Beyond the Highland Mist (40 page)

The tiny Cuban woman dropped to her knees and very carefully pulled Adrienne into her arms. Then she rocked her, smoothed her hair, and did her best to comfort her.

For days and days Adrienne lay on her back replaying every precious memory on the blank screen of her ceiling. She’d pulled the drapes shut and turned all the lights out. She couldn’t stand the world to be bright without him.

Marie floated in and out, bringing food and drink that remained untouched, and Moonie stayed at her side unceasingly.

Adrienne just drifted in and out of consciousness, as the mind does when grief runs too deep to handle. Eventually she came back to herself, but she went the long way around.

On the glistening silica sands of Morar, Adam Black sauntered with arrogant grace to his Queen’s side.

“Where have you been wandering, minstrel-mine?”
Queen Aoibheal asked silkily. “What new tales and entertainments have you collected for me?”

“Oh, the finest of tales! An epic, grand adventure,” Adam bragged, drawing the elegant courtiers near.

The Fae loved a good tale, the thicker the subterfuge, the more intense the passions, the more aroused the court. They’d long since tired of happy endings; immune to suffering themselves, they were enamored with mortal struggles and casualties. The Queen herself was most especially partial to a tragicomedy of errors, and this new tale did suit that genre well.

“Tell us, jester, sing and play for us!” the court of the Tuatha De Danaan cried.

Adam’s smile gleamed brightly. He met his Queen’s eye and held it long. “Once upon a time there was a mortal man. A man so fair even the Fae Queen herself had noticed him …”

The Queen’s eyes glittered brightly as she listened, at first in amusement, after a time with obvious agitation, and finally with a sensation that vaguely resembled remorse.

L
YDIA SIGHED AS SHE PICKED THROUGH HER SEEDS
. T
HE NEW
Year had inched past them as if it traveled on the humped back of a snail. She didn’t even want to recall the grim scene Christmas had been. Winter had descended upon Dalkeith in force—icicles twisted obscenely from the shutters, and the dratted door to the front steps had been frozen shut this morning, effectively sealing her in her own home.

Lydia could remember a time when she’d loved the winter. When she’d reveled in each season and the unique pleasures it brought. Christmas had once been her favorite holiday. But now … she missed Adrian and Ilysse.
Come home, children. I need you
, she prayed silently.

The sound of splintering wood suddenly rent the air, causing her to jerk her head up in an involuntary gesture that sent her precious seeds flying.

Damned inconsiderate of them to split firewood right outside the window.

Lydia pushed irritably at her hair and began to reorganize the scattered seeds. She dreamed of the flowers she would plant—if spring ever came again.

Another resounding crash shuddered through the Great-hall. She stifled a very unladylike oath and laid her seeds aside. “Keep it down out there! A body’s trying to do a bit of thinking!” she yelled.

Still the deafening crashes continued. “We aren’t all that short of firewood, lads!” Lydia roared at the frozen door.

Her words were met with a terrible screeching noise.

“That’s it. That’s
it!”
She leapt up from her chair and seethed. That last one had seemed to come from … upstairs?

She cocked her head at an angle.

Someone had either decided it was too cold to split firewood outside or was quite busily turning the furniture into kindling instead.

The crash was followed by the shattering of glass.
“Holy shit!”
Lydia muttered, as her lovely daughter-in-law would have offered quite perkily. She spun on her heel, grabbed up her skirts, and raced the stairs like a lass of twenty. Hand on her heart she flew down the corridor, skidding past gawking maids and tense soldiers. How many people had stood about listening to this insane destruction while she’d been sitting downstairs?

Not the nursery
, she prayed,
anything but that.

Her son would never destroy that room of dreams. Granted, he’d been a bit out of sorts, but still … No. He definitely would not do something so terrible. Not her son.

By all that’s holy, oh yes he would. And he was.

Her breath came in burning gasps as she stared, dumbfounded. Her son stood in the nursery surrounded by a twisted heap of horrid broken wooden limbs. He’d been literally ripping apart the lovingly crafted furnishings. He was
clad in only a kilt, his upper body glistening with sweat. The veins in his arms were swollen and his hands were raw and bloody. His raven hair was loose but for the two war braids at either temple.
By the sweet saints, just paint his face blue and I wouldn’t even know him for my son!
Lydia thought.

The Hawk stood silently, wild-eyed. There was a smudge of blood on his face where he’d wiped at sweat. Lydia watched, frozen in horror, as he tilted an oil bowl, drizzling its contents over the splinters of furniture, the toys and books, the magnificent dollhouse that had been squashed flat in his gargantuan rage.

When he dropped the candle, a soft scream wrenched her mouth wide.

The flames leapt up, greedily devouring the pile of Hawk’s and Lydia’s shattered dreams. Shaking with hurt and fury, Lydia pressed a hand to her mouth and swallowed a sob. She turned away before the animal that used to be her son could see her tears.

“We have to do something,” Lydia murmured woodenly, staring blankly at the kitchen hearth.

