Maybe it's not like that, Adrienne. Maybe you don't know the whole story, a small voice in her heart pointed out.
Maybe I don't want to know the whole story, she seethed. She clenched her hands until she felt the painful tear of nails in the soft flesh of her palms. I want to go home, she mourned like a lost child. I want Moonie.
That's the only thing that's worth wanting back there, she thought.
She blew out a frustrated breath.
"Adrienne." His voice came out of the shadows of the lower bailey so softly that she thought at first she must have imagined it.
She whirled to meet his gaze. Moonlight fell in wide shafts through the trees, casting a silver bar across his chiseled face.
"Leave me alone, Hawk."
"What did Olivia tell you?" The words sounded as though they were ripped from him against his will.
"Why don't you go ask her? It seems the two of you communicated quite well in the past. A sort of 'wordless communication,' if I recall."
"Lass, don't," he groaned.
"Why not? Does the truth hurt?"
"Adrienne, it wasn't like that. It wasn't…" His voice trailed off and he sighed.
"It wasn't what?" she said icily. Adrienne waited. Would he explain? The word whore could have a variety of meanings, none of them savory. She knew he'd been with beautiful women, and a lot of them from what the Comyn maids had told her, but just how many? A thousand? Ten thousand?
When the Hawk didn't reply, Adrienne pushed. "Are you Olivia's lover?"
"No, lass!"
"Were you?" Adrienne forced herself to ask.
Hawk sighed. "It's true, but it was a long time ago, and you don't know the circumstances—"
Adrienne glared. "I don't want to know the circumstances under which you would be with a woman like her! If you had any discrimination at all, you would never… You men are all the same!"
Hawk's brogue thickened measurably. "Give me a chance, Adrienne. Hear me out. 'Tisna fair to be hating me for things other men may have done to you. One more chance—that's all I'm asking of you, lass."
"I've given you too many chances! Leave me alone, Hawk Douglas. Just leave me alone!" Adrienne spun around and raced for the castle before she could humiliate herself by bursting into tears.
* * * * *
She dreamed of the Hawk and the promise she had glimpsed in his eyes. The hope. If he knew her past, would he still want her? Adrienne's slumbering psyche struggled mightily with the lot of it. Dare she let herself love him? Dare she not? Her heart was still too bruised. Her mind recoiled from any possibility of further shame and regret. But the temptation to fall grew harder to resist every day. If only she were home in her cocoon of solitude. Safe again, but so lonely…
Dreaming within a dream, she finally remembered how she'd come to be there, and understood how she might get back home. The way to escape the Hawk and all his infinite promises of passion and pain.
She was awakened by the impact of the memory. Disentangling herself from the silken sheets, she crossed the room and peered out into the inky night.
Eberhard's chess set.
She could finally recall with perfect clarity what she'd been doing moments before she'd been catapulted through time to land on the Comyn's lap.
She'd been in her library, picking up the pieces of Eberhard's chess set.
That dratted chess set really was cursed. When she'd swiped it from Eberhard's house, she'd been careful not to touch the pieces. Eberhard had often joked about the curse, but Adrienne preferred to give legends, curses, and myths a wide berth. After she'd pilfered the set, she had left it packed, intending to unpack it only if she needed to sell it.
She knew she'd had the black queen in her hand when she'd appeared on Red Comyn's lap, but where had it gone from there? She certainly didn't have it now. Had one of the maids taken it? Would she have to confront the despicable Red Comyn to get it back?
She shook her head dejectedly. It had to be somewhere at the Comyn keep, and wherever it was she had to make an effort to find it. It could take her home.
Could she find her way back to the Comyn keep?
Of course, she assured herself. After traveling scrubby backroads for two thousand miles, Adrienne de Simone could find her way anywhere. But quickly, while she was still under cover of the night. And before her resolve weakened.
