Beyond the Highland Mist Read online

  The answer came easily. Her strong, wise, ethical husband would have done whatever he had to do. Any other man the Hawk would have simply killed. But one couldn’t kill the King of Scotland. Not without having his clan’s existence completely eradicated by the king’s army. Same result, no choice. A sentence of fifteen years, all because of a scorned and spoiled king.

  “Can’t you just accept me as I am now, lass? It’s over. I’m free.” His voice was so low and resonant with anguish that she froze. His words threw her off balance; it was something she might have said herself if confronted with her past by someone she cared for. Her husband understood pain, and perhaps shame and, oh so surely, regret. What right had she to judge and condemn a person for a dark past? If she were honest with herself, she would even point out that her past had been the result of her own naive mistakes, where his painful ordeal had been one he’d been forced to endure to keep safe his clan and his family.

  She wanted to touch and heal the man who sat so stiffly away from her now, yet she was not quite sure how to begin. This much was clear—he hadn’t been the king’s whore, whatever that was, because he’d wanted to; that fact went a long way toward easing her mind. More than anything, she wanted to understand this fierce, proud man. To brush away the shadows in his beautiful dark eyes. She jerked swiftly when she felt silk graze her jaw.

  “No! Don’t put the hood back on me. Please.”

  Hawk ignored her protests, and she sighed as he retied the cords.

  “Will you just tell me why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you ‘seeling’ me now?” What had she done to provoke his anger?

  “I stepped back, lass. I gave you what no other man would have given you. I allowed you the time to choose me of your own will. But it seems your will is wildly foolish and needs persuading. Choose me, you will. And when you do, there will be no other man’s name on your lips, no other man’s shaft between your thighs, no other man’s face in your mind’s eye.”

  “But—” She wanted to know why her time had so suddenly run out. What had made him snap?

  “No buts. No more words, lass, unless you would have me bind your mouth as well. From this time forward you see without the benefit of those beautiful, lying eyes. Perhaps I’m not a complete fool. Perhaps you might see true with your inner vision. Then again, perhaps not. But your first lesson is that what I look like has nothing to do with who I am. Who I might have had to be in the past has nothing to do with who I am. When you finally see me clearly, then and only then will you see with your eyes again.”

  They arrived in Uster shortly after dawn. Pushing his horse hard through the night, Hawk turned a two-day journey into less than one.

  He guided her into the laird’s residence, past the gawking staff, up the stairs and to the bedroom. Without a word, he cut the bonds on her wrists with a dagger, pushed her to the bed, locking the door behind him as he left.

  The instant Adrienne’s hands were free she ripped off the silken hood. She’d been prepared to shred it into tiny silken tatters but realized he’d probably just use something else if she destroyed it. Besides, she mused, she had no intention of fighting him. She had enough of a battle on her hands trying to face her own emotions; let him do what he felt he needed to do. It granted her more time to grow familiar with the new feelings inside her. Dear heaven, but he was angry with her. Just what he was angry about she wasn’t certain, but her resolve was still true. In the face of his fury, her soldiers had not changed their minds. They all stood proudly on the Hawk’s side, and she was with them to a man.

  He planned to seduce her callously? To open her inner vision to him?

  He didn’t need to know that it had already been opened, and that she shamelessly anticipated every moment of the seducing.

  The Hawk walked slowly through the streets of Uster. It was nearly deserted at this late hour, only those of courage, abject stupidity, or evil intent walked the streets late at night when a heavy fog was roiling in. He wondered into which category he fell.

  Much had been begun this day, yet even more remained unfinished. He’d spent most of his morning going over the miller’s books and talking with angry villagers who accused the man of substituting their grain. There was only one miller, so positioned by the king’s men before Hawk had been released from his pledge of service. Being the only one, he had been able to exert absolute control over the villager’s grain and had, in collusion with the local bailiff, indeed been cheating on weights, substituting moldy meal for better grains, and turning a tidy profit three towns northerly.

