Beyond the Highland Mist

Page 17

“A simple smithy.”
Hawk studied him in the moonlight that dappled through the rowans. Nothing simple here. Something tugged at his mind, drifting on a scent of memory, but he couldn’t pin it down. “I know you, don’t I?”
“You do now. And soon, she will know me as well.”
“Why do you provoke me?”
“You provoked me first when you pleased my queen.” The words were spat as the smithy turned away sharply.
Hawk searched his memory for a queen he had pleased. No names came to mind; but they usually didn’t. Still, the man had made his game clear. Somewhere, sometime, Hawk had turned a woman’s head from this man. And the man was now to play the same game with him. With his wife. A part of him tried not to care, but from the moment he’d laid eyes on Mad Janet this day he’d known he was in trouble for the first time in his life. Deep, over his head, for had her flashing silver eyes coaxed him into quicksand, he would willingly have gone.
What do you say to a man whose woman you’ve taken? There was nothing to say to the smithy. “I had no intention to give offense,” Hawk offered at last.
Adam spun around and his smile gleamed much too brightly. “Offense to defense, all’s fair in lust. Do you still seek to send me hence?”
Hawk met his gaze for long moments. The smithy was right. Something in him cried out for justice. Fair battles fought on equal footing. If he couldn’t hold a lass, if he lost her to another man … His pride blazed hot. If his wife left him, whether he had wanted her to begin with or not, and for a smithy at that, well, the legend of the Hawk would be sung to a vastly different tune.
But worse even than that, if he dismissed the smithy tonight, he would never know for certain if his wife would have chosen him over Adam Black. And it mattered. The doubt would torment him eternally. The image of her as she’d stood today, leaning against a tree, staring at the smithy—ah! That would give him nightmares even in Adam’s absence.
He would allow the smithy to stay. And tonight the Hawk would seduce his wife. When he was completely convinced where her affections rested, well, maybe then he might dismiss the bastard.
Hawk waved a hand dispassionately. “As you will. I will not command your absence.”
“As I will. I like that,” Adam Black replied smugly.
Hawk walked through the courtyard slowly, rubbing his head that still ached from a bout of drunkenness three nights past. The troth King James had commanded was satisfied. Hawk had wed the Comyn’s daughter and thus fulfilled James’s final decree. Dalkeith was safe once again.
The Hawk had high hopes that out of sight was truly out of mind, and that King James would forget about Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea. All those years he’d done James’s twisted bidding to the letter, only to have the king demand more of him, until by royal decree James had taken from the Hawk his last claim to freedom.
Why had it surprised him? For fifteen years the king had delighted in taking his choices away, whittling them down to the single choice of obeying his king or dying, along with his entire clan.
He recalled the day James had summoned him, only three days before his service was to end.
Hawk had presented himself, his curiosity piqued by the air of tense anticipation that pervaded the spacious throne room. Attributing it to yet another of James’s schemes—and hoping it had naught to do with him or Dalkeith—Hawk approached the dais and knelt.
“We have arranged a marriage for you,” James had announced when the room quieted.
Hawk stiffened. He could feel the eyes of the courtiers resting on him heavily; with amusement, with mockery and a touch of … pity?
“We have selected a most suitable”—James paused and laughed spitefully—“wife to grace the rest of your days at Dalkeith.”
“Who?” Hawk allowed himself only the one word. To say more would have betrayed the angry denial simmering in his veins. He couldn’t trust himself to speak when every ounce of him screamed defiance.
James smiled and motioned Red Comyn to approach the throne, and Hawk nearly roared with rage. Surely not the notorious Mad Janet! James wouldn’t force him to wed the mad spinster Red Comyn kept in his far tower!
The corner of James’s lip twisted upward in a crooked smile. “We have chosen Janet Comyn to be your bride, Hawk Douglas.”
Soft laughter ripped through the court. James rubbed his hands together gleefully.
“No!” The word escaped Hawk in a burst of air; too late, he tried to suck it back in.
“No?” James echoed, his smile chilled instantly. “Did We just hear you refuse Our command?”