Dark of the Moon (36 page)

Fearfully she looked behind her. The dragoons were no more than a field away; they had only to clear a low stone wall and they would be upon her. Despairing, she looked after the others—and found that Connor had wheeled Fharannain about and was galloping back for her.

She ran crouching to meet him. He was upon her in a brace of seconds. Without ever slackening Fharannain's pace, he leaned down from the saddle, an arm extended toward her.

"Grab hold," he yelled, and as Fharannain rushed by, she was swept from her feet to hang twisting and scrabbling for purchase from Connor's arm as he fought to swing her up behind him. They were riding straight at their hallooing pursuers with her bumping against Fharannain's side. Connor's grip was like iron on her upper arm; his wound must have weakened him, she knew, but she also knew that he would never let her go. Frantically she kicked upward, trying to hook her heel over the saddle. Connor yanked with superhuman strength at the same time. Her heel caught, and her leg slid behind it over the saddle skirt. She was on Fharannain's back, righting herself and then clamping her arms around Connor's waist.

As he released his death-grip on her arm, she clung for dear life to her precarious position on Fharannain's heaving rump. Sawing the reins, Connor wheeled Fharannain about again to send him streaking after the others. The dragoons were clearing the stone wall less than half a field away. Bullets peppered the air around them.

Connor was crouched low over Fharannain's neck, spurring him as she knew he never did as he fought to get every last bit of speed from the big animal. She released her grip on his waist to grab the roll at the back of the saddle, her knees gripping Fharannain's sides so that she would be as little drain on Connor's strength as possible. Her eyes fastened with horror on the bloody mess that was his thigh. He was hurt badly; she could see that at a glance. Blood gushed from an enormous hole; his breeches were black with it. She suspected that they were leaving a trail of his blood in their wake.

They were closing on the others, pulling slightly away from the squad of riders behind them. Just as they approached another wall, higher than the first with a ditch beyond it that made the jump doubly difficult, Liam looked back over his shoulder at them. From the sudden change in his posture, Caitlyn guessed that only at that moment did he realize what had happened. He reined in, slackening Thunderer's pace slightly to allow Fharannain to catch up.

Mickeen, apparently seeing Liam fall back out of the corner of his eye, swung around in the saddle too. Like Liam, he immediately began to slow Aristedes' headlong flight, and shouted to Cormac and Rory up ahead. They would put Fharannain in the middle, protect their injured with their lives. If necessary, they would shoot it out with their pursuers. But Caitlyn prayed that it wouldn't be necessary. With so many to their few, and with their pursuers well armed and well trained, their chances were not good. Some of them would almost certainly be killed. The rest, captured, would hang. Terror tasted bitter on Caitlyn's tongue. But there was nothing she could do to save herself or any of them. All she could do was pray, and cling to Fharannain for her life.

In front, Cormac and Rory raced side by side, their horses sailing over the wall and the ditch without faltering. Caitlyn thought with an odd burst of pride that if they survived that night, any of them, they would owe much of the miracle to the great hearts of Donoughmore's horses.

Then Mickeen was up and over, Aristedes' hoof catching slightly on the top of the wall but not going down. Liam went over without a hitch. Half a length behind and closing fast, Fharannain sailed into the air. He was going to clear that wall and the ditch beyond it as if he had wings.

At the height of their trajectory, something hit Caitlyn between the shoulder blades with tremendous force. She gasped as agonizing pain seared through her. Then she was losing her balance, falling down, down. . . .

Even before she hit the ground her world had gone black.

The pain in his thigh was excruciating, but he could bear it. He had born worse and lived to tell about it. But the loss of so much blood was affecting his concentration. He was getting dizzy, and he knew that if the wound was allowed to bleed unchecked much longer, he would pass out. Only grim determination had kept him conscious this long. To lose consciousness would be to sentence both himself and Caitlyn to death, and probably the others as well. He doubted that they would leave him without a fight.

He was concentrating so hard on staying in the saddle that it was a few seconds before he became aware that Caitlyn was not behind him. Slowly, as if the information was filtered through dense fog it came to him that he had heard her gasp.

