Virgin Star (17 page)

A pistol manifested itself in the man's hand. He did not smile. "And I wager a bullet in your head that you did."

She stood at the side window, staring out at the fog drifting quietly through the front lawns and waiting.

The men who meant to kill her waited outside. She was sure they had watched Seanessy carry her to his ship, then later followed Seanessy and Butcher here to the house. They were waiting for an opportunity.

Sean's men sat at a serving table behind her playing a queer dice and card game as they watched over her. They quietly discussed the upcoming parliamentary elections, relating it to Aristotle's Politics—not the common type of men.

She had read Aristotle's Politics.

She rubbed her forehead. She remembered a library. Images, scenes, and pieces of her missing life began to surface in the quiet. Another image of a house in the English countryside rose in her mind. A large Tudor-style house with a meadow in the back and rolling green countryside in the front.

A profound quietness surrounded her. Tucker kept glancing up as if to make sure she still stood there, and it was odd how she seemed to blend in with the background like a chameleon. He smiled. Like a hungry cat watching a grassy field at night, she was.

Indeed, she used a hunter's trick: she had cleared her mind of all thoughts and feelings, so that her body melded to its surroundings and consciousness emerged as a blank state. Each and every slight movement and sound received her full attention: an owl's mesmerizing hoot, a slight rustle of a squirrel in the branches of a tree, a noisy carriage racing past on the street, and all of these sounds interspersed with the house noises: a maid's melody as she went from room to room lighting the lamps, the crackle of the fire in the nearby study, the distant sounds from the kitchen, all the backdrop for a few of Captain Seanessy's officers eating a late dinner in the garden room down the hall.

Seanessy. She did not like him: his grand arrogance and conceits, the relentless sting of his formidable wit and insults—he treated her as if she were little better than an indolent scullery maid! And the incessant humor with which he viewed the world, as if all of God's creation were one giant jest for his amusement! Oh, he was maddening all right! And a mere glance from those hazel eyes could change her fear and apprehension to bright shining fury in the space of a second.

She glanced at the men watching her. They thought she wanted to escape. They had no idea of her state of terror. The more she thought about it, the more she came to see that Seanessy was her only hope; it was the reason she had had his name and address in her hand. The only place she was going was with Seanessy, on board the Wind Muse as it sailed to the China Seas. Somehow she had to convince him...

She tensed with the sound of horses' hooves. Through the fog she made out the two grooms coming past the front gate, leading two horses. The sound of their laughter stopped her, her keen gaze riveting on the servants' easy gait and manner, the plain common clothes. She relaxed a bit as they led the horses up to the door.

Then she recognized Seanessy's horse.

Was he leaving? Where would he go at this hour?.

Anxiety changed her features as she watched. "Tucker, is Seanessy leaving now?"

"Aye, lass, that he is."

The information brought a panic. Just what they would be waiting for! Merciful Madonna, she was doomed!

Boots against marble, raised masculine voices, laughter sounded down the hall. How could she make him take her? How? If she degraded herself to beg? Could she do that? Did she have any other choice?

Seanessy did not notice the girl as he pushed a pistol into his shoulder harness, calling out to his butler, "Charles! Charles! Where are you, you rascal? I need my cloak—"

Shalyn stepped from the shadows of the room, unclasping the cloak from her shoulders and swinging

it off. She handed it to him. "Here. I have your cloak."

A boyish grin greeted her as he took the cloak. "So! You're worth something more than trouble after all." He swung it over his shoulders, and realized for the first time that he had missed the girl at dinner. "You skipped dinner, child! A bad idea. If anything could possibly redeem you in my eyes, 'twould be an extra bit of flesh on that pretty form—"

"Where are you going?"

"Where am I going?" he repeated, surprised she would ask. "Out."

"Out," Butcher said as he checked the barrel of his pistol too. "To lay down the law to a trespasser."

"I want to go with—"

"Nay, child. You can, believe this is not a place one takes a young woman to."

"I am dressed like a man. If I had a hat—"

A mild kind of amusement reached his eyes as his hand touched the lever of the front door. "A blind man would recognize the femininity in your package at a distance. No." He raised a hand to silence her. "You can't come, Shalyn. Even odds I exchange gunfire tonight, and the last thing I want to think about is what the return fire is aimed at."

The door opened and he disappeared. Butcher saw the alarm in her eyes and said, "Shalyn, look— Tucker and Sammy will be stayin' with ye. No one could get past them. If someone does, invite them to stay on—I want to meet them." The man grinned, his eyes crinkling, and with his beard and long hair, he looked like a dark-haired version of Saint Nicholas, though she was too distraught to take comfort in the thought. Butcher patted her shoulders, bid farewell to Tucker and Samuel, and followed Seanessy out.

The door shut.

She stared at the closed door as her heart began a

slow escalation. If they had seen him carry her on board his ship, they would know she was at his house. They would be waiting for just this opportunity! She needed a place to hide. Dear Lord—

She raced to the door and opened it, darting through just as Seanessy swung up on his mount. "Seanessy!"

Tucker followed her outside.

She ran up to Seanessy's horse, reaching for the bridle as if to hold him there until he told her. "Where can I hide? In case they have discovered where I am?" In a whispered rush: "Is there a place in this house, a secret place? I remember reading that many old houses have hidden rooms or cupboards."

For a long moment nothing happened as Seanessy took in her words, accented dramatically by the emotion in her eyes. He used every ounce of his great will to steel himself from the effect of those eyes filled with fear. He drew a deep breath, as if he needed to concentrate. To no effect.

