Dark of the Moon

by Karen Robards

  Connor did not return her smile as he took his own seat in the matching leather armchair behind the desk. If anything, he looked bleaker than ever. Propping his elbows on the desk, he clasped his hands together and rested his chin on his hands. For a long moment he considered her without speaking. Caitlyn finally squirmed under his unrelenting gaze. As if that were the signal he had been waiting for, he leaned back, pushing the chair a little away from the desk so that he could stretch out his long legs comfortably in front of him. The chair gave a creak of protest at his posture. His fingers drummed on the wooden arms. His eyes met hers again, distant under frowning brows.

  "Caitlyn." He finally broke the silence with her name, then said nothing else. His eyes never left her face as he seemed to mull something over in his mind.

  " 'Tis my name." His uncharacteristic hesitancy was making her nervous. To conceal her apprehension from him, her response was flippant. She met his eyes, questions and defiance mixed in her expression.

  Finally he spoke, the words careful, measured. "First I must admit: you were in the right of it. I owe you an apology. I regret having struck you, though 'twas an accident, as I'm sure you know. Even so, had I kept a tighter rein on my temper it would not have happened. I beg your pardon."

  The very formality of his apology disturbed Caitlyn. She eyed him uncertainly.

  "You were provoked." She had thought that an apology would give her the upper hand. Now she found that the game was all his, as it had ever been. In the face of Connor's baffling behavior, she was fast being reduced to a nervous child. He smiled a little at her unthinking admission, but still his eyes were bleak. He did not seem like himself at all, and the fact had her increasingly frightened.

  "Aye, I was provoked. You seem to have a knack for doing that."

  She thought she detected a note of humor in his voice and tried a faint smile while she searched his eyes in vain. He did not smile back at her, and if there had been humor in his face it was gone now. He looked completely serious, even a little melancholy.

  "Caitlyn." The very way he said her name worried her. It was as if he had bad news to impart and was concerned how she would take it. Her eyes, suddenly huge, searched his. The black ring around his irises seemed to enlarge, making his eyes appear almost dark.

  "We have a problem, lass," he continued after a brief hesitation. "It seems I should have foreseen this difficulty earlier, but surprisingly enough, I did not."

  "What difficulty?" Apprehension was making it difficult for her to talk. From the regretful way he was looking lit her, she could almost suppose herself dead and in her coffin.

  "Raising a lassie in a male household. Lassies are different from lads by their very nature, and lads are different when lassies are around. 'Tis natural for you to want to test your femaleness, and 'tis natural for them to respond to you. I want you to understand that no blame attaches to you for this. You've done nothing wrong."

  "What are you saying?" A terrible weight seemed to have setded in her chest.

  "For your own well-being I must send you away, lass." 11 was said with awful gentleness. Caitlyn stared at him, kciry blue eyes huge in the whiteness of her face, her hands clenching in her lap until the nails dug into the soft flesh of her palms. Her agitation was such that she didn't even feel the pain.

  "What?" The statement was so unexpected that it temporarily bewUdered her.

  He went on quickly, ignoring her interruption and the distress in her face. " 'Tis no great tragedy, Caitlyn. I've no intention of turning you back into the world on your own. The good Sisters at St. Mary's in County Longford have a school for lassies. They'll take you in; I've a friend who said he'd see to the necessary arrangements. They'll leach you things: how to run a household, manners, how to go on. There are many things females need to know that we males have no notion of, it seems."

  "No!"

  " Tis all arranged, and 'tis for the best, lass. Believe me. I'd not do it otherwise."

  "No!"

  He went on swiftiy, as if to head off her protests with reasoned words. "No good can come of you staying here with us. A lassie's place is amongst other females, not randy young bucks. You'll have tomorrow to gather your things and say your good-byes. We leave for St. Mary's Tly the next day."

  Caitlyn felt as if a giant hand were squeezing her heart. Connor's eyes were on her face; they were dark with compassion. Compassion, when he was hurting her so badly that all she wanted to do was scream!