* * * * *
Thirty minutes later she was ready. Tiptoeing through the kitchen, she'd found an oiled sack and filled it with crusty breads and cheeses and a few apples. Tavis snored in his chair by the door, his hand furled about a half-full glass of—she sniffed cautiously—pure grain alcohol from the smell of it. After a quick stop in the Green Lady's room where she'd left the boots Lydia had given her, she'd be ready to go.
Slipping from the kitchen, she moved quickly down the short corridor and pushed open the door to the Green Lady's room. Her eyes flared with dismay. There the Hawk slept, a white linen sheet wrapped around his legs, his torso bare to the dawn's caress. His dark head tossed against the white pillows, and he slept alone—grasping in his arms the dress she'd worn that day she'd taken the dart.
They called him the king's whore, she reminded herself. Perhaps there was actually a royal appointment to such a post. Or perhaps he was simply so nondiscriminating that he'd earned the title all by himself. Regardless, she would never again be one of many.
Adrienne spied her boots on the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Eyes carefully averted from her sleeping husband, she slipped them from the burnished pine lid and skittered back toward the door on kitten paws, closing it gently behind her.
And now the difficult part. Guards were posted all over the castle. She would have to flee through the gardens, down the eternal bridge to the gatehouse, and through the east tower. She'd run from worse things, through worse climes before. She would manage somehow. She always did when it came to running.
* * * * *
Hawk slitted one eye open and watched her leave. He muttered darkly and shifted his body, folding his muscular arms behind his head. He stared at the door a long moment.
She was leaving him?
Never. Not so long as he lived and breathed, and he had a hell of a lot more fight in him than she must think.
He moved to his feet and grabbed his kilt, knotting it loosely at his waist.
So that's the way it was going to be, he mused bitterly. The first sign of something less than savory in his past, and she would run. He hadn't pegged her as the skittish type. He'd thought there was a lass of fiery mettle beneath her silken exterior, but one breath of his sordid past and she was ready to leave him. After the pleasure she'd so obviously experienced in his arms, still—to walk away.
Well, where the hell did she think he'd learned how to give pleasure?
Oh, nay. The next time his wife lay in his arms, and there would be a next time, he would take one of the gypsy potions to make him detached. Then he would truly show her the benefits she reaped from the past she eschewed so violently.
He was offering her his love, freely and openly. He, who had never offered anything more than physical pleasure for a short time to any lass, was offering this woman his life.
And still she would not accept him.
And she didn't even know the first bloody thing about what it meant to be the king's whore. Olivia had been about to tell her, there in the gardens. Olivia, who had ruthlessly exploited the Hawk's servitude to the king by petitioning James to command the Hawk to grant her those carnal favors he'd previously denied her. Olivia, who had given James a whole new way to humiliate the Hawk. The memory of it shamed and enraged him. He banished such thoughts and the blinding anger they generated with a firm flexing of his formidable will.
Adrienne was his immediate problem. Hawk snorted. Was she running off to discover the world in her smithy's arms?
Aye. He was sure she was.
At that moment Grimm pushed the door open and ducked his head in, a silent question in his eye
s.
"Is she headed north?" Hawk's face was bitter.
"Nay," Grimm puzzled. " 'Tis what I expected too, but she goes east."
"To the gatehouse? Alone?"
"Aye. Carrying only a wee pack."
"He must be meeting her there," Hawk mused. "The guard is following?"
"Aye, at a distance. Until you give your command."
Hawk turned his back and studied the dying embers. His command. Should he let her go? Could he? And if she joined with Adam how would he keep himself from killing the smithy with his bare hands? No. Better to stop her before he had to know with absolute certainty her betrayal. "What have you learned of Adam?" Hawk kicked at the hearth.
"Nothing, Hawk. 'Tis as if he blew in on a fae breeze and put down roots. It's the oddest thing. No one knows from whence he came. I think Esmerelda is our best bet for information, as she warms his bed. But I haven't been able to track her down just yet." Grimm rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Seems Esmerelda's people have moved their camp away from the north rowans to the far east pastures."
Hawk spun on his heel, his dark eyes searching Grimm's intently. "The Rom never move camp. They always stay in the north pastures through the summer."