He looked to Butcher for help.

"Well now," Butcher said in a subdued voice. "The lass does know how to handle herself, and she could sit out of the way—no harm there, past the foul language of the sorry losers." Then, "Hey, Raul, lend me your hat, will you?"

The groom tossed his hat to Butcher who in turn tossed it to Shalyn, who caught it. Seanessy watched as a fair and delicate hand quickly knotted the long gold plait before she crowned her head with the groom's black hat.

The girl looked all eyes now. This hardly aided his ability to resist her. He knew when to give up. He leaned over. She felt his large gloved hands come around her waist, lifting her off her feet to a position in front of him. Butcher saw Seanessy's disgruntled

face, guessed the problem, and chuckled as they rode out to the street.

Seanessy looked down as Shalyn pressed against his chest. They passed through the gate and into the street. He pulled the folds of his cloak completely around her, but he did so for her rather than any imagined men watching outside.

If it weren't a mercifully short ride to the Connaught, Seanessy would have swung off the mount or turned the girl around to face an accounting of what she was doing to him. He had given up trying to make sense of what about the girl sparked the incessant and irritating wealth of his lust—-the minute she drew close, he felt as if he were thirteen and in sight of the maid's bathing tub.

He'd send a note to Doreen.

The new oil lanterns threw a gold light into the thick mist. Set back from expansive front gardens sat London's finest townhouses. An occasional carriage passed, and Shalyn watched as the footmen inevitably tipped their hats to Captain Seanessy and called friendly greetings. As if he was famous or revered. Towering colonnades marked the entrance to Hyde Park.

She too was acutely aware of, every place their bodies touched: she felt his chest behind her neck and head, his hard stomach against her spine—he sat so straight in the saddle!—his arms around hers. She drew a small sharp breath. The sensual warmth of his body ignited a tumult inside her—her heart, pulse, every nerve strained to greet him. The effect drew her bit by bit against him; without any real awareness, she eased more and more of her weight into him.

A soft voice asked, "You think I am mad, don't you?"

He stopped the horse suddenly. The great beast

tossed its head back and danced a bit in the middle of the cobblestone street. Thick moist fog enveloped them, billowing slowly through the street as Seanessy stared down at the dark mystery of her eyes. "You know, Shalyn, this persistent thought that men are pursuing you, it is the stuff of mad minds."

She surprised him with a whispered rush of words. "I know, Seanessy, I know. You can't imagine what it's like though—to wake up in a stranger's house with no memory of how you got there or who you are. With no memory of any yesterday, but knowing that I must remember. I must, before 'tis too late." She grabbed her head, careful where the bump protruded slightly. "My head hurts from thinking and trying to remember something, anything, the endless circle made of my thoughts, a nightmare that won't end."

The horse danced restlessly, and Seanessy let it start forward again as she shook her head. "You'll see, Seanessy. You'll see. They're searching for me, and when they find me—"

"Yes?" The hazel eyes narrowed in the darkness, showing his interest. "What happens when they find you?”

On the heels of a contemplative pause, he heard the whisper of her terror: "They will kill me."

"Oh, for heaven's sake! What rot! Shalyn, your loving and kind family is probably out searching for you as I speak, mad with worry—"

Seanessy stopped, drawing his horse up, shielding her head with one hand as he searched the darkness, only because Butcher had suddenly stopped. A baby cried out nearby, the cry growing louder against the distant calls and sounds of the city's nightlife. As they rode into the park, she searched the darkness for the source of the cry, spotting a beggar woman on a bench beneath the golden light of the lantern.

Butcher had stopped his horse in front of bench. Seanessy swore softly as he stopped his mount too.

"Curse his ripped heart."

Shalyn leaned far to the side to watch, interested in this. That afternoon when Butcher had taken her back to the house, he had related a fascinating and utterly unbelievable tale of how Seanessy was related by blood to one of the great titled houses of England. She had been listening intently to each and every word when Butcher had tossed a bag of coins to a beggar on the street. He had never stopped. He had never said a word—he had simply lifted the bag from his coat and dropped it onto the woman's lap.

"Are ye mindin' yer babe, woman?" Butcher was asking now, a queer kind of gentleness in his tone. "That's a hell of a wail he's got goin'."

Dull eyes greeted the frightening sight of any maid's worse nightmare: the man sitting atop a black stallion, his long black hair and beard, piercing blue eyes, buckskin breeches and boots, a belt decked with carved knifes and two ivory-handled pistoles. She seemed to struggle briefly to focus. A trembling hand brushed matted hair from her face before she tightened the ragged shawl about her shoulders.

Gently Butcher asked, "Are ye sucklin' the babe on a gin cloth?"

She weakly waved him away, barely making sense. "Be the only thin' stop 'is fits, 'tis ..."

"The babe needs 'is mother's milk, woman. He be cryin' out for food, for a mother's milk—"

A weak bitter laugh echoed into the darkness. " 'E don't need milk to make 'is sufferin' longer, mister. 'E don't got long for this world, 'e don't. All o' mine be buried afore they cut a tooth."

Butcher searched through his pockets but came up empty, as if, Shalyn thought, watching this, he didn't remember giving his entire money bag to another beggar just that afternoon. "Sean, ye got five quid?"

Seanessy knew not to argue with Butcher; he never did anymore. He simply withdrew his billfold, pulled out a five-pound note, and then gathered up the reins and pressed his horse to Butcher's side.

Sean handed the money to Butcher. "I need you tonight, you know."