“Who the hell put you in charge of me?” Hawk roared.

Tavis’s own burr thickened as his temper mounted. “Your mother, you bletherin’ idiot! And even if she hadna asked me, I would have come after you myself! You may be killing yourself, lad, but I’ll no’ be having you torturing Lydia while you’re doing it!”

“All I’m doing, old man, is having a wee bit of a drink,” Hawk protested.

“You’ve been having a ‘wee bit of a drink’ for over a month now. I, for one, am tired of watching you guzzle yourself to death. If you canna put down the bottle, then just get the hell out. Go piss the night away in a snowdrift where the people who love you are no’ forced to watch.”

Tavis kicked open the doors and tossed the stumbling Hawk face-first into the snow.

“And doona be coming back in until you can be nice to your mother! When you’re ready to be laird again, and you’ve given up the bottle, you can return. But not until then!” Tavis roared as the Hawk struggled to pull his head out of a drift.

When Hawk finally managed to struggle upright, he snorted disbelievingly when he saw the man he’d thought of as a mild-mannered tanner send the Hawk’s own guards to stand wide-legged in front of the door, crossed arms clearly barring him entrance into his own castle.

“Just stay out!” Tavis bellowed with such volume that Hawk heard him through the castle’s heavy wooden doors.

Adrienne hadn’t realized how thoroughly she hated winter.

The pale face of the clock above the mantel chimed once, twice, then lapsed into silence. Two o’clock in the morning; a time when being awake could make a person feel like the only living creature left in the world. And Adrienne did feel that way, until Marie silently entered the library. Adrienne glanced up and opened her mouth to say good night, but instead a deluge of words flooded out despite the dam she’d so painstakingly erected.

Marie tucked herself into an armchair and smoothed an afghan across her lap.

Adrienne poked at the fire and opened a bottle of sweet port while she told Marie a story she’d never told anyone. The story of the orphan girl who thought she’d fallen in love with a prince, only to discover that Eberhard Darrow Garrett had been a prince of organized crime and that he’d been sending her on vacations to get drugs across the border in her luggage, her car, sewn into her clothing. And how, since she had always been packed and unpacked by his attendants, she hadn’t known. She’d simply enjoyed wearing his incredible ten-carat diamond engagement ring, riding in his limos, and thumbing her nose at the Franciscan nuns in the old orphanage on First Street. How she hadn’t known that the FBI had been drawing its net around him ever tighter. She’d seen that a wealthy, undeniably attractive man was showering her with love, or so she’d thought at the time. She’d had no idea she was a last-ditch effort to get a series of shipments out of the country. She’d never suspected that she was less than nothing to him—a beautiful, innocent young woman no one would ever suspect. His perfect pigeon.

Until the day she’d overheard a terrible conversation she’d never been meant to hear.

She told Marie in a hushed voice how she’d turned state’s evidence and bought her own freedom. And then how Eberhard, whom the FBI had managed to miss after all, had come after her in earnest.

Marie sipped her port and listened.

She told Marie how when she’d finally been trapped by him in an old abandoned warehouse, sick of running and hiding and being afraid, she’d done the only thing she could do when he’d raised his gun.

She’d killed him before he could kill her.

At that point Marie waved an impatient hand. “Eees not real story. Why you tell me this?” she asked, accusingly.

Adrienne blinked. She’d just told the woman what she’d been afraid to tell anyone. That she’d killed a man. She’d done it in self-defense, granted, but she’d killed a man. She told Marie things she’d never trusted to anyone before, and the woman waved it away. Pretty much accused her of wasting her time. “What do you mean, Marie? It was real,” she said defensively. “It happened. I was there.”

Marie rummaged through her small reticule of English to find the right words. “Yes yes, señorita. May be ees real, but ees not important. Ees over and forgotten. And ees not why you weep like world ees ending. Tell me real story. Who cares where you come from, or I? Today matters. Yesterday ees skin on a snake, to be shed many times.”

Adrienne sat very still for a long moment as a chill worked its way down her spine and into her belly. The hall clock chimed the quarter hour and Adrienne gazed at Marie with new appreciation.