  "You can't-you can't do this. If 'tis because of-of what happened the other night, it'll never happen again, I promise. I'll stay safe in the house when you ride out, and I'll never even look at Cormac, or Rory, or Liam, or anyone else you don't want me to, and I'll-"

  He stopped her increasingly frantic babble with an upraised hand. " 'Tis not because you rode after us the other night, or what happened after. Tis not because of anything you've done. 'Tis because of what you are. You've grown up into a beautiful lass, Caitlyn, and we're all men here. Men, even the best of them, which I hold my brothers to be though I can't always claim the distinction for myself, can lose their heads easily around a beautiful lassie. There's trouble now, but it can be nipped in the bud. Think of the havoc you'd wreak if you stayed."

  "I wouldn't…"

  "You couldn't help it." The pronouncement was heavy. "Besides, think of yourself. The day will come soon when you'll want to marry and have bairns of your own. What decent man will take you when it's known youVe been living here with us alone? They'll think you've little virtue, and if one does take you, he'll likely value you less because of it. With the holy Sisters, your good name will be safe. And we won't be totally abandoning you, lass.

  We'll visit and bring you presents, and when the time comes for you to wed, I'll even provide you with a bit of a dowry. How's that?"

  "No!"

  "I'm sorry, lassie.'Tis the way it has to be."

  Caitlyn's lips trembled as she searched his face and found not the faintest hint of relenting. He meant to do this. He would really send her away… The sting of tears burned her eyelids, but she blinked them back. She would not cry. She would not!

  "I thought you… cared for me," The words were heartbreaking. Connor's mouth tightened and he reached out a hand toward her, only to pull it back. He looked very stem, his thick black brows drawn together until they almost met over his nose, his strange light eyes dark with regret as they fixed on her face. Looking in agony at that lean, handsome face that had become as familiar to her as her own and dearer than she had dreamed, Caitlyn sobbed once, pitiably. A muscle beside Connor's mouth twitched as he watched her force the tears valiantly back.

  "We all love you like a wee sister, child. Never doubt it."

  "Then why-"

  "The fact is that you're not our sister. You're no blood kin at all. You're a beautiful, nubile young woman, and we're four healthy men. 'Tis a recipe for disaster, Caitlyn. Thank the good Lord I'm old enough to see it before it hits."

  She took a deep, shaking breath. "Do the others know?" She had a faint hope that his brothers would champion her cause. Which they probably would, but in the end there was lide they could do to alter Connor's decision. Connor was the master of Donoughmore, the Earl, the head of the family. Like it or not, in the final reckoning what he decreed was the way it would be.

  "Nay. I thought to tell you first."

  There seemed litde doubt that he would do as he said he would. Hopeless, Caitlyn stared at him, making a mute plea for a stay of sentence. A single tear spilled from each eye. He got up and went over to her. A muscle twitched beside his mouth again as he lifted a hand to brush away the moisture that streaked the cheek he had bruised the night before. He caught the tear on the tip of one finger. Caitlyn felt the brush of his hand against her cheek and looked up at him with silent pleading. He was not looking at her. For an instant only he stared down at the tear he had caught; then with a sudden, involuntary grimace his hand clenched into a fist as if to make the visible sign of the pain he
inflicted go away.

  "I have no more to say. You're free to go."

  Caitlyn got to her feet, moving stiffly like a very old lady. With an almost unendurable sense of loss she realized how very much she had come to consider Donoughmore her home. She loved every blade of grass, every bleating sheep, every hillock and tree and stream. She loved the d'Arcys, one and all. Even this harsh stranger who was sending her away. This was her home, and they were her family. Her heart throbbed in her chest as though it swelled with pain.

  "Please don't do this, Connor," she begged brokenly, her eyes meeting his in one last attempt to sway him.

  " 'Tis done already. And for the best," he answered through stiff lips. Then, as if he could no longer bear the sight of her, he walked out of the room, leaving Caitlyn to sink back down into the worn leather chair and sob as though her heart would break.

