Beyond the Highland Mist

Page 70

Hawk watched in silence as Rushka joined the funeral walk for his daughter.
When one of the Rom betrayed the rules by which they lived, he or she was disciplined by their own. It was a tight-knit community. Wild they could be, and liberal-minded about many things. But there were rules by which they lived, and those rules were never to be mocked.
Esmerelda had disregarded one of great importance—those who gave shelter to the Rom were not to be harmed in any manner. By trying to kill the Hawk’s wife, she had attempted to harm the Laird of Dalkeith himself. But there was something else, the Hawk could sense it. Something Rushka wasn’t telling him. Something else Esmerelda had done that had brought strife upon her people.
As Hawk watched the procession wind toward the sea, he whispered a Rom benediction for the daughter of his friend.
Easing himself back down by the fire, Hawk unwrapped the bandage and cleansed his wounded hand with Scotch and water. Carefully, he untied the leather pouch and wondered curiously at the assortment of stoppered flasks that fell out. He picked up the poultice and laid it to the side, sorting through the rest.
Just what had the seer seen? he wondered grimly. For she’d given him two other potions, one of which he’d sworn to never use again.
Hawk snorted. One was an aphrodisiac he’d tried in his younger days. That one didn’t worry him too much. The one he despised was the potion that had been created to keep a man in a prolonged but detached state of sexual arousal.
He turned the flask with the vile green liquid in it this way and that, watching the sun reflect off the faceted prisms of the stoppered bottle. Shadows rose up and taunted him openly for a time, until his obdurate will banished them back to hell. Quickly he spread the poultice, which eased the pain and would speed recovery. In a fortnight his hand would be well knit.
Adam. Although he hadn’t outright said it, Rushka had insinuated that it was Adam who had brought Esmerelda to them last night. Which meant Adam knew Esmerelda had been trying to kill Adrienne.
What else did Adam know?
And just what had made his friend Rushka, who had never once shown terror in all the thirty-odd years Hawk had known him, betray visible fear now?
Too many questions and not enough answers. Every one pointed an accusing finger toward the smithy, who even now was probably trying to seduce Hawk’s wife.
My wife who doesn’t want me. My wife who wants Adam. My wife who didn’t care enough to even ask about me when I was wounded.
Esmerelda was dead, but Rushka had made it clear that the real threat was still there, and close enough to Dalkeith to drive the Rom away. Apparently Adam was involved. And he’d left his wife in the thick of it. Keep close and closer …
The Hawk’s mind whirred, sorting the scarce facts and hunting for the most feasible solution to his myriad problems. Suddenly the answer seemed impossibly clear. He snorted, unable to believe he hadn’t thought of it before. But the lass had a way of getting so far under his skin that his mind didn’t work in its usual logical fashion with her in the vicinity. No longer! It was time to take control, rather than allowing circumstances to continue to run amok.
His pact with Adam entailed that he could not forbid Adrienne to see the smithy. But he could make it damned difficult for her to do so. He would take her to Uster with him. Far away from the mysterious, compelling Adam Black.
So what if she hadn’t asked about him? She’d made it clear from day one that she didn’t want to be wed to him. She had vowed to hate him forever, yet he would swear her body responded to his. He’d have her all to himself in Uster and be able to test that theory.
Just when had he become passive? When you felt guilty for burning her queen, his conscience reminded. Trapping her here, in spite of her wishes, if she is indeed from the future. But guilt was for losers and fools. Not for Sidheach Douglas. There was no guilt involved when she was at stake. “I love her,” he told the wind. “And so I’ve become the greatest kind of fool.”
A nice one.
Time to remedy that. Guilt and passivity dropped away from him in that clarifying instant. The Hawk who turned his steed around and headed for Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea to claim his wife was the true namesake of the Sidheach of yore, the Viking conqueror who had run ramshod over any who dared oppose him. I commit, I attain, I prevail.
He leapt to his mount and spurred his charger into a full run. Seel and jess, my sweet falcon, he promised with a dark smile.
Beneath a bough of rowans, Adam stiffened. Not fair! Not fair! Get thee hence! But fair or not, he’d seen true. The Hawk had turned around and was coming back to take Adrienne away with him. That was simply unacceptable. He obviously had to do something drastic.