A Rose in Splendor (35 page)

The duchesse laughed. “Such horror on your face,
ma petite
.
Have you guessed the end of my tale? You are correct. I lost the bet. I refused to pay, but naturally my Venetian lover was not a generous man. He hired thieves to take what I refused to part with. I am told that for a while he wore his prize about his neck in a golden globe.”

Deirdre swallowed convulsively as she felt the duchesse’s one eye on her.

The duchesse clapped her hands and a servant appeared at Deirdre’s side with a crystal goblet of sherry.

“Drink it, mademoiselle,” the duchesse commanded coldly “If you faint, Killian will accuse me of tormenting you and that will make him very angry with me.”

Deirdre swallowed the liquid fire, grateful for its bracing warmth. She felt cold in every part of her body. She wanted to rise and leave, to run away, but the thought of seeing Killian kept her rooted in her chair, though she knew the duchesse had done her best to frighten her away. Yet, why should she have?

Deirdre lifted her head when she had drunk half of the sherry. “Does Killian work here?”

“Do not frown,
chérie
.
It encourages wrinkles,” the duchesse answered smoothly. The little guttersnipe had courage, she thought. “Killian,
ma chérie
,
lives here. When he first came to me, he was a very young, very sad, very confused young man.”

She leaned forward a little, smiling with a warmth that did not soften her face. “You will not, I believe, think too harshly of us if I confess that, each bound up in our own sorrows, we sought diversion in each other’s arms.”

Deirdre remained silent but her insides had begun to churn. This woman, this duchesse, was Killian’s lover.

“My—” the duchesse laughed, “
our
Killian is a very clever fellow. He gradually became indispensable to me.” She eyed Deirdre with a mixture of amusement and pity. How innocent, how defenseless she was.

Deirdre held her condescending gaze. What good was caution in the face of utter contempt?

The duchesse nodded her approval. “MacShane has been a hunter too long. He should be ashamed of himself for stalking an innocent.”

Deirdre stood up. “You may have known MacShane long, your grace, but you do not know him well. He is a good man. There is gentleness in him and a willingness to do good.”

“Facts of which he does not relish being reminded,”
the duchesse cut in dryly. “
Enfin
.
I love him, too. Oh, do not look so stricken,
chérie
.
Is that not what we have been discussing all along? You love him. I read that in your eyes. When you say his name, I blush with embarrassment for your transparency. But perhaps only another woman who loves him could detect the passion so easily. Does Killian know of these feelings you have for him?”

“Yes.”

“And still he left you,” the duchesse mused. “
Alors
.
I despair of him. Of course, he may change his mind when he learns that you are here.”

Deirdre started. Suddenly she knew the truth. “You sent for me.”

“But of course! I confess it.” The duchesse shrugged. “Curiosity is another of the vices I permit myself. When your little maid came to my door and asked for Killian, I was intrigued. She has the manners of a whore and the guile of an alley cat, but she was quite willing to tell me who had sent her to find Killian. Do not blame her. I wrote the note myself, telling her that Killian would be informed. You must stay, for certainly Killian will return at any moment.”

“No, your grace, I should not,” Deirdre maintained stiffly.

“Should not? But why not?”

“Captain MacShane may have lived his life in France; but he is an Irishman, and he would not like it if he found me here.”

“In the company of his mistress,” the duchesse suggested, mirth nearly bursting from her.

“Where he has not invited me,” Deirdre answered.

The duchesse’s one eye narrowed. She had underestimated her rival. How delightfully surprising. And sad. If she lost Killian, she would lose him to this pretty, golden-haired child with eyes as pure as the waters of a lake. Strange how purity drew some men, against their natures, against their reason. Purity would draw Killian. She had always known that and feared it. Perhaps that was why she had tried so hard to make him hate himself. Self-loathing was an antidote to the search for salvation.

“Perhaps you shall win him. I wish you
bonne chance
,
chérie
.”

Deirdre curtsied and turned away. Only then did she allow a spasm to cross her face. She felt cut to ribbons by the duchesse’s rapier wit. It seemed almost as if she should be holding a hand over her wounds, so badly did she ache. Killian was this woman’s lover. No, worse than that, he was kept by a wealthy woman for her to enjoy at her leisure. How could she have been so very wrong about him?

“One thing more,
chérie
.
Killian is not the paragon you would believe. You have not heard the end, or the best part, of my tale. Would you not like to know how he fits into the story?”

Deirdre turned about, too battered to care that she must accept one last cut.

“I made him swear to avenge me on the Venetian.” The duchesse lifted the golden globe which hung from the ornate necklace she wore. “The Venetian’s eye was the color of tourmaline, I believe.”

Blinded by tears and revulsion, Deirdre turned away with a hand to her mouth. She did not notice that the door had opened or that it was blocked. She ran headfirst into the man standing there and, lifting her head, looked up into the blazing blue eyes of Killian MacShane.

*

“You had no right, damn you!”

The duchesse shrugged under the assault. After the girl pushed past him and ran out into the night, Killian had gone after her, but her carriage whisked her away before his horse could be brought from the stables. Since his return, he had been pacing and swearing but not directing a word at the duchesse until now.

“I thought to save you the embarrassment of turning out a former mistress,” she drawled. “Would you have seen the girl?”

Killian paused in his pacing, his face livid. “That’s none of your damned business!”

“Then, it is as I thought. You would not have brought her here. You did not want her to know who and what you are.”

“Who and what am I?” Killian questioned dangerously.

