Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  "So? What's your point?" Finnbheara asked impatiently.

  "Janet Comyn is dead. She died today."

  Finnbheara tensed instantly. "Did you harm her, fool?"

  "No, my liege!" The fool gave him a wounded look. "She died by her father's hand. I no more put the idea in his head than a key to her tower in his sporran."

  "Does that mean you did or you didn't put the idea in his head?" the King asked suspiciously.

  "Come now, my liege," the fool pouted, "think you I would resort to such trickery and jeopardize us all?"

  Finnbheara templed his fingers and studied the fool. Unpredictable, cunning, and careless, the jester had not yet been foolish enough to risk their race. "Go on."

  The fool cocked his head and his smile gleamed in the half-light. "It's simple. The wedding can't take place now. King James is going to destroy the Douglas. Oh, the Comyn too," he added irreverently.

  "Ah!" Finnbheara debated a pensive moment. He didn't have to lift a finger and the Hawk would soon die.

  But it wasn't enough, he seethed. Finnbheara wanted his own hand in the Hawk's destruction. He had suffered personal insult, and he wanted an intimately personal revenge. No mortal man cuckolded the King of the Fairy, without divine retribution—and how divine it would feel to destroy the Hawk.

  The glimmer of an idea began to take shape in his mind. As he considered it, King Finnbheara felt more vital than he had in centuries.

  The fool didn't miss the smug smile that teased the King's lips.

  "You're thinking something wicked. What are you planning, my liege?" the fool asked.

  "Silence," King Finnbheara commanded. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he sifted through his options, carefully refining his scheme.

  If time passed while Finnbheara plotted, neither fairy noticed; time meant little to the race of beings who could move about in it at will. The first flames of dawn painted the sky above the sea when the King spoke again:

  "Has the Hawk ever loved?"

  "Loved?" the fool echoed blankly.

  "You know, that emotion for which mortals compose sonnets, fight wars, erect monuments," the King said dryly.

  The fool reflected a moment. "I would say no, my King. The Hawk has never wooed a woman he didn't win, nor does it appear he ever desired any special woman over another."

  "A woman has never denied him?" King Finnbheara asked with a trace of incredulity.

  "Not that I could find. I don't think the woman lives and breathes in the sixteenth century who could deny him. I'm telling you, the man's a legend. Women swoon over him."

  The King smiled avariciously. "I have another errand for you, fool."

  "Anything, my liege. Let me kill him."

  "No! There will be no blood spilled by our hand. Listen to me carefully. Go now through the centuries. Go forward—women are more independent and self-possessed there. Find me a woman who is irresistible, exquisite, intelligent, strong; one who knows her own mind. Bid you well, she must be a woman who won't lose her wits being tossed through time, she must be adaptable to strange events. It wouldn't do to bring her to him and have her brain addled. She must believe in a bit of magic."

  The fool nodded. "Too true. Remember that tax accountant we took back to the twelfth century? She turned into a raving lunatic."

  "Exactly. The woman you find must be somewhat inured to the unusual so she can accept time travel without coming undone." Finnbheara mulled this over a moment. "I have it! Look in Salem, where they still believe in witches, or perhaps New Orleans, where the ancient magic sizzles in the air."

  "Perfect places!" the fool enthused.

  "But most important, fool, you must find me a woman who harbors a special hatred for beautiful, womanizing men; a woman guaranteed to make that mortal's life a living hell."

  The fool smiled fiendishly. "May I embellish on your plan?"

  "You're a crucial part of it," the King said with sinister promise.

  * * * * *

  Adrienne de Simone shivered, although it was an unusually warm May evening in Seattle. She pulled a sweater over her head and tugged the French doors closed. She stared out through the glass and watched night descend over the gardens that tumbled in wild disarray beyond the walk.

  In the fading light she surveyed the stone wall that protected her house at 93 Coattail Lane, then turned her methodical scrutiny to the shadows beneath the stately oaks, seeking any irregular movement. She took a deep breath and ordered herself to relax. The guard dogs that patrolled the grounds were quiet—things must be safe, she assured herself firmly.

