The Highlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 10

  “Can’t lose something you don’t have. Never had me to begin with, Lord Hawk,” she mumbled.

  “Yet,” he corrected. “I haven’t had you yet. At least not in the sense that I will have you. Beneath me. Bare, silky skin slippery with my loving. My kisses. My hunger.” He traced the pad of his thumb along the curve of her lower lip and smiled.

  “Never.”

  “Never say never. It only makes you feel more foolish when you end up taking it back. I wouldn’t want you to feel too foolish, lass.”

  “Never,” she said more firmly. “And I never say never unless I’m absolutely one hundred percent certain I will never change my mind.”

  “There are a lot of nevers in there, my heart. Be careful.”

  “Your heart is a wrinkled prune. And I mean every blasted one of those nevers.”

  “Mean them as you will, lass. ’twill only make it that much more pleasurable to break you to my bit.”

  “I am not a mare to be broken to ride!”

  “Ah, but there are many similarities, wouldn’t you say? You need a strong hand, Adrienne. A confident rider, one not dismayed by your strong will. You need a man who can handle your bucking and enjoy your run. I won’t break you to ride. Nay. I will break you to the feel of my hand and mine alone. A mare broken to ride allows many riders, but a wild horse broken to the bit of one hand—she loses none of her fire, yet permits none but her true master to mount her.”

  “No man has ever been my master, and none ever will. Get that straight in your head, Douglas.” Adrienne gritted her teeth as she struggled to pull herself upright. It was hard trying to hold her ground in a conversation while lying flat on her back feeling ridiculously weak, looking up at this goliath of a man. “And as to mounting me….”

  To her chagrin and the Hawk’s vast amusement, she slipped back into healing slumber without completing the thought.

  Unknown to him, she more than completed it in her dreams. Never! her dreaming-within-the-dream mind seethed, even as she was drawn to the great black charger with fire in his eyes.

  CHAPTER 11

  “IT’S NOT ME SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL, ADRIENNE repeated.

  She was buried in mounds of plush pillows and woolen throws and felt helplessly swallowed by a mountain of feathers. Every time she moved the dratted bed moved with her. It was wearing her out, like being cocooned in a down straitjacket. “I want to get up, Hawk. Now.” Too bad her voice didn’t come off sounding as firm as she’d intended. It would have—it should have—except being in a bed while trying to argue with this particular man scattered her thoughts like leaves to a windstorm, into a jumble of passionate images; bronzed skin against pale, ebony eyes and hot kisses.

  The Hawk smiled, and she had to bite down the overwhelming urge just to smile blankly back, like some dim-witted idiot. He was beautiful when somber, but when he smiled she was in grave danger of forgetting that he was the enemy. And she must never forget that. So she put a lot of frustration to good use, and dredged up an impressive scowl.

  His smile faded. “Lass, it’s been you both times. When are you going to face the facts? You must be guarded. You’ll get used to it. In time you’ll scarce notice them.” He gestured at the dozen brawny men standing outside the Green Lady’s room.

  She shot a withering glance at her “elite guard” as he called them. They stood legs wide, arms folded across thin broad chests. Implacable, stony faces, and all of them with physiques that would make Atlas consider shrugging half his weight over. Where do they breed these kind of men? The Bonny and Braw Beefcake Farm? She snorted her disgust. “What you don’t understand is that if you’re so busy protecting me, the assassin is going to get whoever they’re really after. Because it’s not me!”

  “Do they call you ‘Mad Janet’ because you refuse to accept reality?” he wondered. “Reality is that someone wishes you dead. Reality is that I am only trying to protect you. Reality is that you are my wife and I will always keep you safe from harm.” He was leaning closer as he spoke, punctuating the phrase reality is with a sharp stab at the air directly in front of her. Adrienne compensated by shrinking deeper into her haven of feathers each time he stabbed.

  “It is my duty, my honor, and my pleasure,” he continued. His eyes swept her upturned face and darkened with desire. “Reality … ah … reality is that you are exquisitely beautiful, my heart,” he said in a voice suddenly roughened.

