Beyond the Highland Mist
Page 21

He’d wished for the Hawk to meet a woman with “wit and wisdom”; an intelligent woman.
“Can you do sums?” he snapped.
“I keep ledgers like a pro.”
“Do you read and write?” he pushed.
“Three languages fluently, two reasonably well.” It was the primary reason she could fake their brogue so well and convince them she was Mad Janet Comyn. Although some of the words and expressions she used might seem odd to them—they did expect her to be batty—she’d been a quick study at the Comyn keep, assimilating a burr with the ease of a child. She’d always had an ear for languages. Besides, she’d watched every episode of The Highlander ever made.
Hawk groaned. The second part of Grimm’s wish had been that the woman be perfect of face and form. He need ask no questions on that score. She was a Venus, unadorned, who’d slipped into his world, and he had a nagging premonition that his world might never be the same again.
So, the first two requirements for which Grimm had wished were met. The woman possessed both brains and bewitching beauty.
It was the last requirement Grimm had specified that concerned Hawk the most: A perfect “no” on her perfect lips …
The woman didn’t live and breathe who’d ever said no to the Hawk.
“Lass, I want you,” he said in a raw, husky voice. “I will make the most incredible love to you you’ll ever experience this side of Valhalla. I can take you beyond paradise, make you wish to never set your feet upon this ground again. Will you let me take you there? Do you want me?” He waited, but he was already certain of what was to come.
Her lips pursed in a luscious pucker as she said, “No.”
“You’ve laid a geis upon me with your bloody wish, Grimm!” Laird Sidheach James Lyon Douglas was heard to howl to the starless heavens later that night. Beyond a circle of rowan trees Adam stoked a bank of embers and made a sound a shade too dark to be laughter.
Adrienne sat in the darkness on the edge of her bed for a long time after he’d left, and flinched at his husky howl that rose to touch the moon. A geis? A curse. Bah! She was the one cursed.
To him, she was just like all the rest, and the one thing Adrienne de Simone had learned was that where a man was concerned she couldn’t tolerate being one of all the rest.
Guilty as the legions who’d fallen before her, she wanted this man called the Hawk. Wanted him with an unreasoning hunger that far surpassed her attraction to the smithy. There’d been something almost frightening about the smithy’s eyes. Like Eberhard’s. But the Hawk had beautiful dark eyes with flecks of gold dusting them beneath thick sooty lashes. Hawk’s eyes hinted at pleasures untold, laughter, and if she wasn’t imagining it, some kind of past pain held in careful check.
Right, she told herself caustically. The pain of not having enough time to make love to all the beautiful women in the world. You know what he is. A womanizer. Don’t do this to yourself again. Don’t be a fool, Adrienne.
But she couldn’t shake the discomfort she’d felt each time she’d forced herself to say cruel and hateful things to him. That perhaps he didn’t deserve them. That just because the Hawk was a dark and beautiful man like Eberhard didn’t mean he was the same kind of man as Eberhard. She had a nagging feeling that she was being unfair to him, for no logical reason whatsoever.
Ah, but there is a logical explanation for how and why you’ve suddenly vaulted back from 1997 to 1513? She snorted derisively.
Adrienne had learned to examine facts and deal with reality, regardless of how irrational the immediate reality appeared to be. New Orleans born and raised, she understood that human logic couldn’t explain everything. Sometimes there was a larger logic at work—something tantalizingly beyond her comprehension. Lately, Adrienne felt more surprised when things made sense than when they didn’t—at least when things were odd she was on familiar territory. Despite its being highly illogical and utterly improbable, all five of her senses insisted that she wasn’t exactly in Kansas anymore.
A dim memory teased the periphery of her mind…. What had she been doing just before she’d found herself on the Comyn’s lap? The hours before were hazy, uncertain. She could recall the uneasy feeling of being watched … and what else? An odd scent, rich and spicy, that she smelled just before she’d … what? Adrienne pushed hard against a blanket of confusion and succeeded only in making her head throb.
She struggled with it a moment, then yielded to the pain. Adrienne muttered a fervent prayer that the larger logic behind this irrational reality treat her with more benevolence than whatever had thrown Eberhard her way.