The duchesse laughed in his face. “You’re a drunkard these days,
mon cher
,
and you are my one and only love.”

“What? Will you give no credit to those who came before, those who came after, and those who have occupied your bed these last months even as I reside here?”

“Jealous,
mon cher
?
It becomes you.” She stood and raised her arms to him. “The others, they do not count. They cannot match you,
mon amour
.
And yet, perhaps you should be grateful to the ones who came before you. Because of them, I know how to please you best. And because of me, you know how best to please me.”

“I know how to please any woman,” Killian corrected brutally.

The duchesse smiled. “There, you are angry with me. I, too, should be angry with you. If there is another in your place it is because you have neglected me. Not once in seven months have you come to my bed.” She walked toward him. “Do you think I do not burn, that I am not afire knowing that you lie across the hall, that your magnificent body is so close, and yet so far away? Why do you lock your door?”

She paused before him, running her hands over his shoulders and then down his chest to his waist. “Do you know what torture it is to want you…to want this?” Her hands closed over his manhood and she began kneading him gently through his clothing. “Come upstairs with me, my fine stallion…my splendid wild savage…my greatest and best love!”

Killian pushed her hands away and walked toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To find her,” Killian answered.

The duchesse took a step toward him, one hand raised in pleading, but then she caught herself and straightened. She was a duchesse, not a whore. She would beg nothing more
of him. He must come to her. “You do not know where to find her. I do.”

Killian turned at the door. “Will you tell me?”

“You will come back to me,” she said in full confidence. “This child, she cannot give you what you want, what you need. I have seen her. She is a soft, innocent creature who will give you her love and her body, but both will appall you with their sweet emptiness. You will come back to me. No one else on Earth can take my place.”

Her voice trembled, betraying the agitation she would have kept hidden from him. “You have a taste for wild fruit, for forbidden passion. You are hungry for more and yet you do not realize it. That is what drives you. You think you are tired of passion. You are wrong. You are tired of ordinary delights. There are elixirs which feed and magnify the passion in the blood. There are instruments of delight, carnal joys of the flesh which we have not yet shared. Come to bed. I will send for Jean. You will see. Have you never hungered for a man as you hunger for a woman’s flesh? Jean knows how to please a man. You will be amazed and tantalized beyond your wildest dreams!”

Killian drew back from her flushed face and trembling lips, sickened as he had never been before by her. She was depraved, and the depravity was twisting her mind toward madness. He must escape her! He had known it for months. Yet, there had been nothing to flee to. Until now. “I will find her, with or without your help.”

“I could have her throat slit before you do,” the duchesse said, suddenly calm.

Killian turned back slowly, his face distorted by rage. “If you touch her, if anyone touches her, I will kill you myself, slowly, horribly, and I will see you in Hell after!”

The duchesse retreated a step, a hand clutched to the bauble on her necklace. She believed him, in that moment, believed him fully capable of following her even into Hell.

“Go then!” she whispered furiously. “Go and be damned!”

Killian watched her a moment, pity mingling with his rage and dulling it. “You saved my life. I will not forget that.”

She made a movement of denial with her head. “I hate you, Killian MacShane! Do not think I will forget. She will bore you to tears within a week. Have her. I curse you with her! She is in the Rue Gallion, number twenty-three.”

*

Deirdre had not believed that she was capable of so many tears. They came in great heaving gulps that choked her and soaked her bodice and made her throat and chest ache. And still they continued to flow. She could barely stumble from the carriage and up the stairs to her room before they flooded her face anew. When she found the room empty, she was too grateful for privacy to wonder where Fey was. She threw herself across the bed and gave in to the great misery that threatened to drown her from the inside.

Killian had a lover
,
a beautiful
,
evil
,
wealthy duchesse who adored him.

No wonder he had spurned her interest from the first. How amused he must have been when she offered her innocence to him. Yet, he had taken it, taken it ruthlessly without even a promise to return. And she had allowed it. It had never occurred to her that he might be tied by circumstance or emotion to another. How foolish, how gullible she had been.

The gentle rapping on the door did not surprise her. It would be Fey. “Come in,” she mumbled as she hastily wiped her face on a pillow.

The door opened and closed but she heard no footsteps. “I—I think I’ve caught a cold, Fey,” she mumbled in a hiccupy voice. “I don’t feel well. Would you mind fetching me a cup of tea?”

“If tea will cure your tears, then I will fetch it.”

Deirdre sat straight up at the sound of that masculine
voice.
“Killian!”she whispered in amazement.

He stood just inside the doorway, his face dark, half-lit by the small fire blazing in the grate. He saw the tear streaks gleaming on her face and winced. “Do not cry over me
acushla
.
I am not worth your tears.”

Deirdre crushed the pillow protectively to her breasts. “Do not tell me what I may and may not do.”

Her anger eased his tension. He had not known what to expect when he heard her sobs from the stairway. “You are very angry and very disappointed in me. I tried to warn you that you knew nothing of me,” he said grimly. “I am a savage man, a dishonorable man, a whoremonger, and worse.”

“Aye!” Deirdre whispered. “And I am the greatest fool who ever lived!”

“Nae, not a fool, only a young innocent who loved not wisely. But I do not understand what brings you here.” A sudden chill went through him and his eyes raked the dark interior of the room for clues. “You are not in Paris as a bride? Certainly Monsieur le Comte could afford better accommodations?”

“What do you know of that?” Deirdre asked, caught off guard by his question.

“I heard you were to wed,” Killian replied.