Dark of the Moon (49 page)

Caitlyn could not bear the thought. If Connor died, she would want to die too.

When they rode into Dublin it was past midnight. Revelers packed the streets despite the freezing rain. The town had a carnival air about it. A public hanging was an event even if only the lowliest pickpocket was to forfeit his life. When the condemned was as well loved and well hated (depending upon whether one was Irish or Anglo) as the Dark Horseman, the entertainment promised to be of the highest order. Everyone who could manage to travel to Dublin was there.

Outside St. Catherine's their ways split. Kilmainham Gaol was to the east, Botany Bay to the north. Father Patrick reined in and turned in his saddle to bid them farewell.

"Till dawn, my children," he said, lifting a hand. Caitlyn pushed Meg closer to his mount.

She had an urgent request to make of the priest, though she hated to tell him what she feared she must to secure it. He would think her wanton, indeed. But if it was the price she must pay, pay it she would, and gladly.

"Can you find no way to take me with you, Father? I would see Connor, if I could.

He—I—we have much that is unfinished between us."

"I would go too, if 'tis possible." Cormac spoke up from the darkness behind her. Father Patrick shook his head.

"You, Cormac, are a man grown now and should recognize folly before you suggest it. Do not forget that they are looking for you, and for Rory and Liam as well. You look too much like your brother, so you are impossible to mistake. As for you, lass ..."

"We've had no word that I'm being sought." Seeing Father Patrick's hesitation, she shamelessly appealed to the soft spot he had developed for her. "Please, Father. Should Connor die and I . . . not have speech with him, I—I—" Her voice broke. "If there is any way, I beg you."

Father Patrick frowned. " 'Tis too dangerous. I cannot permit it. 'Tis sorry I am, lass, but—"

"Please, Father!" Caitlyn broke in. " 'Tis more im- portant than you know. There is something I must tell him." Haltingly, she explained the urgency of her mission. By the time she was done, her entire face was bright crimson, and Father Patrick was staring at her from beneath lowered brows. Cormac looked like he had been poleaxed.

"Dear sweet Jesus," Cormac muttered, his eyes running over Caitlyn. She silenced him with a look.

"That does make a difference," Father Patrick agreed after a long silence. "Very well, you may come with me. I will get you in somehow. But there is one condition."

When he told her what it was, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, nearly unseating him from his horse.

Left alone with his thoughts in the cold, damp darkness that imprisoned him on the final night of his life, Connor had nearly fallen asleep when the scraping of the key in the lock of his cell told him he had company. For an awful moment, he thought that it was dawn already and they had come for him. Then he saw the black-robed figure that filled the doorway behind the guard. As light from the candle the guard held illuminated the homely round face, he recognized his visitor.

"Father Patrick!" He would have surged to his feet, but surging was difficult, hampered as he was by a game leg and iron chains. His bed was naught but a single blanket on the cold stone floor, and the relentless chill had caused his leg to stiffen. The chains that linked his ankles and secured him to the wall rattled as he got painfully to his feet.

"I have come to give you what comfort I can in your last hours on this earth, my son,"

Father Patrick intoned piously, walking forward to embrace Connor. Another priest entered the cell behind Father Patrick, head bowed and hands tucked into his robe. Connor spared hardly a glance for the second priest. He was so glad to see Father Patrick that a lump rose in his throat.

For a moment he feared he would be unable to speak.

"God bless you, Father."

"And you, Connor," Father Patrick responded, stepping back and making the sign of the cross over him.

"Heathen Papists," the guard muttered with an expression of distaste, settling the candle into the iron sconce near the barred door. Then, with a nervous look along the corridor behind him, he added more loudly, ' 'Not too long now, Father."

"No longer than it needs, you may be sure," Father Patrick answered calmly, his eyes never leaving Connor, who, with six weeks' worth of black beard covering his jaw and his hair grown overlong and untidy, looked every inch a brigand. The guard sniffed and went out, locking the door behind him with a great grating of iron against iron. Connor, recovering his composure, dropped the priest's hand.

"If you would, cover the peephole," Father Patrick said to the second priest. Connor barely noticed as the man obeyed; his attention was all on Father Patrick.

" 'Twas good of you to come, Father. But perhaps a trifle unwise."

