Beyond the Highland Mist (4 page)

Outside the French doors at 93 Coattail Lane, a man who lacked substance, a creature manmade devices could neither detect nor contain, heard her words and smiled. His choice was made with swift certainty—Adrienne de Simone was definitely the woman he’d been searching for.

A
DRIENNE HAD NO IDEA HOW SHE ENDED UP ON THE MAN’S
lap. None.

One moment she was perfectly sane—perhaps a bit neurotic, but firmly convinced of her sanity nonetheless—and the next moment the ground disappeared beneath her feet and she was sucked down one of Alice’s rabbit holes.

Her first thought was that she must be dreaming: a vivid, horrifying subconscious foray into a barbaric nightmare.

But that didn’t make any sense; only moments before, she’d been petting Moonshadow or doing … something … what? She couldn’t have just fallen asleep without even knowing it!

Maybe she’d stumbled and struck her head, and this hallucination was the dreamy result of a concussion.

Or maybe not, she worried as she looked around the cavernous smoky room filled with oddly dressed people speaking a mutilated version of the English tongue.

You’ve done it now, Adrienne
, she mused soberly.
You’ve finally slipped over the edge, heels still kicking.
Adrienne struggled to focus her eyes, which felt strangely heavy. The man who clutched her was revolting. He was a belching beast with thick arms and a fat belly, and he smelled.

Only moments ago she’d been in her library, hadn’t she?

A greasy hand squeezed her breast and she yelped aloud. Bewilderment was vanquished by embarrassed outrage when his hand deliberately grazed the crest of her nipple through her sweater. Even if this was a dream, she couldn’t permit that kind of activity to pass without redress. She opened her mouth to deliver a scathing tongue lashing, but he beat her to the punch. His pink mouth in that tangled mass of hair expanded into a wide
O.
Dear
heaven
but the man hadn’t even finished chewing, and no wonder—his few remaining teeth were stumpy and brown.

It was with revulsion that Adrienne wiped bits of chicken and spittle from her face when he roared, but it was with genuine alarm that she comprehended his words, through his thick brogue.

She was a godsend, he proclaimed to the room at large. She was a gift from the angels.

She would be married on the morrow.

Adrienne fainted. Her unconscious body spasmed once, then went limp. The black queen slipped from her hand, hit the floor, and was kicked under a table by a scuffed leather boot.

When Adrienne awoke, she lay still, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. Beneath her back she felt the lumpy down ticks piled thickly. It could be her own bed. She had purchased antique ticks and had them restitched to plump atop her
waist-high Queen Anne bed. She was in love with old things, no dithering about it.

She sniffed cautiously. No odd scents from the banquet she’d dreamt. No hum of that thick brogue she’d imagined earlier.

But no traffic either.

She strained her ears, listening mightily. Had she ever heard such silence?

Adrienne drew a ragged breath and willed her heart to slow.

She tossed on the lumpy tick. Was this how insanity occurred? Started with a vague inkling of unease, a dreadful sense of being watched, then escalated rapidly into full blown madness, only to culminate in a nightmare where a smelly, hairy beast announced her impending nuptials?

Adrienne squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut, willing her return to sanity. The silhouette of a chess set loomed in her mind; battle-ready rooks and bitter queens etched in stark relief against the insides of her eyelids, and it seemed that there was something urgent she needed to remember. What had she been doing?

Her head hurt. It was a dull kind of ache, accompanied by the bitter taste of old pennies in the back of her throat. For a moment she struggled against it, but the throbbing intensified. The chess set danced elusively in shades of black and white, then dissolved into a distant nagging detail. It couldn’t have been too important.

Adrienne had more pressing things to worry about—where in the blue blazes was she?

She kept her eyes closed and waited. A few moments more and she would hear the purr of a BMW tooling sleekly down Coattail Lane or her phone would peal angrily….

A rooster did
not
just crow.

Another minute and she’d hear Moonie’s questioning
mer-ooow
, and feel her tail swish past her face as she leapt up on the bed.

She did
not
hear the grate of squeaky hinges, the scrape of a door cut too long against a stone threshold.

“Milady, I know you’re awake.”

Her eyes sprang open to find a portly woman with silver-brown hair and rosy cheeks, wringing her hands as she stood at the foot of the bed. “Who are you?” Adrienne asked warily, refusing to look at any more of the room than the immediate spot that contained this latest apparition.

“Bah! Who am
I
she asks? The lass who pops out of nowhere, lickety-split, like a witch if you please, is wishing to know who I am? Hmmph!”

With that, the woman placed a platter of peculiar-smelling food on a nearby table, and forced Adrienne up by plumping the pillows behind her back.

“I’m Talia. I’ve been sent to see to your care. Eat up. You’ll never be strong enough to face wedding
him
if you doona be eating,” she chided.

With those words and a full glimpse of the stone walls hung with vividly colored tapestries depicting hunts and orgies, Adrienne fainted again—this time, with relish.

Adrienne awoke again to a score of maids bearing undergarments, stockings, and a wedding dress.

