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.
Valhalla on the right. Paradise regained on the left.
Stuck between a Godiva truffle and a chocolate eclair.
Between a rock and a very hard place. Two very hard places from the looks of it. I hate beautiful men, she mourned soulfully. Hate them. Hate them. Hate them. Yet to resist___
Hands clasped her waist from behind as the smithy pulled her back against his sculpted body.
"Let go of me!" she cried, the strange fog lifting from her brain.
The smithy released her.
And that very big, beautiful man facing her—the legendary Hawk—was glaring like Odin preparing to zap her with a thunderbolt. She snorted.
"Don't glare at me. You didn't even bother to show up at our wedding." Adrienne started pacing. If she really was Janet, how would Janet have felt? How terrible to be wed away like a piece of property and then be treated so shabbily by the new in-laws! "I spend two miserable soggy days on the back of a nag and does it ever stop raining in this godawful place? Two days it took us to get here! Gracious Grimm dumps me the minute we set foot on Dalkeith. You don't even bother to greet me. Nobody shows me to a room. Nobody offers me anything to eat. Or drink for that matter." She paused in her litany and leaned back against a tree, hands on her hips, one foot tapping. "And then, since I can't find anyplace to sleep that I'm not afraid doesn't belong to someone else, I go off wandering until you finally bother yourself enough to show up and now you glare at me? Well, I'll have you know—"