Beyond the Highland Myst(53)

Maybe it's not like that, Adrienne. Maybe you don't know the whole story, a small voice in her heart pointed out.

Maybe I don't want to know the whole story, she seethed. She clenched her hands until she felt the painful tear of nails in the soft flesh of her palms. I want to go home, she mourned like a lost child. I want Moonie.

That's the only thing that's worth wanting back there, she thought.

She blew out a frustrated breath.

"Adrienne." His voice came out of the shadows of the lower bailey so softly that she thought at first she must have imagined it.

She whirled to meet his gaze. Moonlight fell in wide shafts through the trees, casting a silver bar across his chiseled face.

"Leave me alone, Hawk."

"What did Olivia tell you?" The words sounded as though they were ripped from him against his will.

"Why don't you go ask her? It seems the two of you communicated quite well in the past. A sort of 'wordless communication,' if I recall."

"Lass, don't," he groaned.

"Why not? Does the truth hurt?"

"Adrienne, it wasn't like that. It wasn't…" His voice trailed off and he sighed.

"It wasn't what?" she said icily. Adrienne waited. Would he explain? The word whore could have a variety of meanings, none of them savory. She knew he'd been with beautiful women, and a lot of them from what the Comyn maids had told her, but just how many? A thousand? Ten thousand?

When the Hawk didn't reply, Adrienne pushed. "Are you Olivia's lover?"

"No, lass!"

"Were you?" Adrienne forced herself to ask.

Hawk sighed. "It's true, but it was a long time ago, and you don't know the circumstances—"

Adrienne glared. "I don't want to know the circumstances under which you would be with a woman like her! If you had any discrimination at all, you would never… You men are all the same!"

Hawk's brogue thickened measurably. "Give me a chance, Adrienne. Hear me out. 'Tisna fair to be hating me for things other men may have done to you. One more chance—that's all I'm asking of you, lass."

"I've given you too many chances! Leave me alone, Hawk Douglas. Just leave me alone!" Adrienne spun around and raced for the castle before she could humiliate herself by bursting into tears.

* * * * *

She dreamed of the Hawk and the promise she had glimpsed in his eyes. The hope. If he knew her past, would he still want her? Adrienne's slumbering psyche struggled mightily with the lot of it. Dare she let herself love him? Dare she not? Her heart was still too bruised. Her mind recoiled from any possibility of further shame and regret. But the temptation to fall grew harder to resist every day. If only she were home in her cocoon of solitude. Safe again, but so lonely…

Dreaming within a dream, she finally remembered how she'd come to be there, and understood how she might get back home. The way to escape the Hawk and all his infinite promises of passion and pain.

She was awakened by the impact of the memory. Disentangling herself from the silken sheets, she crossed the room and peered out into the inky night.

Eberhard's chess set.

She could finally recall with perfect clarity what she'd been doing moments before she'd been catapulted through time to land on the Comyn's lap.

She'd been in her library, picking up the pieces of Eberhard's chess set.

That dratted chess set really was cursed. When she'd swiped it from Eberhard's house, she'd been careful not to touch the pieces. Eberhard had often joked about the curse, but Adrienne preferred to give legends, curses, and myths a wide berth. After she'd pilfered the set, she had left it packed, intending to unpack it only if she needed to sell it.

She knew she'd had the black queen in her hand when she'd appeared on Red Comyn's lap, but where had it gone from there? She certainly didn't have it now. Had one of the maids taken it? Would she have to confront the despicable Red Comyn to get it back?

She shook her head dejectedly. It had to be somewhere at the Comyn keep, and wherever it was she had to make an effort to find it. It could take her home.

Could she find her way back to the Comyn keep?

Of course, she assured herself. After traveling scrubby backroads for two thousand miles, Adrienne de Simone could find her way anywhere. But quickly, while she was still under cover of the night. And before her resolve weakened.

* * * * *

Thirty minutes later she was ready. Tiptoeing through the kitchen, she'd found an oiled sack and filled it with crusty breads and cheeses and a few apples. Tavis snored in his chair by the door, his hand furled about a half-full glass of—she sniffed cautiously—pure grain alcohol from the smell of it. After a quick stop in the Green Lady's room where she'd left the boots Lydia had given her, she'd be ready to go.