The women bathed her in scented water before a massive stone fireplace. While she huddled submerged in the deep wooden tub, Adrienne examined every inch of the room. How could a dream be so vivid, so rich with scent and touch and sound? The bathwater smelled of fresh heather and lilac. The maids chatted lightly as they bathed her. The
stone fireplace was easily as tall as three men—it rose up to kiss the ceiling and sprawled along half the width of the east wall. It was bedecked with an array of artistic silver-work; delicately filigreed baskets, cunningly handcrafted roses that gleamed like molten silver, yet each petal distinct and looking somehow velvety. Above the great mantel, rough-hewn of honey oak, hung a hunt scene depicting a bloody victory.

Her study was cut short by the screech of the door. Shocked gasps and immediately hushed voices compelled her gaze over one bare shoulder, and she, too, gasped aloud. The villain with the matted rug upon his face! Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment and she sunk deeper into the tub.

“Milord, ’tis no place for you—” a maid began.

The slap ricocheted through the room, silencing the maid’s protest and halting anyone else’s before they even considered beginning. The great greasy beast from earlier in her nightmare sunk down on his haunches before the steaming tub, a leer on his face. Slitted blue eyes met steely gray as Adrienne held his rude stare levelly.

His eyes dropped from hers, searched the water line and probed below it. He grinned at the sight of her rosy nipples before she crossed her arms and hugged herself tightly.

“Methinks he doesn’t do so badly for himself,” the man murmured. Then, dragging his eyes from the water to her flushed face, he commanded, “From this moment forth, your name is Janet Comyn.”

Adrienne shot him a haughty look. “My name,” she snapped, “is Adrienne de Simone.”

Crack!

She raised a hand to her cheek in disbelief. A maid cried out a muffled warning.

“Try it again,” he counseled softly, and as soft as his words were, his blue eyes were dangerously hard.

Adrienne rubbed her stinging cheek in silence.

And his hand rose and fell again.

“Milady! We implore you!” A petite maid dropped to her knees beside the tub, placing a hand upon Adrienne’s bare shoulder.

“That’s right, give her counsel, Bess. You know what becomes of a lass foolish enough to deny me. Say it,” he repeated to Adrienne. “Tell me your name is Janet Comyn.”

When his beefy hand rose and fell again, it came down on Bess’s face with fury. Adrienne screamed as he struck the maid repeatedly.

“Stop!” she cried.

“Say it!” he commanded as his hand rose and fell again. Bess sobbed as she crumpled to the floor, but the man went down after her, his hand now a fist.

“My name is Janet Comyn!” Adrienne cried, half rising from the tub.

The Comyn’s fist halted in midair, and he sank back on his haunches, the light of victory gleaming in his eyes. Victory—and that disgusting slow perusal of her flesh.

Adrienne flushed under the sheer lechery of his pale eyes, and plunged her upper body back into the water.

“Nay, he doesn’t get a bad bargain at all. You are much more comely than mine own Janet.” His mouth twisted into a smile. “Would that I had leisure to taste such plump pillows myself, but you came just in the nick of time.”

“Came where?”

“Came
from
where is my question,” he countered. Adrienne realized in that instant that to underestimate this brutish man would be a grave mistake. For behind the slovenly manners and the unkempt appearance was steely
mettle and rapier sharp wit. The flabby arm that had felled the blows couched muscle. The pale slitted eyes that wandered restlessly didn’t miss a beat. He hadn’t punished Bess in rage. He’d beat her in a cold, calculated act to get what he wanted from Adrienne.

She shook her head, her eyes wide with confusion. “Really, I haven’t the faintest idea how I got here.”

“You don’t know where you came from?”

Bess was sobbing softly, and Adrienne’s eyes darkened as she watched the maid curl into a ball and surreptitiously try to inch away from the Comyn. His hand shot out and fastened on the maid’s ankle. Bess whimpered hopelessly.

“Oh nay, my pretty. I may need you yet.” His eyes swept her shuddering form with a possessive leer. Adrienne gasped when he ripped Bess’s gown and proceeded to shred it from her body. Adrienne’s stomach churned in agony when she saw the great welts rising from the maid’s pale flanks and thighs. Cruel, biting welts from a belt or a whip.

The other maids fled the room, leaving her alone with the weeping Bess and the madman.

“This is my world, Adrienne de Simone,” he intoned, and Adrienne had a premonition that the words he was about to utter would be carved deeply into her mind for a long time to come. He stroked Bess’s quivering thigh lightly. “My rules. My people. My will to command life or death. Yours and hers. ’Tis a simple thing I want of you. If you don’t cooperate, she dies. Then another and still another. I will find the very core of that foolish compassion you wear like a shroud. It makes you so easy to use. But women are that way. Weak.”

Adrienne sat hunched in silence, her labored breathing an accompaniment to Bess’s weary sobs.

“Quiet, lass!” He slapped the maid’s face, and she curled into a tighter ball, weeping into her hands to smother the sound.