“If love can be bottled, or shot from Cupid’s bow, my friend,” Grimm whispered into the breeze that ruffled in Hawk’s wake when he entered Adrienne’s chamber.

In the weeks to come the Hawk would wonder many times why the Rom, whom he trusted and valued, and whom he had thought returned those feelings in kind, had never come to tend his wife during those terrible days. When he spoke to his guard, the man said that he’d delivered the message. Not only didn’t the Rom come, they were conspicuously absent from Dalkeith. They made no trips to the castle to barter their goods. They spent no evenings weaving tales in the Greathall before a rapt and dazzled audience. Not one of the Rom approached Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea; they kept to their fields, out past the rowans.

That fact nagged at Hawk’s mind briefly, but was quickly lost in the thick of more weighty concerns. He promised himself he would resolve his questions with a trip to the gypsy camp once his wife was fully healed and matters with the strange smithy were resolved. But it was to be some time before he made the trip to the Rom camp; and by that time, things would be vastly changed.

Adrienne drifted up from healing slumber to find her husband watching her intently.

“I thought I’d lost you.” The Hawk’s face was dark, glistening in the firelight, and it was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. It took her several long moments to shake loose the cotton stuffing that had replaced her brain. With wakefulness came defiance. Just looking at that man made her temper rise.

“Can’t lose something you don’t have. Never had me to begin with, Lord Hawk,” she mumbled.

“Yet,” he corrected. “I haven’t had you yet. At least not in the sense that I will have you. Beneath me. Bare, silky skin slippery with my loving. My kisses. My hunger.” He traced the pad of his thumb along the curve of her lower lip and smiled.

“Never.”

“Never say never. It only makes you feel more foolish when you end up taking it back. I wouldn’t want you to feel too foolish, lass.”

“Never,” she said more firmly. “And I never say never unless I’m absolutely one hundred percent certain I will never change my mind.”

“There are a lot of nevers in there, my heart. Be careful.”

“Your heart is a wrinkled prune. And I mean every blasted one of those nevers.”

“Mean them as you will, lass. ’twill only make it that much more pleasurable to break you to my bit.”

“I am not a mare to be broken to ride!”

“Ah, but there are many similarities, wouldn’t you say? You need a strong hand, Adrienne. A confident rider, one not dismayed by your strong will. You need a man who can handle your bucking and enjoy your run. I won’t break you to ride. Nay. I will break you to the feel of my hand and mine alone. A mare broken to ride allows many riders, but a wild horse broken to the bit of one hand—she loses none of her fire, yet permits none but her true master to mount her.”

“No man has ever been my master, and none ever will. Get that straight in your head, Douglas.” Adrienne gritted her teeth as she struggled to pull herself upright. It was hard trying to hold her ground in a conversation while lying flat on her back feeling ridiculously weak, looking up at this goliath of a man. “And as to mounting me….”

To her chagrin and the Hawk’s vast amusement, she slipped back into healing slumber without completing the thought.

Unknown to him, she more than completed it in her dreams. Never! her dreaming-within-the-dream mind seethed, even as she was drawn to the great black charger with fire in his eyes.

CHAPTER 11

“IT’S NOT ME SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL, ADRIENNE repeated.

She was buried in mounds of plush pillows and woolen throws and felt helplessly swallowed by a mountain of feathers. Every time she moved the dratted bed moved with her. It was wearing her out, like being cocooned in a down straitjacket. “I want to get up, Hawk. Now.” Too bad her voice didn’t come off sounding as firm as she’d intended. It would have—it should have—except being in a bed while trying to argue with this particular man scattered her thoughts like leaves to a windstorm, into a jumble of passionate images; bronzed skin against pale, ebony eyes and hot kisses.

The Hawk smiled, and she had to bite down the overwhelming urge just to smile blankly back, like some dim-witted idiot. He was beautiful when somber, but when he smiled she was in grave danger of forgetting that he was the enemy. And she must never forget that. So she put a lot of frustration to good use, and dredged up an impressive scowl.