Beyond the Highland Mist (35 page)

It wasn’t the black queen that had brought Adrienne to him, or so cruelly ripped her from him. That was a fact.

So what was it?

Someone or something else had that power. The power to destroy the laird of Dalkeith with one blow—by taking his cherished wife away from him. What game, what terrible, twisted amusement was being played out upon Dalkeith’s shore? What power had taken an interest and why?

I came here to hate you, Hawk. But I did not come here to hate the woman you claim as wife.
Adam’s words echoed in his mind, and he began to see just the vague outline of a carefully plotted revenge. But that would mean Adam Black had powers the Hawk had never quite believed existed. Bits and pieces of Rom stories he’d heard as a lad resurfaced in his whirring mind, raising questions and doubts. Stories about Druids and Picts and, aye, even the nefarious and mischievous Fairy. Lydia had always said that any legend was based in some part on fact, the mythical elements being merely the inexplicable but not necessarily untrue.

Oh, his love was testing the limits of his belief in the natural world and blowing them wide open.

But if he conceded belief in such magic as time travel, what magic could he discard as too outrageous? None. He could discard no possibility, however unearthly, without thorough consideration.

Adam Black had been able to cure the previously incurable poison of Callabron. Adam Black always seemed to know too damned much. Adam Black admitted flatly that he had come to Dalkeith for revenge.

The Rom had moved far from the smithy’s forge. The Rom who
believed
the myths and legends.

And the Hawk, indebted to Adam for his wife’s life, had
forced himself to overlook all the oddities, attributing them to his intense dislike of the smithy, convincing himself that he was seeing dragons in the puffy shapes of harmless clouds.

He would never let her go, but someone or something else could take her from him at a moment’s whim.

He would seek it, destroy it, and free her—on his life he vowed it.

For there was no life for him without her.

A
LTHOUGH THE
H
AWK INSISTED ON LEAVING EARLY THE NEXT
morning, he also made sure they took their sweet time on the way back to Dalkeith. He sent half the guards to ride ahead and commanded the other half to stay well behind him and his lady, to allow them privacy. He would return to Uster and oversee the rest of the manorial courts in the future, after this battle was done.

Adrienne was thrilled by his urgency to return to Dalkeith to seal their vows. She was equally thrilled by the three-day journey, with long dalliances in chilly pools of bubbling spring water. Longer interludes of passion on springy moss beneath the canopy of brightly fluttering leaves. Moments in which he teased, coaxed, and taught her until the blushing virgin grew confident in her newly discovered womanhood, thrilled to feel a woman’s power over her man. She soon became expert in the subtle ways of touching or speaking, of wetting a lip and beckoning with her eyes. She knew the
stolen caresses and the instant responses that turned her sweet, beautiful man into a throbbing, hardened savage.

She was mildly stunned to discover that autumn had painted the hills with the inspiration of a master; leaves in brilliant shades of pumpkin, bloodwine, and buttery amber rustled crisply beneath the horse’s hooves as they rode beneath boughs of harvest gold. Squirrels chirped and skittered through the trees with gravity-defying leaps. Scotland in all her majestic glory, airbrushed by love, colored the simple gifts of nature into a tapestry of miracles. Adrienne had never realized the world was such a wonderful place.

She would remember the leisurely return journey to Dalkeith as her honeymoon; a time of phenomenal passion and tender romancing. A time of blissful healing and loving. Quite simply, the happiest days of her life.

Late on the second day, as they lay on a Douglas tartan of blues and grays, an unaddressed hurt surfaced to poke at Adrienne and she couldn’t stay her tongue. Gripping the Hawk’s face between her hands, she kissed him hard, hot, and tempting, then pulled back and said, “If you ever forbid me from you again, my husband, I will tear down the walls of Dalkeith, stone by stone, to get to you.”

The Hawk shook his head, his thoughts completely muddled by the tantalizing kiss and further bewildered by her words. He claimed her lips in a long, equally fierce kiss, and when she lay panting softly beneath him, he said, “If you ever fail to see how I am faring after being wounded, I will add a stone tower onto Dalkeith and lock you in there, my captive love-slave, never to refuse me anything again.”

It was her turn to study him with a bewildered expression, her lips full and rosy from the heat of his kiss. “If you
mean after you were injured by the arrow, I
tried
to see you. Grimm wouldn’t let me.”

Hawk’s gaze battled with hers. “Grimm said you never came. He said you were sleeping soundly in the Peacock Room with naught a worry in your mind, save how soon I would die and leave you free.”

Adrienne gasped. “Never! I was right outside your door. Arguing and fighting with him. Still, he swore you refused me entrance!”

“I have never refused you entrance. Nay, I opened my very soul and bade you enter. Now you’re telling me that you came to see me that night, and Grimm told you I had given orders that you were to be refused?”

Adrienne nodded, wide-eyed.

