Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

  “Beautiful hands,” he murmured, turning it palm up and planting a lingering kiss in the sensitive center. “I feared Mad Janet was a most uncomely shrew. Now I know why the Comyn kept you hidden in his tower all those years. You are the true silver and gold in the Comyn treasure trove. His wealth has been depleted in full measure by the loss of you.”

  “Oh, get off it,” she snapped, and he blinked in surprise. “Listen Sidhawk or Hawk or whoever you are, I’m not impressed. If we’re going to be forced to suffer the same roof above our heads we need to get a few things straight. First”—she held up a hand, ticking off the fingers as she went—“I don’t like you. Get used to that. Second, I didn’t want to marry you, but I had no alternative—”

  “You desire another.” The purr deepened into a rumble of displeasure.

  “Third,” she continued without bothering to respond, “I don’t find your manly wiles even remotely intriguing. You’re not my type …”

  “But Adam certainly is, eh?” His jaw clenched and his ebony eyes flashed.

  “More so than you,” she lied, thinking that if she could convince him she meant it, he might leave her alone.

  “You won’t have him. You are my wife, whether you like it or not. I will not be made a cuckold—”

  “You have to care to be made a cuckold.”

  “Perhaps I could.” Perhaps he already did and he didn’t have the first inkling why.

  “Well, I can’t.”

  “Am I so displeasing then?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared. Gazed about the room. Studied the rafters. No mysterious answer was hovering anywhere to be found.

  “The lasses have always found me most comely,” he said finally.

  “Maybe that’s part of your problem.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I don’t like your attitude.”

  “My attitude?” he echoed dumbly.

  “Right. So get thee from my bed and from my sight and speak no more to me this night.”

  “You’re the damnedest lass I’ve ever met.”

  “And you’re the most shallow, incorrigible knave of a man I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.”

  “Where do you get all these ideas of me?” he wondered.

  “We could start with you being too drunk to show up at your own wedding.”

  “Grimm told you? Grimm wouldn’t have told you that!”

  “A pox on male bonding.” Adrienne rolled her eyes. “All he would tell me was that you were tending to an uprising. Of your stomach, I hadn’t guessed. The maid who showed me to this room earlier had a fine time telling me. Went on and on about how you and three casks of wine and three women spent the week before our wedding trying to … you know”—Adrienne muttered an unintelligible word—“your brains out.”

  “To what my brains out?”

  “You know.” Adrienne rolled her eyes.

  “I’m afraid I don’t. What was that word again?”

  Adrienne looked at him sharply. Was he teasing her? Were his eyes alight with mischief? That half-smile curving his beautiful mouth could absolutely melt the sheet she was clutching, not to mention her will. “Apparently one of them succeeded, because if you had any brains left you’d get out of my sight now,” she snapped.

  “It wasn’t three.” Hawk swallowed a laugh.

  “No?”

  “It was five.”

  Adrienne’s jaw clenched. She held her fingers up again. “Fourth—this will be a marriage in name only. Period.”

  “Casks of wine, I meant.”

  “You are not funny.”

  His laughter rolled dangerous and heavy. “Enough. Now we’re going to count the Hawk’s rules.” He held up his hand and began ticking fingers off. “First, you’re my wife, thusly you’ll obey me in all things. If I must command you to my bed, then so be it. Second”—his other hand rose and she flinched, half expecting to be hit, but he cupped her face firmly and glared into her eyes—“you will stay away from Adam. Third, you’ll give all pretense of being delighted to be married to me—both publicly and privately. Fourth, fifth, and sixth, you’ll stay away from Adam. Seventh”—he yanked her from the bed and to her feet in one swift motion—“you’ll explain precisely what you find so displeasing about me, after I make love to you, and eighth, we’re going to have children. Many. Perhaps dozens. Perhaps I’ll simply keep you fat with child from this moment forth.”

  Adrienne’s eyes grew wider and wider as he spoke. By the time he got to the children part she was nearing a full panic. She gathered her scattered wits and searched for the most effective weapon. What could she say to keep this man at bay? His ego. His gargantuan ego and manly pride. She had to use it.

