Dark of the Moon (28 page)

"Shhh!" he said, leaning against the wall. She could just see the bright gleam of his eyes through the darkness. From his chamber on the other side of the hall, Cormac's resounding snores continued undisturbed, and Caitlyn was sufficiently acquainted with the sleep habits of the rest of the d'Arcys not to fear waking them with anything less than a bloodcurdling scream.

Still, just to make sure, she gently closed the door, then turned to lean against it for a moment, looking at Connor consideringly. He didn't move.

"What is wrong with you?" she demanded, stalking toward him.

"Sweet Jesus, how you plague a man! Will you let me be?" But he didn't move away from the wall, and Caitlyn's alarm grew.

"Are you hurt? Are you ill?" She reached up to lay a hand against his cheek to test for fever, her eyes running worriedly over his tall frame, only to have him catch her wrist and pull her soft palm away from his face.

"I'm neither hurt nor ill, and I want to go to bed. Now will you please go away?" Still holding her wrist, he bent his head toward her menacingly as he spoke. For the first time Caitlyn got a whiff of his breath. Whiskey! Standing stock-still, she stared up at him through the darkness. She was close enough so that her quilt brushed his legs. At the expression on her face, he looked suddenly conscious, and lifted his head a little.

"Connor d'Arcy, have you been drinking?"

His eyes shifted. "A wee dram or two with Father Patrick ..."

"You have been!"

"... does not constitute drinking, precisely, to my mind."

"You're drunk!"

"I am not drunk. Merely tired. And if you will excuse me, I would like to go to bed. Alone, if you please."

At this barb Caitlyn's anger, forgotten in the face of her worry, flared up again. She pulled her wrist from his hold and stood glaring at him.

"You're a swine!"

"So you've said before. But at least I'm not enough of a swine to dishonor a young girl living under my roof under my protection. Not yet, anyway." This last, muttered under his breath, was obviously not meant for her ears.

"Connor . . ." He was still leaning against the wall. As she spoke he straightened up to stand away from it, not quite steadily on the balls of his feet. His hands were on his neckcloth, untying it and pulling it away from his neck.

"Go to bed, Caitlyn. Please." He dropped the neckcloth on the floor and leaned against the wall again. He seemed so exhausted, or so much the worse for drink, that despite her anger she felt another twinge of worry for him.

"Do you need help getting undressed?" This was asked with all the exasperated concern of a mother for an erring but beloved child.

He laughed, the sound tinged with irony. "Help getting undressed is just what I don't need. Go to bed."

"But—"

"I called you a Jezebel, remember? You should be furious at me, not asking if I need help."

"I was furious." Remembering her grievance, Caitlyn scowled at him. "I am furious. Besides being a swine and

three kinds of sons of a dog, you are a loathsome, no- good, dirty spawn of the devil! You—"

"I didn't mean it," he said, stopping her in mid-tirade. Something in the look in those aqua eyes made her heart speed up.

"Connor . . ."

"Go to bed."

"If you think to get away with that meager excuse for an apology . . . !"

"I'll do better in the morning. Go to bed."

"I don't want to go to bed." The soft protest narrowed his eyes. He straightened up from the wall again, put his hands on her shoulders, and tried to turn her about. She resisted, reaching up to close her fingers around his wrists. With neither of her hands to hold it in place, the quilt slid to the floor, leaving her clad only in her thin nightgown. His eyes slid down her body, seemingly drawn like a magnet despite every effort of will, before returning to her face.

"Caitlyn, for God's sake. ..." There was an almost desperate look in his eyes as she moved her fingertips lightly against the bronzed skin of his wrists.

"I want my apology now." Her voice was husky.

"I apologize. There, are you satisfied? Now go to bed."

Caitlyn sniffed. "Do you think that little bit will make up for die dreadful things you said to me?"

"I've forgotten what I did say. I was rather angry at the time. Tomorrow I promise you a handsome apology, but-"

"I remember," she said, interrupting him ruthlessly. Her fingers continued to move over the hard bones of his wrists, and her eyes lifted to his. He was frowning down at her, his brows a forbidding V. But there was a restless glitter in his eyes, and he made no further move to turn her out of the room.

