Beyond the Highland Mist
Read Beyond the Highland Mist Online
Authors: Karen Marie Moning
Featured Alternate Selection of Doubleday Book Club and Rhapsody Book Club
Praise for the novels of
Karen Marie Moning
The Dark Highlander
“Darker, sexier, and more serious than Moning’s previous time-travel romances … this wild, imaginative romp takes readers on an exhilarating ride through time and space.”
—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Pulsing with sexual tension, Moning delivers a tale romance fans will be talking about for a long time.”
—The Oakland Press
“The Dark Highlander
is dynamite, dramatic, and utterly riveting. Ms. Moning takes the classic plot of good vs. evil … and gives it a new twist.”
—Romantic Times
Kiss of the Highlander
“Moning’s snappy prose, quick wit and charismatic characters will enchant.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Moning is quickly building a reputation for writing poignant time travels with memorable characters. This may be the first book I’ve read by her, but it certainly won’t be my last. She delivers compelling stories with passionate characters readers will find enchanting.”
—The Oakland Press
“Here is an intelligent, fascinating, well-written foray into the paranormal that will have you glued to the pages. A must read!”
—Romantic Times
“Kiss of the Highlander
is wonderful…. [Moning’s] storytelling skills are impressive, her voice and pacing dynamic, and her plot as tight as a cask of good Scotch whisky.”
—The Contra Costa Times
“Kiss of the Highlander
is a showstopper.”
—Rendezvous
The Highlander’s Touch
“A stunning achievement in time-travel romance. Ms. Moning’s imaginative genius in her latest spellbinding tale speaks to the hearts of romance readers and will delight and touch them deeply. Unique and eloquent, filled with thought-provoking and emotional elements,
The Highlander’s Touch
is a very special book. Ms. Moning effortlessly secures her place as a top-notch writer.”
—Romantic Times
“Ms. Moning stretches our imagination, sending us flying into the enchanting past.”
—Rendezvous
To Tame A Highland Warrior
“A hauntingly beautiful love story … Karen Marie Moning gives us an emotional masterpiece that you will want to take out and read again and again.”
—Rendezvous
BEYOND THE HIGHLAND MIST
A Dell Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Dell mass market edition / March 1999
Dell mass market reissue / June 2004
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1999 by Karen Marie Moning
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Dell Books, New York, New York.
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-42697-0
v3.0_r2
Excerpt from
The Immortal Highlander
Excerpt from
To Tame A Highland Warrior
Excerpt from
The Highlander’s Touch
Excerpt from
Kiss of the Highlander
Excerpt from
The Dark Highlander
You spotted snakes with double tongue
Thorny hedgehogs be not seen;
Newts and blind worms, do no wrong
Come not near our fairy queen.
S
HAKESPEARE
,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
ROLOGUE
S
COTLAND
1 F
EBRUARY
1513
T
HE FRAGRANCE OF JASMINE AND SANDALWOOD DRIFTED
through the rowan trees. Above dew-drenched branches, a lone gull ghosted a bank of mist and soared to kiss the dawn over the white sands of Morar. The turquoise tide shimmered in shades of mermaid tails against the alabaster shore.
The elegant royal court of the Tuatha De Danaan dappled the stretch of lush greenery. Pillowed chaises in brilliant scarlet and lemon adorned the grassy knoll, scattered in a half-moon about the outdoor dais.
“They say he is even more beautiful than you,” the Queen remarked to the man sprawled indolently at the foot of her dais.
“Impossible.” His mocking laughter tinkled like cut-crystal chimes on a fae wind.
“They say his manhood at half-mast would make a stallion
envious.” The Queen slanted a glance beneath half-lowered lids at her rapt courtiers.
“More likely a mouse,” sneered the man at her feet. Elegant fingers demonstrated a puny space of air, and titters sliced the mist.
“They say at full-mast he steals a woman’s mind from her body. Claims her soul.” The Queen dropped fringed lashes to shield eyes alight with the iridescent fire of mischievous intent.
How easily my men are provoked!
The man rolled his eyes and disdain etched his arrogant profile. He crossed his legs at the ankles and gazed out across the sea.
But the Queen wasn’t fooled. The man at her feet was vainglorious, and not as impervious to her provocation as he feigned.
“Quit baiting him, my Queen,” King Finnbheara admonished. “You know how the fool gets when his ego is wounded.” He patted her arm soothingly. “You’ve teased him enough.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She briefly considered forgoing this vein of revenge. A calculating look at her men dashed that thought, as she recalled what she’d overheard them discussing late last evening in excruciating detail.
The things they’d said were unforgivable. The Queen was not a woman to be compared with another woman and found lacking. Her lip tightened imperceptibly. Her exquisitely delicate hand curled into a fist. She carefully selected her next words.
“But I have found him to be all that they say,” the Queen purred.
In the silence that followed, the statement lingered, unacknowledged, for the cut was too cruel to dignify. The
King at her side and the man at her feet shifted restlessly. She was beginning to think she hadn’t made her point quite painfully clear enough when, in unison, they rose to her bait. “Who is this man?”
Queen Aoibheal of the Fairy disguised a satisfied smile with a delicate yawn, and drank deeply of her men’s jealousy. “They call him the Hawk.”
HAPTER
1
S
COTLAND
1 A
PRIL
1513
S
IDHEACH
J
AMES
L
YON
D
OUGLAS, THIRD
E
ARL OF
D
ALKEITH
, stalked across the floor. Droplets of water trickled from his wet hair down his broad chest, and gathered into a single rivulet between the double ridges of muscle in his abdomen. Moonlight shimmered through the open window, casting a silvery glow to his bronze skin, creating the illusion that he was sculpted of molten steel.
The tub behind him had grown cold and been forgotten. The woman on the bed was also cold and forgotten. She knew it.
And she didn’t like it one bit.
Too beautiful for me
, Esmerelda thought. But by the saints, the man was a poison draught, another long cool swallow of his body the only cure for the toxin. She thought about the things she had done to win him, to share his bed, and—God forgive her—the things she would do to stay there.
She almost hated him for it. She knew she hated herself for it.
He should be mine
, she thought. She watched him stalk across the spacious room to the window which opened between fluted granite columns that met in a high arch twenty feet above her head. Esmerelda sneered at him behind his back. Foolish—such large unprotected openings in a keep—or arrogant. So what if one could lie in the massive goosedown bed and gaze through the rosy arch at a velvety sky pierced by glittering stars?
She’d caught him gazing that way tonight as he’d slammed into her, exciting that bottomless hunger in her blood with the rock-hard kind of maleness only he possessed. She’d whimpered beneath him in the greatest ecstasy she’d ever experienced and he’d been looking out the window—as if no one else was there with him.
Had he been counting the stars?
Silently reciting bawdy dittys to prevent himself from toppling over and falling asleep?
She’d lost him.
No, Esmerelda vowed, she would
never
lose him.
“Hawk?”
“Hmmm?”
She smoothed the lavender silk sheet through her trembling fingers. “Come back to bed, Hawk.”
“I’m restless tonight, sweet.” He toyed with the stem of a large pale blue blossom. A half hour earlier he’d swept the dewy petals along her silken skin.
Esmerelda flinched at his open admission that he still had energy to spare. Sleepily sated, she could see that his body still thrummed from head to toe with restless vigor. What kind of woman would it take—or how many—to leave that man drowsing in fascinated satisfaction?