Dark fury flitted across the Hawk’s face as he recalled the agony he’d endured, believing she’d not cared enough to see if he still lived and breathed. Suddenly he understood his friend’s stiff behavior that night. The way Grimm’s gaze had not seemed quite steady. The nervous way he’d built up the already blazing fire and had poked aimlessly at the crackling logs. “Grimm, what mischief do you play?” he murmured. Could Grimm wish Adrienne ill? Or had Grimm only been trying to protect him, his friend and brother-in-arms, from further harm?

Regardless, his actions were unacceptable. No matter how long-standing their friendship, lies were never tolerable. And Grimm’s lies had driven a wedge between him and his wife, a wedge that had sent the Hawk rushing off to Uster. What if he hadn’t returned for Adrienne? How far might Grimm’s lies have taken them apart from each other? What might Adam have done to his wife if he hadn’t returned for her?

The Hawk’s mouth tightened. Adrienne laid her palm
against his cheek and said softly, “Hawk, I don’t think he meant any harm. He seemed to be trying to protect you. He said I had brought you nothing but pain, and that it was all his fault.”

“His
fault?”

“For wishing on a star.”

The Hawk snorted. “Wishes on stars don’t come true, lass. Any addlebrained bairn knows that.”

Adrienne cocked a mischievous brow at him. “But he did say he wished for the perfect woman.” She preened. “And I do fit the bill,” she teased.

“Aye, that you do,” the Hawk growled. With a wicked smile, he cupped one of her perfect breasts in his hand and pushed her back upon the tartan as their passion began once again. His last coherent thought before he lost himself in the beauty and wonder that was his wife, was that Grimm owed him some answers and his wife an apology. And, if he had to admit it, that for all he knew maybe wishes on falling stars did come true. Stranger things had happened of late.

On the last day, Hawk rode as if hell-bent.
Stole three days
, he mused darkly, holding his wife to his chest in his possessive embrace, his cheek brushing her silky hair.

In the woods he had felt safe, that whatever enemy threatened her didn’t know where she was at that moment. So he’d prolonged it and spun it out to make it last, keeping his worries away from his wife, wanting nothing to spoil her pleasure.

Besides, he kept collapsing into near slumber every time his demanding young wife had her way with him. Damnedest odd thing. He’d never fallen so replete and satisfied to the ground. Oh, but that lass had some
serious
magic.

But now his mind turned darkly to the matter that lay ahead. Until the feast of the Blessed Dead, Rushka had warned. The Samhain was tomorrow, the day after the Samhain was the feast of the Blessed Dead—or All Saints, as some called it.

The Samhain was a perilous time for any to be alone. It was rumored that the Fairy walked the earth in full glamour on such a night. It was rumored that wickedness abounded on the Samhain, which was why the clans laid the double bonfire of birch, rowan, oak, and pine, and carved deep trenches around it. There they gathered to a one, every man, woman, and child, and feasted together in the protective rim of light. Within that ring, he would pledge his life to his wife and try to make some magic of their own.

He could just feel it in his bones that something was about to go very wrong.

For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.
S
HAKESPEARE
, S
ONNETS
CIX

A
DAM HISSED AS HE LEFT THE FAIRY ISLE OF
M
ORAR
. T
IME
, usually of no significance to him, had flashed past him, day by precious day. When he played a mortal game, time became a nagging concern. For too long he’d neglected his doings at Dalkeith, but it had taken some time to convince his Queen that he was up to no mischief.

Now the far-seeing Adam turned his mind toward Dalkeith to study the changes in his game. He stiffened and hissed again. How dare they?

When his Queen had said the damning words sealing the Hawk’s fate, Adam had searched far and wide for the perfect tool of revenge. He had wandered through the centuries, listening, watching, and finally choosing the perfect woman with careful precision. Adam was not one to muck in the lives of mortals often, but when he did, legends arose. And Adam liked that.

Some called him Puck.
A
Bard would name him Ariel.
Still others knew him as Robin Goodfellow. The Scots called him the
sin siriche du
—the black elf. Occasionally, Adam donned the visage of a charging and headless horseman, or a grim-faced specter carrying a scythe, just to live long in the memories of mortals. But whatever the glamour chose, he
always
won what he set out to win. And he’d been so certain of success this time! The woman had not only grown up in magical New Orleans, she’d sworn off men so vehemently that he’d heard her through the centuries. Adam had watched her for weeks before he’d made his careful choice; he’d studied her, learned everything there was to know about the fascinating Adrienne de Simone. Things even her beloved husband didn’t know about her. He had been convinced that she was the one woman guaranteed to hate the legendary Hawk.

Now, as Adam moved toward Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea, his far-reaching vision revealed a blissful Adrienne, wedding plans lazing dreamily in her mind.

But the Hawk, ah…. the Hawk wasn’t so comfortable right now. He sensed something was wrong. He would be prepared.