Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

  And surprise him she had.

  Slipping in the back door of the garage and into his luxurious home, Adrienne overheard a conversation not meant for her ears.

  A conversation he would have killed her for hearing.

  She hadn’t called out his name as she’d placed her hand on the door to his den. Gerard’s voice carried clearly through the door.

  “Did Rupert meet her in London?”

  Adrienne froze. They were talking about her. How had they known that Rupert was in London? She’d just met him there yesterday. She hadn’t even called Eberhard and discussed anything with him yet. She’d come back on the redeye and it had taken all day and half the night to get home. She pressed her ear to the door, listening curiously.

  Eberhard laughed. “Just as we’d planned. He told her he was in town to buy a gift for his wife. You know Adrienne, she’d believe anything. She didn’t notice a thing when he swapped her luggage. She’s so lovely and gullible. You were right about her from the first, Gerard. She’s the perfect pigeon. And she’ll never catch on to what we’re doing until it’s too late to matter.”

  Adrienne jerked violently, her hand frozen on the door.

  “And when she finally gets caught, Eb? What will you do then?”

  Eberhard’s laughter chilled her blood. “Ah, that’s the beauty of it. They’ll dig up the records from the orphanage. I took the liberty of having them doctored a bit. They now reflect a juvenile delinquent with a natural inclination toward criminal behavior. She’ll take the fall alone. There’s not a cop in my fair city who’d try to pin anything on Mr. Eberhard Darrow Garrett—generous political patron. I never leave the Kingdom of N’Awlins. She’s the one always in and out of the country.”

  Adrienne’s eyes were wide with horror. What was he saying?

  Gerard laughed. “We got a huge shipment out in her Mercedes last month, Eb. The Acapulco run was nothing but brilliant.”

  Shipment? Adrienne wondered frantically. Shipment of what? She backed soundlessly away from the door.

  Stupid. Gullible. Innocent. What was so bad about being innocent? she wondered as she slunk through the darkened house, swallowing her sobs. At least there was honor in innocence. At least she never hurt anyone, never used anyone. So maybe she was a tad … gullible. Maybe she even lacked a bit of common sense. But she more than made up for it in other departments. She had a good heart. That should count for something.

  Her throat tightened with suppressed tears. Stop it, she chided herself. Focus. Find the queen. Get back home. They don’t make men like the Hawk in the twentieth century, and after the Hawk no man would ever be a temptation again.

  The gatehouse loomed before her. Why hadn’t they stopped her? She knew they were still there. Maybe he wanted them to let her go. Maybe she’d been so naive and unschooled that he really wasn’t interested at all. After all, a man like that certainly wouldn’t have a hard time finding a willing woman.

  What would the king’s whore care? There would always be another woman.

  She kicked angrily at a pebble and watched it skitter into the wall of the gatehouse. Would they pull up the portcullis and draw back the sally port for her? Roll out the red carpet to celebrate her leave-taking?

  And as she stepped into the archway, Grimm melted out of the shadows.

  She stopped, relieved.

  Try that again, she told herself. Write that scene one more time, Adrienne de Simone. It reads, “she stopped, furious at being denied escape.”

  No, definitely relieved.

  She sighed, her shoulders drooping. “Grimm. Let me pass. It’s my life. Move.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, milady.”

  “Grimm, I must go back to the Comyn keep.”

  “Why?”

  She studied him a moment in the breaking light. He looked truly confused, and his eyes kept scanning the northern bailey, as if he was expecting someone. “Because I’m homesick,” she lied. Well, perhaps not exactly a lie—she did miss Moonie terribly.

  “Ah!” Understanding dawned in his handsome features. He stood before her, his legs apart, muscular arms folded across his chest. “Are you looking for something?”

  “What?” He couldn’t know! Could he? “Grimm, did Lady Comyn—I mean my mother—say anything about … well … anything of mine that I might have left there … at home?”

  “Like what?” Grimm asked, the veritable picture of innocence.