"Besides calling me a Jezebel, you accused me of throwing myself at your head."

"Don't you?" The dry murmur was robbed of its sting by the way his eyes watched the movement of her lips, as if mesmerized.

She shook her head. His eyes rose to meet hers, and she felt as if she would be trapped forever in those aqua depths.

"Just because I said, 'I love you, Connor . . .' " Her voice was a soft caress; her eyes never left his. At her words, tiny embers at the backs of his eyes began to blaze. Her hands left his wrists to slide up his arms, her fingers moving lightly over the still-damp cloth of his coat until they touched his shoulders. Then, slowly, her eyes still locked with his, her hands slid behind his neck.

. . and 'I want you to kiss me, Connor' "—she tilted her face toward his while his hands automatically came to rest on her waist—". . . that doesn't constitute throwing myself at your head. Precisely."

"Not precisely." His voice was unsteady. Beneath her fingers, the skin of his neck felt as if it would burst into flames at any instant.

"If I really wanted to throw myself at your head," she continued, her words scarcely above a whisper, "I would ..." She hesitated, her tongue coming out to moisten her lower lip. The blaze in his eyes exploded into a full-fledged conflagration.

"What?" The single word was hoarse.

She smiled at him, tremulously, going up on tiptoe to touch her lips to his.

"Do this," she said against his mouth. And kissed him.

For a moment only he accepted her caress without moving. Then he made a sound like a gasp, as though he were dying, his arms slid around her waist to clamp her to him, and he was bending her back over his arm, kissing her as if he were starving for the taste of her mouth.

Dizzy, Caitlyn clung to him, opening her mouth to his endlessly, reveling even in the sharp taste of whiskey which previously she had despised, returning his kiss with a fiery need of her own. Her arms wrapped around his neck as if she would never let him go; her tongue touched his, stroked it, and he shuddered. Then he scooped her up in his arms and took two rather unsteady strides toward the bed. Whether or not he meant to deposit her romantically there-upon, Caitlyn never discovered. What actually happened was that the tipsy creature tripped over his own feet and sent them both sprawling across the feather mattress. The ropes supporting it creaked loudly in protest against such unexpected violence.

Caitlyn lay on her back where she had fallen, staring up at the shadowed ceiling, shocked at the abrupt change in the course of events. After a moment she turned her head, to find Connor lying on his side beside her, one arm pillowing his head as he rested with what appeared to be utter contentment amidst the quilts their fall had disordered. His eyes glinted at her; his mouth curled in the merest hint of a smile.

"Fools and children," he muttered obscurely and flopped onto his back, smiling with rueful charm up at the ceiling.

"Fools and children indeed," she said, sitting up and glaring down at him. "If by that you mean that the good Lord in His wisdom is protecting me from you, then I would say that He uses some peculiar methods. First that shameless hussy, and now what I would guess is a good bit more than 'a wee dram or two' of whiskey! You're drunk as a lord, Connor d'Arcy, and 'tis certainly not the work of the angels! More likely an agent of the devil!"

"Now there you're out. Unless the devil's agent has disguised himself as Father Patrick, who tips a mean decanter. Father Patrick is surely one of the Lord's angels. He says you're a fleshly temptation I must overcome for the good of my immortal soul." Connor's eyes shifted from the ceiling to focus on her face. "Get thee behind me, Satan," he said to her and chuckled.

"There's no getting any sense out of you tonight, I can see." Caitlyn said with disgust, getting off the bed and eyeing him with disfavor. His long legs were sprawled out in front of him, the heels of his boots touching the floor, his torso to the thighs supported by the bed. His arms were flung up over his head, and the remains of a whimsical smile curved his mouth. She had seen Connor in many moods, but never drunk, and despite her annoyance she had to smile at him. With his black hair escaping from its ribbon to curl around his head, his eyes twinkling, and that crooked smile lending a boyish charm to his lean, dark face, he looked so handsome that he took her breath away. He also looked very young suddenly, younger even than she. All this time he had looked after her. For once it was he who needed looking after.

