Dark of the Moon (38 page)

"By the miraculous grace of God, it is you! Ach, I have missed you, cuilin."

He felt her shudder against him even as his world slowly began to right itself on its axis. For once in his life, what was lost was regained. It had all been a hideous misunderstanding, a fiendish trick played by an evil Shedu, the details of which she would now explain. Not that the why or the how of it mattered. Not in the face of this wondrous blessing. She was alive, alive!

God in His wisdom had given him his miracle, after all.

"C-Connor." She did not seem able to say his name without a catch in it. His eyes opened, and he blinked once to rid them of the burning that threatened to unman him. Offering another thanks to God, he pressed his lips against that shining ebony hair, dropped brief hard kisses on her eyes, her nose, her mouth, and her chin before burying his head in the hollow of her neck.

As if his fierce kisses were some sort of catalyst, her arms dropped from around his waist and she pushed against his rib cage, wanting to be let go. He could not bring himself to do so.

Beneath the unfamiliar scent of a sweet perfume, he drew in the clean aroma of her skin and hair. He felt as if he had been frozen from the time she had left him and he was only now just starting to melt. The pain was excruciating, but it felt wonderful to be coming alive again.

"Let me go, Connor." The words were spoken quietly, but it was obvious from them that at least she had regained her composure. There was also a note in her voice that did not quite fit with his notion of a rapturous reunion. He drew a deep, shaky breath and lifted his head to look down at her questioningly. Still he held her close. Some part of him feared that she was naught but an apparition and that if he lost touch with her, she would vanish into the shadows of the night.

"We have to talk, Connor. Please let me go."

There was sense in what she said, he knew. They had to talk, to expose the circumstances that had caused him so much pain. Once the hows and the whys were out of the way, he'd be free to sweep her up in his arms again. To carry her back to Donoughmore, with everything the same as before. To marry her, and keep her beside him all the days of his life. To love her forever. He smiled with great sweetness down into her eyes, feeling as if shackles and chains andiron weights had suddenly been lifted from his heart. Unbelievably, miraculously, everything was going to be all right. Caitlyn was restored to him. Her death had been nothing more than a year-long bad dream, and now he had awakened at last.

"This is noplace for explanations, my own," he told her, smiling though his voice was not quite his own yet. "What was lost is found, and for the moment that's miracle enough. Grab your cloak or whatever garment you need to make that pretty dress passably warm, and we'll be away. Mickeen's waiting at an inn up the road, and by now he's probably grown old with worry over me. I've been here far too long. What a surprise he'll have when he sees you! And my brothers! What a celebration we'll have! 'Tis a miracle, and no mistake! Caitlyn alive! God in all His glory be thanked and praised."

"I'll not be going with you," she said quietly, and succeeded in pulling herself out of his arms. He frowned. Something was very wrong, but the euphoria of finding her alive overshadowed all else.

"What do you mean, you'll not be going with me? Of course you will. You belong with me, my own, so get your cloak." He felt an unwelcome premonition even as he spoke. His eyes were seeing what his mind had refused to register. She was his Caitlyn, yet, hideously, not his Caitlyn. Her lovely face was whitened as much by rice powder as by shock, though the artificial rosiness of rouge was readily apparent on her cheekbones. Her lips were very red too, and he suspected she had used paint there as well. For the first time since he had made sure of her identity, his eyes left her face to run over her body. The gown she wore was just this side of indecent, like the gowns the tarts had worn in the ballroom. It was of fine blue silk trimmed with silver lace, caught up around the hem with big silver bows to reveal a silver lace petticoat beneath. The neckline bared neck and shoulders and more than half her lovely bosom. She must have been tightly laced beneath the dress, because her creamy-skinned breasts thrust provocatively upward, lushly available to eyes and touch, and her waist was even more impossibly slender than he remembered. Frowning, he looked her over again. She was tricked out like an expensive whore.

" 'Tis glad I am to see you, Connor, truly, and please give my love to your brothers, but I wish you'd leave now. Please."

Connor had the sense of falling again into a nightmare. His frown deepened into a scowl, but he was more bewildered than angry. He reached for her. She took a quick step back from him, and he let his hand fall to his side. "Suppose you explain yourself, lass. We've thought you dead, all of us, and now, when I by the sheer grace of God find you alive, you tell me to go away. We are affianced, Caitlyn. Your home is with me, at Donoughmore. Have you problems with your memory?"