"I would have come sooner if I could. Be assured, no difficulties will befall me for this. But come, we have much to do and not much time to do it. I have a surprise for you. I hope 'tis to your liking."

"Did you not come to give me Supreme Unction, then? I confess I hesitate to meet my maker without it." Connor smiled a little, his expression wry. Father Patrick laid his hand on his shoulder.

" 'Tis my fervent hope that you'll long outlive me, my son. But just in case, I will give you absolution before I leave you. Are you not curious as to my surprise?"

"You are surprise enough for me, Father. But aye, I would see what you've brought. I warn you, I'm hoping for a nice bit of mutton and maybe some turnips. ..."

"I did not think of food," Father Patrick muttered, sounding put out with himself. "But then, I wager you'll not think of it in a moment either." He turned and beckoned to the second priest, who stepped forward. Connor watched with casual interest until something about this unknown priest's movements held his eyes. Even before she lifted a hand to pull back the cowled hood, he knew.

"Caitlyn," he groaned as she ran into his arms. They closed around her, holding her tight.

"Oh, Caitlyn." His voice broke, and he buried his face in the mass of her shining hair. She clung to him, murmuring love words that he could not make out, so soft and warm and alive in his arms that she banished the specter of the grave that yawned before him. He held her for what seemed like an eternity. Then, finally remembering his interested audience, he lifted his head from her hair and smiled rather unsteadily at the priest.

"A fine surprise, indeed, Father."

"I thought you would like it." Father Patrick's voice was dry, but the candlelight caught just the faintest suspicion of moisture in his eyes.

"Connor, you do love me?" Caitlyn lifted her head from his chest at last, a touch of uncertainty in her eyes. He looked down at her, remembered that he had never told her, and smiled tenderly.

"More than my life, my own."

"Enough to wed me?"

"Aye, willingly. But . . ."

"The lass tells me she thinks she is with child. I would not like her to be left in such a state, unwed, should you die on the morrow." Father Patrick looked at Connor with as much sternness as he could muster under the circumstances.

"With child!" Connor looked stunned. His face whitened, tightened as he gazed into the kerry blue eyes that stared at him so apprehensively. For a moment the reason for her nervousness eluded him. Surely she knew that he would never deny her— The thought that it might not be of his seed popped full-blown into his brain. The brat might be the spawn of his deadliest enemy, and Caitlyn's rapist. ... He looked down at the beautiful face he loved more than anything else in this world or out of it, and knew it did not matter. If Caitlyn was with child, he would wed her. Of whatever issue, he would give her and the bairn the protection of his name. That was all he had left to give them.

"Are you pleased?" she asked, low-voiced. His mind boggled. He could not by the greatest stretch of good will on earth term himself pleased.

"Pleased?" he equivocated, and felt her stiffen before she pulled out of his arms. Both she and Father Patrick fixed him with chilling glares.

"Aye, pleased!" Though her voice was low, her anger was unmistakable. "As a man should be when told he's to be a father!"

" 'Tis disappointed in you 1 am, Connor." Father Patrick was no less disapproving than Caitlyn.

Connor stared at the two of them, then gave it up. "All right. Aye, I'm pleased. I'll certainly wed you, my own, with the greatest happiness on earth. And I'll give a name to your child, whether it be mine or no. 1—"

"Whether it be yours or no!" Caitlyn's horrified interjection was echoed in Father Patrick's expression. Connor, realizing that the shame of what she had no doubt suffered at Sir Edward's hands had made her wish to block all the reasons that the bairn might well not be his from her mind, could have kicked himself for a clumsy-tongued fool.

"I didn't mean that. 'Twas a slip of the tongue, a—a misstatement, if you will." He desperately tried to retrieve the situation. Caitlyn and Father Patrick glared at him.

"It is yours! Whose else would it be?"

"Sir Edward . . ." As soon as he said the name, he could have bitten off his tongue. Caitlyn's eyes got huge. Father Patrick looked scandalized, and Connor guessed that there were large parts of her life over the past year and a half that Caitlyn had not confided to the priest.

"Could you excuse us a moment, Father? We—I think we have the need for some private speech here." Connor looked over Caitlyn's blushing head at the priest. He nodded and took himself to the door of the cell, where with an imperious kick he demanded that he be let out.

