Beyond the Highland Mist

Page 13

A license to do and say anything she wanted—with no repercussions.
No Eberhard, no guns, no bad memories.
Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.
CHAPTER 5
ADRIENNE HAD BEEN WANDERING THE GROUNDS OF DALKEITH for several hours when she stumbled upon the smithy. After a grueling two-day ride from Comyn Keep to her new home—Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea—by cantankerous steed, she’d planned to collapse in the nearest soft bed, sleep for days, and then when she woke up (if she was still here) find a good bottle of Scotch and drink herself into oblivion. And then check again to see if she was still here.
Not only hadn’t she been able to find a soft bed in the riotous castle, but there had been no Scotch, no sign of a husband, and everyone had summarily ignored her. Made it awfully hard to feel at home. Grimm had made haste from her company the moment they’d entered the pink granite walls of the Douglas keep, although he’d seemed quite the gentleman during the journey.
But she was no fool. She didn’t have to be hit in the head with a stick to figure out that she was definitely not a wanted wife. Wed by proxy, no welcome, and no sign of a husband. Definitely not wanted.
Adrienne gave up her fruitless search for husband, bed, and bottle and went for a stroll to explore her new home.
And so it was quite by accident that she stumbled through the rowan trees and upon the forge at the edge of the forest. Upon the man, clad only in a kilt, pumping the bellows and shaping the steel of a horseshoe.
Adrienne had heard that her husband by proxy was too beautiful to be borne, but this man indeed rendered the magnificent Grimm a veritable toad.
There just wasn’t this much raw man around in the twentieth century, she thought in helpless fascination as she watched him work. To see this kind of man in the twentieth century, a woman had to somehow gain entry to that inner sanctum of dumbbells and free weights, where the man was defining his body in homage to himself. But in this century such a man existed by simple force of nature.
His world demanded that he be strong to survive, to command, to endure.
When the smithy twisted and swooped to switch hammers, she saw a rivulet of sweat which had beaded at his brow run down his cheek, drop with a splatter to his chest, and trickle, oh, so slowly along the thick ridges of muscle in his abdomen. To his navel, to the top of his kilt, and lower still. She eyed his legs with fascination, waiting to see the drops of sweat reappear on those powerful calves, and wondering deliriously about every inch in between.
So intense was the shimmering heat from the forge, so strange her need, that Adrienne didn’t realize he had stopped for several moments.
Until she raised her eyes from his chest to meet his dark, unsmiling eyes. She gasped.
He crossed the distance and she knew she should run. Yet she also knew that she couldn’t have run if her life depended on it. Something about his eyes….
His hand was rough when it closed upon her jaw, forcing her head back to meet him eye to flashing silver eye.
“Is there a service I might perform for you, my fair queen? Perhaps you have something in need of a heated shaping and molding? Or perhaps I might reshape my steel lance in the heat of your forge, milady?”
Her eyes searched his face wildly. Composure, she commanded herself.
He shook her ruthlessly. “Do you seek my services?”
“It’s the heat, nothing more,” she croaked.
“Aye, ’tis most assuredly the heat, beauty.” His eyes were devilish. “Come.” He took her by the hand and started off at a fast pace.
“No!” She swatted at his arm.
“Come,” he ordered, and she suffered the uncanny sensation that he was reaching inside her with those eyes and reordering her will to match his will. It terrified her.
“Release me!” she gasped.
His eyes searched deeper, and although she knew it was crazy, Adrienne felt as if she was fighting for something terribly important here. She knew she must not go with this man, but she couldn’t begin to say why. She sensed danger, dark and primeval. Unnatural and ancient danger beyond her control. If he opened his cruelly beautiful mouth and said come one more time, she might do just that.
He opened his mouth. She braced herself for the command she knew would follow.
“Release my wife,” commanded a deep voice behind them.
CHAPTER 6
SO THIS MAN AT THE FORGE WAS NOT HER HUSBAND. DEAR God in heaven, what was she going to find when she turned around? Dare she?
She turned slightly, as if a small sidewise peek might be safer. Might minimize the impact. Adrienne soon discovered just how wrong she was. Nothing could minimize that man’s impact.