Dark of the Moon (40 page)

The thought made her want to cry again. Instead, she swung her aching limbs off the bed and limped to the washstand to do what she could to clean and soothe her abused body.

As she looked at herself in the long cheval mirror, Caitlyn felt that it was a stranger looking back at her. She didn't know this lass with the paint still clinging to her face, with the red-rimmed eyes and swollen mouth. Her nakedness was obscene. The marks on her buttocks and legs were livid purple welts overlying greenish bruises from the last beating. She felt like a stranger in her own skin and, not for the first time, wondered if she was on the brink of losing a grip on sanity. Then she gritted her teeth. She would not be cowed and defeated, she would not.

One day she would get her revenge.

London was a large city, and finding one hell-born brat within its environs was no easy task. Connor went about the job methodically, reasoning that since Caitlyn's protector had set her up in her own house and had been a guest at the Marquis of Standon's house party, he must be a man of some means. English gentlemen of means were creatures of habit for the most part, and there were certain sections of London where such gentlemen kept their mistresses. Covent Garden was the centerpiece around which most of those areas revolved, and it was there that he focused his search.

He had told no one of his soul-shaking discovery. Not Mickeen, who had been on the verge of saddling his horse and coming in search of him when he had finally appeared at the inn that night. Not Liam, who had nonetheless guessed that something had occurred to overset him but, despite many subtle and not so subtle inquiries, could not determine what. Not Cormac nor Rory, to whom he wrote the obligatory letter once a week. No one. He could not admit that he'd found Caitlyn only to lose her again, not when he didn't understand it himself. He'd been too hurt, too heartsore and confused to question her as he should have when she'd blurted her amazing story to him. His judgment had been clouded by the two things that appeared to be indisputable fact: she was alive, and she was living as the mistress of another man.

She'd refused to tell him her lover's identity, but he had little doubt that he would shortly discover it. As soon as he learned her location, he would set a man to watch her house night and day. When a gentleman entered, Connor would be notified. He meant to see Caitlyn's lover for himself. What happened after that would depend on many things.

It was nothing short of amazing, he reflected wryly, how well he had come to know the theater district in the three weeks since he had discovered that Caitlyn was not lost to him through death but only through her own incomprehensible will. Though he had many times cursed himself for a blind, stubborn fool, he could not bring himself to just let her be, even though she had said that was what she wanted. The more he considered the matter, the more he found it impossible to believe that his Caitlyn, with her fiery spirit and loyal heart, could have grown so callous and mercenary during the course of a single year. To have allowed him to believe her dead was a hideous act of which the lass he had known was simply not capable; to take such pleasure in material things was another facet of her character that did not agree with all that he knew of her. But his senses had not deceived him: he had found his Caitlyn all right, miraculously delivered from the dead. She had seen him, known him, remembered everything— and had sent him away, saying that she loved another man. Though everything he remembered of her screamed that this was not so, it was always possible that she was telling the truth. The question that ate at him was: what reason could she have to lie?

Searching for her, he wandered the twisting streets of the theater district, sometimes on foot though it still pained him to walk far distances, sometimes in his own hired curricle, sometimes in a hackney. The weather was for the most part foul. Though it did not deter him from his purpose, it did make his leg ache and worsened his temper, which was not oversweet to begin with.

He hoped to see her on the street, then follow her home, but he caught nary a glimpse of her.

Instinct warned him to move cautiously until he was sure of exactly what she was about, or he would have stood boldly in the center of every damned street in the area, bellowing her name until she showed herself.

Finally, when all his subtle strategies failed him, he was forced to employ more direct measures. Knocking discreetly on the door of several dozen residences, inquiring for a Miss O'Malley and describing her in case she should be residing there under some other name, he struck pay- dirt at last in the fourth week of his search. A plump maidservant answered the door of one of the neat row houses on Lisle Street. In response to his inquiry, the giggling creature allowed as how she didn't know no Miss O'Malley, but she did know that a young woman answering the description Connor had given her lived along the street a ways at Number 21, though she rarely left her residence. Connor thanked her for the information and walked away.

