Adrienne gazed lovingly at the man who'd taught her how to trust again. The man she'd lost her heart to hopelessly and helplessly. This man who liberally dripped honor, valor, compassion, and chivalry. Neither her past nor his had any relevance to love such as theirs. "Trust you, Sidheach? With all my heart and further then."
His smile was blinding. "Adrienne…"
"My lord?" her voice was soft and warm and carefree as a girl's.
When he took her in his arms, she shivered with desire. "My lord!"
* * * * *
Adrienne didn't see that above her head his eyes grew dark. How was he going to protect her? How could he assure her safety? How quickly could he get to Adam and find what was going on? Because no matter what winding corridors his mind wandered trying to unravel the strange happenings that involved his wife, they all seemed to come circling back to a grinding halt directly in front of that damned smithy. And it wasn't mere jealousy, although the Hawk would readily admit to an abiding dislike for the man.
It wasn't the black queen that had brought Adrienne to him, or so cruelly ripped her from him. That was a fact.
So what was it?
Someone or something else had that power. The power to destroy the laird of Dalkeith with one blow—by taking his cherished wife away from him. What game, what terrible, twisted amusement was being played out upon Dalkeith's shore? What power had taken an interest and why?
I came here to hate you, Hawk. But I did not come here to hate the woman you claim as wife. Adam's words echoed in his mind, and he began to see just the vague outline of a carefully plotted revenge. But that would mean Adam Black had powers the Hawk had never quite believed existed. Bits and pieces of Rom stories he'd heard as a lad resurfaced in his whirring mind, raising questions and doubts. Stories about Druids and Picts and, aye, even the nefarious and mischievous Fairy. Lydia had always said that any legend was based in some part on fact, the mythical elements being merely the inexplicable but not necessarily untrue.
Oh, his love was testing the limits of his belief in the natural world and blowing them wide open.
But if he conceded belief in such magic as time travel, what magic could he discard as too outrageous? None. He could discard no possibility, however unearthly, without thorough consideration.
Adam Black had been able to cure the previously incurable poison of Callabron. Adam Black always seemed to know too damned much. Adam Black admitted flatly that he had come to Dalkeith for revenge.
The Rom had moved far from the smithy's forge. The Rom who believed the myths and legends.
And the Hawk, indebted to Adam for his wife's life, had forced himself to overlook all the oddities, attributing them to his intense dislike of the smithy, convincing himself that he was seeing dragons in the puffy shapes of harmless clouds.
He would never let her go, but someone or something else could take her from him at a moment's whim.
He would seek it, destroy it, and free her—on his life he vowed it.
For there was no life for him without her.
* * *
CHAPTER 27
although the hawk insisted on leaving early the next morning, he also made sure they took their sweet time on the way back to Dalkeith. He sent half the guards to ride ahead and commanded the other half to stay well behind him and his lady, to allow them privacy. He would return to Uster and oversee the rest of the manorial courts in the future, after this battle was done.
Adrienne was thrilled by his urgency to return to Dalkeith to seal their vows. She was equally thrilled by the three-day journey, with long dalliances in chilly pools of bubbling spring water. Longer interludes of passion on springy moss beneath the canopy of brightly fluttering leaves. Moments in which he teased, coaxed, and taught her until the blushing virgin grew confident in her newly discovered womanhood, thrilled to feel a woman's power over her man. She soon became expert in the subtle ways of touching or speaking, of wetting a lip and beckoning with her eyes. She knew the stolen caresses and the instant responses that turned her sweet, beautiful man into a throbbing, hardened savage.
She was mildly stunned to discover that autumn had painted the hills with the inspiration of a master; leaves in brilliant shades of pumpkin, bloodwine, and buttery amber rustled crisply beneath the horse's hooves as they rode beneath boughs of harvest gold. Squirrels chirped and skittered through the trees with gravity-defying leaps. Scotland in all her majestic glory, airbrushed by love, colored the simple gifts of nature into a tapestry of miracles. Adrienne had never realized the world was such a wonderful place.
She would remember the leisurely return journey to Dalkeith as her honeymoon; a time of phenomenal passion and tender romancing. A time of blissful healing and loving. Quite simply, the happiest days of her life.