Dark of the Moon (41 page)

His body hardened to the point that he was physically uncomfortable in a matter of seconds. No other woman had ever affected him so much so quickly, not even his first. But then, he had never since that first wench gone so long without availing himself of a woman's comforts.

Connor reminded himself savagely that he had not had a woman since that night with Caitlyn.

As the thought and all that went with it registered, he cursed himself again for being a bloody fool. Here he had been mourning her like a monk, while all the time she had been playing the harlot as if she'd been bom to the role.

He stood up to relieve the discomfort she had caused, adjusting the tight black breeches with a gathering scowl. Whatever rhyme or reason had motivated her, Miss Caitlyn O'Malley had much to answer to him for. And he was here to ask the questions that his shock and hurt had saved her from the last time they had met.

Crouching again, he raised the window inch by inch until the opening was large enough for him to pass through. With knife in hand, he slid one leg over the sill, then his body, then pulled the other leg through. When he was safely inside, he paused, still sheltered by the cascading curtains, and looked carefully around the room. It was elegantly decorated in shades of pink, with a carved four- poster bed spread with a rose satin coverlet. The mirrored dressing table in the corner was of fine mahogany; its top was littered with the miscellany that fashionable women considered necessary to their lives, though in her previous incarnation Caitlyn never had. A tall wardrobe rested against the opposite wall, its doors partially ajar. In front of it was an open valise half filled with dresses and other items of feminine apparel, and a pair of bandboxes. Either she had not yet finished unpacking from the last trip, or she was soon to be leaving on one. He reminded himself to ask her, then turned his attention to other things. Like the dressing table, the wardrobe was also of fine mahogany. Whoever he was, her protector did not stint her materially. Heart clenching like an angry fist, Connor wished the man were there before him now. He would slay him with the greatest pleasure on earth.

Narrowed, his eyes returned to Caitlyn. The bath had been placed before the fire, which, besides the candle on the bedside table, was the only illumination in the room. The firelight bathed her in a soft orange glow, while flickering shadows shifted in the corners of the room. A quick glance followed by a second, thorough one confirmed his original impression that she was alone. Reassured on that head, he allowed his attention to revert to Caitlyn. She was in the process of washing her face. Her eyes were closed tight as she worked soft white lather into her skin. It was clear that she was still completely unaware of his presence. The soap she used must have been scented with lilacs, because the soft fragrance filled the room. For a moment the lovely sight of her bathing naked, accompanied by the beguiling scent, threatened to make him forget just why he had come. But only for a moment.

Moving quietly, he stepped before the tub so that she would see him when she opened her eyes again. As he waited, his arms crossed over his chest, his frown was replaced by a savage half-smile. He'd wager double every groat that Liam was in all likelihood losing at that very moment in Cribb's Parlor that looking up to find him there would give Caitlyn the surprise of her life.

Caitlyn rubbed the soft cloth across her face, concentrating on the feel of its gentle abrasiveness so that she would not feel the burning pain in her buttocks and thighs. The hot soapy water caused the marks left by Sir Edward's latest beating—delivered the night before—to sting unmercifully. But she was becoming almost accustomed to bathing (indeed, living) with pain and had found that if she concentrated on something other than her discomfort, the discomfort actually seemed to lessen, if not disappear.

Splashing her face to rid it of the soap, she groped for the towel. Minna, the bracket-faced maid Sir Edward had provided for her use along with the house, had set the towel out on the small table by the tub before Caitlyn had dismissed her for the night. As it always did, pride had forbidden her to allow Minna to remain. She could not bear the idea of anyone seeing the shameful marks that bore silent witness to the beatings she endured. Minna was in Sir Edward's employ, hired as much to guard as to serve, Caitlyn suspected. Minna and the hulking butler, Fromer, followed her orders insofar as she gave them. Since she had never requested them to do aught but the most mundane servants' duties, she had never tested their loyalty to the point that they were openly insubordinate. But she had no doubt that that point could be reached: the servants were Sir Edward's minions, not her own. If the two should conflict, she knew that Sir Edward's interests would be served.