Sluing his head around, he saw that he was alone on Fharannain. Behind him, perhaps a furlong or so back, the dragoons were coming over the wall that Fharannain had cleared with ease moments earlier. A slight figure almost covered by a black cape lay crumpled on the ground just beyond the ditch. Though it was not much more than a darker shadow amidst all the other shadows that the night had made of rain-wet ground and ditch and wall, Connor knew it was Caitlyn. His heart lurched. She lay without moving, her posture so awkward that he felt a sudden, driving fear that she was already dead. The pursuit was clustering around her. If she was not dead, she was taken.

"No!" he screamed, though the cry emerged as a hoarse whisper. He was growing dangerously weak. But he had to hold on, he had to! He had to go back for her. Hauling savagely on Fharannain's reins, he tried to turn the big animal about. A wave of dizziness engulfed him. Fharannain reared, confused and frightened by the unaccustomed pain in his mouth. It was all Connor could do to stay in the saddle. He slumped over the horse's neck as the animal came down again on all fours. Liam appeared beside him, snatching Fharannain's reins out of his weakened hand, pulling them over the horse's head as he spurred Thunderer away from the shadowy riders clustering about Caitlyn's fallen form. Cormac, coming up on his other side, made a daring leap from Kildare's saddle to Fharannain's rump, wrapping his arms around Connor's waist as he grabbed his brother's pommel. Cormac's arms served as a barrier to keep him in the saddle. Rory was leading the riderless Kildare, just as Liam was leading Fharannain.

With Mickeen in the lead, they galloped frantically for safety.

"Caitlyn. ..." Connor managed to groan through the blackness that was threatening to claim him. The pain in his leg was white-hot agony cutting through the descending darkness; the pain in his heart was worse.

"We can't help her now, Conn," Cormac said in his ear, his voice rough with grief. "There aren't enough of us. You're shot, maybe bleeding to death. Tis going to take all of us to get you home safe. We can't go back for her. If we do, we'll all be taken, or worse. Maybe we can rescue her later, help her escape from wherever she's taken. But now we've got to get you home."

"I'll not leave her," Connor muttered, but he could hold the darkness at bay no longer. It descended on him like a rung-down curtain, sheltering him from physical pain and heartbreak alike. He slumped over Fharannain's neck, his arms dangling limply along the animal's sleek black sides. Cormac's arms were the only things that kept him in the saddle.

With their pursuers distracted and appeased by Caitlyn's fall, the rest of them made it home to Donoughmore without further mishap. As soon as they emerged safely from the tunnel into the stable, Cormac eased Connor's limp body down to Rory and Liam, who between them just managed to carry him into the house and up to his room. The hole in his leg was hideous, the blood loss immense. But they all knew that when their brother awoke, what would hurt him most would be the pain in his heart.

Grim-faced, they worked frantically for a quarter of an hour trying to stanch the blood. At last the flow slowed to a sluggish trickle, then stopped altogether. As Liam tied the bandage in place, Cormac spoke, his voice loud in the tense stillness.

"I'm going to go find out what I can about Caitlyn."

Liam looked at him, his hands pausing for an instant in the act of knotting the bandage around Connor's leg. "Is that wise?"

Mickeen made as if to spit, remembered where he was, and swallowed it. " 'Twill be no help to the lassie if you go getting yourself taken too."

"I'll be careful. There's a pub in Naas—they'll know something there."

"I'll come with you," Rory said, and without further objections from the others, the two left the room.

When they returned hours later as dawn broke over the sky, Mickeen was waiting for them in the stable. He was sitting on an overturned bucket, his hands clasped between his knees, his head lowered. As they entered he looked up, his face as colorless as theirs.

"Is aught amiss with Connor?" Rory asked sharply, swinging down from Balladeer.

Mickeen stood up and took the reins from Rory. When he was upset, they knew he liked to calm himself by caring for horses. He'd started life as a groom, and in times of stress he reverted to his earliest habits.

' 'His lordship's awake and asking for her. He don't—he don't remember what happened, exactly. He's burning up with the fever. Liam's had to tie him to the bed to keep him from getting up to look for her. He knows something's amiss, but he don't know quite what. He's fashing himself something awful."

