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  “She had to know it couldn’t be, Hawk. Everyone knows you’ve been as good as wed since King James decreed your betrothal.”

  “As good as dead. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “The time draws near, Hawk. You’re not only going to have to talk about it, you’re going to have to do something about it—like go collect your bride. Time is running out. Or don’t you care?” Hawk slanted a savage look Grimm’s way.

  “Just making sure, that’s all. There’s scarce a fortnight left, remember?”

  Hawk stared out into the crystalline night, heavy with glowing stars. “How could I forget?”

  “You really think James would carry out his threats if you don’t wed the Comyn lass?”

  “Absolutely,” Hawk said flatly.

  “I just don’t understand why he hates you so much.”

  A sardonic smile flitted across the Hawk’s face. He knew why James hated him. Thirty years ago Hawk’s parents had humiliated James to the seat of his vain soul. Since the Hawk’s father had died before James could avenge himself, the king had turned on Hawk in his father’s stead.

  For fifteen long years James had controlled every minute of the Hawk’s life. Days before his pledge of service was to expire, James contrived a plan to affect every future moment of it. By the king’s decree, the Hawk was being forced to wed a lass he didn’t know and didn’t want. A reclusive spinster who was rumored to be quite hideous and unquestionably mad. It was King James’s twisted idea of a lifetime sentence. “Who fathoms the minds of kings, my friend?” Hawk evaded, pointedly putting an end to the topic.

  The two men passed a time in silence, both brooding for different reasons as they stared into the velvety sky. An owl hooted softly from the gardens. Crickets rubbed their legs in sweet concerto, offering twilight tribute to Dalkeith. Stars pulsed and shimmered against the night’s blue-black canopy.

  “Look. One falls. There, Hawk. What do you make of it?” Grimm pointed at a white speck plummeting from the heavens, leaving a milky tail glowing in its wake.

  “Esmerelda says if you make a wish upon such a falling star ’twill be granted.”

  “Did you wish just now?”

  “Tinker talk,” Hawk scoffed. “Foolish romantic nonsense for dreamy-eyed lasses.” Of course he’d wished. Every time he’d seen a falling star lately. Always the same wish. After all, the time was nearing.

  “Well, I’m trying it,” Grimm grumbled, not to be swayed by Hawk’s mockery. “I wish …”

  “Yield, Grimm. What’s your wish?” Hawk asked curiously.

  “None of your concern. You don’t believe.”

  “I? The eternal romantic who enchants legions with his poetry and seduction—not a believer in all those lovely female things?”

  Grimm shot his friend a warning look. “Careful, Hawk. Mock them at your own risk. You may just really make a lass angry one day. And you won’t know how to deal with it. For the time being, they still fall for your perfect smiles—”

  “You mean like this one.” Hawk arched a brow and flashed a smile, complete with sleepily hooded eyes that spoke volumes about how the lass receiving it was the only true beauty in his heart, a heart which had room for only one—whoever happened to be in the Hawk’s arms at the moment.

  Grimm shook his head in mock disgust. “You practice it. You must. Come on, admit it.”

  “Of course I do. It works. Wouldn’t you practice it?”

  “Womanizer.”

  “Uh-hmm,” Hawk agreed.

  “Do you even remember their names?”

  “All five thousand of them.” Hawk hid his grin behind a swallow of port.

  “Blackguard. Libertine.”

  “Rogue. Roué. Cad. Ah, here’s a good one: ‘voluptuary,’” Hawk supplied helpfully.

  “Why don’t they see through you?”

  Hawk shrugged a shoulder. “They like what they get from me. There are a lot of hungry lasses out there. I couldn’t, in good conscience, turn them away. ’Twould trouble my head.”

  “I think I know exactly which head of yours would be troubled,” Grimm said dryly. “The very one that’s going to get you in big trouble one day.”

  “What did you wish for, Grimm?” Hawk ignored the warning with the devil-may-care attitude that was his wont where the lasses were concerned.