  His voice conjured images of sweet cream blended with fine Scotch, tossed over melting ice cubes. Smooth and rough at the same time. It unnerved her, flatly shattering what little composure she’d been hugging tightly around her. When he wet his full lower lip with his tongue her mouth went dry as a desert. And his dark eyes flecked with gold were a smoldering promise of endless passion. His eyes that were locked on her lips and oh, but he was going to kiss her and she would do anything to prevent that!

  “It’s time you know the truth. I am not Mad Janet,” she snapped, saying something, anything, whatever came to mind to keep his lips from claiming hers in that intoxicating pleasure. “And for the umpteenth time—I am not your blasted heart!”

  He agreed instantly. “I didn’t think you were. Mad, I mean. But you are my heart, whether you like it or not. By the bye, neither does Lydia. Think you’re mad, that is. We both know you’re intelligent and capable. Except when it comes to two things: your safety and me. You’re completely unreasonable about both of those issues.” He shrugged one of his muscled shoulders. “That’s why I’m having this wee talk with you. To help you see things more clearly.”

  “Oooh! Those are the two things you’re being so pigheaded about. I’m not in danger and I don’t want you!”

  He laughed. Damn the man, but he laughed. “You are in danger, and as to wanting me …” He moved closer. His weight settling on the down ticks beside her caused her to shift and roll alarmingly. Right into his arms. How convenient, she thought sardonically. Now she understood why they’d used all those down ticks in the olden days. And why they’d had so many children.

  “You’re right, I do want you—”

  He froze. “You do?”

  “—out of my room,” she continued. “Out of my face and out of my life. Don’t get in my space, don’t even breathe my air, okay?”

  “It’s my air, by the bye, as laird, and all that. But I could be persuaded to share it with you, sweet wife.”

  He was smiling!

  “And I am not your wife! Or at least, not the one you were supposed to get! I’m from the nineteen nineties—that’s almost five hundred years in the future in case you can’t add—and the Comyn killed his own daughter. How? I don’t know, but I have my suspicions, and I haven’t got the faintest idea how I ended up in his lap. But he had to marry someone to you—he said I was a godsend—so he used me when I popped in! And that’s the long and the short of how I ended up getting stuck with you.”

  There. It was out. The truth. That should stop him from any further plans of seduction. No matter that if what Lydia had told her was true about King James, she’d just jeopardized the entire Douglas clan. Her words prevented his lips from reaching hers and that was the most imminent danger she could see. Not even the wrath of vengeful kings seemed quite as threatening. One more beautiful man, one more broken heart.

  The Hawk sat motionless. He studied her a long moment in silence, as if digesting what she’d just said. Then a gentle smile chased the clouds from his eyes. “Grimm told me you wove outlandish tales. He said you had an epic imagination. Your father told Grimm how you begged to be allowed to be his bard, rather than his daughter. Lass, I have nothing against a good tale and will willingly listen, if you but take my counsel about your safety.”

  Adrienne blew out a frustrated breath that sent a strand of her silvery-blond hair brushing the Hawk’s face. He kissed it as it slid gently across his mouth.

  Flames uncoiled in her belly. She shut her eyes and gathered her composure from the fleeting corners of her soul. I will not think
about him kissing any part of me, she told herself firmly.

  “I am not Red Comyn’s daughter,” she sighed, squeezing her eyes more tightly shut. When was she going to figure out that closing her eyes didn’t make anything go away? She opened her eyes. Oh dear heaven, but the man was magnificent. She pondered the thought with some pride that she could dislike him so intensely, yet still be so objective about his good looks. A sure sign of her maturity.

  “Nay, it doesn’t matter. You are my wife now. That’s all that matters.”

  “Hawk—”

  “Hush, lass.”

  Adrienne stilled, absorbed in the warmth of his hands on hers. When had he taken her hands in his? And why hadn’t she pulled away instinctively? And why was the slow, sensual movement of his skin against hers so intoxicating?

  “Adrienne … this Callabron. For it to work correctly it must enter the body through a primary vessel of blood.” His fingers lightly skimmed the faint red mark that still puckered the translucent skin of her throat. “This was no near miss. This was perfect aim.”

