Beyond the Highland Mist

Page 37

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 certainly 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.