"Well… I was walking in the gardens and I was thinking about the twentieth century. I was thinking about how much—
"You wanted to leave," Lydia finished for her, with a trace of bitterness.
Adrienne was equally surprised and touched. "No. Actually I was thinking about how nice it is here. In the 1990s, my God, Lydia, people were just out of control! Children killing parents. Parents killing children. Children killing children. They've all got cell phones stuck to their ears and yet I've never seen such distance between people trying so hard to be close. And just the day before I left you should have seen the headlines in the papers. A boy strangled a little girl when she wouldn't get off the phone and let him use it. Oh, I was thinking bitter thoughts of that time and comparing it to home and home was definitely winning."
"Say that again?" Lydia uttered softly.
"What?" Adrienne asked blankly. "Oh, headlines, papers, they're—" she started to explain, but Lydia cut her off.
"Home." Lydia's face lit with a beautiful smile. "You called this home."
Adrienne blinked. "I did?"
The two women looked at each other a long moment.
"Well, by the Sanhain, Lydia, give her the coffee, I'll say." Tavis's gruff voice came from the door. "Popping in and out like that, surely she's got a thirst on."
"Coffee?" Adrienne perked.
"Ah." Lydia smiled, pleased with herself and doubly delighted with her daughter-in-law who had called Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea home without even realizing it. She quickly filled a porcelain mug with the steaming brew and placed it proudly on the table in front of her.
Adrienne's nose twitched as her taste buds kicked up a sprightly jig and she reached greedily for the mug. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and drank.
And choked.
Tavis pounded her on the back and looked accusingly at Lydia. "I told you!" he said.
When Adrienne could breathe again, she wiped the tears from her eyes and peered suspiciously in her cup. "Oh, Lydia! You don't leave the coffee grounds—no, not grounds quite… more like a paste, I think. What did you do? Mush the beans and mix them with water? Ugh!"
"Didn't I tell you to run it through a sieve?" Tavis reminded. "Would you want to drink it like that?"
"Well, with all the hubbub I forgot!" Lydia snatched the mug. "Since you're so certain you know how to do it, you do it!" She thrust the mug at Tavis, sloshing thick brown stuff on the floor.
"Fine. See if I don't, I'll say!" With a supercilious look he made off for the buttery.
Lydia sighed. "Adrienne, I know it hasn't been a very good morning so far. I so wanted to have coffee for you, but in lieu of coffee, how about a cup of tea and a chat?"
"Uh-oh," Adrienne said. "I know that look, Lydia. What's wrong? Besides my being tossed through time portals?"
"Tea?" Lydia evaded.
"Talk," Adrienne said warily.
How best to start this? Lydia was determined to hide nothing from her. Lies and half-truths had a nasty way of reproducing and breeding distrust. If Adrienne could see the Hawk clearly, the truth would hopefully not do damage; but lies, somewhere down the line, assuredly would. "Esmerelda is dead."
"I'm so sorry," Adrienne offered instantly. "But who's Esmerelda?"
"The Hawk's… er… well, ex-mistress probably explains it the best—
"You mean in addition to Olivia? And where was he keeping her, by the way? In the dungeon? The tower? The room next to mine?"
Lydia winced. "It's not like that, Adrienne. He'd ended it with her months before you came. She lived with the Rom who camp on our fields in the warm seasons. According to what her people told Tavis this morning, she's the one who had been trying to kill you. The good news is, you're safe now."
"Haven't I been saying it all along? I told you it was probably one of that man's ex-girlfriends, didn't I? Oh!" She leapt to her feet.
"Adrienne."
"What now?"
Oh, bother, Lydia brooded. Well buck up, she told herself, knowing from the look on Adrienne's face that she was just spoiling for a good fight with the Hawk, and that she would be mad as a spitting banshee when she realized she couldn't get one. "Hawk left for Uster at dawn."
"For how long?" Adrienne gritted.
"He didn't say. Adrienne! Wait! We need to sort out what brought you here!" But Adrienne was no longer listening.
