Beyond the Highland Myst(38)

The Hawk crossed swiftly to his desk. He opened a carved wooden box and extracted the chess piece. He rolled it in his fingers, studying it carefully.

When he raised his eyes again they were blacker than midnight, deeper than a loch and just as unfathomable. "The Lady Comyn believes it brought her here?"

Grimm nodded.

"Then it could take her away?"

Grimm shrugged. "Lady Comyn said Adrienne didn't seem to remember it. Has she ever mentioned it to you?"

Hawk shook his head and looked thoughtfully, first at the black queen, then at his brightly burning fire.

Grimm met Hawk's gaze levelly, and Hawk knew there would never be words of reproach or even a whisper of the deed, if he chose to do it.

"Do you believe?" Grimm asked softly.

* * * * *

The Hawk sat before the fire for a long time after Grimm left, alternating between belief and disbelief. Although he was a creative man, he was also a logical man. Time travel simply didn't fit into his understanding of the natural world.

He could believe in the banshee, who warned of pending death and destruction. He could even believe in the Druids as alchemists and practitioners of strange arts. He'd been raised on childhood warnings of the kelpie, who lived in deep lochs and lured unsuspecting and unruly children to their watery graves.

But traveling through time?

Besides, he told himself as he stuffed the chess piece into his sporran for later consideration, there were other more pressing problems to address. Like the smithy. And his willful wife, upon whose lips the smithy's name sat far too often.

The future would allow plenty of time to unravel all of Adrienne's secrets, and make sense of the mass delusions at the Comyn keep. But first, he had to truly make her his wife. Once that was accomplished, he could begin to worry about other details. Thus resolved, he stuffed away the unsettling news Grimm had brought him, much as he had stuffed away the chess piece.

Plans of just how he would seduce his lovely wife replaced all worries. With a dangerous smile and purpose in his stride, the Hawk went off in search of Adrienne.




* * *





CHAPTER 13




adrienne walked restlessly, her mind whirling. Her brief nap in the sunshine had done nothing to dispel her wayward thoughts. Thoughts like just how capable, not to mention how willing, the Hawk was of providing babies to fill that dratted nursery.

Instinctively she avoided the north end of the bailey, unwilling to confront the smithy and those unnerving images still fermenting in her mind from when she'd been ill.

South she strayed, beckoned by the glimmer of sun off a glass roof and curiosity deep as a loch. These were no barbaric people, she mused. And if she didn't miss her guess, she was walking right toward a hothouse. How brilliant was the mind that had fashioned Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea. It was impenetrable on the west end due to the cliffs, which presented a sheer, unscalable drop to the fierce ocean. Spreading north, south, and east, the keep itself was sealed behind monstrous walls, all of seventy to eighty feet high. How strange that the same mind which had designed Dalkeith as a stronghold had made it so beautiful. The complicated mind of a man who provided for the necessity of war, yet savored the times of peace.

Careful, getting intrigued are you?

When she reached the hothouse, Adrienne noticed that it was attached to a circular stone tower. During her many hours of surfing the Internet she'd been drawn time and time again to things medieval. The mews? Falcons. It was there they kept and trained falcons for hunting.

Drawn by the lure of animals and missing Moonshadow with an ache in her chest, Adrienne approached the gray stone broch. What had Hawk meant about treating her like one of his falcons? she wondered. Well, she'd just find out for herself, so she'd know what to avoid in the future.

Tall and completely circular, the broch had only one window, which was covered by a slatted shutter. Something about the dark, she remembered reading. Curious, she approached the heavy door and pushed it aside, closing it behind her lest any falcons be tempted to escape. She wouldn't give the Hawk any excuse to chastise her.

Slowly her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom and she was able to make out several empty perches in the dim light. Ah, not the mews, this must be the training broch. Adrienne tried to recall the way the trainers of yore had skilled their birds for the hunt.

The broch smelled of lavender and spice, the heavy musk from the attached hothouse permeating the stone walls. It was a peaceful place. Oh, how easily she could get used to never hearing the rush of traffic again; never having to look over her shoulder again; never seeing New Orleans again—an end to all the running and hiding and fear.

The walls of the broch were cool and clean to the touch, nothing like the stone walls that had once held her prisoner in the gritty dirt of a New Orleans prison cell.