  XX

  It was near dawn. Connor had tossed and turned in his bed all night, so for without getting a wink of sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he could see Caitlyn's stricken face. He had wounded her to the heart, he knew. But it had been necessary for the future well-being of them all.

  As he had told her, her continued presence at Donoughmore was nothing more than a recipe for disaster. Already she had succeeded in making them turn on one another. The previous night's debacle between Cormac and himself was but the final straw. Cormac and Rory were lately at each other's throats constantly as they vied for her favor, and even staid Liam had been seen to give her more than one long look. As for himself, he was too old at twenty-seven to be led around by the nose by tricks from a new-hatched chick. But he would be less than honest if he refused to admit to being swayed by the extraordinary beauty that had grown so unexpectedly in their midst. After all, he was not a saint, not a priest, not a eunuch. He had all the normal male instincts. Fortunately for her, he also had a conscience, and was old enough and experienced enough to follow it. His brothers were younger; in her presence they reminded him of young stags jousting with their antlers. Even among the four of them, close as they were, there was real potential for violence. And when the other males who flocked around Donoughmore now that word of Caitlyn's loveliness had spread were counted into the equation, it was more than a recipe for disaster. It was a prescription for bloodshed. The worst thing about it was that it was no one's fault, yet Caitlyn was going to bear the brunt of the punishment. But he'd been unable to come up with a more palatable course of action than to send her away.

  Family had to come first. His family. No matter how winsome or lovely, an outsider could not be allowed to drive a wedge between brothers. Since his father's death, they'd been the world to one another. He had used every last ounce of his strength and ingenuity and passion to keep them all together. There'd been some who had thought to put them on the parish after their father's death, thinking that the young lads would certainly starve on their own. He, Connor, had in his darkest hours thought the same. But he had nevertheless managed to keep them all together, body and soul. A family.

  It had been a rough haul. But the worst was behind them. Now he had to concentrate on getting his brothers creditably settled and restoring Donoughmore to what it had been. And there was also the matter of avenging the murder of his father. That he meant to see to once the others were done. Caitlyn had no place in any of these plans. Her presence served merely to confuse the issues. Again he thought that he should have foreseen the complications as soon as he discovered her true sex. But he hadn't. And now the time had come to rectify that mistake. Mickeen was in the right of it, he knew; at Donoughmore, Caitlyn was nothing but trouble.

  The holy Sisters would be good to her, teaching her feminine ways and things she should know. Despite her fetching looks and recent foray into flirting, she was still near as much lad as lass, and the fault was to some degree his. He simply didn't know anything about raising a lassie. He'd treated her as one of the lads as long as he could, and when that had become impossible he'd floundered for a bit. The whole situation had somehow gotten beyond him in a matter of a few weeks.

  Then, as he'd ridden over the moors the night before, making the expected delivery to Father Patrick, he had had a sudden vision of the way Caitlyn looked defying him in the stable. He had pictured her in his mind's eye as clearly as if she stood before him, pictured the heart-shaped face framed by disheveled masses of raven hair, the flashing sapphire blue of her eyes, the whiteness of her skin, the softness of her pink mouth. He'd pictured the shape of her, clearly apparent in the boy's garb that did as much to reveal as to hide: the long, slender legs that looked all the more shapely and feminine when outlined by the worn material of Cormac's oldest breeches; the slim hips and tiny waist, cinched by a rope of all things; the roundness of her small bottom; the thrust of young tender breasts against the thin linen shirt. And, picturing that, he had felt a fierce stab of lust. God forgive him.

  There was the crux of his dilemma: the age-old desire of a male for a lovely young female. Though he had man aged to successfully banish that shameful pang of lust- largely by dwelling on his fury at the headstrong lass who provoked it-he had not banished the uneasy feeling that it had caused. His brothers must be experiencing much the same thing, but they were younger, less disciplined. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that they would lind such strong urges uncontrollable. And the consequences of that he shuddered to contemplate. He was left with a firm conviction: the situation as it existed was impossible.

