends. And then how are you going to pass the time?” Olivia might have taken her in years ago, but not much fooled her anymore.

  “How dare you, you petite salope!” Olivia spit out. “I was only offering my help—”

  “By following us, spying on us, and then bringing up his past? His past is gone, Olivia.” Adrienne wasn’t aware she was defending him until she heard herself doing it. “Some people learn from their past, grow better and wiser. My Hawk has done that. You’re just angry because you know he’s not the man he used to be. If he was, he would have stayed in the gardens with you instead of spending the evening talking with me.”

  “Talking? He and I used to … talk … like that too. He’s just temporarily inflamed with a new body. He’ll get over it. And when he does, he’ll come back to my bed.”

  “You’re wrong,” Adrienne said calmly. “And you know it. That’s what really upsets you.”

  “Old dogs do not learn new tricks, sweet young fool,” Olivia sneered.

  Adrienne flashed a saccharin smile at the older woman. “Perhaps not. But sometimes dogs give up their old tricks entirely.”

  “You speak like a woman in love. Yet you wouldn’t say his name,” Olivia declared, arching a penciled brow.

  Adrienne’s smile faded. “I speak for both myself and my husband when I suggest you leave Dalkeith at first light, whether the horses are rested or not. You are no longer welcome here. Don’t ever come back.”

  I sure can pick ‘em, can’t I? she brooded as she picked her way through the garden.

  Just as with Eberhard, the boat-deck-tanned playboy elite who’d manipulated her so flawlessly, she’d been a fool for a beautiful illusion. The real beauty had to come from inside. A man called the king’s whore … well, what kind of beauty was there in that?

  Worse yet was the thought of what she’d been about to do, would have willingly done with the Hawk, if Olivia hadn’t come along. His pleas had virtually undone her defenses, and she knew full well that had Olivia not interrupted them, she would even now be lying beneath his magnificent body, just another one of the king’s whore’s conquests.

  Maybe it’s not like that, Adrienne. Maybe you don’t know the whole story, a small voice in her heart pointed out.

  Maybe I don’t want
to know the whole story, she seethed. She clenched her hands until she felt the painful tear of nails in the soft flesh of her palms. I want to go home, she mourned like a lost child. I want Moonie.

  That’s the only thing that’s worth wanting back there, she thought.

  She blew out a frustrated breath.

  “Adrienne.” His voice came out of the shadows of the lower bailey so softly that she thought at first she must have imagined it.

  She whirled to meet his gaze. Moonlight fell in wide shafts through the trees, casting a silver bar across his chiseled face.

  “Leave me alone, Hawk.”

  “What did Olivia tell you?” The words sounded as though they were ripped from him against his will.

  “Why don’t you go ask her? It seems the two of you communicated quite well in the past. A sort of ‘wordless communication,’ if I recall.”

  “Lass, don’t,” he groaned.

  “Why not? Does the truth hurt?”

  “Adrienne, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t …” His voice trailed off and he sighed.

  “It wasn’t what?” she said icily. Adrienne waited. Would he explain? The word whore could have a variety of meanings, none of them savory. She knew he’d been with beautiful women, and a lot of them from what the Comyn maids had told her, but just how many? A thousand? Ten thousand?

  When the Hawk didn’t reply, Adrienne pushed. “Are you Olivia’s lover?”

  “No, lass!”

  “Were you?” Adrienne forced herself to ask.

  Hawk sighed. “It’s true, but it was a long time ago, and you don’t know the circumstances—”

  Adrienne glared. “I don’t want to know the circumstances under which you would be with a woman like her! If you had any discrimination at all, you would never … You men are all the same!”

  Hawk’s brogue thickened measurably. “Give me a chance, Adrienne. Hear me out. ’Tisna fair to be hating me for things other men may have done to you. One more chance—that’s all I’m asking of you, lass.”

  “I’ve given you too many chances! Leave me alone, Hawk Douglas. Just leave me alone!” Adrienne spun around and raced for the castle before she could humiliate herself by bursting into tears.

  She dreamed of the Hawk and the promise she had glimpsed in his eyes. The hope. If he knew her past, would he still want her? Adrienne’s slumbering psyche struggled mightily with the lot of it. Dare she let herself love him? Dare she not? Her heart was still too bruised. Her mind recoiled from any possibility of further shame and regret. But the temptation to fall grew harder to resist every day. If only she were home in her cocoon of solitude. Safe again, but so lonely …

  Dreaming within a dream, she finally remembered how she’d come to be there, and understood how she might get back home. The way to escape the Hawk and all his infinite promises of passion and pain.

  She was awakened by the impact of the memory. Disentangling herself from the silken sheets, she crossed the room and peered out into the inky night.

  Eberhard’s chess set.

  She could finally recall with perfect clarity what she’d been doing moments before she’d been catapulted through time to land on the Comyn’s lap.

  She’d been in her library, picking up the pieces of Eberhard’s chess set.

  That dratted chess set really was cursed. When she’d swiped it from Eberhard’s house, she’d been careful not to touch the pieces. Eberhard had often joked about the curse, but Adrienne preferred to give legends, curses, and myths a wide berth. After she’d pilfered the set, she had left it packed, intending to unpack it only if she needed to sell it.

  She knew she’d had the black queen in her hand when she’d appeared on Red Comyn’s lap, but where had it gone from there? She certainly didn’t have it now. Had one of the maids taken it? Would she have to confront the despicable Red Comyn to get it back?