  “Do what you will. I’ll simply think on Adam.” She stifled a yawn and studied her cuticles.

  Hawk stepped back, dropping his hands from her body as if burned. “You’ll simply think on Adam!”

  He rubbed his jaw, not quite believing what he’d heard while he stared at the vision before him, half clad in a cloud of transparent froth. Silver-blond hair tumbled around the most beautiful face he had ever beheld. Her face was heart-shaped, her jaw delicate yet surprisingly strong. Her lips were full and velvety plum-rich, and she had spitting silver-gray eyes. She was passion breathing, and she didn’t seem to have a clue about her own beauty. Or she didn’t care. Lust clenched a fist hard around him and squeezed. His ebony eyes narrowed intently. She had creamy skin, beautiful shoulders, a slim waist, sweet flare of hips and legs that climbed all the way up to heaven. Her beauty branded him, claimed him. The lass was sheer perfection. Although the Hawk was not a superstitious man, the words of Grimm’s wish on the falling star chose that moment to resurface in his mind. What exactly had Grimm said?

  He’d wished for the Hawk to meet a woman with “wit and wisdom”; an intelligent woman.

  “Can you do sums?” he snapped.

  “I keep ledgers like a pro.”

  “Do you read and write?” he pushed.

  “Three languages fluently, two reasonably well.” It was the primary reason she could fake their brogue so well and convince them she was Mad Janet Comyn. Although some of the words and expressions she used might seem odd to them—they did expect her to be batty—she’d been a quick study at the Comyn keep, assimilating a burr with the ease of a child. She’d always had an ear for languages. Besides, she’d watched every episode of The Highlander ever made.

  Hawk groaned. The second part of Grimm’s wish had been that the woman be perfect of face and form. He need ask no questions on that score. She was a Venus, unadorned, who’d slipped into his world, and he had a nagging premonition that his world might never be the same again.

  So, the first two requirements for which Grimm had wished were met. The woman possessed both brains and bewitching beauty.

  It was the last requirement Grimm had specified that concerned Hawk the most: A perfect “no” on her perfect lips …

  The woman didn’t live and breathe who’d ever said no to the Hawk.

  “Lass, I want you,” he said in a raw, husky voice. “I will make the most incredible love to you you’ll ever experience this side of Valhalla. I can take you beyond paradise, make you wish to never set your feet upon this ground again. Will you let me take you there? Do you want me?” He waited, but he was already certain of what was to come.

  Her lips pursed in a luscious pucker as she said, “No.”

  “You’ve laid a geis upon me with your bloody wish, Grimm!” Laird Sidheach James Lyon Douglas was heard to howl to the starless heavens later that night. Beyond a circle of rowan trees Adam stoked a bank of embers and made a sound a shade too dark to be laughter.

  Adrienne sat in the darkness on the edge of her bed for a long time after he’d left, and flinched at his husky howl that rose to touch the moon. A geis? A curse. Bah! She was the one cursed.

  To him, she was just like all the rest, and the one thing Adrienne de Simone had learned was that where a man was
concerned she couldn’t tolerate being one of all the rest.

  Guilty as the legions who’d fallen before her, she wanted this man called the Hawk. Wanted him with an unreasoning hunger that far surpassed her attraction to the smithy. There’d been something almost frightening about the smithy’s eyes. Like Eberhard’s. But the Hawk had beautiful dark eyes with flecks of gold dusting them beneath thick sooty lashes. Hawk’s eyes hinted at pleasures untold, laughter, and if she wasn’t imagining it, some kind of past pain held in careful check.

  Right, she told herself caustically. The pain of not having enough time to make love to all the beautiful women in the world. You know what he is. A womanizer. Don’t do this to yourself again. Don’t be a fool, Adrienne.

  But she couldn’t shake the discomfort she’d felt each time she’d forced herself to say cruel and hateful things to him. That perhaps he didn’t deserve them. That just because the Hawk was a dark and beautiful man like Eberhard didn’t mean he was the same kind of man as Eberhard. She had a nagging feeling that she was being unfair to him, for no logical reason whatsoever.