  A slow smile slid over Grimm’s face. “A lass who doesn’t want you. A lovely, nay, an earth-shatteringly beautiful one, with wit and wisdom to boot. One with a perfect face and a perfect body, and a perfect ‘no’ on her perfect lips for you, my oh-so-perfect friend. And I also wished to be allowed to watch the battle.”

  Hawk smiled smugly. “It will never happen.”

  The wind gusting sweetly through the pines carried a disembodied voice that drifted on a breeze of jasmine and sandalwood. Then it spoke in laughing words neither man heard. “I think that can be arranged.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE MYSTICAL ISLE OF MORAR WAS CLOAKED IN EVENTIDE, the silica sands glistening silver beneath King Finnbheara’s boots as he paced, impatiently awaiting the court fool’s return.

  The Queen and her favorite courtiers were merrily celebrating the Beltane in a remote Highland village. Watching his elfin Aoibheal dance and flirt with the mortal Highlanders had goaded his slumbering jealousy into wakeful wrath. He’d fled the Beltane fires before he could succumb to his desire to annihilate the entire village. He was too angry with mortals to trust himself around them at the moment. The mere thought of his Queen with a mortal man filled him with fury.

  As the fairy Queen had her favorites among their courtiers, so did the fairy King; the wily court fool was his longtime companion in cups and spades. He’d dispatched the fool to study the mortal Hawk, to gather information so he might concoct a fitting revenge for the man who’d dared trespass on fairy territory.

  “His manhood at half-mast would make a stallion envious…. he claims a woman’s soul.” King Finnbheara mocked his Queen’s words in scathing falsetto, then spit irritably.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” the fool said flatly as he appeared in the shade of a rowan tree.

  “Really?” King Finnbheara grimaced. He’d convinced himself Aoibheal had embellished a bit—after all, the man was mortal.

  The fool scowled. “I spent three days in Edinburgh. The man’s a living legend. The women clamor over him. They speak his name as if it’s some mystic incantation guaranteed to bestow eternal ecstasy.”

  “Did you see him? With your own eyes? Is he beautiful?” the King asked quickly.

  The fool nodded and his mouth twisted bitterly. “He’s flawless. He’s taller than me—”

  “You’re well over six feet in that glamour!” the King objected.

  “He stands almost a hand taller. He has raven hair worn in a sleek tail; smoldering black eyes; the chiseled perfection of a young god and the body of Viking warrior. It’s revolting. May I maim him, my liege? Disfigure his perfect countenance?”

  King Finnbheara pondered this information. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach at the thought of this dark mortal touching his Queen’s fair limbs, bringing her incomparable pleasure. Claiming her soul.

  “I will kill him for you,” the fool offered hopefully.

  King Finnbheara gestured impatiently. “Fool! And break the Compact between our races? No. There must be another way.”

  The fool shrugged. “Perhaps we should sit back and do nothing. The Hawk is about to come to harm at his own race’s hand.”

  “Tell me more,” Finnbheara ordered, his interest piqued.

  “I discovered that the Hawk is to be wed in a few days. He is affianced by his mortal king’s decree. Destruction is about to befall him. You see, my liege, King James has ordered the Hawk to wed a woman named Janet Comyn. The king has made it clear that if the Hawk doesn’t wed this woman, he will destroy both the Douglas and Comyn clans.”

  “So? What’s your point?” Finnbheara asked impatiently.

  “Janet C
omyn is dead. She died today.”

  Finnbheara tensed instantly. “Did you harm her, fool?”

  “No, my liege!” The fool gave him a wounded look. “She died by her father’s hand. I no more put the idea in his head than a key to her tower in his sporran.”

  “Does that mean you did or you didn’t put the idea in his head?” the King asked suspiciously.

  “Come now, my liege,” the fool pouted, “think you I would resort to such trickery and jeopardize us all?”

  Finnbheara templed his fingers and studied the fool. Unpredictable, cunning, and careless, the jester had not yet been foolish enough to risk their race. “Go on.”

  The fool cocked his head and his smile gleamed in the half-light. “It’s simple. The wedding can’t take place now. King James is going to destroy the Douglas. Oh, the Comyn too,” he added irreverently.

