Beyond the Highland Mist (29 page)

She raised her head from her hands slowly to meet Adam’s piercing gaze. How long had he been standing there watching her with worship in his eyes. Dark eyes, black as hate.
Now where had that come from?

“You hate the Hawk, don’t you, Adam?” she asked in a flash of crystal-clear intuition.

He smiled appreciatively. “You women are like that. Cut to the quick of it with a canny eye. But hate attaches a great deal of importance to its predicate,” he mocked as he dropped himself beside her on the ledge.

“Don’t play word games with me, Adam. Answer my question.”

“This would please you? Honesty from a man?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged a beautiful, sun-kissed shoulder. “I hate the Hawk.”

“Why?” Adrienne asked indignantly.

“He’s a fool. He fails to cede appropriate due to your beauty, Beauty.”

“To my
what
?” The
least
important thing about her.

The smithy flashed a blinding smile. “He seeks but to spread them, to slip between your thighs, but those love-slick dewy petals
I
would immortalize.”

Adrienne stiffened. “That’s very poetic, but there’s no need to be rude, Adam. And you don’t even know me.”

“I can think of nothing I’d rather do with my time than spend it knowing you. In the biblical sense, since you find my other references too graphic. Is that pretty enough for you?”

“Who are you?”

“I can be anyone you want me to be.”

“But who are
you
?” she repeated stubbornly.

“I am the man you’ve needed all your life. I can give you whatever you wish before you even realize you’re wishing for it. I can fill your every longing, heal your every wound, right your every wrong. You have enemies? Not with me at your side. You have hunger? I will find the most succulent, ripe morsel and feed you with my bare hands. You have pain? I will ease it. Bad dreams? I will chase them asunder. Regrets? I will go back and undo them. Command me, Beauty, and I am yours.”

Adrienne shot him a withering look. “The only regrets I have are all centered around beautiful men. So I suggest you get yourself out of my—”

“You find me beautiful?”

Something about this man’s eyes was just not quite right. “Aesthetically speaking,” she clarified.

“As beautiful as the Hawk?”

Adrienne paused. She could be cutting at times, but when push came to shove it was her nature to go out of her way not to hurt people’s feelings. Adrienne preferred to
maintain her silence when her opinion was not the answer sought, and in this case, her silence was answer enough.

Adam’s jaw tightened.

“As beautiful as the Hawk?”

“Men are different. You can’t compare apples to oranges.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to compare a man to a man. The Hawk and myself,” he growled.

“Adam, I am not getting into this with you. You’re trying to force me to say something—”

“I am only requesting a fair answer.”

“Why is this so important to you? Why do you even care?”

His mood changed, quicksilver. “Give me a chance, Beauty. You said aesthetically I please. You can’t truly compare men until you’ve tasted the pleasure they can give you. Lie with me Beauty. Let me—”

“Stop it!”

“When you watched me forge the metal it made you burn.” Adam’s intense black eyes bored into hers, penetrating and deep. He claimed her hand and turned it palm up to his lips.

“Yes, but that was before I saw—” She broke off quickly.

“The Hawk,” Adam spit out bitterly. “Hawk the magnificent. Hawk the living legend. Hawk the seductive bastard. Hawk—the king’s whore. Remember?”

She gazed sadly at him. “Stop it, Adam,” she finally said.

“Have you bedded him?”

“That’s none of your business! And let go of my hand!” She tried to tug her hand out of his grasp, but his grip tightened and as his fingers caressed her wrist she felt confusion assail her senses.

“Answer me, Beauty. Have you lain with the Hawk?”

She swallowed tightly.
I won’t answer him
, she vowed stubbornly even as her lips murmured, “No.”

“Then the game still plays, Beauty and I have yet to win. Forget the Hawk. Think of Adam,” he crooned as he claimed her lips in a brutal kiss.

Adrienne seemed to sink deeper and deeper into a murky sea that made her want to curl up and pull into herself.

“Adam. Say it, Beauty. Cry for me.”

Where was the Hawk when she needed him? “H-h-hawk,” she whispered against Adam’s punishing mouth.

Enraged, Adam forced her head back until she met his furious gaze. As Adrienne watched, Adam’s dark features seemed to shimmer strangely, changing … but that wasn’t possible, she assured herself. Adam’s dark eyes suddenly seemed to have the Hawk’s flecks of gold, Adam’s lower lip suddenly curved in Hawk’s sensual invitation.

“Is this what I must do to have you, Beauty?” Adam asked bitterly.

Adrienne stared in horrified fascination. Adam’s face was melting and redefining, and he looked more like her husband with every passing instant.

“Must I resort to such artifice? Is it the only way you’ll have me?”

Adrienne extended a shaking hand to touch his oddly morphing face. “A-adam, s-stop it!”

“Does this make you burn, Beauty? If I wear his face, his hands? For I will, if it does!”

You’re dreaming
, she told herself.
You’ve fallen asleep, and you’re having a really, really bad nightmare, but it will pass.