"Not this summer." Grimm shrugged. "Verily odd. Said even the Samhain would be celebrated at a new site this harvest."
"Strange." Hawk pondered this new oddity. But he spared only a moment to consider the Gypsy tribe that camped Dalkeith—there were more important issues to attend to. His wife was leaving him. "Stop her at the gatehouse, Grimm. I'll be there shortly."
* * * * *
Adrienne knew she was being followed.
Escaping the castle was as hard as trying to break out of a prison. She had less chance of evading the guards than she had of wishing herself back to the twentieth century. This time she didn't even have a gun.
Like the night Eberhard had died—a night she'd promised herself never to think of again.
She hadn't meant for any of it to happen. She hadn't even known what was going on until the night she'd finally discovered why Eberhard had been sending her on all those solitary vacations. So lovely and stupidly gullible. Wasn't that how she'd heard him describe her that night she'd returned unexpectedly from London, hoping to surprise him?
And surprise him she had.
Slipping in the back door of the garage and into his luxurious home, Adrienne overheard a conversation not meant for her ears.
A conversation he would have killed her for hearing.
She hadn't called out his name as she'd placed her hand on the door to his den. Gerard's voice carried clearly through the door.
"Did Rupert meet her in London?"
Adrienne froze. They were talking about her. How had they known that Rupert was in London? She'd just met him there yesterday. She hadn't even called Eberhard and discussed anything with him yet. She'd come back on the redeye and it had taken all day and half the night to get home. She pressed her ear to the door, listening curiously.
Eberhard laughed. "Just as we'd planned. He told her he was in town to buy a gift for his wife. You know Adrienne, she'd believe anything. She didn't notice a thing when he swapped her luggage. She's so lovely and gullible. You were right about her from the first, Gerard. She's the perfect pigeon. And she'll never catch on to what we're doing until it's too late to matter."
Adrienne jerked violently, her hand frozen on the door.
"And when she finally gets caught, Eb? What will you do then?"
Eberhard's laughter chilled her blood. "Ah, that's the beauty of it. They'll dig up the records from the orphanage. I took the liberty of having them doctored a bit. They now reflect a juvenile delinquent with a natural inclination toward criminal behavior. She'll take the fall alone. There's not a cop in my fair city who'd try to pin anything on Mr. Eberhard Darrow Garrett—generous political patron. I never leave the Kingdom of N'Awlins. She's the one always in and out of the country."
Adrienne's eyes were wide with horror. What was he saying?
Gerard laughed. "We got a huge shipment out in her Mercedes last month, Eb. The Acapulco run was nothing but brilliant."
Shipment? Adrienne wondered frantically. Shipment of what? She backed soundlessly away from the door.
Stupid. Gullible. Innocent. What was so bad about being innocent? she wondered as she slunk through the darkened house, swallowing her sobs. At least there was honor in innocence. At least she never hurt anyone, never used anyone. So maybe she was a tad… gullible. Maybe she even lacked a bit of common sense. But she more than made up for it in other departments. She had a good heart. That should count for something.
Her throat tightened with suppressed tears. Stop it, she chided herself. Focus. Find the queen. Get back home. They don't make men like the Hawk in the twentieth century, and after the Hawk no man would ever be a temptation again.
The gatehouse loomed before her. Why hadn't they stopped her? She knew they were still there. Maybe he wanted them to let her go. Maybe she'd been so naive and unschooled that he really wasn't interested at all. After all, a man like that certainly wouldn't have a hard time finding a willing woman.
What would the king's whore care? There would always be another woman.
She kicked angrily at a pebble and watched it skitter into the wall of the gatehouse. Would they pull up the portcullis and draw back the sally port for her? Roll out the red carpet to celebrate her leave-taking?
And as she stepped into the archway, Grimm melted out of the shadows.
She stopped, relieved.
Try that again, she told herself. Write that scene one more time, Adrienne de Simone. It reads, "she stopped, furious at being denied escape."