  She shook her head dejectedly. It had to be somewhere at the Comyn keep, and wherever it was she had to make an effort to find it. It could take her home. Could she find her way back to the Comyn keep?

  Of course, she assured herself. After traveling scrubby backroads for two thousand miles, Adrienne de Simone could find her way anywhere. But quickly, while she was still under cover of the night. And before her resolve weakened.

  Thirty minutes later she was ready. Tiptoeing through the kitchen, she’d found an oiled sack and filled it with crusty breads and cheeses and a few apples. Tavis snored in his chair by the door, his hand furled about a half-full glass of—she sniffed cautiously—pure grain alcohol from the smell of it. After a quick stop in the Green Lady’s room where she’d left the boots Lydia had given her, she’d be ready to go.

  Slipping from the kitchen, she moved quickly down the short corridor and pushed open the door to the Green Lady’s room. Her eyes flared with dismay. There the Hawk slept, a white linen sheet wrapped around his legs, his torso bare to the dawn’s caress. His dark head tossed against the white pillows, and he slept alone—grasping in his arms the dress she’d worn that day she’d taken the dart.

  They called him the king’s whore, she reminded herself. Perhaps there was actually a royal appointment to such a post. Or perhaps he was simply so nondiscriminating that he’d earned the title all by himself. Regardless, she would never again be one of many.

  Adrienne spied her boots on the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Eyes carefully averted from her sleeping husband, she slipped them from the burnished pine lid and skittered back toward the door on kitten paws, closing it gently behind her.

  And now the difficult part. Guards were posted all over the castle. She would have to flee through the gardens, down the eternal bridge to the gatehouse, and through the east tower. She’d run from worse things, through worse climes before. She would manage somehow. She always did when it came to running.

  Hawk slitted one eye open and watched her leave. He muttered darkly and shifted his body, folding his muscular arms behind his head. He stared at the door a long moment.

  She was leaving him?

  Never. Not so long as he lived and breathed, and he had a hell of a lot more fight in him than she must think.

  He moved to his feet and grabbed his kilt, knotting it loosely at his waist.

  So that’s the way it was going to be, he mused bitterly. The first sign of something less than savory in his past, and she would run. He hadn’t pegged her as the skittish type. He’d thought there was a lass of fiery mettle beneath her silken exterior, but one breath of his sordid past and she was ready to leave him. After the pleasure she’d so obviously experienced in his arms, still—to walk away.

  Well, where the hell did she think he’d learned how to give pleasure?

  Oh, nay. The next time his wife lay in his arms, and there would be a next time, he would take one of the gypsy potions to make him detached. Then he would truly show her the benefits she reaped from the past she eschewed so violently.

  He was offering her his love, freely and openly. He, who had never offered anything more than physical pleasure for a short time to any lass, was offering this woman his life.

  And still she would not accept him.

  And she didn’t even know the first bloody thing about what it meant to be the king’s whore. Olivia had been about to tell her, there in the gardens. Olivia, who had ruthlessly exploited the Hawk’s servitude to the king by petitioning James to command the Hawk to grant her those carnal favors he’d previously denied her. Olivia, who had given James a whole new way to humiliate the Hawk. The memory of it shamed and enraged him. He banished such thoughts and the blinding anger they generated with a firm flexing of his formidable will.

  Adrienne was his immediate problem. Hawk snorted. Was she running off to discover the world in her smithy’s arms?

  Aye. He was sure she was.

  At that moment Grimm pushed the door open and ducked his head in, a silent question in his eyes.

  “Is she headed north?” Hawk’s face was bitter.

  “Nay
,” Grimm puzzled. “’Tis what I expected too, but she goes east.”

  “To the gatehouse? Alone?”

  “Aye. Carrying only a wee pack.”

  “He must be meeting her there,” Hawk mused. “The guard is following?”

  “Aye, at a distance. Until you give your command.”

  Hawk turned his back and studied the dying embers. His command. Should he let her go? Could he? And if she joined with Adam how would he keep himself from killing the smithy with his bare hands? No. Better to stop her before he had to know with absolute certainty her betrayal. “What have you learned of Adam?” Hawk kicked at the hearth.

  “Nothing, Hawk. ’Tis as if he blew in on a fae breeze and put down roots. It’s the oddest thing. No one knows from whence he came. I think Esmerelda is our best bet for information, as she warms his bed. But I haven’t been able to track her down just yet.” Grimm rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Seems Esmerelda’s people have moved their camp away from the north rowans to the far east pastures.”

  Hawk spun on his heel, his dark eyes searching Grimm’s intently. “The Rom never move camp. They always stay in the north pastures through the summer.”

  “Not this summer.” Grimm shrugged. “Verily odd. Said even the Samhain would be celebrated at a new site this harvest.”

  “Strange.” Hawk pondered this new oddity. But he spared only a moment to consider the Gypsy tribe that camped Dalkeith—there were more important issues to attend to. His wife was leaving him. “Stop her at the gatehouse, Grimm. I’ll be there shortly.”

  Adrienne knew she was being followed.

  Escaping the castle was as hard as trying to break out of a prison. She had less chance of evading the guards than she had of wishing herself back to the twentieth century. This time she didn’t even have a gun.

  Like the night Eberhard had died—a night she’d promised herself never to think of again.

  She hadn’t meant for any of it to happen. She hadn’t even known what was going on until the night she’d finally discovered why Eberhard had been sending her on all those solitary vacations. So lovely and stupidly gullible. Wasn’t that how she’d heard him describe her that night she’d returned unexpectedly from London, hoping to surprise him?