  Inexplicably tense, she entered the code on the alarm pad that would activate the motion detectors strategically mounted throughout the one-acre lawn. Any nonrandom motion over one hundred pounds in mass and three feet in height would trigger the detectors, although the shrill warning would not summon the police or any law enforcement agency.

  Adrienne would run for her gun before she'd run for a phone. She'd summon the devil himself before she'd dream of calling the police. Although six months had passed, Adrienne still felt as if she couldn't get far enough from New Orleans, not even if she moved across an ocean or two, which she couldn't do anyway; the percentage of fugitives apprehended while trying to leave the country was shockingly high.

  Was that what she really was? she marveled. It never failed to astonish her, even after all these months. How could she—Adrienne de Simone—be a fugitive? She'd always been an honest, law-abiding citizen. All she'd ever asked of life was a home and a place to belong; someone to love and someone who loved her; children someday—children she would never abandon to an orphanage.

  She'd found all of that in Eberhard Darrow Garrett, the toast of New Orleans society, or so she'd thought.

  Adrienne snorted as she surveyed the lawn a final time then dropped the drapes across the doors. A few years ago the world had seemed like such a different place; a wonderful place, full of promise, excitement, and endless possibility.

  Armed only with her irrepressible spirit and three hundred dollars cash, Adrienne Doe had invented a last name for herself and fled the orphanage on the day she'd turned eighteen. She'd been thrilled to discover student loans for which practically anyone could qualify, even an unsecured risk like an orphan. She'd taken a job as a waitress, enrolled in college, and embarked on her quest to make something of herself. Just what, she wasn't sure, but she'd always had a feeling that something special was waiting around the next corner for her.

  She'd been twenty, a sophomore at the university, when that special thing had happened. Working at the Blind Lemon, an elegant restaurant and bar, Adrienne had caught the eye, the heart, and the engagement ring of the darkly handsome, wealthy Eberhard Darrow Garrett, the bachelor of the decade. It had been the perfect fairy tale. She'd walked around for months on clouds of happiness.

  When the clouds had started to melt beneath her feet, she'd refused to look too closely, refused to acknowledge that the fairy-tale prince might be a prince of darker things.

  Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut wishing she could blink some of her bad memories out of existence. How gullible she'd been! How many excuses she'd made—for him, for herself—until she'd finally had to run.

  A tiny meow coaxed her back to the present and she smiled down at the one good thing that had come of it all; her kitten, Moonshadow, a precocious stray she'd found outside a gas station on her way north. Moonie rubbed her ankles and purred enthusiastically. Adrienne scooped up the furry little creature, hugging her close. Unconditional love, such was the gift Moonie gave. Love without reservation or subterfuge—pure affection with no darker sides.

  Adrienne hummed lightly as she rubbed Moonie's ears, then broke off abruptly as a faint scratching sound drew her attention to the windows again.

  Perfectly still, she clutched Moonie and waited, holding her breath.

  But there was only silence.

  It must have been a twig scratching at the roof, she decided. But, hadn't she cut all the tr
ees back from the house when she'd moved in?

  Adrienne sighed, shook her head, and ordered her muscles to relax. She had nearly succeeded when overhead a floorboard creaked. Tension reclaimed her instantly. She dropped Moonie on a stuffed chair and eyed the ceiling intently as the creaking sound repeated. Perhaps it was just the house settling. She really had to get over this skittishness. How much time had to pass until she stopped being afraid that she would turn around and see Eberhard standing there with his faintly mocking smile and gleaming gun? Eberhard was dead. She was safe, she knew she was. So why did she feel so horridly vulnerable? For the past few days she'd had the suffocating sensation that someone was spying on her. No matter how hard she tried to reassure herself that anyone who might wish her harm was either dead—or didn't know she was alive—she was still consumed by a morbid unease. Every instinct she possessed warned her that something was wrong—or about to go terribly wrong. Having grown up in the City of Spooks—the sultry, superstitious, magical New Orleans—Adrienne had learned to listen to her instincts. They were almost always right on target.

