Beyond the Highland Mist

Page 8

It was with revulsion that Adrienne wiped bits of chicken and spittle from her face when he roared, but it was with genuine alarm that she comprehended his words, through his thick brogue.
She was a godsend, he proclaimed to the room at large. She was a gift from the angels.
She would be married on the morrow.
Adrienne fainted. Her unconscious body spasmed once, then went limp. The black queen slipped from her hand, hit the floor, and was kicked under a table by a scuffed leather boot.
When Adrienne awoke, she lay still, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Beneath her back she felt the lumpy down ticks piled thickly. It could be her own bed. She had purchased antique ticks and had them restitched to plump atop her waist-high Queen Anne bed. She was in love with old things, no dithering about it.
She sniffed cautiously. No odd scents from the banquet she’d dreamt. No hum of that thick brogue she’d imagined earlier.
But no traffic either.
She strained her ears, listening mightily. Had she ever heard such silence?
Adrienne drew a ragged breath and willed her heart to slow.
She tossed on the lumpy tick. Was this how insanity occurred? Started with a vague inkling of unease, a dreadful sense of being watched, then escalated rapidly into full blown madness, only to culminate in a nightmare where a smelly, hairy beast announced her impending nuptials?
Adrienne squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut, willing her return to sanity. The silhouette of a chess set loomed in her mind; battle-ready rooks and bitter queens etched in stark relief against the insides of her eyelids, and it seemed that there was something urgent she needed to remember. What had she been doing?
Her head hurt. It was a dull kind of ache, accompanied by the bitter taste of old pennies in the back of her throat. For a moment she struggled against it, but the throbbing intensified. The chess set danced elusively in shades of black and white, then dissolved into a distant nagging detail. It couldn’t have been too important.
Adrienne had more pressing things to worry about—where in the blue blazes was she?
She kept her eyes closed and waited. A few moments more and she would hear the purr of a BMW tooling sleekly down Coattail Lane or her phone would peal angrily….
A rooster did not just crow.
Another minute and she’d hear Moonie’s questioning mer-ooow, and feel her tail swish past her face as she leapt up on the bed.
She did not hear the grate of squeaky hinges, the scrape of a door cut too long against a stone threshold.
“Milady, I know you’re awake.”
Her eyes sprang open to find a portly woman with silver-brown hair and rosy cheeks, wringing her hands as she stood at the foot of the bed. “Who are you?” Adrienne asked warily, refusing to look at any more of the room than the immediate spot that contained this latest apparition.
“Bah! Who am I she asks? The lass who pops out of nowhere, lickety-split, like a witch if you please, is wishing to know who I am? Hmmph!”
With that, the woman placed a platter of peculiar-smelling food on a nearby table, and forced Adrienne up by plumping the pillows behind her back.
“I’m Talia. I’ve been sent to see to your care. Eat up. You’ll never be strong enough to face wedding him if you doona be eating,” she chided.
With those words and a full glimpse of the stone walls hung with vividly colored tapestries depicting hunts and orgies, Adrienne fainted again—this time, with relish.
Adrienne awoke again to a score of maids bearing undergarments, stockings, and a wedding dress.
The women bathed her in scented water before a massive stone fireplace. While she huddled submerged in the deep wooden tub, Adrienne examined every inch of the room. How could a dream be so vivid, so rich with scent and touch and sound? The bathwater smelled of fresh heather and lilac. The maids chatted lightly as they bathed her. The stone fireplace was easily as tall as three men—it rose up to kiss the ceiling and sprawled along half the width of the east wall. It was bedecked with an array of artistic silver-work; delicately filigreed baskets, cunningly handcrafted roses that gleamed like molten silver, yet each petal distinct and looking somehow velvety. Above the great mantel, rough-hewn of honey oak, hung a hunt scene depicting a bloody victory.
Her study was cut short by the screech of the door. Shocked gasps and immediately hushed voices compelled her gaze over one bare shoulder, and she, too, gasped aloud. The villain with the matted rug upon his face! Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment and she sunk deeper into the tub.
“Milord, ’tis no place for you—” a maid began.
The slap ricocheted through the room, silencing the maid’s protest and halting anyone else’s before they even considered beginning. The great greasy beast from earlier in her nightmare sunk down on his haunches before the steaming tub, a leer on his face. Slitted blue eyes met steely gray as Adrienne held his rude stare levelly.