Beyond the Highland Mist (41 page)

Tavis yanked Hawk to his feet in a swift motion, surprising the drunken laird. “Pretty strong for an old man,” Hawk muttered. Tavis pulled the stumbling Hawk to the doors of the study.

“Get off me!” the Hawk bellowed.

“I expected more from you, lad. A fool I must be, but I thought you were the kind of man who fought for what he wanted. But no, you just fell apart in the face of a wee bit of adversity—”

“Och, and my wife leavin’ me for another man is only a wee bit of adversity? That’s what you call it?” Hawk slurred thickly, his burr deepening with his anger.

“Regardless of how
you
perceive what happened, you still have a family here, and a clan who needs its laird. If you can’t do the job, then step aside for someone who can!”

“Who the hell put you in charge of me?” Hawk roared.

Tavis’s own burr thickened as his temper mounted. “Your mother, you bletherin’ idiot! And even if she hadna asked me, I would have come after you myself! You may be killing yourself, lad, but I’ll no’ be having you torturing Lydia while you’re doing it!”

“All I’m doing, old man, is having a wee bit of a drink,” Hawk protested.

“You’ve been having a ‘wee bit of a drink’ for over a month now. I, for one, am tired of watching you guzzle
yourself to death. If you canna put down the bottle, then just get the hell out. Go piss the night away in a snowdrift where the people who love you are no’ forced to watch.”

Tavis kicked open the doors and tossed the stumbling Hawk face-first into the snow.

“And doona be coming back in until you can be nice to your mother! When you’re ready to be laird again,
and
you’ve given up the bottle, you can return. But not until then!” Tavis roared as the Hawk struggled to pull his head out of a drift.

When Hawk finally managed to struggle upright, he snorted disbelievingly when he saw the man he’d thought of as a mild-mannered tanner send the Hawk’s own guards to stand wide-legged in front of the door, crossed arms clearly barring him entrance into his own castle.

“Just stay out!” Tavis bellowed with such volume that Hawk heard him through the castle’s heavy wooden doors.

Adrienne hadn’t realized how thoroughly she hated winter.

The pale face of the clock above the mantel chimed once, twice, then lapsed into silence. Two o’clock in the morning; a time when being awake could make a person feel like the only living creature left in the world. And Adrienne did feel that way, until Marie silently entered the library. Adrienne glanced up and opened her mouth to say good night, but instead a deluge of words flooded out despite the dam she’d so painstakingly erected.

Marie tucked herself into an armchair and smoothed an afghan across her lap.

Adrienne poked at the fire and opened a bottle of sweet port while she told Marie a story she’d never told anyone. The story of the orphan girl who thought she’d fallen in love
with a prince, only to discover that Eberhard Darrow Garrett had been a prince of organized crime and that he’d been sending her on vacations to get drugs across the border in her luggage, her car, sewn into her clothing. And how, since she had always been packed and unpacked by his attendants, she hadn’t known. She’d simply enjoyed wearing his incredible ten-carat diamond engagement ring, riding in his limos, and thumbing her nose at the Franciscan nuns in the old orphanage on First Street. How she hadn’t known that the FBI had been drawing its net around him ever tighter. She’d seen that a wealthy, undeniably attractive man was showering her with love, or so she’d thought at the time. She’d had no idea she was a last-ditch effort to get a series of shipments out of the country. She’d never suspected that she was less than nothing to him—a beautiful, innocent young woman no one would ever suspect. His perfect pigeon.

Until the day she’d overheard a terrible conversation she’d never been meant to hear.

She told Marie in a hushed voice how she’d turned state’s evidence and bought her own freedom. And then how Eberhard, whom the FBI had managed to miss after all, had come after her in earnest.

Marie sipped her port and listened.

She told Marie how when she’d finally been trapped by him in an old abandoned warehouse, sick of running and hiding and being afraid, she’d done the only thing she could do when he’d raised his gun.

She’d killed him before he could kill her.

At that point Marie waved an impatient hand. “Eees not real story. Why you tell me this?” she asked, accusingly.

Adrienne blinked. She’d just told the woman what she’d been afraid to tell anyone. That she’d killed a man. She’d done it in self-defense, granted, but she’d killed a man. She told Marie things she’d never trusted to anyone before, and the woman waved it away. Pretty much accused her of wasting her time. “What do you mean, Marie? It was real,” she said defensively. “It happened. I was there.”