She looked at him steadily as she took another step away from him. He allowed her to put what distance she wished between them, his eyes never leaving her face. That tantalizing tongue came out to wet her lips again, and he wanted to groan. She was his own beloved Caitlyn . . . and yet she was not. He began to question his sanity once more.

"You are entitled to an explanation, 'tis true. I've been remiss, I know, in not letting you know that I was alive, but I've been so ... so happy this past year. I'm . . .I'm in love, Connor."

He felt as if he had walked into landscape that was familiar at first glance, but as he moved further into it, it became grotesque and hideously distorted.

"I thought you were in love with me." The words were very quiet, almost puzzled. Her eyes were huge as they met his, then dropped.

"Faith, this is hard for me to say! I had hoped to spare you this, 'tis one reason I didn't contact you after I . . . was able to. You were right, all those months ago at Donoughmore: I was naught but a child then. I loved you, and I still do, but not in the way I thought. What I felt then was nothing more than infatuation. You are a very handsome man, Connor! And now—why, now 'tis truly a woman grown I am, and I find I love you like a brother. Just a brother, Connor, and nothing more."

"A brother." He repeated her words stupidly, feeling as if he were fighting his way through a fog. She flicked a quick look up at him and spoke more rapidly.

"There's someone else now, the man who saved my life. He was with the dragoons who pursued us that night. When I was shot—oh, aye, I was shot—the wound was grave. I was hit in the back, it was very bloody he told me later, and the rest of that pack of jackals thought I was dead. But he ... he found that there was some faint spark of life remaining in me, and that I was a woman. He said naught to the others but volunteered to take charge of the body. There was a reward, you know, which he paid himself out of his own pocket later so no one would realize the highwayman they'd shot had not truly died. But that night he took me to his 1-lodgings, and over the next few weeks he nursed me back to health. He was kind, Connor. And . . . and I found that I liked him very much. I had no money, nothing to give him, so I ... I paid back his kindness in the only way I could. Then, later still, I discovered I loved him. And he loves me.

He is a gentleman, an English gentleman. When he returned to his home, he brought me with him. I truly thought it would be kinder if you just never saw me again."

Connor watched her as she spoke, disbelieving. The Caitlyn he knew could not have done the things she said. She could not have bedded a man out of gratitude and pity, not when she was betrothed to another. She could not have fallen in love with someone else.

"For a twelve-month I have believed you dead." His voice was hoarse. "You are telling me that you were alive and aware all the while, bedding another man even, and had not the first thought of letting me know? Have you any idea of the grief we have suffered, not just me but my brothers, who loved you too? Have you lost your heart as well as your mind?"

"I'm very sorry, Connor. 'Twas thoughtless, I know."

"Thoughtless." He thought of the agony he had gone through, the heartrending pain that had stabbed him as recently as this very night, and fought an uige to wrap his hands around her soft neck and squeeze the life out of her in truth this time. "Aye, I'd say you were a trifle thoughtless in this matter."

His sarcasm did not seem to move her, and her very indifference enraged him at last. He caught her arm, pulling her toward the wardrobe that rested against one wall. Holding her despite her struggling protests, he flung open the door with his other hand and began to rifle through the contents. All the clothes were expensively lavish, and most were totally unsuitable for the midnight ride through a near-winter night that he had in mind. He threw several dresses on the floor before he yanked out an emerald-green wool walking costume. It had a decent neckline and long sleeves, and the material would be insulating. It would do.

"Put that on." He thrust it at her. She took it, stopping her useless struggles to stand glaring at him. "Until I sort this tangle through to the bottom, I'll not have you freezing to death."

"I told you, I'm not coming with you, Connor!"

"Oh, are you not, then? We'll see about that." With barely restrained ferocity he closed a hand in the shocking neckline of her gown and jerked downward. The thin silk gave with a satisfying rip. She gasped and tried to free herself from his hold, but to no avail. He stripped the gown from her, then his eyes narrowed on her underclothes. They were very pretty, white and lacy and trimmed with satin bows. The underclothes of a woman who meant for them to be seen. A pulse began to pound in his head. She'd said she had a lover.