  “Who would want to kill me?” She swallowed tightly. How could anyone want to? No one here knew her. But … what if someone wanted to kill Mad Janet, and didn’t know she wasn’t her?

  “For that I have no answer, my heart. Yet. But until I do you will be guarded day and night. Every moment, every breath. I will not risk your life foolishly again.”

  “But I am not Janet Comyn,” she tried again, stubbornly.

  His ebony gaze searched her clear gray eyes intently. “Lass, I really don’t care who you are, or have been, or need to think you’ll be. I want you. In my life. In my arms. In my bed. If it makes you feel better to believe this … this thing about being from the future, then believe it if you must. But from this day on, you are first and foremost my wife, and I will keep you safe from anything that would hurt you. You need never fear again.”

  Adrienne raised her hands helplessly. “Fine. Guard me. So can I get up now?”

  “No.”

  “When?” she asked plaintively.

  “When I say so.” He smiled disarmingly and ducked to steal a kiss. His face came smack up against both her hands. It took every ounce of her willpower not to cradle it with her palms and lead him to the kiss he sought with shaking hands.

  He growled and gave her a long measuring look. “I should treat you like one of my falcons, wife.”

  “Let me get out of bed,” she bartered prettily. No way was she going to ask how he treated his falcons.

  He growled, lower in his throat, and left then. But the elite dozen stayed at her door.

  After he was gone she remembered one thing he’d said most clearly. You need never fear again. The man was just too good to be true.

  The days of healing were pure bliss. Lydia overrode the Hawk’s objections and had a chaise carried out to the gardens for Adrienne. Although she was still heavily guarded, she was able to curl up in the golden sunshine like a sleepy, smug cat, which went a long way toward healing her. The rose-drenched days of conversation with Lydia, as they came to know one another through small talk and small silences, healed more than her exhausted body. Sipping tea (she would have preferred coffee, but that would have brought the Hawk and his boons into the picture) and sharing stories, occasionally Adrienne would shiver with the intense feeling that this was where she’d belonged all her life.

  Love can grow among the rocks and thorns of life, she thought in one of those small silences that was comfortable as a favored, love-worn blanket. From the desolate barrens of her own life, somehow, she had come to be here, and here life was blessed—peaceful and perfect and simple.

  Adrienne healed more quickly than anyone imagined possible. Tavis pointed out that she had the resilience of youth on her side, as he flexed and studied his time-gnarled hands. Not to mention an indomitable nature, he’d added. You mean stubborn, the Hawk had corrected him.

  Lydia believed there might have been just a blush of love on her cheeks. Ha! Hawk had scoffed. Love of the sunshine, perhaps. And Lydia had almost laughed aloud at the seething look of jealousy Hawk had turned on the bright rays as he’d gazed out the kitchen windows.

  Grimm offered the likelihood that she was so angry with the Hawk that she hurried her healing just to fight with him on equal footing. Now there’s a man who understands women, Hawk had thought.

  None of them knew that with the exception of missing her cat, Moonshadow, those days were the happiest she’d ever known.

  While she lazed in the peace and sunshine, Adrienne enjoyed a blissful kind of ignorance. She would have been mortified had someone told her that she’d talked about Eberhard in her drugged stupor. She would not have understood if someone had told her she’d spoken of a black queen, for her waking mind hadn’t remembered the chess piece yet.

  She had no idea that while she and Lydia were passing sweet time, Grimm had been sent to, and was now on his way back from, Comyn keep, where he’d discovered shocking information about Mad Janet.

  And she would have packed up a few things and run for her very life, if not her soul, had she known how obsessively determined the Hawk was to claim her as his wife, in all the aspects it entailed.

  But she knew none of this. And so her time spent in the gardens of Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea would be lovingly placed as a precious jewel into the treasure chest of her memory, where it would twinkle like a diamond amid the shadows.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT WASN’T MUCH FUN SNOOPING AROUND THE CASTLE WITH A dozen hard-boiled commandos trailing along behind her, but Adrienne managed. After a while she pretended they weren’t there. Just as she pretended the Hawk was nothing more than an annoying gnat to be brushed away repeatedly.

