“Cure her,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
“You grant my boon?” the smithy asked.
“As we agreed. Only if she chooses you.”
“You will place no restrictions upon any time she chooses to spend with me. I am wooing her from this day forth and you will not caution her from me. She is free to see me as she pleases.”
“I am wooing her too.”
“That is the game, Hawk,” Adam said softly, and Hawk finally understood. The smithy didn’t want his wife handed over freely. He wanted a contest, a battle for her favors. He wanted an open challenge, and intended to win.
“You will hate it when I take her from you, dread Hawk,” the smithy promised. “Close the door when you leave.”
CHAPTER 10
“HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT A MAN’S WORLD CAN BE TURNED inside out before he even has a chance to see it coming and try to stop it, Grimm?”
Hawk had started drinking the moment the door had shut on his wife and the smithy. He was trying with determination to get head-reeling, feet-stumbling, bellyaching drunk and was not succeeding.
“Do you believe he can cure her, Hawk?”
Hawk puzzled a moment. “Aye, Grimm. I do. There’s something unnatural about Adam Black, and I mean to find out what it is.”
“What do you suspect?”
“I don’t know. Grimm, I want you to find out everything about the man you can. Talk to everyone on the estate until you get some answers. Where he came from, when he came here, who he’s related to, what he does all day. I want to know about every breath he draws, every piss he takes.”
“Understood, Hawk.”
“Good.”
They both turned to stare at the door to the Green Lady’s room. It had been hours since the smithy had closed the door. Not a sound had escaped since.
“Who would try to kill her, Hawk?” Grimm puzzled. “Mad Janet was practically a recluse. According to the gossip at Comyn keep, fewer than five people ever saw her. How could a lass so far out of circulation offend anyone enough to invite murder?”
Hawk rubbed his head tiredly. His stomach was churning and the Scotch wasn’t helping. On sudden impulse he rolled the bottle away from him, toward Grimm. “Don’t let me have any more. I need a clear head. I can’t think right now. He’s touching her, Grimm. He could be bathing her, gazing upon her. I want to kill him.”
“So do it, when he’s done curing her,” Grimm said easily.
“I can’t!”
“Then I’ll do it for you,” Grimm said, ever faithful.
“Nay. We made a pact.”
“You made a pact with him?” Grimm’s eyes flared wide. “Damn it all to hell, man! You never break a pact. Why would you be so foolish to make a pact with a man you can’t stand?”
“He can save my wife.”
“When did you come to have such feeling for this Mad Janet you swore never to take to wife anyway?”
“Shut up, Grimm.”
“What’s the pact, Hawk?” Grimm persisted.
“He wants Adrienne.”
“You gave him Adrienne?”
“Grimm, no more questions. Just find out anything and everything about this man called Adam Black.”
“Be assured, I will.”
“You are flawless, beauty,” the smithy said as his coal-black eyes raked over her nude body twisted in the damp sheets.
“Flawless lalless,” Adrienne pooh-poohed dreamily. The heat was ebbing, slowly.
“Decidedly lawless.”
He couldn’t know. Not possibly. “What do you mean by that?” She struggled to form the words, and wasn’t certain she even made a sound.
“Just that there must be something criminal about a woman so beautiful,” he replied archly.
“Nothing criminal about me,” she demurred distantly.
“Oh, beauty, I think there is much criminal about you.”
“There is something just not normal about you, Adam,” she mumbled as she tossed restlessly.
“No,” he replied smugly, “there is certainly nothing normal about me. Give me your hand, beauty, I’ll show you not normal.”
And then there was cool water, frothy ocean upon powder-white sand. Whisper of gentle surf rushing over the beach, cool sand beneath her bare toes. No ants, no rack, no fire. Just peace in her most favorite haven in the world. The seaside at Maui where she’d vacationed with her girlfriends. Beautiful, blissful days they’d passed there with fresh-squeezed orange juice and endless summer jogs on the beach, bare feet slapping the edge of the tide.