  Ah, but there is a logical explanation for how and why you’ve suddenly vaulted back from 1997 to 1513? She snorted derisively.

  Adrienne had learned to examine facts and deal with reality, regardless of how irrational the immediate reality appeared to be. New Orleans born and raised, she understood that human logic couldn’t explain everything. Sometimes there was a larger logic at work—something tantalizingly beyond her comprehension. Lately, Adrienne felt more surprised when things made sense than when they didn’t—at least when things were odd she was on familiar territory. Despite its being highly illogical and utterly improbable, all five of her senses insisted that she wasn’t exactly in Kansas anymore.

  A dim memory teased the periphery of her mind…. What had she been doing just before she’d found herself on the Comyn’s lap? The hours before were hazy, uncertain. She could recall the uneasy feeling of being watched … and what else? An odd scent, rich and spicy, that she smelled just before she’d … what? Adrienne pushed hard against a blanket of confusion and succeeded only in making her head throb.

  She struggled with it a moment, then yielded to the pain. Adrienne muttered a fervent prayer that the larger logic behind this irrational reality treat her with more benevolence than whatever had thrown Eberhard her way.

  Too bad she hadn’t lost some of those really, really bad memories. But no, just a few strange hours; a short gap of time. Perhaps the shock of what had occurred was muting her memory for now. But surely as she adjusted to this new environment she would figure out just how she’d managed to travel through time. And figure out how to get back.

  But then she wondered, did she really want to get back to what she’d left behind?

  In the morning, Adrienne splashed icy water on her face and assessed herself in the blurry polished silver disc hanging above the basin. Ah, the little luxuries. Hot water. Toothpaste. What did she pine for the most?

  Coffee. Surely somewhere in the world someone was growing coffee in 1513. If her luscious husband was so anxious to please, perhaps he would find it for her—and quickly. She’d need a full carafe every morning if she continued to lose sleep like this.

  By the time the Hawk had left her room last night she’d been shaking from head to toe. The lure of the smithy was but a dim echo of the pull the man called Hawk had on all her senses. Just being in his presence made her feel quivery inside and weak at the knees—far worse than Adam had. She snorted as she recalled the Hawk’s rules. Four of them had been to stay away from the smithy. Well, that was one sure way to irritate him if she felt like it. After she got her coffee.

  Adrienne rummaged through Janet’s “trousseau” seeking something reasonably simple to wear. Donning a lemon-yellow gown (how did they make these brilliant fabrics in this age?), she accented it with a gold girdle at the waist and several gold arm cuffs she found. Soft leather slippers for her feet and a shake of her silvery mane and coffee assumed the priority of breathing.

  “Coffee,” she croaked when she’d finally managed to wind her way through the sprawling castle and find several people enjoying a leisurely breakfast. There were a dozen or so seated at the table, but the only ones Adrienne recognized were Grimm and Him, so she issued the word in their general direction hopefully.

  Everyone at the table stared at her.

  Adrienne stared back unblinkingly. She could be rude too.

  “I think she said coffee,” Grimm suggested after a long pause, “although I’ve heard more intelligible sounds from some of our falcons.”

  Adrienne rolled her eyes. Morning always lent a husky quality to her brandy-rich voice. “I need coffee,” she explained patiently. “And my voice is always like this in the morning.”

  “A voice to cherish, smooth and complex as the finest malt Scotch,” the Hawk purred. His eyes lingered on her face, then slid gently down to her toes. How in God’s name could a mere look make her feel as if he’d peeled her gown from her body slowly and deliciously?

  “Didn’t that fellow from Ceylon leave a store of odd things in the buttery? And I’m Lydia Douglas, by the bye, this rapscallion’s—”

  “Mother—”

  “Hush. You botched the wedding and you’re making a fine mess of things now, so just hush.”

  Adrienne forgave him for almost everything at that moment, because he looked like a small boy as he blinked in silence. “My lady,” she said, attempting a curtsy and hoping she’d addressed Hawk’s mother correctly because she liked the woman instinctively, even if she had given birth to that overbearing womanizer.