  Hawk sighed. That had been only the first of a dozen problems demanding his attention. He would have to hold the courts for a fortnight to catch up on all that had gone wrong under his benign neglect while he had been off in service to James.

  But he had time to remedy the villagers’ many ills, and remedy them he would. His people had been well pleased to have him back and once again taking an interest in their needs. As of this day, three men in Uster now held miller’s tools and miller’s rights. The Hawk smiled. Competition would be good for his people.

  Tansy and mint swirled out the door of an open establishment as he passed by. A woman beckoned from the doorway, clad only in a filmy bit of stained and tattered silk. The Hawk cocked an amused brow and smiled, but declined as he continued down the street. His eyes turned dark and bitter. He had more than he could handle waiting for him at home.

  Adrienne sat up with a start when she heard the Hawk throw open the door to her chamber. She had been imagining the sweet seduction he had in store for her and had to use all her composure to hide her excitement at his return.

  “Oh, you’re back,” she drawled, hoping she had succeeded in masking her delight.

  He crossed the room in two awesome strides, took her in his arms, and frowned darkly down at her. He lowered his head inexorably toward her lips, and she turned her face away. Undeterred, he grazed her neck with his teeth until he reached the base where her traitorous pulse beat raggedly. Her breath caught in her throat as he nipped her and ran his tongue up the column of her neck. If his very nearness made her shiver, his kisses would be her complete undoing. His rough shadow beard chafed her skin when he tugged her head back and gently nipped the lobe of her ear. Adrienne sighed her pleasure, then added a little squeal of protest just to be convincing.

  “You will forget the smithy, lass,” he promised. A swift yank of her hair forced her to meet his gaze.

  “I had no intention of remembering him anyway. He’s nothing more than a pushy, overbearing, liberty-taking scoundrel.”

  “Nice try, wife,” Hawk said dryly.

  “What do you mean, nice try? Why are you so obsessed with the smithy?”

  “Me? You’re the one who’s obsessed with the smithy!” He raised the hood toward her head.

  “You are so thickheaded you don’t even see the truth when it’s right in front of you.”

  “Oh, but that’s just the point, lass. I saw the truth clearly with my own eyes that day in the garden. Aye, too clearly, and the memory of it seethes in my mind, mocking me. I had just been wounded saving your fickle life, but you had no care for that. Nay, you had other sweet plans in the making. And my absence only made it easier for you. Gone from your side for all of a few hours and so quickly you lay beneath him on the fountain. My fountain. My wife.”

  So that was it, she mused. He’d returned and seen the smithy when he’d been doing those foggy frightening things to her, when she’d been fighting him. He’d been standing there watching the smithy practically rape her and, in his mind, believed she was willing. He hadn’t even thought to help her.

  “Perhaps I’m not the only one who can’t see so clearly,” she said scathingly. “Perhaps there are two in this room who could benefit from a little inner vision.”

  “What say you, lass?” Hawk said softly.

  She would not dignify his stupidity with a response. A man had practically raped her, and in his jea
lousy her husband had simply watched. The more she protested her innocence, the guiltier she would look. And the more she thought about it, the angrier it made her. “I merely suggest you find that inner eye yourself, husband,” she said, just as softly.

  Her quiet dignity gave him pause. No mewling or lying or groveling. No justifications. Could it be he had misunderstood what he had seen on the fountain? Perhaps. But he would erase her memories of the smithy, that he vowed. He smiled darkly and seeled her with the silken hood again. Yes, by the time he was finished she would forget Adam Black even existed.

  That he knew he could do. He’d been trained for it. First by the Gypsies and then by the Duchess of Courtland. “Sex is not merely a momentary pleasure,” she’d instructed him. “It is an art to be practiced with studied hand and discriminating taste. I am going to school you in this, the finest of forays into human scandal. You will be the best lover the land has ever known by the time I am done. Easily, for there is no question that you are the most beautiful.”