No, definitely relieved.
She sighed, her shoulders drooping. "Grimm. Let me pass. It's my life. Move."
He shook his head. "Sorry, milady."
"Grimm, I must go back to the Comyn keep."
"Why?"
She studied him a moment in the breaking light. He looked truly confused, and his eyes kept scanning the northern bailey, as if he was expecting someone. "Because I'm homesick," she lied. Well, perhaps not exactly a lie—she did miss Moonie terribly.
"Ah!" Understanding dawned in his handsome features. He stood before her, his legs apart, muscular arms folded across his chest. "Are you looking for something?"
"What?" He couldn't know! Could he? "Grimm, did Lady Comyn—I mean my mother—say anything about… well… anything of mine that I might have left there… at home?"
"Like what?" Grimm asked, the veritable picture of innocence.
"Yes, like what?" echoed a voice behind her. Something in his voice had decidedly changed and for the worse. The Hawk's velvet purr had taken on the coldness of smooth, polished steel.
Was she responsible for that change?
"Take her to the Peacock Room. Lock the door and bring me the key, Grimm."
"No!" she cried, spinning around to face him. "I must go! I want to go to the Comyn keep!"
"What seek you, wife?" he asked icily.
Mute, she stared at him defiantly.
Hawk muttered a dark curse. Could it be true? Could she truly be from the future and looking for the way back home? The thought that she might leave him for Adam had made him near crazed.
But, he brooded darkly, if it was the black queen she was seeking, then she was most definitely doing it for a reason. Odds were she was from somewhere else if not some when else, and she thought the black queen could take her away from him.
One way to find out, he decided.
"Is it this you're after, lass?" he asked as he withdrew the chess piece from his sporran and raised it before her widening eyes.
* * *
CHAPTER 18
"come, lass." the command was toneless and unmistakably dangerous. And even now, the mere word made her shiver with desire. The flush of heat stole her breath. "Hawk—"
"Don't." The word was a warning. "Now. Take my hand."
What was he
going to do? she wondered frantically. Behind her, she felt Grimm step closer, edging her toward the Hawk.
"Wait!" She held out a hand to ward him off.
"Move, milady," Grimm said softly.
"Don't lock me in a room!"
"How could I not?" Hawk sneered. "Knowing that you would go back to a place where it seems you knew little joy—yet you would rather be there than here with me!"
"You don't believe I'm from the future!" she gasped.
"I'm beginning to," he muttered. "How do you think I knew about this?" The black queen glittered in his hand.
She shrugged. "How?"
"You, my sweet wife, talked about it when you were poisoned. Worried and fretted and tried to find it—"
"But I only just remembered."
"Your sleeping mind remembered sooner."
"But how did you get it?"
It was Grimm who told her. "The Lady Comyn saw it fall from your hand the night she claims you arrived."
"But how—"
"Lady Comyn entrusted it to me after the wedding. I gave it to the Hawk."
"She admitted that you're not her blood daughter. I can see no reason why she would lie on that score." Unless Comyn keep is suffering some strange contagious madness, he thought grimly. "Will it truly take you back to wherever you came from?" the Hawk asked carefully.
"I think so. As far as I can tell, it's what brought me here," she said, her gaze cast upon the cobbled walkway.
"And your plan was to get it and go home, lass? You planned to slip from Dalkeith, by yourself?"
"No! With your mother, Hawk!" she snapped absurdly. "Of course by myself!"
"So you were going to go to Comyn keep to get this chess piece and try to go back to wherever you came from? That was your plan this evening?" She missed the warning in his careful tone.
"Yes, Hawk. I admit it. All right? I was going to try. I'm not certain it will work, but it's the last thing I had in my hand before I ended up here, and legend says the chess set is cursed. It's the only thing I can think of that might have done it. If it brought me here, it might just take me back."
The Hawk smiled coolly. He turned the queen in his hand, studying it carefully. "Viking," he mused. "Beautiful piece. Well worked and well preserved."
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