"Wait!" Adrienne broke into a run, fear gripping her heart as she realized he was making a beeline for the northern edge of the bailey, where the forge was burning brightly.
"No, Hawk!" she screamed as he melted into the gardens.
Her feet flew as she plunged through the lush greenery, racing over the beds of anemones and purple iris. She leapt the low stone walls and pushed thorny rose branches from her face, tearing the soft palms of her hands until she erupted from the gardens only to see him a dozen lengths ahead of her.
Gasping for breath, she called on every ounce of fleet-footed strength she had. If she made it at all, it would be close—too close.
From a window high above, Lydia watched the scene unfold.
Pushing against the pain of her unwilling muscles, Adrienne desperately tried to catch up to Hawk, but it was too late—he already stood next to Adam near the brightly glowing embers.
Gasping, she lunged forward just as Grimm's hand closed upon her cape. He yanked hard on the fabric, pulling her backward. The cape ripped and she fell, crying out as she tumbled to the ground. "Hawk, don't!"
"Destroy this," Hawk commanded Adam.
"No!" Adrienne screamed.
Adam cast a momentary eye upon the felled beauty. "It would seem the lady feels otherwise."
"I didn't ask you to think, Adam Black, and I don't give a bloody damn what the lady thinks."
Adam smiled impishly. "I take it you have failed to jess the falcon, Lord Hawk?"
"Burn it, smithy. Lest I satisfy myself by incinerating you, rather than the queen."
"Adam! No!" Adrienne pleaded.
Adam seemed to ponder the situation a moment, then with an oddly triumphant look, he shrugged and tossed the piece into the forge.
To Adrienne, lying flat on the ground, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
She watched in horror as the black queen soared through the air and sank into the glowing coals. Adrienne swallowed a sob as the flames licked greedily at the chess piece. Her only way out had been destroyed.
Hawk sighed his relief. Adrienne collapsed against the earth, staring blankly at the soil. The black queen was gone, the dense African wood no match for the blaze hot enough to forge steel.
No Moonie. No way home.
She was here in 1513—with him—forever.
Adam made a sound a shade too dark to be laughter as he leaned closer to the Hawk. Close enough that only the Hawk heard his low, mocking words. "She will warm my bed in no time at all now, fool Hawk."
Hawk flinched. The smithy was right. His wife would hate him for what he'd done.
"What the hell are you doing at the forge in the middle of the night anyway?" Hawk snapped.
Adam grinned impishly. "I am ever a merry wanderer of the night. Besides, one never knows what prime opportunity might present itself for the plucking."
Hawk snarled at the smithy.
Behind him, he heard Adrienne stagger to her unsteady feet. Her breathing was labored from her run, perhaps from shock as well. Bleakly, the Hawk studied the forge in rigid silence. Adrienne's voice trembled with fury.
"Know one thing, Lord Douglas, and it's all you'll ever need to know. Remember it, should you someday think I may have changed my mind. I won't. I despise you. You took from me what you had no right to take. And there's nothing you can ever do to earn my forgiveness. I hate you!"
"Despise me as you must," he said quietly, still staring at the forge. "But you can never leave me now. That's all that matters."
* * *
LUGHNASSADH
(Midsummer)
———————————————
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble…
shakespeare, Macbeth
* * *
CHAPTER 19
twilight crept up from the ocean and over the cliffs with purple impatience that stained the walls of Dalkeith a dusky crimson. In his study, Hawk watched the night seep through the open doors on the west end.
She stood on the cliff's edge, unmoving, her velvet cape tossing restlessly in the wind. What was she thinking as she gazed blindly out to sea?
He knew what he'd been thinking—that even the wind sought to unclothe her. He tortured himself with the memory of the sultry rose peaks he knew crowned her breasts beneath the silk of her gown. Her body had been shaped for this time, to wear clinging silks and rich velvets. To be a fine laird's lady. To mate a proud warrior.
What the hell was he going to do? Things couldn't go on like this.
He'd been trying to provoke her, hoping she'd make him angry so he could lose his head and punish her with his body. But time and again when he'd pushed she'd given him only cool civility, and a man couldn't do a bloody thing with that kind of response. He whirled from the door and squeezed his eyes shut to erase all haunting memory of the vision of his wife.