His first thought was to go immediately and discover if he had, indeed, found his quarry. His second was cooler: it behooved him to go home and think this through first.

Like the house where Caitlyn was presently residing, this residence on Curzon Street was not a fashionable address, though it had been one before the street had been allowed to run down. Certainly no English gentleman of the first stare would live thereon, unless his pockets were severely to let. But Connor was not an English gentleman; he had no use for extravagance, and the neat town house suited him just fine. With Mrs. Dabney, a housekeeper-cook hired from an agency, to do the cooking and oversee the running of the house, two maids on whom Mrs. Dabney had insisted for doing most of the cleaning, and Mickeen to act as butler-cum-valet, Connor considered that he and Liam were positively pampered.

Liam, to his oft-expressed surprise, had found much in London to his liking. Connor did not doubt that the freedom of the English wenches (who, unlike the majority of Irish lasses Liam had known, did not consider themselves damned for eternity to Hellfire if they lifted their skirts outside of marriage) had much to do with Liam's reconciliation to their exile. Still, Connor suspected that, like himself, Liam sometimes longed to be back in the fresh air and green fields of Donoughmore. But if he did, Liam didn't say so. Like Rory and Cormac, who in agreeing to look to their long-neglected education to please Connor were making a real sacrifice on his behalf, Liam was determined to do all he could to help his brother cope with grief. Had he hated London, he would have stayed as long as he felt Connor needed him. That he did not hate it was a nice bonus.

"There you are, Conn! I've a notion to visit Cribb's Parlor tonight with some cronies. Would you care to join us? 'Twould do you good to get out, you know." Liam, resplendent in a yellow coat and dark green breeches that were only a small part of his new London wardrobe, was just descending into the entry hall as Connor let himself in through the front door. (Mickeen was not the most efficient butler, but then Connor wouldn't have known what to do with a true butler if he had had one; the fellow would have driven him right insane.)

"What? Oh, no, I've things to do tonight, thanks." Connor was deep in thought and barely emerged from his abstraction long enough to answer Liam, who was frowning at him with some concern. Since Caitlyn's supposed death, Liam had taken upon himself the role of his older brother's keeper. Before Connor had rediscovered Caitlyn, Liam had begun to relax his vigilance, as Connor had seemed to be coping better with his grief. But Connor knew that his behavior of late was bewildering in the extreme. Once or twice he had nearly told Liam all, but he could not bring himself to do so, not yet. He felt that in some vague way it would be disloyal to Caitlyn. His brothers would hate her if they knew she had been alive the entire time he had been half mad with grief over her death. Though his head told him he was being foolish, his heart was not quite ready to give up on her.

Connor was moving down the hallway toward the room he had commandeered as his office when he bethought himself of something. "Mind you don't play too deep, now. My pocket is not bottomless," he cautioned, looking back over his shoulder at Liam with a warning frown.

This typical statement wiped some of the worry off

Liam's face. He grinned, promised not to bankrupt the family, and with a relatively light heart left his brother to himself.

In the office, Connor sat and brooded. He roused himself for supper, then retired to the front parlor, where he stared into the fire without seeing it and sipped at an excellent cognac. After a while, deciding that cognac was not to his taste, he made a decision: he would go for a walk.

The cold night air would clear his head, if anything could.

Rejecting Mickeen's plea—almost a demand—that he be allowed to accompany him, Connor donned hat and cloak and set off down the street. He walked for nearly an hour, thinking hard all the while, before finding himself on Lisle Street. Even as he realized where his wandering feet had taken him, he knew that this had been his object all along. From the moment when the maidservant had told him where Caitlyn lived, he had known he had to see her. For good or ill, the lass had a hold on him that was nothing short of an obsession.

