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—SAMUEL JOHNSON
Hawk raised his silver flask of brandy and drank deep. Instant warmth hit his stomach and he didn’t move for a long moment, savoring the feeling. He turned in the saddle and saw the lurching carriage coming nearer.
His wife was inside that carriage. His wife.
He closed his eyes a moment, still disbelieving that it was done. He didn’t feel married, not even remotely. The Reverend Mr. MacLeod’s words had floated about his head, not really part of him, even though his responses had affirmed that they were.
It was drizzling again. The sky was a moldering gray. The little foliage that clung for life among the barren rocks and crags looked sodden, limp, and ready to collapse from fatigue. The damned road was little more than a jagged path littered with rocks and deep mud puddles. There were occasional crofts to be seen, thready lines of smoke circling from chimneys, but no people. Only utter fools would show their faces on a dismal day like this. He accepted being an utter fool. Anything was preferable to sharing the carriage with her—Frances Hawksbury, Countess of Rothermere.
He thought of his father, as he did many times every hour, an automatic prayer on his lips that the old autocrat still clung to life. Suddenly it occurred to him that his father might just take one look at Frances and keel over from the shock. He resolved that before he took his wife into his father’s bedchamber, he would make her rid herself of the spectacles, perh
aps remove the bilious cap she would probably be wearing. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t see his father clearly. It did matter that his father didn’t keel over at seeing a living nightmare that was his daughter-in-law.
He should have married Clare. No, he should have married Viola. Younger, more amenable, more pliable.
I must have been insane to attach myself to Frances.
He wasn’t being fair, he knew it, but somehow it didn’t make him feel more than a bit guilty. At least he’d spent the previous night burrowing himself into a lovely warm body. He didn’t feel more than a bit guilty about that either. That brought his thinking to his wedding night. His hands tightened on Ebony’s reins, and the stallion pranced to the side, his right-front hoof coming down in the middle of a mud puddle. Hawk cursed as the thick brown muck splashed his boots.
He heard Grunyon shout and wheeled Ebony about. When he reached the carriage, he turned his stallion to face Grunyon.
“What is it, Grunyon?”
Grunyon felt miserable, and so cold that he believed his very bones were frozen. “It will be dark soon,” he said. “I looked at a map. We should be nearing a town called Airdrie. There should be a decent inn there.”
Hawk vaguely remembered passing through Airdrie on his way to Kilbracken. It had seemed a quaint little town, but now he imagined it would look about as dismal as both he and Grunyon felt. Hawk looked at the darkening sky overhead. He didn’t want to stop, not yet. He wanted to keep going until they reached England. He wanted to keep going until he reached Greece.
“I also want to relieve myself,” Grunyon said. He nodded back toward the carriage. “It seems likely, my lord, that your poor wife must be in a similar difficulty.”
Hawk, who had taken care of his natural functions more than an hour before, felt a surge of guilt.
“Very well,” he said finally. “Let us find a marvelous accommodation at Airdrie,” he added, his voice filled with sarcasm.
Frances leaned back against the comfortable squabs, her lips drawn in a thin furious line. Miserable bastard! She was cold, hungry, and yes, she wanted to yell out the carriage window at her husband, she did need to relieve herself.
The carriage lurched forward once again.
Airdrie. She’d visited the small town the month before with her father to buy feed. There was an excellent inn there, the Devil’s Lair. Fitting, she thought, very fitting.
She wished she had some little beasties, the biting kind, to place in his bed. His bed. Oh dear, he wouldn’t, would he?
Frances squared her shoulders. No, he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t allow it. She found herself hoping her wretched husband caught a chill from his ride, then quickly reversed that thought. No, she wanted him to remain nauseatingly healthy. He would leave her all the sooner.
It occurred to her that her anger at her husband was keeping her from feeling utterly wretched about leaving Kilbracken.
The Devil’s Lair looked about as inviting as an old abbey ruin in the dull rainy evening light. Hawk dismounted and shouted for an ostler. A man the size of a stout oak barrel emerged from the inn and shouted, “What wish ye?”
“Rooms, dinner, and a warm stable for my horses,” Hawk called back in a tone of voice that would have brought all his men to startling attention in his army days.
“A Sassenach,” old Harmon grunted. “See ye to the gentleman’s horses, Enard,” he told a gangly youth whose head was covered by an old tattered scarf.
The carriage door opened and Grunyon smiled into the dim interior. “My lady?”
Frances, stiff-legged, cold, and in a foul humor, gave Grunyon her gloved hand and descended the carriage steps.
Hawk walked slowly toward the cloaked and hooded figure.
“We will stay here for the night,” he said.