  Her instincts had even been right about Eberhard. She'd had a bad feeling about him from the beginning, but she'd convinced herself it was her own insecurity. Eberhard was the catch of New Orleans; naturally, a woman might feel a little unsettled by such a man.

  Only much later did she understand that she'd been lonely for so long, and had wanted the fairy tale so badly, that she'd tried to force reality to reflect her desires, instead of the other way around. She'd told herself so many white lies before finally facing the truth that Eberhard wasn't the man she'd thought he was. She'd been such a fool.

  Adrienne breathed deeply of the spring air that breezed gently in the window behind her, then flinched and spun abruptly. She eyed the fluttering drapes warily. Hadn't she closed that window? She was sure of it. She'd closed all of them, just before closing the French doors. Adrienne edged cautiously to the window, shut it quickly, and locked it.

  It was nerves, nothing more. No face peered in the window at her, no dogs barked, no alarms sounded. What was the use of taking so many precautions if she couldn't relax? There couldn't possibly be anyone out there.

  Adrienne forced herself to turn away from the window. As she padded across the room her foot encountered a small object and sent it skidding across the faded Oushak rug, where it clunked to a rest against the wall.

  Adrienne glanced at it and flinched. It was a piece from Eberhard's chess set, the one she'd swiped from his house in New Orleans the night she'd fled. She'd forgotten all about it after she'd moved in. She'd tossed it in a box—one of those piled in the corner that she'd never gotten around to unpacking. Perhaps Moonie had dragged the pieces out, she mused, there were several of them scattered across the rug.

  She retrieved the piece she'd kicked and rolled it gingerly between her fingers. Waves of emotion flooded her; a sea of shame and anger and humiliation, capped with a relentless fear that she still wasn't safe.

  A draft of air kissed the back of her neck and she stiffened, clutching the chess piece so tightly that the crown of the black queen dug cruelly into her palm. Logic insisted that the windows behind her were shut—she knew they were, still—instinct told her otherwise.

  The rational Adrienne knew there was no one in her library but herself and a lightly snoring kitten. The irrational Adrienne teetered on the brink of terror.

  Laughing nervously, she berated herself for being so jumpy, then cursed Eberhard for making her this way. She would not succumb to paranoia.

  Dropping to her knees without sparing a backward glance, Adrienne scooped the scattered chess pieces into a pile. She didn't really like to touch them. A woman couldn't spend her childhood in New Orleans—much of it at the feet of a Creole storyteller who'd lived behind the orphanage—without becoming a bit superstitious. The set was ancient, an original Viking set; an old legend claimed it was cursed, and Adrienne's life had been cursed enough. The only reason she'd pilfered the set was in case she needed quick cash. Carved of walrus ivory and ebony, it would command an exorbitant price from a collector. Besides, hadn't she earned it, after all he'd put her through?

  Adrienne muttered a colorful invective about beautiful men. It wasn't morally acceptable that someone as evil as Eberhard had been so nice to look at. Poetic justice demanded otherwise—shouldn't people's faces reflect their hearts? If

  Eberhard had been as ugly on the outside as she'd belatedly discovered he was on the inside, she never would have ended up at the wrong end of a gun. Of course, Adrienne had learned the hard way that any end of a gun was the wrong end.

  Eberhard Darrow Garrett was a beautiful, womanizing, deceitful man—and he'd ruined her life. Clutching the black queen tightly she made herself a firm promise. "I will never go out with a beautiful man again, so long as I live and breathe. I hate beautiful men. Hate them!"

  * * * * *

  Outside the French doors at 93 Coattail Lane, a man who lacked substance, a creature manmade devices could neither detect nor contain, heard her words and smiled. His choice was made with swift certainty—Adrienne de Simone was definitely the woman he'd been searching for.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 3

  adrienne had no idea how she ended up on the man's lap. none.

  One moment she was perfectly sane—perhaps a bit neurotic, but firmly convinced of her sanity nonetheless—and the next moment the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she was sucked down one of Alice's rabbit holes.