Tavis stepped close behind her, his hands suspended in the air just above her waist. He dropped his head forward and inhaled deeply of her scent. “I’ll speak with him, Lydia—”

“He won’t listen,” she choked as she spun around. “I’ve tried. Dear God, we’ve all tried. He’s like some rabid dog, snarling and foaming and oh, Tavis! My nursery! My grandbabies!”

“
I
haven’t tried yet,” Tavis said calmly, dropping his hands to grip her waist.

Lydia cocked her head, marveling at the implicit
authority in his words. He’d managed to surprise her once again, this gentle man who’d stood patiently by her side for so long.

“You’ll speak with him?” she echoed hopefully, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears.

“Aye,” he assured her.

Strength and ability laced his reply. How could it have taken her so long to begin to see this man clearly?

Some of her astonishment must have been evident in her gaze, because he gave her that patient smile and said tenderly, “I knew one day you’d finally open your eyes, Lydia. I also knew it would be worth every minute of the wait,” he added quietly.

Lydia swallowed hard as a fission of heat and hope and heady, tumultuous love spread through her in a wave. Love. How long had she been in love with this man? she wondered dumbly.

Tavis brushed her lips with his, a light friction that promised so much more. “Doona worry. I care for him like my own, Lydia. And, as if he were my own, ’tis time we had a good thorough father-son kind of talk.”

“But what if he refuses to listen?” she fretted.

Tavis smiled. “He’ll listen. You can take Tavis MacTarvitt’s word on that, I’ll say.”

The Hawk brooded into the fire, watching ghosts dance whitely in the spaces between the flames. They were memory-born and hell-bound, as he surely was. But purgatory—if not heaven—was within his reach, tidily captured in a bottle, and so he toasted the ghosts as he raced them to oblivion.

He picked up another bottle of whisky and turned it in
his hand, studying its rich amber color with drunken appreciation. He raised the bottle to his lips, his hand fisted about the neck, and bit out the stopper. Briefly he remembered biting out the stopper of a Gypsy potion. Remembered covering his wife’s body with his own and tasting, touching, kissing … He’d been fool enough then to believe in love.

Bah! Adam! It had always been him. From the first day he’d seen her. She’d been standing pressed against a tree trunk watching the blasted smithy with hunger in her eyes. He tossed back a swallow of whisky and considered going back to court. Back to King James.

A crooked, bitter smile curved his lip. Even as he pictured himself prowling the boudoirs of Edinburgh again, another part of his mind recalled the roiling thick steam rising from a scented bath, the sheen of oil upon her skin as she’d tossed her head back, baring the lovely column of her throat to his teeth. Baring everything to him, or so he’d thought.

Adrienne … Treacherous, traitorous, lying unfaithful bitch.

“Lay me into the dead earth now and be done with it,” he muttered to the fire. He didn’t even react when the door to the study was flung open so hard that it hit the wall. “Close the door, man. A bit of a draft chilling my bones, there is,” the Hawk slurred unsteadily without even bothering to see who had invaded the drunken squalor of his private hell. He again tilted the bottle to his mouth and took a long swallow.

Tavis crossed the room in three purposeful strides and smashed the bottle out of Hawk’s hand with such force that it shattered in a splash of glass and whisky on the smooth stones of the hearth. He gazed at Tavis a befuddled moment, then reached, undeterred, for a second bottle.

Tavis stepped between the Hawk and the crated liquor.

“Get out of my way, old man,” Hawk growled, tensing to rise. He had barely gained his feet when Tavis’s fist connected solidly with his jaw, spilling him back into the chair.

Hawk wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and glared up at Tavis. “Why’d you go and do that for, Tavis MacTarvitt?” he grumbled, making no move to defend himself.

“I don’t give a bloody hell what you do to yourself,
laird,”
Tavis sneered. “Just get the hell out of this castle and don’t do it in front of your mother.”

“Who the hell d’you think you are?”

“I know who I am! I’m the man who watched you grow from wee lad to braw laird. I’m the man who burst with pride while he watched you make some hard choices.” Tavis’s voice dropped a harsh notch, “Aye, I’m just the man who has loved you since the day you drew your first hungry breath in this world. And now I’m the man who’s going to thrash you within an inch of your worthless life if you don’t get a grip on yourself.”

Hawk gaped, then swiped irritably at Tavis. “Go ‘way.” He closed his eyes wearily.

“Oh, I’m not done yet, my boy,” Tavis said through gritted teeth. “You are not fit to be laird of a dunghill. ’Tis obvious you have no intention of pulling yourself together, so until you do you can just get the bleeding hell out of Lydia’s castle. Now! I’ll send word to Adrian and bring him home. He’ll make a fine laird—”

The Hawk’s eyes flew open. “Over my dead body,” he snarled.

“Fine. So be it,” Tavis spit back. “You’re no use to anyone
as you are now anyway. You may as well fall on your own claymore for all the good you’re doing your people!”

“I am laird here!” Hawk slurred, his eyes flashing furiously. “And you … you, old man, oh hell, you’re fired.” Although he had intended—when he’d still had his wife—to relinquish his place to Adrian, it was currently damned cold outside and he wasn’t going anywhere just yet. Maybe in the spring, if he hadn’t drowned himself in whisky yet.