  “Yes, like what?” echoed a voice behind her. Something in his voice had decidedly changed and for the worse. The Hawk’s velvet purr had taken on the coldness of smooth, polished steel.

  Was she responsible for that change?

  “Take her to the Peacock Room. Lock the door and bring me the key, Grimm.”

  “No!” she cried, spinning around to face him. “I must go! I want to go to the Comyn keep!”

  “What seek you, wife?” he asked icily.

  Mute, she stared at him defiantly.

  Hawk muttered a dark curse. Could it be true? Could she truly be from the future and looking for the way back home? The thought that she might leave him for Adam had made him near crazed.

  But, he brooded darkly, if it was the black queen she was seeking, then she was most definitely doing it for a reason. Odds were she was from somewhere else if not some when else, and she thought the black queen could take her away from him.

  One way to find out, he decided.

  “Is it this you’re after, lass?” he asked as he withdrew the chess piece from his sporran and raised it before her widening eyes.

  CHAPTER 18

  “COME, LASS.” THE COMMAND WAS TONELESS AND UNMISTAKABLY dangerous. And even now, the mere word made her shiver with desire. The flush of heat stole her breath. “Hawk—”

  “Don’t.” The word was a warning. “Now. Take my hand.”

  What was he going to do? she wondered frantically. Behind her, she felt Grimm step closer, edging her toward the Hawk.

  “Wait!” She held out a hand to ward him off.

  “Move, milady,” Grimm said softly.

  “Don’t lock me in a room!”

  “How could I not?” Hawk sneered. “Knowing that you would go back to a place where it seems you knew little joy—yet you would rather be there than here with me!”

  “You don’t believe I’m from the future!” she gasped.

  “I’m beginning to,” he muttered. “How do you think I knew about this?” The black queen glittered in his hand.

  She shrugged. “How?”

  “You, my sweet wife, talked about it when you were poisoned. Worried and fretted and tried to find it—”

  “But I only just remembered.”

  “Your sleeping mind remembered sooner.”

  “But how did you get it?”

  It was Grimm who told her. “The Lady Comyn saw it fall from your hand the night she claims you arrived.”

  “But how—”

  “Lady Comyn entrusted it to me after the wedding. I gave it to the Hawk.”

  “She admitted that you’re not her blood daughter. I can see no reason why she would lie on that score.” Unless Comyn keep is suffering some strange contagious madness, he thought grimly. “Will it truly take you back to wherever you came from?” the Hawk asked carefully.

  “I think so. As far as I can tell, it’s what brought me here,” she said, her gaze cast upon the cobbled walkway.

  “And your plan was to get it and go home, lass? You planned to slip from Dalkeith, by yourself?”

  “No! With your mother, Hawk!” she snapped absurdly. “Of course by myself!”

  “So you were going to go to Comyn keep to get this chess piece and try to go back to wherever you came from? That was your plan this evening?” She missed the warning in his careful tone.

  “Yes, Hawk. I admit it. All right? I was going to try. I’m not certain it will work, but it’s the last thing I had in my hand before I ended up here, and legend says the chess set is cursed. It’s the only thing
I can think of that might have done it. If it brought me here, it might just take me back.”

  The Hawk smiled coolly. He turned the queen in his hand, studying it carefully. “Viking,” he mused. “Beautiful piece. Well worked and well preserved.”

  “Do you believe me now, Hawk?” She needed to know. “That I really am from the future?”

  “Suffice it to say—I don’t believe in taking any chances.” He still didn’t quite believe, but infinitely better safe than sorry.

  He turned sharply on his heel and stalked off toward the gardens. “Bring her, Grimm,” he called over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought.

  But Grimm didn’t have to take her anywhere. A thousand warning bells clanged in her head, and she raced off behind him to catch up. His careful tone, his steely demeanor, his questions. He’d been neatly tying things down to the absolute letter. The Hawk was not a man lacking intellect and purpose. She only hoped she misunderstood his purpose now.

  “Hawk!” she cried.