"What are you doing?" He lifted his head from the mattress as she straddled one booted foot, her back to him. The effort was apparently too much for him, because his head fell back almost immediately.

"Taking off your boots. You don't want to sleep in them, do you?"

"I have before. 'Tisn't fetal."

"Well, you won't tonight. I don't think." This last was muttered under her breath as the boot in question resisted considerable tugging. At last she managed to wrest it off, freeing the foot and calf from the long slide of scuffed leather. While that foot flexed its toes, still in the confines of a white stocking, she went to work on the other. By the time she had managed to liberate the second foot, she was panting. Picking up the boots and setting them neatly side by side next to the bed, she turned back to look at him. He was watching her, but with the room cloaked in shadowy darkness relieved only slightly by the rays from the sickly moon that floated just outside the window, it was impossible for her to read his expression. She had the impression that he was making a concerted effort to regain control of his whiskey-befuddled senses.

"Can you sit up?"

His eyes shifted from their contemplation of her person to the ceiling. "Now why would I want to do a fool thing like that?"

"Because you're still wearing your coat, and 'tis damp. If you can sit up, it'll make getting it off you that much easier."

"And if I cannot?"

"Then I'll cut it off you. There are scissors in the office."

"That you won't!" He had a partiality for the coat, she knew.

"Then sit up. Here, take my hands." She reached out to him. After a moment's hesitation he grasped her hands. Tugging with all her might, and with considerable groaning from him, she just managed to pull him into an upright position on the edge of the bed. He groaned again, slumping forward, elbows on knees, his head immediately sinking into the cradle of his hands.

"My skull feels as if there's a legion of little people inside, all going at it with hammers."

"Serves you right," she said without sympathy, easing the coat from his shoulders. "Strong drink is its own punishment."

He grunted, lifting his head from his hands so that he could look at her. "You're no comfort at all."

"Here, raise your arm. It seems you've had comfort enough tonight already. Is that not why men drink?"

Obediently lifting his arms while she stripped the coat from him, he favored her with a wry glance. "I know not why other men drink. I only know what prompts me to it."

"And what is that?" Keeping a steadying hand on his shoulder, she dropped the damp coat on the floor. His shirt felt damp, too, beneath her hand. As automatically as a mother would do for a child, she fell to undoing the buttons.

A crooked smile twisted his mouth. "You, my beauteous Caitlyn. Naught but you."

Her hands stilled and she stared down at him. "I see no reason why I should be held responsible for your foolishness."

"Do you not?" His hands lifted to catch hers where they had stilled on his shirtfront. As his hands closed over hers, pressing them closer to his body, she became aware for the first time of her knuckles brushing the hair-roughened bare chest beneath the shirt. Her breath caught.

"You are a constant temptation and torment to me, my lass, and I wrestle the devil for the salvation of my soul whenever you are within my view. Looking at you, with your soft white skin and rosy mouth, with your slanted eyes and tangles of silky hair black as the darkest midnight, to say nothing of curves that would tempt a saint, I am almost persuaded to agree with Father Patrick that you are devil-sent. Except that I know something of you that Father Patrick does not: I know your soul, and it is purely angel."

Connor was not a man given to flowery speeches, and yet those were the most beautiful, eloquently spoken words she had ever heard. They touched her heart, moved her to tears.

"Oh, Connor, I do love you so," she whispered, barely managing to get the words out past the constriction in her throat. For a long moment they stared at each other, he seated on the edge of the bed, clad in half-fastened shirt, snug black breeches, and stockinged feet, she standing over him, her hands clenched beneath his and pressed to his heart.

"Ah, well, they do say the road to hell is paved with good intentions," he muttered and pulled her down into his arms.

Caitlyn went with a little mewling sound, curling up on his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck, lifting her face to his even as his mouth lowered to hers. This time he initiated the kiss, his mouth soft and gentle at first and then hardening into fierce passion as she opened her lips to him, giving herself without reserve. She kissed him with all the love that she had bottled inside her for all those affectionless years, and with a woman's passion too; kissed him until she forgot where she was, forgot everything but him and her need of him, her love for him.