  “Ah!” Finnbheara debated a pensive moment. He didn’t have to lift a finger and the Hawk would soon die.

  But it wasn’t enough, he seethed. Finnbheara wanted his own hand in the Hawk’s destruction. He had suffered personal insult, and he wanted an intimately personal revenge. No mortal man cuckolded the King of the Fairy, without divine retribution—and how divine it would feel to destroy the Hawk.

  The glimmer of an idea began to take shape in his mind. As he considered it, King Finnbheara felt more vital than he had in centuries.

  The fool didn’t miss the smug smile that teased the King’s lips.

  “You’re thinking something wicked. What are you planning, my liege?” the fool asked.

  “Silence,” King Finnbheara commanded. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he sifted through his options, carefully refining his scheme.

  If time passed while Finnbheara plotted, neither fairy noticed; time meant little to the race of beings who could move about in it at will. The first flames of dawn painted the sky above the sea when the King spoke again:

  “Has the Hawk ever loved?”

  “Loved?” the fool echoed blankly.

  “You know, that emotion for which mortals compose sonnets, fight wars, erect monuments,” the King said dryly.

  The fool reflected a moment. “I would say no, my King. The Hawk has never wooed a woman he didn’t win, nor does it appear he ever desired any special woman over another.”

  “A woman has never denied him?” King Finnbheara asked with a trace of incredulity.

  “Not that I could find. I don’t think the woman lives and breathes in the sixteenth century who could deny him. I’m telling you, the man’s a legend. Women swoon over him.”

  The King smiled avariciously. “I have another errand for you, fool.”

  “Anything, my liege. Let me kill him.”

  “No! There will be no blood spilled by our hand. Listen to me carefully. Go now through the centuries. Go forward—women are more independent and self-possessed there. Find me a woman who is irresistible, exquisite, intelligent, strong; one who knows her own mind. Bid you well, she must be a woman who won’t lose her wits being tossed through time, she must be adaptable to strange events. It wouldn’t do to bring her to him and have her brain addled. She must believe in a bit of magic.”

  The fool nodded. “Too true. Remember that tax accountant we took back to the twelfth century? She turned into a raving lunatic.”

  “Exactly. The woman you find must be somewhat inured to the unusual so she can accept time travel without coming undone.” Finnbheara mulled this over a moment. “I have it! Look in Salem, where they still believe in witches, or perhaps New Orleans, where the ancient magic sizzles in the air.”

  “Perfect places!” the fool enthused.

  “But most important, fool, you must find me a woman who harbors a special hatred for beautiful, womanizing men; a woman guaranteed to make that mortal’s life a living hell.”

  The fool smiled fiendishly. “May I embellish on your plan?”

  “You’re a crucial part of it,” the King said with sinister promise.

  Adrienne de Simone shivered, although it was an unusually warm May evening in Seattle. She pulled a sweater over her head and tugged the French doors closed. She stared out through the glass and watched night descend over the gardens that tumbled in wild disarray beyond the walk.

  In the fading light she surveyed the stone wall that protected her house at 93 Coattail Lane, then turned her methodical scrutiny to the shadows beneath the stately oaks, seeking any irregular movement. She took a deep breath and ordered herself to relax. The guard dogs that patrolled the grounds were quiet—things must be safe, she assured herself firmly.

  Inexplicably tense, she entered the code on the alarm pad that would activate the motion detectors strategically mounted throughout the one-acre lawn. Any nonrandom motion over one hundred pounds in mass and three feet in height would trigger the detectors, although the shrill warning would not summon the police or any law enforcement agency.

  Adrienne would run for her gun before she’d run for a phone. She’d summon the devil himself before she’d dream of calling the police. Although six months had passed, Adrienne still felt as if she couldn’t get far enough from New Orleans, not even if she moved across an ocean or two, which she couldn’t do anyway; the percentage of fugitives apprehended while trying to leave the country was shockingly high.

  Was that what she really was? she marveled. It never failed to astonish her, even after all these months. How could she—Adrienne de Simone—be a fugitive? She’d always been an honest, law-abiding citizen. All she’d ever asked of life was a home and a place to belong; someone to love and someone who loved her; children someday—children she would never abandon to an orphanage.