  Hawk’s shoulders tightened. He was beyond anger at this moment, he had slipped into the realm of icy resolve. He knew what he had to do as he broke into a run through the gardens, across the bailey, in the blushing Scottish morn. Until it was done, he couldn’t afford to let her touch him, to put her sweet hands on his shoulders and beg. I’ll take no chances where my wife is concerned.

  “Wait!” Adrienne broke into a run, fear gripping her heart as she realized he was making a beeline for the northern edge of the bailey, where the forge was burning brightly.

  “No, Hawk!” she screamed as he melted into the gardens.

  Her feet flew as she plunged through the lush greenery, racing over the beds of anemones and purple iris. She leapt the low stone walls and pushed thorny rose branches from her face, tearing the soft palms of her hands until she erupted from the gardens only to see him a dozen lengths ahead of her.

  Gasping for breath, she called on every ounce of fleet-footed strength she had. If she made it at all, it would be close—too close.

  From a window high above, Lydia watched the scene unfold.

  Pushing against the pain of her unwilling muscles, Adrienne desperately tried to catch up to Hawk, but it was too late—he already stood next to Adam near the brightly glowing embers.

  Gasping, she lunged forward just as Grimm’s hand closed upon her cape. He yanked hard on the fabric, pulling her backward. The cape ripped and she fell, crying out as she tumbled to the ground. “Hawk, don’t!”

  “Destroy this,” Hawk commanded Adam.

  “No!” Adrienne screamed.

  Adam cast a momentary eye upon the felled beauty. “It would seem the lady feels otherwise.”

  “I didn’t ask you to think, Adam Black, and I don’t give a bloody damn what the lady thinks.”

  Adam smiled impishly. “I take it you have failed to jess the falcon, Lord Hawk?”

  “Burn it, smithy. Lest I satisfy myself by incinerating you, rather than the queen.”

  “Adam! No!” Adrienne pleaded.

  Adam seemed to ponder the situation a moment, then with an oddly triumphant look, he shrugged and tossed the piece into the forge.

  To Adrienne, lying flat on the ground, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

  She watched in horror as the black queen soared through the air and sank into the glowing coals. Adrienne swallowed a sob as the flames licked greedily at the chess piece. Her only way out had been destroyed.

  Hawk sighed his relief. Adrienne collapsed against the earth, staring blankly at the soil. The black queen was gone, the dense African wood no match for the blaze hot enough to forge steel.

  No Moonie. No way home.

  She was here in 1513—with him—forever.

  Adam made a sound a shade too dark to be laughter as he leaned closer to the Hawk. Close enough that only the Hawk heard his low, mocking words. “She will warm my bed in no time at all now, fool Hawk.”

  Hawk flinched. The smithy was right. His wife would hate him for what he’d done.

  “What the hell are you doing at the forge in the middle of the night anyway?” Hawk snapped.

  Adam grinned impishly. “I am ever a merry wanderer of the night. Besides, one never knows what prime opportunity might present itself for the plucking.”

  Hawk snarled at the smithy.

  Behind him, he heard Adrienne stagger to her unsteady feet. Her breathing was labored from her run, perhaps from shock as well. Bleakly, the Hawk studied the forge in rigid silence. Adrienne’s voice trembled with fury.

  “Know one thing, Lord Douglas, and it’s all you’ll ever need to know. Remember it, should you someday think I may have changed my mind. I won’t. I despise you. You took from me what you had no right to take. And there’s nothing you can ever do to earn my forgiveness. I hate you!”

  “Despise me as you must,” he said quietly, still staring at the forge. “But you can never leave me now. That’s all that matters.”

  Double, double toil and trouble;

  Fire burn and cauldron bubble …

  SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

  CHAPTER 19

  TWILIGHT CREPT UP FROM THE OCEAN AND OVER THE CLIFFS with purple impatience that stained the walls of Dalkeith a dusky crimson. In his study, Hawk watched the night seep through the open doors on the west end.

  She stood on the cliff’s edge, unmoving, her velvet cape tossing restlessly in the wind. What was she thinking as she gazed blindly out to sea?