  “Lydia is fine, and if I may—Adrienne? Hawk told me it’s your address of preference.”

  “Adrienne is wonderful. Coffee?”

  Lydia laughed, obviously unabashed by this single-minded obsession. “I take it you’re used to having the strong brew of a morn. My healer tells me it has rejuvenating properties and is a natural energizer.”

  “Yes.” Adrienne nodded vehemently.

  “The buttery, Hawk,” Lydia encouraged her son.

  “You’re going to let me go?” he asked caustically.

  “Since when do you listen to me?” Lydia asked with a twinkle in her eye. “Take your new wife to find her coffee. And Adrienne, if you need aught else, even a commiserating ear, do find me. I spend much of the day in my gardens. Anyone can point you the way.”

  “Thank you.” Adrienne meant it from the bottom of her heart. How nice it was to have someone extend a friendly welcome! Someone not male and beautiful beyond endurance.

  “Come.” The Hawk extended a hand to her. Refusing to touch him, she said sweetly, “After you.”

  “Nay, lass, after you.” He motioned. He’d follow the sweet curve of her hips past the horned minions of hell.

  “I must insist,” Adrienne demurred.

  “As must I,” he countered.

  “Go,” she snapped.

  He folded his powerful arms across his chest and resolutely met her gaze.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, do we have to fight about this, too?”

  “Not if you obey me, lass.”

  Behind them Lydia half laughed, half groaned. “Why don’t the two of you just walk side by side,” she said encouragingly.

  “Fine,” Adrienne snapped.

  “Fine,” the Hawk snarled.

  Lydia laughed until tears twinkled in her merry green eyes. Finally—a lass worthy of her son.

  CHAPTER 8

  SIDE BY SIDE. SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO LOOK AT HIM. THANK GOD for small favors.

  “And here we have the buttery,” the Hawk said as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. Adrienne’s spirits rose. Her nose twitched delicately. She could smell coffee beans, spices, teas, all manner of wonderful things. She practically vaulted into the room, the Hawk at her heels. As she was about to plunge a hand deep into the woven brown sack from which issued the most delicious aroma of sinfully dark coffee, the Hawk somehow managed
to insinuate himself between Adrienne and her prize.

  “It would seem you quite like your coffee,” he observed, with too keen an interest for her liking.

  “Yes.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot, impatiently, but the man had a lot of body to block her way with. “Move, Hawk,” she complained, and he laughed softly as he gripped her waist with his big hands, nearly circling it.

  Adrienne froze as a scent even more compelling than her beloved coffee tantalized her nostrils. Scent of leather and man. Of power and sexual prowess. Of confidence and virility. Scent of everything she’d imagined in her dreams.

  “Ah, my heart, there is a price—” he murmured.

  “You have no heart,” she informed his chest.

  “True,” he agreed. “You’ve thieved it. And last night I stood before you in agony whilst you ripped it asunder—”

  “Oh give over—”

  “You have odd sayings, my heart—”

  “Your heart is a puny black walnut. Wizened. Shriveled.” She refused to look up at him.

  He laughed. “Lass, you will keep me amused long into my twilight years.”

  “Coffee,” she muttered.

  “The toll troll must be reckoned with.”

  “And just what does the toll troll wish?”

  “This morn, ’tis simple. Other days it may not be. Today your coffee will cost you only a wee kiss.”

  “You think to dole out the coffee to me in return for kisses?” she exclaimed, disbelieving. And in spite of herself she tilted her head back and met his gaze. Well, almost. Her eyes snagged and held about three inches below his eyes on his perfectly sculpted, beautifully colored lips. A man’s lips should not be so well formed and desirable. She forgot about coffee as she thought about tasting him, and her traitorous knees started to get all wobbly again.

  “Go ahead,” he encouraged.

  The bastard. He knew she wanted to kiss him.

  “I know you don’t want to, lass, but you must if you want your coffee.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You don’t get your coffee.” He shrugged. “Really, ’tis a wee price to pay.”