"Forgot my rosary," they heard him grumble to the guard when the door was opened and he stepped outside. "Have to have a rosary, you know. Father Simeon can hear his confession, but have to have a rosary. Do you suppose . . . ?"

The door clanged shut again, locked. Connor turned his attention back to Caitlyn, who had recovered the presence of mind to pull her cowl back over her head before the guard looked into the room. He would have put his arms around her, but he could not reach her, chained to the wall as he was. She looked up at him, wet her lip.

"I never did—that—with Sir Edward," Caitlyn said quietly, the wrath dying from her eyes.

"I forgot you did not know. Sir Edward was not—lie did not—he was not a normal man. He took his pleasure from—from hurting me. . . ." Her voice was veiy low, and at the end trailed away entirely. Her lower lip quivered, and she looked down at the rough stones beneath her feet. At the sight of her face, pale and shamed, Connor felt his heart twist with love. He reached for her again, but the damned chain tethered him to the wall so that he could not quite get his hands on her.

"No," she said, shaking her head and stepping back. Then to his astonishment she was loosening the rope that tied the priest's robe about her waist, sliding it from her shoulders.

Beneath it she wore a shirt and breeches. As Connor stared, she began to unbutton her shirt.

"What—?" he started to ask, amazed. She shook her head again, turning her back as she pulled off her shirt. His mouth went dry at the sight of her standing there clad in nothing but a man's breeches and boots, her shining mass of hair the only thing covering the nakedness of her back. He cast a quick glance at the door. The peephole was covered by a cloth, and Father Patrick was sure to give a loud warning of his return. He turned his attention back to Caitlyn.

She had dropped her breeches. The gray wool lay in a puddle around her feet. Her back was to him still. His heartbeat speeded up at his knowing that she was naked, though her hair effectively concealed most of her flesh from his eyes.

"I want you to see for yourself so you'll know that what I'm telling you is the truth. I'll not have any doubts lingering in your head about whether or not this babe is yours." Even as she spoke she swept the fall of her hair aside. Connor felt as though a fist had slammed into his stomach as he stared at the mass of scars crisscrossing her lower back and buttocks and thighs.

They were nearly healed, but the faint purple marks of a whip were still clearly visible against the translucent ivory satin of her skin.

"Oh, my God," he said, the words both prayer and curse. Then curse got the better of him.

He swore loud and long, rage a red mist before his eyes, condemning Sir Edward to fiery torment in a hundred different ways before it occurred to him that she was facing him now, breeches in place, already pulling on her shirt and buttoning it. The look on her face shocked him back to sanity. He could not get his hands on Sir Edward at the moment. He could, however, get his hands on Caitlyn.

"Come here, cuilin," he said low, opening his arms to her. She looked up, saw the expression in his eyes, and with a little sob ran into his arms. They closed around her, held her tight against his heart. He bent his head over hers, enfolding her in his embrace as she gasped out disjointed pieces of what she had suffered at Sir Edward's hands. By the time she had told of how she waited for the chance to kill him, she was sobbing. Connor's face was white, his eyes glinting murder as he listened. With far more passion than before, he regretted he had not killed the swine himself, when he had had the chance.

"Cry it out. 'Tis all right, I have you safe now," he whispered into her hair, and she did, weeping against the tattered front of the shirt he had worn for more than a month, clutching him as if she would never let him go. At last, little by litde, her sobs lessened. Finally she gasped, and gulped, and sniffed, and lifted her head to look up at him.

"Oh, Connor, I do love you so," she whispered, a pathetic little catch in her voice.

"And I love you, my own," he answered, his own voice hoarse. Teary-eyed and pale, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld in his life. His arms tightened around her. "I'll love you always, forever. If I die on the morrow, then be sure that I'll love you long after my body is cold in its grave. I'll love you through the joys of Heaven, or the torments of Hell."

"You must not talk of dying! 'Tis bad luck," she moaned, and when fresh tears came to her eyes he bent his head and kissed her. It was a long, long time before he let her go, and then only because they heard Father Patrick loudly condemning the guard because he had not found a rosary anywhere on the premises. By the time the key had turned in the lock again, Caitlyn was dressed once more as a priest, her back to the door and Connor on his knees before her as she pretended to hear his confession.