“Why can’t you do it?” he demanded, his brogue rough velvet over broken glass. “Is it so impossible? Sidheach. That’s all you have to say. Or James, even Lyon. Laird Douglas would do!” Anything but Adam.

Adrienne stared, revulsion at her own weakness choking her. She’d learned nothing! One more inch, one scant movement, and she would be lost as never before. Where the body goes … the heart will follow … say his name and kiss him again, then you can just kiss your soul goodbye. This man has the power to destroy you in ways Eberhard never could.

“What will it take to make you forget him?”

And he thought it was Adam, but it wasn’t Adam. It was Eberhard. And there would be nothing left of her this time if she played the fool again.

“Say my name, lass, for the love of God!” Hawk roared. He was shaking with a mixture of barely restrained passion and disbelief that she could respond to him so erotically, so completely, yet still withhold his name. “If there is any chance for me at all, Adrienne, call out to me! If you can’t even say my name, then I stand no chance of ever gaining your love!”

His last plea was the agonized cry of a wounded animal; it laid open her heart.

A pulse throbbed in his neck and she raised her hand to place trembling fingers against it. Harder and harder she steeled her heart, until it was safe again behind a glacier of remembrance and regret.

He pushed her hand away.

“Say it.” He forced his demand through gritted teeth.

“Now isn’t this just sooo touching. I’ll help her.” Olivia’s voice dripped venom. “Just call him the king’s whore,” she purred. “That’s all we ever called him.”

The storm raging in him stilled at precisely that moment.

“Is it true?” Adrienne finally whispered, her eyes wide and deep with hurt. Hurt and something else. Hawk saw the unspoken cry in her slate depths. He wanted to deny it, to explain the nightmare away. But he would not lie to this lass. She would have to take him in full truth or not at all; when she accepted him, if he even had any chance left, she would possess him entirely. Bitterness welled up, cloaking him in a despair so complete he almost cried aloud with the agony of it.

“I was called the king’s whore,” he replied stiffly.

Shadows leapt and flickered in her opalescent silver eyes. Darkness he had vowed to ease, he had fed with his own hands.

He rolled from her and rose slowly, then walked away into the night as silent as a wolf, leaving her on the edge of a precipice with his vengeful ex-mistress. He hoped she’d simply push the spiteful Olivia over the edge, but he knew it was not going to be that easy. For if he judged rightly, his wife would be in Adam’s bed in no time now.

She was lost to him.

Better that he had never met this lass so that he might never have known the sweet rush of emotion, the absolving passion, the freeing wings of what love might have been.

He wandered that night, lost in memories of that time when he had been commanded by his king. All for Dalkeith and his mother, for Ilysse and Adrian. Aye, and fair Scotia from time to time when his king had been wildly foolish. Nay, there had never really been any choice.

Hawk’s eyes searched the night sky for yet another falling star. He intended to wish upon every one for the rest of his life if necessary. Surely ten thousand wishes could undo one. But the cloud cover had returned and there wasn’t one flicker of a star to be seen in the absolute darkness that surrounded him.

CHAPTER 17

“OH MY DEAR, I THOUGHT YOU KNEW!” OLIVIA GUSHED.

“Go to hell,” Adrienne said softly as she forced herself to her feet.

“I’m trying to help you—”

“No you’re not. The only person you’re trying to help is yourself—to a heaping helping of my husband.”

“Ah, yes. Your precious husband. Have you no curiosity about his time at court?” Olivia purred invitingly.

“Do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe you would tell me any truth about him? A woman like you?”

Olivia stopped midsentence, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

Adrienne’s slate-gray eyes coolly met Olivia’s heavily kohled ovals. “Just that you’re the kind of woman who measures her success by the men she beds and the women she bites and one day soon, and not too far off from the look of you, you’re going to be nothing but a plump, unwanted old woman with no friends. And then how are you going to pass the time?” Olivia might have taken her in years ago, but not much fooled her anymore.