Her groping hand found the smooth wood of the table- top, moved across it. An extra bar of the same lilac-scented soap in which she had bathed skittered to the floor. It landed on the carpet beneath the bath with a muffled thud. The towel must have fallen to the floor too, because she could not find it.

"Devil take it," she muttered crossly and opened one eye to search for the towel. The sight that met her bleary gaze caused both eyes to pop open, along with her mouth.

"I give you good-evening, Caitlyn," Connor said suavely. There was a glint in his eyes that told her he had been watching her for some time. Caitlyn gave a momentary prayer of thanksgiving that he had not chosen to call on her in such a manner the night before, when Sir Edward had, at just about this time, been practicing his beastly ritual on her. The thought of Connor's reaction had he witnessed that made her shudder.

"Cold?" He misinterpreted her shudder and held out the towel, which he had apparently appropriated. She accepted it, closed her mouth, and patted her face dry with great deliberation while she willed herself into her role. When at last she again met his eyes, her own were guarded, cool.

"What are you doing here?"

"Paying you a call. Did you think I would not find you?"

"I hoped you would not."

His eyes narrowed at the calm statement. "Then 'tis sorry I am that your hope was misplaced. If I were you, I'd step out of that water. You'll be chilled to the bone before long."

"If you'll turn your back, I will."

He laughed then, the sound unamused. "Turn my back? Come, come, Caitlyn! Over the course of the past several months, you've surely lost all claims to feminine modesty. You are, after all, no matter how much you profess to love your gentleman friend or how much he may profess to love you, naught but his whore. Just as you were mine. So why bother to pretend to a modesty you cannot feel? Physically, at least, I know you well, from the scar on your thumb to the little black mole on the left check of your luscious behind."

"Will you turn your back?" There was an edge to her voice. His comments were both insulting and unsettling, but beyond that they reminded her of the telltale marks on her flesh.

She knew that if he saw them, the fat would be in the fire indeed. Because she loved him, and because he was in mortal danger though he did not know it, she had to be strong. She had to drive him away this time for good and all—before the whole situation blew up hideously in her face.

"No." The one-word reply bordered on brutality. Caitlyn eyed him for a moment, then made up her mind. She would play the role of whore that he had assigned her, and hoped to give him such a disgust of her that he would never want to see her again. It was the only way she could think of to keep him safe.

"Very well, then. As you say, 'tis useless to be modest with you. I had quite forgotten how well we once knew one another. 'Twas very long ago, after all."

"A year." His reply was toneless as she stood up, step ping from the tub, careful to keep her abused backside turned away from him. Thus she presented him with what looked like a deliberately wanton view of her full frontal nudity as she patted her body dry with carefully assumed languor. His eyes took on a dangerous gleam that she thought was a combination of anger and desire. Still damp, she abandoned her self-ministrations without the least appearance of haste and reached for the white silk wrapper Minna had left lying over the back of a nearby chair. Pulling it around herself, tying the belt, she felt marginally safer. At least the incendiary evidence of the abuse she had suffered was hidden from him. The servants were retired for the night, and Sir Edward, his lust slaked for a few days from their hellish encounter of the night before, was unlikely to make a late-hour appearance. She would have no better opportunity to convince Connor of her unsuitability for him once and for all.

His eyes were fixed on her body, the shape of which was clearly visible through the thin silk that clung closely to every damp curve. So for just a moment she allowed herself the luxury of looking at him. The last time she had seen him, she had been too shocked to notice much in the way of detail. Now she saw that he looked older, with lines of suffering in his face that had not been there in those days at Donoughmore. Here and there a silver thread glittered against the night-black waves of his hair. He was altogether taller, bigger, more formidable-looking than she remembered. His clothes were new and very fine, the work of a fashionable English tailor, she imagined. The cloak he wore was of fine black wool, fastened at the neck with an elegant frog. Beneath it his frock coat was a sober fawn over snug black breeches. His high-topped boots were black and spotted with water from the dampness outside. His linen was faintly crumpled, his neckcloth looking as though he had retied it in a hurry. She wondered if, beneath it, he still wore her betrothal ring on a chain around his neck. The thought made her heart contract. He was still her impossibly handsome Connor, lean, dark, and dangerous.