"Stop it, Connor! You can't make me go with you! I'll not! Do you hear me? I'll not!"

He ignored her, whirling her around and yanking at the strings of her stays.

"What are you doing?" She tried to pull away as he untied the bow and loosened the strings, but he jerked her back into place by the very strings he was loosening.

"You can't ride in this." The stays fell away, and her bosom and waist returned to their natural configuration inside the shift and petticoat she still wore. Instinctively she clutched the green walking costume protectively to her breast as she whirled to face him.

' 'What do I have to say to convince you? I'm not going with you! I'm sorry if you've been hurt, but I don't love you any more! I love someone else now!"

"And what is your lover's name?"

She laughed. "Think you that I would be fool enough to tell you that? I know you! 'Tis crazy jealous you are, and have always been! You'd kill him in a heartbeat!"

"Aye, if you've bedded him."

"There, you see? You see? That's why I never told you I survived! Go away, Connor! I'm happy now, far happier than I was with you, so just go away!"

"I don't believe you."

"Oh, don't you now?" Her eyes narrowed, and an edge of fine Irish temper entered her voice. "You always were a conceited creature! You're a handsome man, 'tis true, but you've a temper like the devil and a damned highhanded way with you that I mislike! The man I love is gentle with me, and kind, and lets me do just as I choose! At Donoughmore, I worked from morn to midnight on your bloody sheep farm! And, had I wed you, I no doubt would have continued to do so until I died, and single- handedly raised a houseful of your squally brats besides! The man I love has presented me with my own house in London, and I have servants to fill my every need. I sleep till noon anytime I like, and then do nothing more strenuous than shop! Remember the rags I wore at Donoughmore? The man I love has given me fine clothes, lovely clothes! Fashioned in the latest styles of silks and satins and velvets! See this dress?"

She thrust the walking costume under his nose. "I had not a single gown that was half so fine when I lived with you! Now I have a wardrobe full, each more grand than the last! And you say you don't believe me when I tell you I prefer him to you?" She laughed derisively. Her eyes blazed at him. The scene was so familiar that he wanted to kiss her and smack her bottom at the same time—until he considered her words. Then he wanted to wring her neck. He felt his own temper, held in abeyance to some degree by confusion and shock, start to simmer. Whatever else might have changed about Caitlyn, she had not lost the knack of making him wild with anger.

"You little whore." He said the words coldly, deliberately, and had the satisfaction of seeing her face whiten.

"Call me what you like. It makes no difference, as long as you leave."

"Leave? Aye, I'll leave! Think you that I want a whore to wife? I should have guessed that one day you'd follow in the footsteps of your whore of a mother! Don't they say that the apple never falls far from the tree?"

"Don't you dare call my mother a whore!"

He'd known that would enrage her. In any other circumstances, he would have felt that using the knowledge she had given him of her mother's fate against her would have been a low blow. But at the moment he was too angered to care. He watched her eyes flame at him and used his own growing fury as balm for the hideous hurt beneath.

"You've no objection to the term for yourself, then?"

"Bastard!"

"A whore would swear like a bloody dragoon," he observed, and she launched herself at him, clawing at his face. He knocked her hands aside, but she was beside herself, kicking him and ripping at his shirtfront so that she could use those claws on his skin. He heard his shirt rip and caught her hands, squeezing her wrists until she winced.

"I hate you!" she hissed, tears starting to her eyes.

"Not near so much as I hate you." The words, at that moment, were heartfelt. They glared at each other, and then her eyes dropped to his chest, widened. Connor frowned, looking down at himself to see what had caused that shocked expression. If the little bitch had made him bleed, he would . . .

Nestled in the the dark hair on his chest, bared by his torn shirt, lay the betrothal ring he had given her long ago. Since her loss he had worn it night and day, suspended from a thin gold chain around his neck. Looking down at the amber beauty of the stone, seeing her look at it too, knowing what it revealed about his emotions, he felt a rage rise up in him that was so black and uncontrollable that he feared he might do her actual physical harm. With a curse he flung her away from him and, without a backward glance, turned on his heel and left.