Beyond the Highland Mist (16 page)

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?

Besides, 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.

A
DRIENNE WALKED RESTLESSLY, HER MIND WHIRLING
. H
ER
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.