Beyond the Highland Mist

by Karen Marie Moning

  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.

  CHAPTER 24

  IN HER DEPRESSION, ADRIENNE CONSIDERED NOT EATING. SHE 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.

  Adrienne moaned softly, partly in pain from his words and partly in pleasure from his touch.

  “Faithless, cruel beauty, what did I do to deserve this?”

  “What did I do—”

  “No!” he thundered. “No words. I will suffer no honeyed lies from that sweet snake’s lair you call a mouth. Aye, lass, you have the most cruel of poisons. Better I had let the dart take you, or the arrow. I was a fool to suffer one moment of pain on your account.”

  I’m dreaming again? she wondered. But she knew she wasn’t because never in a dream had she been so aware of every inch of her own body, her traitorous body that begged to get closer to this angry man who dripped sex appeal, even in his fury.

  “Tell me what he has to give you that I don’t have! Tell me what you hunger for in that man. And after I’ve shown you every inch of what I have to give you, then you can tell me if you still think he has more than I.”

  “The smithy?” she asked incredulously.

  He ignored her question completely. “I should have done this long ago. You are my wife. You will share my bed. You will bear my children. And most assuredly, by the time I’m done with you, you will never say that word again. I told you the Hawk’s rules once. Now I’m reminding you for the last time. Smithy and Adam are two words that you will never say to me. If you do, I will punish you so innovatively and cruelly that you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  The words were spoken with such white-hot yet carefully controlled anger that Adrienne didn’t even begin to question what punishment he might have in mind. She knew instinctively that she never wanted to find out. As she parted her lips to speak, Hawk rubbed his body against hers, intimately pressing his hard cock between her thighs. The words she’d planned to say were exhaled instead as a soft whoosh of air that tapered into a husky moan. Adrienne wanted to melt against him, to arch herself into his body with complete abandon. She couldn’t even stand next to this man without wanting him.

  His smile was mocking and cruel. “Does he feel like this, lass? Does he have this much to pleasure you with?”

  No man has that, she thought feverishly, as her hips moved hungrily against him. Hawk growled softly, closing his mouth over hers in a ruthless, punishing kiss.

  Adrienne felt his hand, raising her skirt and realized that in his current rage the Hawk was going to take her, right here in the dim and chill hallway. Tipsy or not, this was not how Adrienne planned to part with her hard-kept virginity. She wanted him, but not like this. Never like this. “Stop! Hawk, whatever you think I’ve done—I haven’t!” she cried.

  He silenced her with his mouth, his kiss hot, hungry, and cruel. She understood he was punishing her with his body, not making love to her, but she couldn’t resist his tongue and couldn’t prevent herself from breathlessly kissing him back.

  Hawk dropped his head and grazed her neck with his teeth, then teased her hardened nipples through her gown. Adrienne was so lost in pleasure that she didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late.

  She felt the rasp of a rope against her wrists as he yanked her arms down and spun her around, securing her hands at the base of her back.

  “You son of a bitch!” she hissed.

  “Son of a bitch,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Now you don’t like my mother?”

  “I don’t like you when you’re like this! Hawk! Why are you doing this? What have I done?”

  “Silence, lass,” he commanded softly, and she learned then that when his voice was soft and supple as oiled leather was when she was in the most extreme danger. It was the first of many lessons he would teach her. When the silken hood slid down over her face she screamed her fury and lashed out against him with her feet. Struggling, kicking, raging in his arms, she cursed raggedly.

  “Wife,” he said right against her ear through the silk hood, “you belong to me. Soon you will not remember that there was ever a time when you didn’t.”

  Adam stood amidst the shadow of the rowans and watched as the Hawk stalked through the night, the hooded woman fighting his grasp. So he thought he could escape Adam Black, did he? Hawk thought he could take her away? Clever. Adam hadn’t negotiated that point. Hawk had obviously decided to play cutting-edge close to the letter of their law.

  The man was becoming downright infuriating.

  No, this was not what Adam had expected at all when he’d staged his scene in the gardens.

  So, the man was more brute than he had thought. He had vastly underestimated his opponent. He’d thought the Hawk was too decent and too nice to know when a man had to be as hard and unforgiving as steel with a woman. He’d counted on the noble Hawk being so wounded by seeing her with the smithy that he’d curse her and swear her off, maybe divorce her—any of which, according to his plan, would send her scurrying to his blazing forge at the rowans. He’d thought, quite mistakenly it seemed, that the Hawk had at least one or two weaknesses of character.

  “Silence, wife!” The Hawk’s baritone resonated in the darkness. Adam shuddered. No mortal should have such a voice.

  Well, this just wouldn’t do. He’d have to seriously intervene, because if such a man carried off a woman and kept her for a time, the woman would surely belong to him when he was through.

  And Adam never lost at anything. Certainly not this.

  He stepped forward from the shadows, prepared to confront the Hawk, when he heard a harsh whisper behind him.

  “Fool!”

  “What now?” Adam snarled, turning to face King Finnbheara.

  “The Queen demands your presence.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now. She’s on to us. I think it’s that snoopy little Aine again. You’ll have to leave this game at least long enough to allay the Queen’s suspicions. Come.”

  “I can’t come now.”

  “You have no choice. She
will come for you herself if you don’t. And then we’ll have no chance left at all.”

  Adam stood still a long moment, allowing his rage to burn through him and leave cinders of resolve in its wake. He had to be very careful where his Queen was concerned. It would do him no good to bar her whim or will in any manner.

  He allowed himself one long look over his shoulder at the retreating figure on horseback. “Very well, my liege. Through this rotten hell, bar my will, pledged to none but the fairest queen, lead on.”

  CHAPTER 25

  SHE STOPPED SCREAMING ONLY WHEN HER VOICE GAVE OUT. Stupid, she told herself. What did that accomplish? Not a thing. You’re trussed up like a chicken about to be plucked and now you can’t even peep a protest.

  “Just take the hood off, Hawk,” she begged in a gravelly whisper. “Please?”

  “Rule number nine. My name from this moment forward is Sidheach. Sidheach, not Hawk. When you use it, you will be rewarded. When you don’t, I will permit no quarter.”

  “Why do you want me to use that name?”

  “So I know you understand who I really am. Not the legendary Hawk. The man. Sidheach James Lyon Douglas. Your husband.”

  “Who first called you Hawk?” she asked hoarsely.

  He stifled a swift oath and she felt his fingers at her throat. “Who first called me Hawk doesn’t make the difference. Everyone did. But ’twas all the king ever called me,” he gritted. He didn’t add that in all his life he had never given a lass leave to call him Sidheach. Not one.

  He untied the hood and lifted it from her face, then poured cool water into her mouth, relieving some of the burning that made her voice so rough. “Try not to scream anymore tonight, lass. Your throat will bleed.”

  “King James used only that name?” she asked swiftly.

  Another sigh. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She could feel his body tense behind her. “Because he said I was his own captive hawk, and it was true. He controlled me for fifteen years as surely as a falconer controls his bird.”

  “My God, what did he do to you?” she whispered, horrified at the icy depths in his voice when he spoke of his service. The Hawk controlled by another? Incomprehensible. But if the threat of destruction of Dalkeith, his mother, and his siblings had been held over his head? The threat of killing the hundreds of his clanspeople? What would the noble Hawk have done to prevent that?