"Perhaps I'm not the only one who can't see so clearly," she said scathingly. "Perhaps there are two in this room who could benefit from a little inner vision."
"What say you, lass?" Hawk said softly.
She would not dignify his stupidity with a response. A man had practically raped her, and in his jealousy her husband had simply watched. The more she protested her innocence, the guiltier she would look. And the more she thought about it, the angrier it made her. "I merely suggest you find that inner eye yourself, husband," she said, just as softly.
Her quiet dignity gave him pause. No mewling or lying or groveling. No justifications. Could it be he had misunderstood what he had seen on the fountain? Perhaps. But he would erase her memories of the smithy, that he vowed.
He smiled darkly and seeled her with the silken hood again. Yes, by the time he was finished she would forget Adam Black even existed.
That he knew he could do. He'd been trained for it. First by the Gypsies and then by the Duchess of Courtland. "Sex is not merely a momentary pleasure," she'd instructed him. "It is an art to be practiced with studied hand and discriminating taste. I am going to school you in this, the finest of forays into human scandal. You will be the best lover the land has ever known by the time I am done. Easily, for there is no question that you are the most beautiful."
And the lessons had begun. She'd been right—there had indeed been much he hadn't known. And she showed him, this spot here, that curve there, this way of moving, a thousand positions, the subtle ways to use his body to bring many different kinds of pleasure, and finally, all the mind games that went with it.
He learned well, committing this art to memory. And in time, his eager boyish hunger was lost adrift a meaningless sea of conquests and mistresses.
Oh, he was the best, no question about it. He left the lasses begging for his attention. The legend of the Hawk grew. Then one day, a woman whom Hawk had spurned repeatedly—Olivia Dumont—petitioned King James for his favors as if he were a piece of property to be granted.
And like royal property, James had granted him, wielding the same threat of harm to Dalkeith should he disobey.
How James had loved that—especially when he realized how much the Hawk had been humiliated by it. And so the king had said, you will be whoever We want you to be, even if it's a thing so trivial as Our whore, to please Our favored ladies. Other men were sent to battle. The Hawk was sent to bed with Olivia. Doubly humiliating.
Many men had envied the Hawk—the lover of so many beautiful women. Still more men had hated the Hawk for his prowess and virility, and for the legends the ladies wove about him.
Eventually, James had grown tired of hearing the legends. Sick of his ladies clamoring about the beautiful man, James had sent the Hawk abroad on absurd and risky missions. To steal a crown jewel from Persia. To beguile a priceless objet d'art from an old heiress in Rome. Whatever odd treasure the greedy James had heard of, the Hawk was sent to acquire by fair means or foul. The king's whore had been simply that: a man who did the king's "dirty work," whatsoever his fickle liege wished at the time.
Now his eyes returned to the lass standing in silence before him.
She was so different from any he'd ever known. From the first day he'd seen her, he'd recognized that she was truly without artifice or coy subterfuge. Although she might have hidden depths, they were neither malicious nor self-serving but had been born of suffering and loneliness, not of deceit. He'd recognized that she had a pure heart, as pure and real and full of possibility as his Gypsy fields had been, and that it had already been given to a man who was undeserving! To the epitome of deceit and strange artifice. To Adam Black.
By hook or crook or whatever fashion was necessary, he would woo and win her. He would make her see the error of her ways—that she'd given her heart to the wrong man.
She was seeled both from him and to him, until she learned to see again with that pure heart which had recoiled into hiding. He would wake it, shake it up, and force it to come out and face the world again. And when she'd learned to see him for what he really was, then she could see him with her eyes again.
Adrienne stood stock-still and uncertain. It was strange, knowing he was in the room but not knowing where or what he was doing. He could be standing in front of her even now, his body nude and glistening in the oil lights. She imagined him lit by the soft glow of candles. She loved the fires and torcheres of this century. What kind of romance could live and breathe beneath fluorescent lights of her own time?
She regretted the hood as it deprived her of seeing him, but decided that was for the best. If she could see him, that meant he could see her eyes, and they would surely betray her fascination, if not her willingness.