"Oh, Jesus." Dismounting wearily, Cormac said the words as much as a prayer as a sigh. He tied Kildare to a ring, knowing that in his present mood Mickeen would see to him as well as Balladeer and be glad of the work.

"What of the lass?" Mickeen asked.

Cormac's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "She's dead," he said unevenly, then drew a deep breath. "Killed outright, they said. And how we're to tell Connor, I don't know."

But tell him they did, later that day when they thought he could bear it. Liam gave him the news. Connor refused at first to believe. At last, when he did, the cry of grief that rose from his throat was a piercing and mournful as a wolfs howl at the moon.

And thus, for Connor, began the period that forever afterward he was to think of as the black night of his soul.

It was going to be a harsh winter. Though it was only late October, the night was cold, and the nip in the air threatened snow within the next few days. Even the crackling fires in the vast fireplaces of this English country home could not warm him as he stood on the landing, looking down on the merrymakers in the ballroom below.

The house belonged to the Marquis of Standon, a notorious rake who had recently buried his third wife. The guests were a motley mix of what among the Sassenach passed for gentlemen and their fashionable impures, and the merrymaking was very merry indeed. In fact, Connor had just been treated to the edifying sight of one slightly inebriated young woman stripping to the altogether while dancing on a marble-topped table to the tune of raucous cheers. His lip curled as he sought out the young woman, who was now being ushered, naked and giggling, from the ballroom by the gentleman who would enjoy her favors that night. It was the last night of a week-long house party, and Connor ventured to guess that, over its duration, the young woman had enjoyed at least as many partners as there were days in the week. It was not what even English society would term a select gathering.

The women—he could not term them ladies—who remained were outlandishly clad. It was a masquerade ball, and the costumes of most of the females were remarkable for what they were not hiding. Some of them had necklines cut so low and skirts hiked so high that there wasn't much to imagine between them. Others wore diaphanous gowns that clung to them faithfully. In their hair, some sported towering headdresses, others bobbing ostrich plumes, while still others had opted for wigs. A few were merely powdered and patched in the prevailing fashion. The gentlemen were more sedate, for the most part contenting themseLves with enveloping dominoes in various jewel tones and black in lieu of costumes. Here and there a dandy sported something more elaborate, like the giggling Julius Caesar in the corner, but their rarity made them stand out. All wore masks.

Which was why Connor had chosen this particular house on this particular night. Entry had been ridiculously easy. In his domino and mask, he looked no different from any of the other male guests. He had been in the house for nearly an hour, and he ventured to suppose that he had made intimate acquaintance with the jewelry of nearly every female present, to say nothing of the lovely set of rubies his unwitting host had inherited from the estate of his wealthy, recently departed wife, which had been carelessly left in her jewel case that still sat out on her dressing table. Those rubies had been his object, the rest mere gravy. The purloined jewels were waiting in a small bag he had dropped from an upper window moments earlier. He was now on his way to retrieve them, before quitting the premises. A small smile lurked at the corners of his mouth as he considered the approximate value of his haul. All in all, when one weighed return versus risk, robbing houses certainly beat robbing coaches.

He was turning away, ready to descend the stairs, when his eye was caught by a young woman below. What it was about her that attracted his attention he did not know. Unlike most of the other females, she was clad in a black domino much like the one he was wearing. The towering plumed headdress she wore was black as well, and dangled beads of jet. Her elaborate cat's-eye mask was of gold satin. She was unsmiling, dancing with a tall, thin gentleman also successfully disguised. Then he realized that it was something in her carriage that had caught his eye. Her lithe gracefulness reminded him of Caitlyn. His eyes fol- lowed her even as his lips tightened. One hand went automatically to massage his damaged thigh. An arrow of pain lodged in his heart.

It had been a year now, almost to the day, since he'd lost her. He still caught himself doing double takes at black-haired young women, thinking that this one or that one was, miraculously, her. Which would be more of a miracle than even God could provide: Caitlyn was dead, shot from the saddle that nightmarish night. As befitted a highwayman, she'd been buried in lime within the week without benefit of word or prayer, so he had not even a grave to grieve over. Though that did not stop him from grieving.