Adam’s hands were on her breasts and fingers of icy fire shivered a column of exquisite sensation through her spine … but it was not pleasure.

A dozen paces away the Hawk froze, mid-step, after barreling up the long bridge to the gardens. Line by line, muscle by muscle, his face became a mask of fury and pain.

How long had he been gone? A dozen hours? Half a day?

The wound he’d taken while saving her life burned angrily in his hand as his desire for her throbbed angrily beneath his kilt.

He forced himself to watch a long moment, to seal permanently upon his mind just what kind of fool he was to want this lass. To love her even as she betrayed him.

The smithy’s hard, bronzed body stretched the length of his wife’s sultry curves as they lounged on the fountain’s edge. His hands were twined in her silvery-blond mane and his mouth was locked on his wife’s yielding lips.

Hawk watched as she whimpered, hands frantic against the smithy in her need … as she pulled at his hair, frantically clawed at his shoulders.

Grass and flowers ripped from the fragrant earth beneath his boot as Hawk turned away.

Adrienne struggled for her sanity. “Go … back t-to whatever hell … from whence y-you c-c-came …” The words took every ounce of energy she still possessed and left her gasping limply for air.

The groping hands abruptly released her.

She fell off the ledge and landed in the fountain with a splash.

The cool water swept away the thick confusion instantly. She cringed in terror, waiting for the smithy’s hand to reach in for her, but nothing happened.

“A-Adam?”

A breath of puckish wind teased her chilled nipples through the thin material of her gown. “Oh!” she covered them hastily with her palms.

“A-Adam?” She called, a little stronger. No answer.

“Who are you, really?” she yelled furiously into the empty morning.

I
N HER DEPRESSION
, A
DRIENNE CONSIDERED NOT EATING
. S
HE
wondered if they had cigarettes in 1513, reconsidered, and decided to eat instead.

Until she found the Scotch.

About time
, she mused as she sat in his study and propped her feet on his desk. She poured a healthy dollop of the whisky into a cut-crystal tumbler and took a burning swallow. “Och,” she said to the desk thoughtfully, “but they do brew a fine blend, doona they?”

She spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in his sacred haven, hiding from the strange smithy’s advances, Lydia’s abiding concern, and her own heartache. She read his books as she watched the misty rain that started while she drained the tumbler of Scotch. He had fine taste in books, she thought. She could fall in love with a man who liked to read.

Later, when she rummaged through his desk, she told
herself she had every right because she
was
his wife, after all. Letters to friends, from friends, to his mother while he’d been away sat neatly ribboned in a box.

Adrienne picked through the drawers, finding miniatures of the Hawk’s sister and brother. She discovered boyhood treasures that warmed her heart: a leather ball with often-repaired stitching, cunningly carved statues of animals, rocks and trinkets.

By her second glass of Scotch she was liking him entirely too much.
Enough Scotch, Adrienne, and it’s long past time to eat something.

On unsteady legs she’d made her way to the Greathall.

“Wife.” The voice held no warmth.

Adrienne flinched and gasped. She spun around and found herself face-to-face with the Hawk. But he’d gone to Uster, hadn’t he? Apparently not. Her heart soared. She was ready to try, but something in his gaze unnerved her and she hadn’t the foggiest notion why. She narrowed her eyes and peered at him intently. “You look downright cantankerous,” she said. She emitted a squeak of fear when he lunged for her. “Wh-what are you doing, Hawk?”

His hands closed about her wrists with steely possession as he used his powerful body to force her back against the cool stone of the corridor.

“Hawk, what—”

“Silence, lass.”

Wide-eyed, she stared into his face, searching for some clue that would explain the icy hostility in his eyes.

He forced his muscular leg between her thighs, cruelly pushing them apart. “You’ve been drinking, lass.”

His breath was warm on her face, she could smell the
potent stench of alcohol. “So? So have you! And I thought you were in Uster!”

His beautiful lips contorted in a bitter smile. “Aye, I’m quite aware that you thought I was in Uster, wife.” His brogue rasped thickly, betraying the extent of his rage.

“Well, I don’t see why you’re so angry with me!
You’re
the one who’s had nine million mistresses, and
you’re
the one who left without saying goodbye, and
you’re
the one who wouldn’t—”

“What’s good for the gander is not necessarily good for the goose,” he snarled. He twined his hand in her hair and yanked her back sharply, baring the pale arch of her throat. “Neither in spirit consumption nor in lovers, wife.”

“What?” He wasn’t making any sense, talking about farm animals when she was trying to have a reasonably sober conversation with him. She gasped when he bit her gently at the base of her neck where her pulse pounded erratically. If she couldn’t handle this man sober, she certainly couldn’t handle him tipsy.

With excruciating leisure, he traced his tongue down her neck and across the upper curves of her breasts. Her mouth went dry and an entire flock of twittering birds took wing in her belly.

“You wanton,” he breathed against her flawless skin.