  And the lessons had begun. She’d been right—there had indeed been much he hadn’t known. And she showed him, this spot here, that curve there, this way of moving, a thousand positions, the subtle ways to use his body to bring many different kinds of pleasure, and finally, all the mind games that went with it.

  He learned well, committing this art to memory. And in time, his eager boyish hunger was lost adrift a meaningless sea of conquests and mistresses.

  Oh, he was the best, no question about it. He left the lasses begging for his attention. The legend of the Hawk grew. Then one day, a woman whom Hawk had spurned repeatedly—Olivia Dumont—petitioned King James for his favors as if he were a piece of property to be granted.

  And like royal property, James had granted him, wielding the same threat of harm to Dalkeith should he disobey.

  How James had loved that—especially when he realized how much the Hawk had been humiliated by it. And so the king had said, you will be whoever We want you to be, even if it’s a thing so trivial as Our whore, to please Our favored ladies. Other men were sent to battle. The Hawk was sent to bed with Olivia. Doubly humiliating.

  Many men had envied the Hawk—the lover of so many beautiful women. Still more men had hated the Hawk for his prowess and virility, and for the legends the ladies wove about him.

  Eventually, James had grown tired of hearing the legends. Sick of his ladies clamoring about the beautiful man, James had sent the Hawk abroad on absurd and risky missions. To steal a crown jewel from Persia. To beguile a priceless objet d’art from an old heiress in Rome. Whatever odd treasure the greedy James had heard of, the Hawk was sent to acquire by fair means or foul. The king’s whore had been simply that: a man who did the king’s “dirty work,” whatsoever his fickle liege wished at the time.

  Now his eyes returned to the lass standing in silence before him.

  She was so different from any he’d ever known. From the first day he’d seen her, he’d recognized that she was truly without artifice or coy subterfuge. Although she might have hidden depths, they were neither malicious nor self-serving but had been born of suffering and loneliness, not of deceit. He’d recognized that she had a pure heart, as pure and real and full of possibility as his Gypsy fields had been, and that it had already been given to a man who was undeserving! To the epitome of deceit and strange artifice. To Adam Black.

  By hook or crook or whatever fashion was necessary, he would woo and win her. He would make her see the error of her ways—that she’d given her heart to the wrong man.

  She was seeled both from him and to him, until she learned to see again with that pure heart which had recoiled into hiding. He would wake it, shake it up, and force it to come out and face the world again. And when she’d learned to see him for what he really was, then she could see him with her eyes again.

  Adrienne stood stock-still and uncertain. It was strange, knowing he was in the room but not knowing where or what he was doing. He could be standing in front of her even now, his body nude and glistening in the oil lights. She imagined him lit by the soft glow of candles. She loved the fires and torchères of this century. What kind of romance could live and breathe beneath fluorescent lights of her own time?

  She regretted the hood as it deprived her of seeing him, but decided that was for the best. If she could see him, that meant he could see her eyes, and they would surely betray her fascination, if not her willingness.

  She felt the whisper of a breeze. Was he to her left? No, her right.

  “The first time is for erasing all your memories of another man.”

  He was circling round her. Her heart thundered. With any other man, being unable to see would have felt threatening, but not with the Hawk. For despite his fury, he had proven himself to be honorable to the core. She knew that although he’d seeled her, he had done so in an attempt to win her love and trust—not to dominate or subdue her. There was nothing threatening in the fact that he’d closed her eyes to him; he’d opened her heart with his silken hood. Her lack of vision heightened all her other senses to an exquisite state.

  When his hand caressed the column of her neck, she swallowed a sigh of pleasure.

  Hawk continued circling her; to her side, then to her back, and, in what seemed like an eternity later, around to her front. Her ears strained for clues, her body vibrated with tension, wondering, waiting.

