Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  "Be assured, I will."

  * * * * *

  "You are flawless, beauty," the smithy said as his coal-black eyes raked over her nude body twisted in the damp sheets.

  "Flawless lalless," Adrienne pooh-poohed dreamily. The heat was ebbing, slowly.

  "Decidedly lawless."

  He couldn't know. Not possibly. "What do you mean by that?" She struggled to form the words, and wasn't certain she even made a sound.

  "Just that there must be something criminal about a woman so beautiful," he replied archly.

  "Nothing criminal about me," she demurred distantly.

  "Oh, beauty, I think there is much criminal about you."

  "There is something just not normal about you, Adam," she mumbled as she tossed restlessly.

  "No," he replied smugly, "there is certainly nothing normal about me. Give me your hand, beauty, I'll show you not normal."

  And then there was cool water, frothy ocean upon powder-white sand. Whisper of gentle surf rushing over the beach, cool sand beneath her bare toes. No ants, no rack, no fire. Just peace in her most favorite haven in the world. The seaside at Maui where she'd vacationed with her girlfriends. Beautiful, blissful days they'd passed there with fresh-squeezed orange juice and endless summer jogs on the beach, bare feet slapping the edge of the tide.

  And then the stranger images. Scent of jasmine and sandalwood. Snowflake sand dotted with fuchsia silk tents and butterflies upon every bough of every limb of every rowan. An improbable place. And she was lying in the cool sands and healed by tropical lapis waves.

  "Beauty, my beauty. Want me. Feel me, hunger for me and I will slake your need."

  "Hawk?"

  Adam's anger was palpable in the air.

  Adrienne forced her eyes open a slit, and gasped. If her body had obeyed, she would have shot straight up in bed. But it didn't obey. It lay flaccid and weak upon the bed while her temper shot up instead. "Get out of my room!" she yelled. At least her voice hadn't lost its vigor.

  "I was just checking to make sure your forehead cooled." Adam grinned puckishly.

  "You thickheaded oaf! I don't care why you're in here, just get out!"

  Finally her body obeyed a little and she managed to get her fingers around a tumbler at the bedside. Too weak to throw it, she was at least able to slide it off the table. Glass crashed to the floor and shattered. The sound mollified her slightly.

  "You were dying. I cured you," Adam reminded.

  "Thank you. Now get out."

  Adam blinked. "That's all? Thank you, now get out?"

  "Don't think I'm so stupid that I don't realize you were touching my breasts!" she whispered fiercely. At the abashed look on his face she realized he had indeed thought she'd been unconscious. "So that and my thanks are all you'll be getting, smithy!" she growled. "I hate beautiful men. Hate them!"

  "I know," Adam smiled with real pleasure and obeyed her dismissal.

  Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut tightly but upon the pink-gray insides of her eyelids shadows arose. Images of being held between the Hawk's rock-hard thighs, wrapped in arms that were bands of steel. His voice murmuring her name over and over, calling her back, commanding her back. Demanding that she live. Whispering words of… what? What had he said?

  * * * * *

  "She lives, Lord Buzzard—"

  "Hawk."

  "Both birds of prey. What difference?"

  "A buzzard is a scavenger. A hawk selects his kill as carefully as a falcon. Stalks it with the same unerring conviction. And fails as frequently—which is never."

  "Never," Adam mused. "There are no absolutes, Lord Hawk."

  "In that you're wrong. I choose, I adhere, I pursue, I commit, I attain. That—that, my errant friend—is an absolute."

  Adam shook his head and studied the Hawk with apparent fascination. "A worthy adversary. The hunt begins. No cheating. No tricks. You may not forbid her from me. And I know that you tried to already. You will recant your rules."

  Hawk inclined his dark head. "She chooses," he allowed tightly. "I will forbid her nothing."

  Adam nodded, a satisfied nod as he plunged his hands deep in the pockets of his loose trousers and waited.

  "Well? Get thee from my castle, smithy. You have your place, and it is without my walls."

  "You might try a thank-you. She lives."

  "I'm not certain you aren't the reason she almost died."