Though she had gone a whole year without seeing him, she had not forgotten the smallest detail of his appearance, from the blue-black sheen of his jaw as night waxed into morning to the heart-stopping impact of those aqua eyes.

His eyes lifted from their avid contemplation of her curves to find her studying him just as hungrily.

"You've not changed," he muttered, and the flames that leaped to life in those devil's eyes nearly unnerved her.

"You have," she said and laughed, a carefully calculated little trill. One of the ladybirds whom she had met at the latest demimonde party to which the gentlemen had brought their mistresses instead of their wives had laughed like that. At the time, she had thought it was the most wanton sound she had ever heard. Its effect on every gentleman within earshot had been immediate and apparent. Emerging from her own throat, its effect on Connor was immediate and apparent too. He looked both furious and disgusted.

"I had forgotten just how . . . very handsome you are," she breathed, deliberately fanning the flames, and reached up to pull the gold pick from her hair. As the silky black cloud tumbled around her face and shoulders, fell down her back, she smiled at him with conscious provocation. As she had expected, his face tightened. What she hadn't expected was his next reaction. He was in front of her in two strides, his hands gripping her upper arms hard through the flimsy silk.

"Now stop that," he said, glaring down at her, fingers digging punishingly into her soft flesh. "I'll not tolerate your acting the whore in my presence, at least."

"I'll act any way I please, in your presence or out of it," she snapped back, startled out of her careful pose. His brows lifted, and he looked briefly struck. The expression vanished almost instantly, to be replaced by a black frown.

"You'll do as I tell you, my lass. And I'm telling you that I'll have no more of your whorish tricks, unless you're wishful to feel my hand on your backside."

"Lay a hand on my backside, Connor d'Arcy, and you'll draw back a bloody nub! You forget that I'm no longer subject to your hell-born temper!''

"I'll have no more of your swearing, either!"

"Bastard! Son of a bastard! Hell-born son of a bastard! Bloody—" This deliberate litany of curses, uttered in furious defiance of his edict, earned her a little shake.

"You watch your mouth!"

"I'll swear if I want to! What I do is no concern of yours any more! Who asked you to come sniffing after me, anyway?"

Caitlyn suddenly stopped her tirade and took a deep breath. She was horrified to discover that she had been arguing with him in precisely the same vein as she always had. Taking a grip on herself, reminding herself of her object, which was to save Connor at whatever cost to herself, she deliberately put a lid on her wrath and softened her voice to a tone a mild exasperation.

"What will it take to convince you, I wonder? I don't want you any more, Connor. I don't need you any more. 'Tis grateful I am that you rescued me from the back streets of Dublin, and doubly grateful that you taught me not to fear men. But I'm not a bairn for you to raise any longer. I'm all grown up, and I've chosen my own path in life. One that does not include you. So go home and mother your brothers, and leave me be!"

By the end of this neat speech, Connor was glaring at her so fiercely that his eyes were mere glittering slits in his dark face.

"So you're grateful to me, eh? Aye, you should be! I saved your life, you hell-born whelp, took you home and fed you and turned you from a grimy, thieving lad into a lovely little lass!

As you grew up, I turned myself inside out trying to save you from my brothers and myself, and from so many others that I've lost count! Had I known that whoring was in your blood, I'd not have bothered! Doubtless if we'd passed you around the family, you'd have thanked the lot of us for the compliment!"

Caitlyn, unable to stop herself, scowled at him. Staring down at her through those glittering slits of eyes, he continued softly. " 'Tis a second miraculous escape I've had, no doubt. For had you not possessed a clearer head than I during our recent touching reunion, I doubtless would have fetched you back to Donoughmore with me. And then the fat would have been in the fire, indeed."

"And just what does that mean, pray?"