Lydia sighed as Adrienne stormed from the kitchen mumbling nonstop under her breath, "Arrogant pigheaded pain-in-the-ass Neanderthal…"
* * *
CHAPTER 23
just what is your problem, adrienne de simone? She asked herself furiously.
She shrugged and sighed before forlornly advising a nearby rosebush, "I seem to have a bit of a thing for the man."
The rosebush nodded sagely in the soft summer breeze and Adrienne willingly poured the whole of it upon her rapt audience.
"I know he's been with a lot of women. But he's not like Eberhard. Of course, probably there's nobody like Eberhard except maybe a five-headed monster from the jaws of hell."
When the rosebush didn't accuse her of being melodramatic or waxing poetical, she summoned up a truly pitiful sigh and continued. "I can't understand a blasted thing about the man. First he wants me—I mean, come on, he burned my queen to keep me here, which didn't really work apparently, but the intention was there. He saves my life repeatedly even though it was kind of indirectly his fault it was in danger to begin with, and then he refuses to see me. And if that's not enough, he just up and leaves without so much as a fare-thee-well!"
Adrienne plucked irritably at the rosebush.
"I don't think he quite understands the full necessity of clear and timely communication. Timely meaning now. Where exactly is Uster, anyway?" She fully considered trying to find a horse and go there herself. How dare he just up and abandon her? Not that she minded entirely being where she was—Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea was certainly lovely, but what if she got zipped back to her own time for good and never saw him again?
Damned if that didn't put things in an entirely different perspective. A few soldiers of the war raging within her breast got up and traitorously switched camp on the heels of that thought.
How had she failed to realize that she could disappear and never see the man she was married to again? That she had no control over it whatsoever? Twenty more soldiers marched over to the Hawk's side of the fracas raging inside her. Holy cow.
Don't you wonder, Adrienne, what it would feel like to lie down next to him in the sizzling heat of magnificent passion?
Okay. She had one soldier left on her side and his name was Mr. Suspicious N. Fearful.
Traitors! She frowned at the Hawk's new camp. Just thinking about him made her feel hot. She trailed her fingers in the fountain's sparkling, chemical-free water.
She couldn't imagine never seeing this beautiful fountain again, never smelling the lavender virgin air of 1513. No Lydia, no Tavis. No castle by the sea. No Laird Hawk, man of steel and blazing passion. Just Seattle and bitter memories and fear keeping her inside her house. The 1990s, bargain packaged with smog and ozone holes.
She doubted Hawk would ever try to send her on vacations alone. He seemed to be the kind of man who would treasure his wife and keep her close to his side if the woman allowed it. Close to that beautifully muscled side, and under that kilt…
"Dream a wicked dream," she sighed softly. Adrienne squeezed her eyes tightly shut and dropped her head in her hands. A long eternity of questions tumbled through her head, and slowly but surely Adrienne helped the last little soldier to his feet, dusted him off, and let him lean on her as she walked him over to the other side of the war. She had made her decision. She would try.
She raised her head from her hands slowly to meet Adam's piercing gaze. How long had he been standing there watching her with worship in his eyes. Dark eyes, black as hate. Now where had that come from?
"You hate the Hawk, don't you, Adam?" she asked in a flash of crystal-clear intuition.<
br />
He smiled appreciatively. "You women are like that. Cut to the quick of it with a canny eye. But hate attaches a great deal of importance to its predicate," he mocked as he dropped himself beside her on the ledge.
"Don't play word games with me, Adam. Answer my question."
"This would please you? Honesty from a man?"
"Yes."
He shrugged a beautiful, sun-kissed shoulder. "I hate the Hawk."
"Why?" Adrienne asked indignantly.
"He's a fool. He fails to cede appropriate due to your beauty, Beauty."
"To my what?" The least important thing about her.
The smithy flashed a blinding smile. "He seeks but to spread them, to slip between your thighs, but those love-slick dewy petals I would immortalize."
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 a sunder. 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."
Beyond the Highland Myst Page 19