  At that, Adam's brow creased thoughtfully. "No. But now that I think on it, I have work to do. I wonder… who would try to kill the beauty, if not me? And I didn't. Had I, she would be dead. No slow poison from my hand. Quick death or not at all."

  "You're a strange man, smithy."

  "But I will soon be most familiar to her."

  "Pray the gods she is wiser than that," Grimm mumbled as Adam stalked off into the dim corridor. Night had fallen and the castle lamps were still largely unlit.

  Hawk sighed heavily.

  "What deal did you make with that devil?" Grimm asked in a voice scarcely audible.

  "Think you he may be?"

  "Something is not natural about that man and I intend to find out what."

  "Good. Because he wants my wife, and she doesn't want me. And I saw her wanting him with a hurt in her eyes."

  Grimm winced. "You are certain you don't want her just because she doesn't want you and he wants her?"

  Hawk shook his head slowly. "Grimm, I have no words for what she makes me feel."

  "You always have words."

  "Not this time, which warns me truly that I'm in deep trouble and about to get deeper. Deep as I must to woo that lass. Think you I've been spelled?"

  "If love can be bottled, or shot from Cupid's bow, my friend," Grimm whispered into the breeze that ruffled in Hawk's wake when he entered Adrienne's chamber.

  * * * * *

  In the weeks to come the Hawk would wonder many times why the Rom, whom he trusted and valued, and whom he had thought returned those feelings in kind, had never come to tend his wife during those terrible days. When he spoke to his guard, the man said that he'd delivered the message. Not only didn't the Rom come, they were conspicuously absent from Dalkeith. They made no trips to the castle to barter their goods. They spent no evenings weaving tales in the Greathall before a rapt and dazzled audience. Not one of the Rom approached Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea; they kept to their fields, out past the rowans.

  That fact nagged at Hawk's mind briefly, but was quickly lost in the thick of more weighty concerns. He promised himself he would resolve his questions with a trip to the gypsy camp once his wife was fully healed and matters with the strange smithy were resolved. But it was to be some time before he made the trip to the Rom camp; and by that time, things would be vastly changed.

  * * * * *

  Adrienne drifted up from healing slumber to find her husband watching her intently.

  "I thought I'd lost you." The Hawk's face was dark, glistening in the firelight, and it was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. It took her several long moments to shake loose the cotton stuffing that had replaced her brain. With wakefulness came defiance. Just looking at that man made her temper rise.

  "Can't lose something you don't have. Never had me to begin with, Lord Hawk," she mumbled.

  "Yet," he corrected. "I haven't had you yet. At least not in the sense that I will have you. Beneath me. Bare, silky skin slippery with my loving. My kisses. My hunger." He traced the pad of his thumb along the curve of her lower lip and smiled.

  "Never."

  "Never say never. It only makes you feel more foolish when you end up taking it back. I wouldn't want you to feel too foolish, lass."

  "Never," she said more firmly. "And I never say never unless I'm absolutely one hundred percent certain I will never change my mind."

  "There are a lot of nevers in there, my heart. Be careful."

  "Your heart is a wrinkled prune. And I mean every blasted one of those nevers."

  "Mean them as you will, l
ass. 'Twill only make it that much more pleasurable to break you to my bit."

  "I am not a mare to be broken to ride!"

  "Ah, but there are many similarities, wouldn't you say? You need a strong hand, Adrienne. A confident rider, one not dismayed by your strong will. You need a man who can handle your bucking and enjoy your run. I won't break you to ride. Nay. I will break you to the feel of my hand and mine alone. A mare broken to ride allows many riders, but a wild horse broken to the bit of one hand—she loses none of her fire, yet permits none but her true master to mount her."

  "No man has ever been my master, and none ever will. Get that straight in your head, Douglas." Adrienne gritted her teeth as she struggled to pull herself upright. It was hard trying to hold her ground in a conversation while lying flat on her back feeling ridiculously weak, looking up at this goliath of a man. "And as to mounting me…"

  To her chagrin and the Hawk's vast amusement, she slipped back into healing slumber without completing the thought.