Marie rummaged through her small reticule of English to find the right words. “Yes yes,
señorita.
May be ees real, but ees not important. Ees over and forgotten. And ees not why you weep like world ees ending. Tell me real story. Who cares where you come from, or I? Today matters. Yesterday ees skin on a snake, to be shed many times.”

Adrienne sat very still for a long moment as a chill worked its way down her spine and into her belly. The hall clock chimed the quarter hour and Adrienne gazed at Marie with new appreciation.

Drawing a deep breath, Adrienne told her of Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea. Of Lydia. And of Sidheach. Marie’s brown eyes lit with a sparkle, and Adrienne was treated to a rare sight she’d bet few people had ever seen. The tiny olive-skinned woman laughed and clapped her small hands to hear of her love and of her time with the Hawk. She latched on to details, oohing over the nursery, glaring at her for saying Adam’s name too many times, ahhing over their time together in Uster, sighing over the wedding that should have been.

“Ah … finally … this ees
real
story.” Marie nodded.

In 1514, the Hawk was trying desperately to sleep. He’d heard a man could freeze to death if he fell asleep in the snow. But either it was too damned cold in that drift or he
wasn’t quite drunk enough. He could remedy that. Shivering, he pulled his tartan closer against the bitter, howling wind. Stumbling to his feet, he teetered unevenly up the exterior stairs to the rooftop, knowing the guards often kept a few bottles up there to keep them warm while they stood watch.

No such luck. No bottles and no guards. How could he have forgotten? The guards were all
inside
, where it was warm. He was the only one
outside.
He kicked aimlessly at the snow on the roof, then stiffened when a shadow shifted, black against the gleaming snow. He squinted and peered through the wet swirling flakes. “What the hell are you doing up here, Grimm?”

Grimm reluctantly abandoned his persistent survey of the falling dusk. He was about to explain when he saw the Hawk’s face and kept his silence instead.

“I said, what are you doing up here, Grimm? They tell me you practically live on my roof now.”

Suddenly furious, Grimm retorted, “Well, they tell me you practically live in a bottle of whisky now!”

Hawk stiffened and rubbed his unshaven jaw. “Don’t yell at me, you son of a bitch! You’re the one who lied to me about my—” He couldn’t say the word. Couldn’t even think it. His wife, about whom Grimm had been right. His wife, who had left him for Adam.

“You are so unbelievably dense you can’t even see the truth when it’s right in front of you, can you?” Grimm snapped.

The Hawk swayed drunkenly, God, where had he heard those words before? Why did they make his heart lurch inside his chest? “What are you doing up here, Grimm?” he repeated stubbornly, clutching at the parapet to steady himself.

“Waiting for a blasted falling star so I can wish her back, you drunken fool.”

“I don’t want her back,” Hawk snarled.

Grimm snorted. “I may have mucked it up once, but I’m not the only one who let his emotions interfere. If you would just get past your foolish pride and anger, you’d realize that the lass would never have left you willingly for that blasted smithy!”

Hawk flinched and rubbed his face. “What say you, man?”

Grimm shrugged and turned away, his dark eyes searching the sky intently. “When I thought she was breaking your heart, I tried to keep the two of you apart. ’Twas a damn fool thing for me to do, I know that now, but I did what I thought was best at the time. How the hell was I supposed to know you two were falling in love? I’ve had no such experience. It seemed like a bloody battle to me! But now, thinking back on it, I’m fair certain she loved you from the very beginning. Would that we all could see forward with such clarity. If you’d pull your head out of that bottle and your own stubborn ass long enough, you might develop keen vision as well.”

“She-said-she-loved-the-smithy,” Hawk spit each word out carefully.

“She said, if you’ll recall, that she loved him like Ever-hard. Tell me Hawk, how did she love her Ever-hard?”

“I don’t know,” Hawk snarled.

“Try to imagine. You told me yourself that he broke her heart. That she talked of him while you held her—”

“Shut up, Grimm!” the Hawk roared as he stalked away.

Hawk wandered the snow-covered gardens with his hands pressed over his ears to stem the flood of voices. He removed his hands from his ears only long enough to take another swig from the bottle he’d pilfered from the stable boy. But oblivion never came and the voices didn’t stop—they just grew louder and clearer.

I love you, Sidheach. Trust you, with all my heart and further then.

None of my falcons have ever flown my hand without returning
, he had warned her at the beginning of that magic summer.

You were right about your falcons, Sidheach
, she’d said when she left with Adam. He’d wondered many a night why she’d said those words; they’d made no sense to him at all. But now a hint of understanding penetrated his stupor.

Right about his falcons …

Had his own jealousy and insecurity about the smithy so muddled his vision?