  Father Patrick was an old friend of the family, one of the handful in the Dark Horseman's far-flung distribution network who knew the highwayman's real identity. As the ‹›ld Earl's confessor, Father Patrick had known Connor and his brothers from birth and did not hold his expedient Protestant upbringing against him, realizing that in Connor's heart and soul he was a son of the True Church. While sitting in the vast dark kitchen of the monastery orphanage that the good Father ran, enjoying a wee dram before setting off for Donoughmore again, Connor had lound himself unburdening his dilemma, sinful thoughts mid all. It was Father Patrick who had suggested the Sisters at St. Mary's, and it was Father Patrick who had volunteered to make the arranagements. Connor, well into his dozenth wee dram by that time, had been pleased to agree. Caitlyn was a problem that had to be dealt with. She was disrupting his life, his brother's lives. Her good name was in grave danger of being sullied, to say nothing of her virtue. The Father's suggestion was a good one; if Connor wished now that he had searched for some alternative solution before agreeing, well, that was because he was allowing his heart to rule his head, which was always a mistake.

  But her crying had smote him hard.

  Connor turned over in bed, trying in vain to find a spot that would induce sleep. The faintest suggestion of silvery moonlight spilled through the shuttered windows. The moon was waxing full again…

  He rolled onto his back, kicking at the covers that confined him. As he did so, he saw something move at the foot of his bed. He froze, barely daring to breathe. Someone was in his room, standing at the foot of his bed, watching him. Stealthily, hoping that the person's eyesight was no better than his in the darkness, he slipped his hand beneath his pillow where he kept his loaded pistol. Not for the first time would the habit stand him in good stead.

  "Connor."

  He would know that voice in the darkest pit in Hell. His fingers abandoned their quest for the pistol to grab the bedclothes. Sitting up abruptly, yanking the covers securely over his lap, for he slept naked, he glared through the darkness at the source of his sleeplessness.

  "What the devil are you doing in my bedchamber at this hour?" The question was a surly hiss. On top of his recent shameful thoughts, her presence was as welcome as potato rot to a farmer.

  "I want to make a bargain with you." Her voice was determined, but her form was shrouded in darkness. Connor gave vent to a long-suffering sigh and reached for the tender he kept on the bedside table. In moments the candle was lit. The flickering light cast strange shadows in the co
mers of the room. He looked down the length of the bed at Caitlyn and felt another twinge in the region of his heart. Her nose was as red as the worst tippler's, her eyes were swollen and damp, and her black hair straggled about her colorless face like the hair on one of the witches of All Saints. Clad in a long-sleeved, high-necked white nightdress, she looked the veriest child. The fatal beauty that had so alarmed him was superseded by innocent pathos. But as he looked closer, he saw that there was an air of triumph about her that belied the evidence of recent copious tears.

  "A bargain?" He was wary. With her, he had learned to be.

  "Aye, a bargain. You don't send me away-and I won't tell anyone that you're the Dark Horseman."

  Connor was struck speechless for a moment. He leaned back against the intricately carved rosewood headboard and stared at the hardhearted little minx who was very calmly threatening his life and the lives of all those he held dear. He had never envisioned this possibility, and it flummoxed him. Slowly, carefully, he worked it through. It all boiled down to one inescapable conclusion: she had him. Even as he recognized the fact, a spurt of relief mixed with his anger that it should be so.

  " 'Tis bloody ungrateful you are, isn't it?" he demanded, nettled.

  She lifted her chin at him. Connor could not help but notice the thrust of her breasts against her nightdress. To his angry embarrassment, his body responded as nature had intended that it should. Damn, there would be hell to pay if she stayed. And he was thrice a fool for allowing himself to get caught in this predicament, though he still did not see quite what he could have done to prevent it coming about. He gave up on that for the moment and focused his attention on keeping his eyes on her face. If she was to remain with them, then all of them-himself included-would have to keep a tight rein on their baser instincts.

  "I don't want to be sent away." It was an explanation. Connor tucked the covers more securely about his waist, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and eyed her.