Beyond the Highland Myst(29)

The smithy could heal his wife, or so he said.

The Rom may know nothing.

And all the smithy wanted in exchange for saving his wife's life was his wife.

Every fiber in his body screamed in defiance. Entrust this woman, bequeath her body and her lush bounty unto another man? Never. Hawk forced his eyes open and stared at the man called Adam. He was to allow this arrogant, beautiful bastard of a smithy to raise his body above his wife's and capture her moans of pleasure in his lips? The smithy's lips were even now curving in a cruel smile as he savored the war that waged within the Hawk.

Hawk schooled his face to impassive calm. Never betray the real feelings. Never let them see what you're thinking when it hurts the deepest. How well he'd learned that lesson from King James.

Yet—still—anything so that she might live. "A lass is not a boon to be granted. I will give her to you if—and only if—she wants you," he said finally. If she died he would lose her. If she lived, by price of saving her, he would lose her too. But then again, maybe not. Unable to defuse the rage which he knew must be blazing in his eyes, he closed them again.

"Done. You will give her to me if she wants me. Remember your words, Lord Hawk."

Hawk flinched.

When he opened his eyes again, Adam was holding out a hand to his wife's face. Sweat glistened in beads above her lips and on her forehead. The wound upon her neck was pussing green around its blackened mouth. "You touch her, smithy, no more than you must to cure her," the Hawk warned.

"For now. When she's cured, I touch her all she wants."

"She is the key word there."

Adam laid his palm against Adrienne's cheek, intently studying the wound on her neck. "I need boiling water, compresses, and a dozen boiled linens."

"Bring me boiling water, compresses, and a dozen boiled linens," the Hawk roared at the closed door.

"And I need you out of this room."

"No." There was no more finality in death than in the Hawk's refusal.

"You leave or she dies," Adam murmured, as if he'd merely said "It's raining, had you noticed?"

Hawk didn't move a muscle.

"Sidheach James Lyon Douglas, have you a choice?" Adam wondered.

"You have all my names. How do you know so much about me?"

"I made it my business to know so much about you."

"How do I know you didn't shoot her yourself with some obscure poison that isn't even Callabron but mimics it, and now you're faking a cure—all so you can simply steal my wife?"

"Absolutely." Adam shrugged.

"What?" Hawk snarled.

Adam's eyes glittered like hard stones. "You don't know. You must make a choice. Can you save her at this point, Lord Hawk? I don't think so. What are your options? She's dying from something, that much is plain to see. You think it's Callabron, but you're not certain. Whatever it is, it is killing her. I say I can cure her and ask a boon for it. What choice do you have, really? They say you make hard decisions look easy. They say you're a man who would move a mountain without blinking, if he wanted that mountain moved. They say you have an unerring sense of justice, right and wrong, honor and compassion. They say, also"—Adam grimaced at this—"that you are passingly fair between the sheets, or so one woman said, and it offended me in great sum. In fact, they say entirely too much about you for my liking. I came here to hate you, Hawk. But I didn't come here to hate this woman you claim as your wife."

Adam and Hawk stared at each other with barely harnessed violence.

Adrienne cried out sharply and shuddered in Hawk's arms. Her body convulsed, then tensed as if pulled taut on a rack. Hawk swallowed hard. What choice? There was no choice, no choice at all.

"Cure her," he muttered through gritted teeth.

"You grant my boon?" the smithy asked.

"As we agreed. Only if she chooses you."

"You will place no restrictions upon any time she chooses to spend with me. I am wooing her from this day forth and you will not caution her from me. She is free to see me as she pleases."

"I am wooing her too."

"That is the game, Hawk," Adam said softly, and Hawk finally understood. The smithy didn't want his wife handed over freely. He wanted a contest, a battle for her favors. He wanted an open challenge, and intended to win.

"You will hate it when I take her from you, dread Hawk," the smithy promised. "Close the door when you leave."




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CHAPTER 10




"how is it possible that a man's worls can be turned inside out before he even has a chance to see it coming and try to stop it, Grimm?"

Hawk had started drinking the moment the door had shut on his wife and the smithy. He was trying with determination to get head-reeling, feet-stumbling, bellyaching drunk and was not succeeding.