Beyond the Highland Mist (26 page)

“And just what does my being without a husband have to do with
you
?”

Tavis cocked his head and gave her the patient, tender smile that sometimes swam up to linger in her mind just before she drifted off to sleep at night.

“Just that I’ll always be here for you, Lydia. You can always count on Tavis of the tannery, and I’ll say that a thousand times more.” His eyes were level and deep with something
she was unable to face. She had already lost two husbands to two wars and the sweet saints knew there was always another war coming.

But Tavis MacTarvitt, he always came back. Scarred and bloody, he always came back.

Back to stand in the kitchens with her while she dried her herbs and spices. Back to lend a helping hand now and again as she dug in her rich black soil and pruned her roses.

There were times when they both knelt in the dirt, their heads close together, that she’d feel a fluttery sensation in her belly. And times when she sat by the hearth in the kitchen and asked his help brushing out her long dark hair. He’d take the pins out first, then unsmooth her plaits one by one.

“Nothing’s happening Lydia.” Tavis’s voice shattered her pensive reverie and forced her mind back to the present.

She shook herself sharply, dragging her thoughts back to the task at hand. Coffee. She wanted coffee for her daughter-in-law.

“Maybe it’s like the black beans or dried peas and has to soak overnight,” she worried as she rubbed the back of her neck. Nothing was going right this morning.

Lydia had woken early, thinking about the lovely lass who had so bedazzled her son. Thinking about how the situation must seem from
her
point of view. Calamity after calamity had struck since her arrival.

Which is why she’d gone to the buttery to retrieve quite a store of the shining black beans her daughter-in-law so coveted. The least she could do was find Adrienne a cup of coffee this morning before she told her that the Hawk had left for Uster at dawn. Or worse, the news Tavis had discovered a scant hour ago: that Esmerelda had been trying to kill Adrienne but was now dead herself.

So it had come to this … peering into a pan full of glistening black beans that were doing not much of anything in the steaming water.

“Maybe we should smash the beans, Lydia,” Tavis said, leaning closer. So close that his lips were scant inches from hers when he said, “What think you?”

Lydia beamed. “Tavis, I think you just might have it. Get that mortar and pestle and let’s get at it. This morning I’d really like to be able to start her day off with coffee.”
She’s going to need it.

“It’s getting out of hand, fool. A mortal lies dead,” King Finnbheara snapped.

“Of her own race’s hand. Not mine,” Adam clarified.

“But if
you
hadn’t been here, it would not have come to be. You are perilously close to destroying everything. If the Compact is ever broken, it will be by my Queen’s choosing, not through your act of idiocy.”

“You had a hand in this plan too, my liege.” Adam reminded. “Furthermore, I have harmed no mortal. I merely pointed out to the Rom that I was displeased. It was they who took action.”

“You split hairs quite neatly, but you’re too close to rupturing the peace we’ve kept for two millennia. This was not part of the game. The woman must go back to her time.” King Finnbheara waved a dismissive hand.

Adrienne was walking in the garden, thinking about the advantages of the sixteenth century and the serene bliss of unspoiled nature, when it happened. She suffered a horrid falling sensation, as if a great vortex had opened and a relentless
whirlpool tugged her down. When she realized that she recognized the feeling, Adrienne opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She’d felt this way just before she’d found herself on the Comyn’s lap; as if her body were being stretched thin and yanked at an impossible speed through a yawning blackness.

Agonizing pressure built in her head, she clutched it with both hands and prayed fervently,
Oh, dear God, not again, please not again!

The stretching sensation intensified, the throb in her temples swelled to a crescendo of pain, and just when she was convinced she would be ripped in two, it stopped.

For a moment she couldn’t focus her eyes; dim shapes of furniture wavered and rippled in shades of gray. Then the world swam into focus and she gasped.

Adrienne stared in shock at the fluttering curtains of her own bedroom.

She shook her head to clear it and groaned at the waves of pain such a small movement caused.

“Bedroom?” she mumbled dumbly. Adrienne looked around in complete confusion. There was Moonshadow perched delicately upon the overstuffed bed in her customary way, little paws folded demurely over the wood foot-rail, staring back at her with an equally shocked expression on her feline face. Her lime golden eyes were rounded in surprise.

“Princess!”

Adrienne reached.

Adam quickly made a retrieving gesture with his hand and glared at his king. “She stays.”

King Finnbheara snapped his fingers just as quickly. “And I said she goes!”

Adrienne blinked and shook her head, hard. Was she back in Dalkeith’s gardens? No, she was in her bedroom again.

This time, determined to get her hands on Moonie, Adrienne lunged for her, startling the already confused cat. Moonie’s back arched like a horseshoe, her tiny whiskers bristled with indignation, and she leapt off the bed and fled the room on tiny winged paws.

Adrienne followed, hard on her heels. If by some quirk of fate she was to be given a second chance, she wanted one thing. To bring Moonshadow back to the sixteenth century with her.

Adam snapped his fingers as well. “Do not think to change your mind midcourse. You agreed to this, my King. It wasn’t just
my
idea.”

Adrienne groaned. She was in the gardens again.

It happened three more times in quick succession and each time she tried desperately to capture Moonie. A part of her mind protested that this simply couldn’t be happening, but another part acknowledged that if it was, she was damn well going to get her precious cat.

On the last toss, she almost had the bewildered little kitten cornered in the kitchen, when Marie, her erstwhile housekeeper, selected that precise moment to enter the room.

“Eees that you, Mees de Simone?” Marie gasped, clutching the doorjamb.

Startled, Adrienne turned toward her voice.

The women gaped at each other. A thousand questions and concerns tumbled through Adrienne’s mind; how much time had passed? Was her housekeeper Marie living in the house now? Had she taken Moonie for her shots? But she didn’t ask because she didn’t know how much longer she had.

Sensing a reprieve, Moonshadow bolted for the door. Adrienne lunged after her, and abruptly found herself once again in the garden, shaking from head to toe.

Adrienne moaned aloud.

She’d almost had her!
Just one more time
, she whispered.
Send me back one more time.

Nothing.

Adrienne sank to a stone bench to spare her shaky legs and took several deep breaths.

Of all the nasty things to have to endure first thing in the morning. This was worse than a bad hair day. This was insult to injury on a no-coffee day.

She sat motionless and waited again, hopefully.

Nothing. Still in the gardens.

She shivered. It had been terrible, being tossed about like that, but at least now she knew Moonie was okay and that Marie obviously hadn’t waited
too
long before moving to the big house from her room over the garage. And although Adrienne’s head still ached from being tossed back and forth, there was comfort in her knowledge that her Moonshadow was not a little skeleton cat traipsing through a lonely house.