Beyond the Highland Mist Read Online Free PDF

beat. He hadn’t punished Bess in rage. He’d beat her in a cold, calculated act to get what he wanted from Adrienne.
    She shook her head, her eyes wide with confusion. “Really, I haven’t the faintest idea how I got here.”
    “You don’t know where you came from?”
    Bess was sobbing softly, and Adrienne’s eyes darkened as she watched the maid curl into a ball and surreptitiously try to inch away from the Comyn. His hand shot out and fastened on the maid’s ankle. Bess whimpered hopelessly.
    “Oh nay, my pretty. I may need you yet.” His eyes swept her shuddering form with a possessive leer. Adrienne gasped when he ripped Bess’s gown and proceeded to shred it from her body. Adrienne’s stomach churned in agony when she saw the great welts rising from the maid’s pale flanks and thighs. Cruel, biting welts from a belt or a whip.
    The other maids fled the room, leaving her alone with the weeping Bess and the madman.
    “This is my world, Adrienne de Simone,” he intoned, and Adrienne had a premonition that the words he was about to utter would be carved deeply into her mind for a long time to come. He stroked Bess’s quivering thigh lightly. “My rules. My people. My will to command life or death. Yours and hers. ’Tis a simple thing I want of you. If you don’t cooperate, she dies. Then another and still another. I will find the very core of that foolish compassion you wear like a shroud. It makes you so easy to use. But women are that way. Weak.”
    Adrienne sat hunched in silence, her labored breathing an accompaniment to Bess’s weary sobs.
    “Quiet, lass!” He slapped the maid’s face, and she curled into a tighter ball, weeping into her hands to smother the sound.
    One day I will kill him with my bare hands
, Adrienne vowed silently.
    “I don’t know how you came to be here or who you are, and frankly, I don’t care. I have a problem, and you’re going to fix it. If you ever forget what I am about to tell you, if you ever slip, if you ever betray me, I will kill you after I’ve destroyed everything you care about.”
    “Where am I?” she asked tonelessly, reluctantly voicing one of the questions that had been bothering her. She was afraid that once she started asking questions, she might discover this really wasn’t a dream after all.
    “I don’t care if you’re mad,” he chuckled appreciatively. “Fact is, I rather relish the thought that you might have bats flapping in your belfry. God knows, my Janet did. ’Tis no more or less than he deserves.”
    “Where am I?” she insisted.
    “Janet had a difficult time remembering that, too.”
    “So, where am I?”
    The Comyn studied her, then shrugged. “Scotland. Comyn keep—
my
keep.”
    Her heart stopped beating within her breast. It was not possible. Had she truly gone mad? Adrienne steeled her will to ask the next question—the obvious question, the terrifying question she’d been studiously avoiding since she’d first awoken. She’d learned that sometimes it was safer not to ask too many questions—the answers could be downright unnerving. Obtaining the answer to this question could tamper with her fragile grasp on reason; Adrienne had a suspicion that
where
she was wasn’t quite the onlyproblem she had. Drawing a deep breath, she asked carefully, “What year is it?”
    The Comyn guffawed. “You really are a wee bit daft, aren’t you lass?”
    Adrienne glared at him in silence.
    He shrugged again. “ ’Tis fifteen hundred and thirteen.”
    “Oh,” Adrienne said faintly.
Ohmygodohmygod
, she wailed in the confines of her reeling mind. She took a deep, slow breath, and told herself to start at the beginning of this mystery; perhaps it could be unraveled. “And who exactly are you?”
    “For all intents and purposes, I am your father, lass. That’s the first of many things you must never forget.”
    A broken sob temporarily distracted Adrienne from her problems. Poor abused Bess; Adrienne could not bear a person