No matter what she had said, or done, or felt or didn't feel for him, he could not leave it at that. Though she had told him in plain words that she wished it, he could not just pluck her from his life now that he knew she lived. She had woven herself too deeply into the tapestry of his heart. For love or hatred, there was a connection between them that would not be denied. He had to see her again. It was not a choice but a need. Whether she would or no, his heart cried out that she was his. If somehow she had forgotten what they had once been to each other, then he would remind her. But he would not let her go. Not without one hell of a fight.

Connor walked around the house, ignoring the aching in his leg that warned him that he had walked too far, and eyed it with the thoroughness of a professional. It was near eleven o'clock, too late to go banging on doors. Besides, he had no wish to have whatever servants might be inside attending to his very private meeting with Caitlyn. What he had to say was for her ears alone.

It was always possible that the man she professed to love might be in the house with her, but that was a chance he would have to take. Connor smiled grimly, thinking of it. If the man happened to be disporting himself in Caitlyn's boudoir, that might solve the problem forevermore. Confronted with his rival in a compromising position with his love, Connor knew that he would likely kill the bastard on the spot.

The faintest glow lighted the curtains of the upstairs front room. Connor guessed it was her bedroom, and saw at once how he might enter unobserved. An elegant stoop extended along the front of the house. If he could get on top of it, he would have access to her window.

Getting up there proved no problem. He jumped, caught the parapet, and heaved himself up and over. His only fear was that he would be observed by someone from a neighboring house who would summon the watch. But, glancing around, he didn't think that was likely. It was a very dark, moonless night, the kind of night the Dark Horseman had been wont to favor for his rides. The top of the stoop, on which he crouched behind an ornamental railing, was deep in shadows. Occupants of the occasional carriage rattling along the street below would not be able to see him. Not all the houses nearby were dark, but most were. The ones that still showed lights showed them in the bedrooms. The residents of those houses would probably not be looking out their windows while they did whatever they did to get ready for sleep, and therefore were not likely to see him, if he was even visible at all except as a shadow amidst other shadows.

The curtains were drawn. Though his face was pressed against the glass, Connor could see nothing inside the room. He would have to take the risk that the chamber was Caitlyn's and that she was alone. Extracting the knife from his boot, he slid it along the window frame until it caught on the latch. Carefully he worked the knife, and was rewarded by the sound of the latch falling against the window jamb. Then, with utmost stealth, he edged open the window. The curtains still blocked his view. He parted them just a sliver. The sight that immediately filled his eyes almost caused him to fall off the roof.

Caitlyn stood not ten feet from where he peered through the curtains. She was naked, facing him, and she was just stepping into a steaming porcelain bath.

Before she sank into the water he got a good, long look at the whole luscious front of her.

Staring, he felt his blood heat and his loins tighten. He had forgotten how achingly beautiful she was.

Perhaps a saint would not have crouched and stared, but Connor had fallen so far short of sainthood in the past year and a half that he no longer had to worry about what a saint might do.

He watched her with frank enjoyment, admiring every lovely curve and hollow. Her masses of hair were twisted into a soft pile on top of her head and secured with an elegant gold pick. Her silky black brows were as delicate as brushstrokes against the petal-smoothness of her brow.

She was looking down at her hands as she busily lathered a cloth, so he caught just glimpses of the fathoms-deep blue of her eyes. But her lashes were long and black and feathery as they cast faint shadows over her cheeks, and her lips looked as soft and pink as the lushest rose. He admired the elegant lines of her face, the daintiness of her features, the graceful movements of her hands when she lifted them to splash herself with water. The tub stopped his view at her waist, but not above. Like a man too long denied water who finds himself unexpectedly confronted with a stream that is, torturously, just beyond his reach, he stared. The wind blew around him, and small flakes of snow floated down to melt on his skin and clothes, but he never noticed.

He stared at her breasts, remembering how they had felt in his hands, how they had tasted.