  Unknown to him, she more than completed it in her dreams. Never! her dreaming-within-the-dream mind seethed, even as she was drawn to the great black charger with fire in his eyes.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 11

  "it's not me someone's trying to kill," adreanne repeated.

  She was buried in mounds of plush pillows and woolen throws and felt helplessly swallowed by a mountain of feathers. Every time she moved the dratted bed moved with her. It was wearing her out, like being cocooned in a down straitjacket. "I want to get up, Hawk. Now." Too bad her voice didn't come off sounding as firm as she'd intended. It would have—it should have—except being in a bed while trying to argue with this particular man scattered her thoughts like leaves to a windstorm, into a jumble of passionate images; bronzed skin against pale, ebony eyes and hot kisses.

  The Hawk smiled, and she had to bite down the overwhelming urge just to smile blankly back, like some dim-witted idiot. He was beautiful when somber, but when he smiled she was in grave danger of forgetting that he was the enemy. And she must never forget that. So she put a lot of frustration to good use, and dredged up an impressive scowl.

  His smile faded. "Lass, it's been you both times. When are you going to face the facts? You must be guarded. You'll get used to it. In time you'll scarce notice them." He gestured at the dozen brawny men standing outside the Green Lady's room.

  She shot a withering glance at her "elite guard" as he called them. They stood legs wide, arms folded across thin broad chests. Implacable, stony faces, and all of them with physiques that would make Atlas consider shrugging half his weight over. Where do they breed these kind of men? The Bonny and Braw Beefcake Farm? She snorted her disgust. "What you don't understand is that if you're so busy protecting me, the assassin is going to get whoever they're really after. Because it's not me!"

  "Do they call you 'Mad Janet' because you refuse to accept reality?" he wondered. "Reality is that someone wishes you dead. Reality is that I am only trying to protect you. Reality is that you are my wife and I will always keep you safe from harm." He was leaning closer as he spoke, punctuating the phrase reality is with a sharp stab at the air directly in front of her. Adrienne compensated by shrinking deeper into her haven of feathers each time he stabbed.

  "It is my duty, my honor, and my pleasure," he continued. His eyes swept her upturned face and darkened with desire. "Reality… ah… reality is that you are exquisitely beautiful, my heart," he said in a voice suddenly roughened.

  His voice conjured images of sweet cream blended with fine Scotch, tossed over melting ice cubes. Smooth and rough at the same time. It unnerved her, flatly shattering what little composure she'd been hugging tightly around her. When he wet his full lower lip with his tongue her mouth went dry as a desert. And his dark eyes flecked with gold were a smoldering promise of endless passion. His eyes that were locked on her lips and oh, but he was going to kiss her and she would do anything to prevent that!

  "It's time you know the truth. I am not Mad Janet," she snapped, saying something, anything, whatever came to mind to keep his lips from claiming hers in that intoxicating pleasure. "And for the umpteenth time—I am not your blasted heart!"

  He agreed instantly. "I didn't think you were. Mad, I mean. But you are my heart, whether you like it or not. By the bye, neither does Lydia. Think you're mad, that is. We both know you're intelligent and capable. Except when it comes to two things: your safety and me. You're completely unreasonable about both of those issues." He shrugged one of his muscled shoulders. "That's why I'm having this wee talk with you. To help you see things more clearly."

  "Oooh! Those are the two things you're being so pigheaded about. I'm not in danger and I don't want you!"

  He laughed. Damn the man, but he laughed. "You are in danger, and as to wanting me…" He moved closer. His weight settling on the down ticks beside her caused her to shift and roll alarmingly. Right into his arms. How convenient, she thought sardonically. Now she understood why they'd used all those down ticks in the olden days. And why they'd had so many children.

  "You're right, I do want you—"

  He froze. "You do?"

  "—out of my room," she continued. "Out of my face and out of my life. Don't get in my space, don't even breathe my air, okay?"

  "It's my air, by the bye, as laird, and all that. But I could be persuaded to share it with you, sweet wife."

  He was smiling!