  She’d found all of that in Eberhard Darrow Garrett, the toast of New Orleans society, or so she’d thought.

  Adrienne snorted as she surveyed the lawn a final time then dropped the drapes across the doors. A few years ago the world had seemed like such a different place; a wonderful place, full of promise, excitement, and endless possibility.

  Armed only with her irrepressible spirit and three hundred dollars cash, Adrienne Doe had invented a last name for herself and fled the orphanage on the day she’d turned eighteen. She’d been thrilled to discover student loans for which practically anyone could qualify, even an unsecured risk like an orphan. She’d taken a job as a waitress, enrolled in college, and embarked on her quest to make something of herself. Just what, she wasn’t sure, but she’d always had a feeling that something special was waiting around the next corner for her.

  She’d been twenty, a sophomore at the university, when that special thing had happened. Working at the Blind Lemon, an elegant restaurant and bar, Adrienne had caught the eye, the heart, and the engagement ring of the darkly handsome, wealthy Eberhard Darrow Garrett, the bachelor of the decade. It had been the perfect fairy tale. She’d walked around for months on clouds of happiness.

  When the clouds had started to melt beneath her feet, she’d refused to look too closely, refused to acknowledge that the fairy-tale prince might be a prince of darker things.

  Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut wishing she could blink some of her bad memories out of existence. How gullible she’d been! How many excuses she’d made—for him, for herself—until she’d finally had to run.

  A tiny meow coaxed her back to the present and she smiled down at the one good thing that had come of it all; her kitten, Moonshadow, a precocious stray she’d found outside a gas station on her way north. Moonie rubbed her ankles and purred enthusiastically. Adrienne scooped up the furry little creature, hugging her close. Unconditional love, such was the gift Moonie gave. Love without reservation or subterfuge—pure affection with no darker sides.

  Adrienne hummed lightly as she rubbed Moonie’s ears, then broke off abruptly as a faint scratching sound drew her attention to the windows again.

  Perfectly still, she clutched Moonie and waited, holding her breath.

  But there was only silence.

  It must have been a twig scratchi
ng at the roof, she decided. But, hadn’t she cut all the trees back from the house when she’d moved in?

  Adrienne sighed, shook her head, and ordered her muscles to relax. She had nearly succeeded when overhead a floorboard creaked. Tension reclaimed her instantly. She dropped Moonie on a stuffed chair and eyed the ceiling intently as the creaking sound repeated.

  Perhaps it was just the house settling.

  She really had to get over this skittishness.

  How much time had to pass until she stopped being afraid that she would turn around and see Eberhard standing there with his faintly mocking smile and gleaming gun?

  Eberhard was dead. She was safe, she knew she was.

  So why did she feel so horridly vulnerable? For the past few days she’d had the suffocating sensation that someone was spying on her. No matter how hard she tried to reassure herself that anyone who might wish her harm was either dead—or didn’t know she was alive—she was still consumed by a morbid unease. Every instinct she possessed warned her that something was wrong—or about to go terribly wrong. Having grown up in the City of Spooks—the sultry, superstitious, magical New Orleans—Adrienne had learned to listen to her instincts. They were almost always right on target.

  Her instincts had even been right about Eberhard. She’d had a bad feeling about him from the beginning, but she’d convinced herself it was her own insecurity. Eberhard was the catch of New Orleans; naturally, a woman might feel a little unsettled by such a man.

  Only much later did she understand that she’d been lonely for so long, and had wanted the fairy tale so badly, that she’d tried to force reality to reflect her desires, instead of the other way around. She’d told herself so many white lies before finally facing the truth that Eberhard wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. She’d been such a fool.

  Adrienne breathed deeply of the spring air that breezed gently in the window behind her, then flinched and spun abruptly. She eyed the fluttering drapes warily. Hadn’t she closed that window? She was sure of it. She’d closed all of them, just before closing the French doors. Adrienne edged cautiously to the window, shut it quickly, and locked it.