Beyond the Highland Mist (22 page)

“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?

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.”