  "And I am not your wife! Or at least, not the one you were supposed to get! I'm from the nineteen nineties—that's almost five hundred years in the future in case you can't add—and the Comyn killed his own daughter. How? I don't know, but I have my suspicions, and I haven't got the faintest idea how I ended up in his lap. But he had to marry someone to you—he said I was a godsend—so he used me when I popped in! And that's the long and the short of how I ended up getting stuck with you."

  There. It was out. The truth. That should stop him from any further plans of seduction. No matter that if what Lydia had told her was true about King James, she'd just jeopardized the entire Douglas clan. Her words prevented his lips from reaching hers and that was the most imminent danger she could see. Not even the wrath of vengeful kings seemed quite as threatening. One more beautiful man, one more broken heart.

  The Hawk sat motionless. He studied her a long moment in silence, as if digesting what she'd just said. Then a gentle smile chased the clouds from his eyes. "Grimm told me you wove outlandish tales. He said you had an epic imagination. Your father told Grimm how you begged to be allowed to be his bard, rather than his daughter. Lass, I have nothing against a good tale and will willingly listen, if you but take my counsel about your safety."

  Adrienne blew out a frustrated breath that sent a strand of her silvery-blond hair brushing the Hawk's face. He kissed it as it slid gently across his mouth.

  Flames uncoiled in her belly. She shut her eyes and gathered her composure from the fleeting corners of her soul. I

  will not think about him kissing any part of me, she told herself firmly.

  "I am not Red Comyn's daughter," she sighed, squeezing her eyes more tightly shut. When was she going to figure out that closing her eyes didn't make anything go away? She opened her eyes. Oh dear heaven, but the man was magnificent. She pondered the thought with some pride that she could dislike him so intensely, yet still be so objective about his good looks. A sure sign of her maturity.

  "Nay, it doesn't matter. You are my wife now. That's all that matters."

  "Hawk—"

  "Hush, lass."

  Adrienne stilled, absorbed in the warmth of his hands on hers. When had he taken her hands in his? And why hadn't she pulled away instinctively? And why was the slow, sensual movement of his skin against hers so intoxicating?

  "Adrienne… this Callabron. For it to work correctly it must enter the body through a primary vessel of blood." His fingers lightly skimmed the faint red mark that still puckered the translucent skin of her throat. "This was no near miss. Thi
s was perfect aim."

  "Who would want to kill me?" She swallowed tightly. How could anyone want to? No one here knew her. But… what if someone wanted to kill Mad Janet, and didn't know she wasn't her?

  "For that I have no answer, my heart. Yet. But until I do you will be guarded day and night. Every moment, every breath. I will not risk your life foolishly again."

  "But I am not Janet Comyn," she tried again, stubbornly.

  His ebony gaze searched her clear gray eyes intently. "Lass, I really don't care who you are, or have been, or need to think you'll be. I want you. In my life. In my arms. In my bed. If it makes you feel better to believe this… this thing about being from the future, then believe it if you must. But from this day on, you are first and foremost my wife, and I will keep you safe from anything that would hurt you. You need never fear again."

  Adrienne raised her hands helplessly. "Fine. Guard me. So can I get up now?"

  "No."

  "When?" she asked plaintively.

  "When I say so." He smiled disarmingly and ducked to steal a kiss. His face came smack up against both her hands. It took every ounce of her willpower not to cradle it with her palms and lead him to the kiss he sought with shaking hands.

  He growled and gave her a long measuring look. "I should treat you like one of my falcons, wife."

  "Let me get out of bed," she bartered prettily. No way was she going to ask how he treated his falcons.

  He growled, lower in his throat, and left then. But the elite dozen stayed at her door.

  After he was gone she remembered one thing he'd said most clearly. You need never fear again. The man was just too good to be true.

  * * * * *

  The days of healing were pure bliss. Lydia overrode the Hawk's objections and had a chaise carried out to the gardens for Adrienne. Although she was still heavily guarded, she was able to curl up in the golden sunshine like a sleepy, smug cat, which went a long way toward healing her. The rose-drenched days of conversation with Lydia, as they came to know one another through small talk and small silences, healed more than her exhausted body. Sipping tea