  Dalkeith Upon-the-Sea was as lovely a castle as she’d ever imagined when as a child she’d snuggled under a tent of blankets in bed with a pilfered flashlight, reading fairy tales long after lights out.

  The rooms were spacious and airy, with brightly woven tapestries hung on the thick stone walls to smother any chill drafts that might seep through the cracks, although Adrienne hadn’t been able to find so much as one crack in a wall—she’d peeped behind a few tapestries, just to see.

  Historical curiosity, she’d told herself. Not that she was hunting for imperfections in either the castle or the castle’s laird.

  Hundreds of beautiful mullioned windows. Obviously the people who inhabited Dalkeith couldn’t bear to be cooped up inside when there was so much lush landscape to be enjoyed outdoors in Scotland’s mountains, vales, and seasides.

  Adrienne sighed wistfully as she paused by a vaulted window to savor the view of the unceasing slate-silver waves crashing against the cliffs at the west end.

  A woman could fall in love in a place like this. Tumble silken tresses over dainty satin slippers to land in a mass of ribbons and romance right at the perfect laird’s perfect feet.

  At that very moment, as if summoned by her wayward thoughts, the Hawk walked into her line of vision in the bailey below, leading one of the largest black chargers she’d ever seen. Adrienne started to turn away, but her feet would no more walk her away from the window than her eyes would avert themselves, and in spite of her best intentions to ignore him, she stood watching in helpless fascination.

  With a fluid leap, the kit-clad Scottish laird tossed himself onto the back of the snorting fiesty stallion.

  And as he mounted, that lovely kilt went flying up, giving Adrienne a sinful glimpse of powerfully muscled thighs, beautifully dusted with a bit of silky black hair. She blinked a moment, refusing to ponder what else she thought she’d seen.

  Surely they wore something under those kilts. Surely it was only her overactive imagination, absurdly overlaying the stallion’s obvious masculinity upon the Hawk’s body.

  Yes. That was it, decidedly. She’d noticed the stallion’s prominently displayed attributes in the periphery of her vision while she’d been looking at the Hawk’s legs, and managed to muddle the two together, somehow. She c
ertainly had not seen that the Hawk was, himself, hung like a stallion.

  Her cheeks flushed with that thought. She turned sharply on her heel to squelch it firmly and sought the next unsurveyed room. She had decided to explore the castle that morning, in large part to keep her mind off that dratted man. It just figured that he’d have to walk by the one window she was looking out. And toss up his skirts to add fuel to the proverbial fire.

  She forced her mind back to the lovely architecture of Dalkeith. She was on the second floor of the castle, and had already traipsed through dozens of guest rooms, including the chamber in which she’d spent her first night. Dalkeith was enormous. There must have been a hundred or more rooms, and many of them appeared as if they’d lain unused for decades. The wing she currently explored was the most recently renovated and frequently utilized. It was finished in light woods, polished to a fine gleam, and not a speck of dust could be seen. Thick woven mats covered the floors, no rushes or cold bare stones here. Bunches of fragrant herbs and dried flowers hung upside down from nearly every window ledge, scenting the corridors.

  A shaft of sunlight drew Adrienne’s attention to a closed door halfway down the corridor. Etched into the pale wood was an exquisitely detailed prancing horse, rearing elegantly, mane tossing in the wind. A single horn spiraled daintily from its equine brow. A unicorn?

  Her hand on the door, she paused, suddenly suffering an odd premonition that this room might be better left alone. Curiosity killed the cat….

  When the door swung silently inward, she froze, a hand fluttering on the jamb.

  Unbelievable. Simply incomprehensible. Her astonished gaze swept the room from floor to rafter, end to end and back again.

  Who had done this?

  The room appealed to every ounce of woman in her body. Face it, Adrienne, she told herself grimly, this entire castle appeals to every ounce of woman in your body. Not to mention the sexy, masculine laird of the keep himself.