  Her first thought was that she must be dreaming: a vivid, horrifying subconscious foray into a barbaric nightmare.

  But that didn't make any sense; only moments before, she'd been petting Moonshadow or doing… something… what? She couldn't have just fallen asleep without even knowing it!

  Maybe she'd stumbled and struck her head, and this hallucination was the dreamy result of a concussion.

  Or maybe not, she worried as she looked around the cavernous smoky room filled with oddly dressed people speaking a mutilated version of the English tongue.

  You've done it now, Adrienne, she mused soberly. You've finally slipped over the edge, heels still kicking. Adrienne struggled to focus her eyes, which felt strangely heavy. The man who clutched her was revolting. He was a belching beast with thick arms and a fat belly, and he smelled.

  Only moments ago she'd been in her library, hadn't she?

  A greasy hand squeezed her breast and she yelped aloud. Bewilderment was vanquished by embarrassed outrage when his hand deliberately grazed the crest of her nipple through her sweater. Even if this was a dream, she couldn't permit that kind of activity to pass without redress. She opened her mouth to deliver a scathing tongue lashing, but he beat her to the punch. His pink mouth in that tangled mass of hair expanded into a wide O. Dear heaven but the man hadn't even finished chewing, and no wonder—his few remaining teeth were stumpy and brown.

  It was with revulsion that Adrienne wiped bits of chicken and spittle from her face when he roared, but it was with genuine alarm that she comprehended his words, through his thick brogue.

  She was a godsend, he proclaimed to the room at large. She was a gift from the angels.

  She would be married on the morrow.

  Adrienne fainted. Her unconscious body spasmed once, then went limp. The black queen slipped from her hand, hit the floor, and was kicked under a table by a scuffed leather boot.

  * * * * *

  When Adrienne awoke, she lay still, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Beneath her back she felt the lumpy down ticks piled thickly. It could be her own bed. She had purchased antique ticks and had them restitched to plump atop her waist-high Queen Anne bed. She was in love with old things, no dithering about it.

  She sniffed cautiously. No odd scents from the banquet she'd dreamt. No hum of that thick brogue she'd imagined earlier.

  But no traffic either.

  She strained her ears, listening mightily. Had she ever heard such silence?

  Adr
ienne drew a ragged breath and willed her heart to slow.

  She tossed on the lumpy tick. Was this how insanity occurred? Started with a vague inkling of unease, a dreadful sense of being watched, then escalated rapidly into full blown madness, only to culminate in a nightmare where a smelly, hairy beast announced her impending nuptials?

  Adrienne squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut, willing her return to sanity. The silhouette of a chess set loomed in her mind; battle-ready rooks and bitter queens etched in stark relief against the insides of her eyelids, and it seemed that there was something urgent she needed to remember. What had she been doing?

  Her head hurt. It was a dull kind of ache, accompanied by the bitter taste of old pennies in the back of her throat. For a moment she struggled against it, but the throbbing intensified. The chess set danced elusively in shades of black and white, then dissolved into a distant nagging detail. It couldn't have been too important.

  Adrienne had more pressing things to worry about—where in the blue blazes was she?

  She kept her eyes closed and waited. A few moments more and she would hear the purr of a BMW tooling sleekly down Coattail Lane or her phone would peal angrily…

  A rooster did not just crow.

  Another minute and she'd hear Moonie's questioning mer-ooow, and feel her tail swish past her face as she leapt up on the bed.

  She did not hear the grate of squeaky hinges, the scrape of a door cut too long against a stone threshold.

  "Milady, I know you're awake."

  Her eyes sprang open to find a portly woman with silver-brown hair and rosy cheeks, wringing her hands as she stood at the foot of the bed. "Who are you?" Adrienne asked warily, refusing to look at any more of the room than the immediate spot that contained this latest apparition.

  "Bah! Who am I she asks? The lass who pops out of nowhere, lickety-split, like a witch if you please, is wishing to know who I am? Hmmph!"