And then the stranger images. Scent of jasmine and sandalwood. Snowflake sand dotted with fuchsia silk tents and butterflies upon every bough of every limb of every rowan. An improbable place. And she was lying in the cool sands and healed by tropical lapis waves.

“Beauty, my beauty. Want me. Feel me, hunger for me and I will slake your need.”

“Hawk?”

Adam’s anger was palpable in the air.

Adrienne forced her eyes open a slit, and gasped. If her body had obeyed, she would have shot straight up in bed. But it didn’t obey. It lay flaccid and weak upon the bed while her temper shot up instead. “Get out of my room!” she yelled. At least her voice hadn’t lost its vigor.

“I was just checking to make sure your forehead cooled.” Adam grinned puckishly.

“You thickheaded oaf! I don’t care why you’re in here, just get out!”

Finally her body obeyed a little and she managed to get her fingers around a tumbler at the bedside. Too weak to throw it, she was at least able to slide it off the table. Glass crashed to the floor and shattered. The sound mollified her slightly.

“You were dying. I cured you,” Adam reminded.

“Thank you. Now get out.”

Adam blinked. “That’s all? Thank you, now get out?”

“Don’t think I’m so stupid that I don’t realize you were touching my breasts!” she whispered fiercely. At the abashed look on his face she realized he had indeed thought she’d been unconscious. “So that and my thanks are all you’ll be getting, smithy!” she growled. “I hate beautiful men. Hate them!”

“I know,” Adam smiled with real pleasure and obeyed her dismissal.

Adrienne squeezed her eyes shut tightly but upon the pink-gray insides of her eyelids shadows arose. Images of being held between the Hawk’s rock-hard thighs, wrapped in arms that were bands of steel. His voice murmuring her name over and over, calling her back, commanding her back. Demanding that she live. Whispering words of … what? What had he said?

“She lives, Lord Buzzard—”

“Hawk.”

“Both birds of prey. What difference?”

“A buzzard is a scavenger. A hawk selects his kill as carefully as a falcon. Stalks it with the same unerring conviction. And fails as frequently—which is never.”

“Never,” Adam mused. “There are no absolutes, Lord Hawk.”

“In that you’re wrong. I choose, I adhere, I pursue, I commit, I attain. That—that, my errant friend—is an absolute.”

Adam shook his head and studied the Hawk with apparent fascination. “A worthy adversary. The hunt begins. No cheating. No tricks. You may not forbid her from me. And I know that you tried to already. You will recant your rules.”

Hawk inclined his dark head. “She chooses,” he allowed tightly. “I will forbid her nothing.”

Adam nodded, a satisfied nod as he plunged his hands deep in the pockets of his loose trousers and waited.

“Well? Get thee from my castle, smithy. You have your place, and it is without my walls.”

“You might try a thank-you. She lives.”

“I’m not certain you aren’t the reason she almost died.”

At that, Adam’s brow creased thoughtfully. “No. But now that I think on it, I have work to do. I wonder … who would try to kill the beauty, if not me? And I didn’t. Had I, she would be dead. No slow poison from my hand. Quick death or not at all.”

“You’re a strange man, smithy.”

“But I will soon be most familiar to her.”

“Pray the gods she is wiser than that,” Grimm mumbled as Adam stalked off into the dim corridor. Night had fallen and the castle lamps were still largely unlit.

Hawk sighed heavily.

“What deal did you make with that devil?” Grimm asked in a voice scarcely audible.

“Think you he may be?”

“Something is not natural about that man and I intend to find out what.”

“Good. Because he wants my wife, and she doesn’t want me. And I saw her wanting him with a hurt in her eyes.”

Grimm winced. “You are certain you don’t want her just because she doesn’t want you and he wants her?”

Hawk shook his head slowly. “Grimm, I have no words for what she makes me feel.”

“You always have words.”

“Not this time, which warns me truly that I’m in deep trouble and about to get deeper. Deep as I must to woo that lass. Think you I’ve been spelled?”