  He knew what he’d been thinking—that even the wind sought to unclothe her. He tortured himself with the memory of the sultry rose peaks he knew crowned her breasts beneath the silk of her gown. Her body had been shaped for this time, to wear clinging silks and rich velvets. To be a fine laird’s lady. To mate a proud warrior.

  What the hell was he going to do? Things couldn’t go on like this.

  He’d been trying to provoke her, hoping she’d make him angry so he could lose his head and punish her with his body. But time and again when he’d pushed she’d given him only cool civility, and a man couldn’t do a bloody thing with that kind of response. He whirled from the door and squeezed his eyes shut to erase all haunting memory of the vision of his wife.

  Weeks had passed since that day by the forge—weeks lush with fragile days and delicate dawns, ruby nights and midsummer storms. And in those passing days, those jewels of Scotia’s summer, were a thousand sights he wanted to share with her.

  Damn it! He pounded his fist upon his desk, sending papers fluttering and statues scurrying. She was his wife. She had no way back to wherever she’d come from! When was she going to accept that and make the most of it? He would give her anything she wanted. Anything but to leave him. Never that.

  His existence had all the makings of a gilded, living hell and he could find no exit.

  As swiftly as it had assailed him, his rage evaporated.

  Adrienne, his lips formed the word silently. How did we come to this impasse? How did I make such a mess of it?

  “Walk with me, lass,” he said softly, and she whirled upon the cliff’s edge, a breathtaking flutter of silver and cobalt blue. His colors, the Douglas colors. Unwittingly, it seemed, she wore them often. Did she even know that she donned in vivid splashes the very threads of the Douglas tartan, and that no name could have branded her more certainly his lady?

  He waved a dismissive hand at his guards. He needed to steal precious moments with her alone, before he left. After hours of struggling, he had reached many decisions. First and foremost being that he was long overdue for a visit to Uster, one of his many manors and the most troublesome. He simply couldn’t keep neglecting his estates in his lovesick idiocy. The laird had to put in the occasional appearance and take an interest in resolving his villagers’ concerns.

  Besides, he was making no progress here. If she chose Adam in his absence, then he could just die inside and get on with the pretense of living. It was how he’d survived the first thirty-odd years. What kind of fool had he becom
e to expect the rest to be any different?

  “Laird Douglas,” she clipped.

  In silence they walked the cliff’s edge together, toward the forest.

  “I will be leaving for a time,” he said finally as they entered the forest.

  Adrienne stiffened. Was he serious? “Wh-where are you going?” And why did it disturb her so much?

  He took a sharp, indrawn breath. “Uster.”

  “What is Uster anyway?”

  “One of my manors. Seventeen manors belong to Dalkeith. Uster holds the villages of Duluth and Tanamorissey, and they are an intemperate lot. ’Twas a problem even when the king’s men held Dalkeith.”

  When the king’s men held Dalkeith.

  When her husband had been the king’s whore.

  In the last weeks the heat of Adrienne’s anger had cooled, leaving a poignant regret. Hawk had mostly avoided her, except for the occasional times he’d seemed to be trying to pick a fight with her for some reason. She’d half expected him to lock her in his room, but after that terrible night he had retreated carefully to his study by the sea. There he’d stayed every night—so quiet, so beautiful, and so alone.

  “Hawk?” she began tentatively.

  “Yes?”

  “What exactly did the king’s whore do?”

  Hawk stiffened. Could this be the chance he’d been waiting for? Perhaps he could dare to hope after all. His laughter was full of bitter self-mockery. “Are you quite certain you wish to know, lovely Adrienne?”

  Lurking behind a towering oak, Esmerelda studied Adrienne’s silvery-blond mane, silvery eyes, sparkling face. What did the Hawk see in that skinny, pale girl he couldn’t find in Esmerelda’s sultry embrace?

  For the first time in weeks the guards were gone and the bitch walked unprotected enough that Esmerelda could strike and flee into the shelter of the dark forest. Her beloved Hawk might suffer a time of mourning, but he would find solace and sweet passion in Esmerelda’s arms once the soil stilled upon his wife’s grave.