Beyond the Highland Myst(15)

"Stay away from my wife." Hawk was startled to hear the words leave his lips. By the saints, he sounded like a jealous husband! He had intended to push the question of who had hired the smithy, but apparently he was no more in control of his words than he had been of his feet; at least not where his new wife was concerned.

Adam laughed wickedly. "I won't do a thing the lady doesn't want me to do."

"You won't do a thing I don't want you to do."

"I heard the lady didn't want you."

"She will."

"And if she doesn't?"

"All the lasses want me."

"Funny. I have just the same problem."

"You're uncanny rude for a smithy. Who was your laird before?"

"I have known no man worthy to call master."

"Funny, smithy. I have just the same problem."

The men stood nose to nose. Steel to steel.

"I can order you from my land," Hawk said tightly.

"Ah, but then you'd never know if she would choose you or me, would you? And I suspect there is this deep kernel of decency in you, a thing that cries out for old-fashioned mores like fairness and chivalry, honor and justice. Foolish Hawk. All the knights will soon be dead, as dust of dreams passing on time's fickle fancy."

"You're insolent. And as of this moment, you're unemployed."

"You're afraid," the smithy marveled.

"Afraid?" The Hawk echoed incredulously. This fool smithy dared stand on his land and tell him that he, the legendary Hawk, was afraid? "I fear nothing. Certainly not you."

"Yes you do. You saw how your wife looked at me. You're afraid you won't be able to keep her hands off me."

A bitter, mocking smile curved Hawk's lip. He was not a man given to self-deception. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to keep his wife away from the smithy. It galled him, incensed him, and yet the smithy was also right about his underlying decency. Decency that demanded, as Grimm had suspected, that he not deprive a man of his livelihood because of his own insecurity about his wife. The Hawk suffered the rare handicap of being noble, straight to the core. "Who are you, really?"

"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 rune.

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.