  “The second time will be for teaching. Teaching you how it feels to be loved by a man such as me. ’Tis a thing you’ll never forget.”

  His breath fanned the nape of her neck, his fingers picked up a fall of her hair. She could hear only ragged breathing—his or hers, she wasn’t certain. She stiffened at the brush of his hand against the curve of her hip, feeling a wild jolt of electricity charge through her body.

  “The third time will be for the jessing and leashing. I promise you that time will be the end of your resistance.”

  He trailed his fingers down her neck, across her breasts from nipple to nipple, then down over her taut stomach. His light caress feathered between her legs and was gone, leaving behind an aching hunger.

  “But the fourth time, ah, the fourth time when I hear your sweet cries, that one’s for me, lass. For the waiting and the hunger and the agony of wanting you. Just for me.”

  His hands were on her shoulders, sliding the silk of the gown over her skin. Undoing tiny pearl buttons at the nape of her neck one by one with something that felt like … teeth? Oh! His tongue flickered against the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck then moved lower still.

  Oh dear heavens but this sensuous stroke of his tongue could be her complete undoing. The rough velvet of his tongue traced its way all the way down her spine, then lower still. She trembled.

  Her knees weak, she swayed in silence. Can’t make a sound, she reminded herself. Not a good sound, anyway. Only protests.

  Just when she was certain she couldn’t maintain her silence a second longer, he stepped back, and she felt a slow breeze in his wake. She turned, attempting to track him in the silence.

  The back of her gown was open, her skin damp from his kisses. She waited in mute anticipation. Where was he?

  There, she thought as she suddenly felt him grasp the fabric of her dress. He tugged her gown and it fell to the floor in a rustle of silk. The chemise fell next, and then there was nothing but stockings, lace stays, and slippers.

  Hawk was grateful she was seeled, that she couldn’t see the tremor in his hands as he slid to his knees and removed one stocking slowly, rolling it down inch by inch as he knelt before her. He trailed reverent kisses down her long, silky leg. From her supple thigh to the back of her knee to her trim ankle, he lavished her legs, first one, then the other, with hot kisses, making certain he didn’t miss one delectable inch of the creamy flesh he’d been dying to taste.

  She made not a whimper, but he understood her game. Hating him as she did, she would surely not utter one sound of pleasure unless he could rip it from her throat. And to do that
he must keep a clear head. He must not lose control and start thinking about those shimmering curls at the sweet juncture of her thighs, only inches from his mouth, or the silken nub that nestled within, the very center of her passion. From his position at her feet he reveled in every plane and curve of her perfect body. His eyes skimmed over her firm thighs, up her taut, slightly rounded belly, over her creamy breasts to the alabaster column of her neck where it met the black silk hood.

  Adrienne knew that if something didn’t happen fast, her legs were going to simply buckle beneath her and she would fall on his face. Not a bad idea, her mind offered. She was shocked. Aghast. But maybe …

  She swayed forward slightly.

  Hawk groaned as her shimmering curls brushed his unshaven cheek. Kneeling at her feet, he squeezed his eyes shut to banish the vision, the need, unaware that his tongue wet his lip and his mouth demanded …

  Shaking, he growled and surged to his feet, and then his hands were on her body and he knew he was in serious trouble. Where the hell had the Hawk gone? he wondered as he tumbled her roughly back to the bed. Where was the Lothario? That legendary master of control who was going to tease her beyond endurance and shatter her defenses? Just where the hell had his will gone? What will? he wondered, for he was lost in a green field of innocence more sweet and lush than any he’d ever known.

  Adrienne moaned when his body covered hers, pressing her down into the soft bed. He was every inch a hot, demanding man. Oh, heavenly, the woman within her purred. Take me, she wanted to cry. But not that easily, she wouldn’t give in too quickly.

  In a swift motion the Hawk ripped the hood off her head and kissed her, burying his hands in her hair. He kissed her so deeply that she lost her breath and the last remnants of her fear.