At the height of their trajectory, something hit Caitlyn between the shoulder blades with tremendous force. She gasped as agonizing pain seared through her. Then she was losing her balance, falling down, down…
Even before she hit the ground her world had gone black.
XXXIII
The pain in his thigh was excruciating, but he could bear it. He had born worse and lived to tell about it. But the loss of so much blood was affecting his concentration. He was getting dizzy, and he knew that if the wound was allowed to bleed unchecked much longer, he would pass out. Only grim determination had kept him conscious this long. To lose consciousness would be to sentence both himself and Caitlyn to death, and probably the others as well. He doubted that they would leave him without a fight.
He was concentrating so hard on staying in the saddle that it was a few seconds before he became aware that Caitlyn was not behind him. Slowly, as if the information was filtered through dense fog it came to him that he had heard her gasp.
Sluing his head around, he saw that he was alone on Fharannain. Behind him, perhaps a furlong or so back, the dragoons were coming over the wall that Fharannain had cleared with ease moments earlier. A slight figure almost covered by a black cape lay crumpled on the ground just beyond the ditch. Though it was not much more than a darker shadow amidst all the other shadows that the night had made of rain-wet ground and ditch and wall, Connor knew it was Caitlyn. His heart lurched. She lay without moving, her posture so awkward that he felt a sudden, driving fear that she was already dead. The pursuit was clustering around her. If she was not dead, she was taken.
"No!" he screamed, though the cry emerged as a hoarse whisper. He was growing dangerously weak. But he had to hold on, he had to! He had to go back for her. Hauling savagely on Fharannain's reins, he tried to turn the big animal about. A wave of dizziness engulfed him. Fharannain reared, confused and frightened by the unaccustomed pain in his mouth. It was all Connor could do to stay in the saddle. He slumped over the horse's neck as the animal came down again on all fours. Liam appeared beside him, snatching Fharannain's reins out of his weakened hand, pulling them over the horse's head as he spurred Thunderer away from the shadowy riders clustering about Caitlyn's fallen form. Cormac, coming up on his other side, made a daring leap from Kildare's saddle to Fharannain's rump, wrapping his arms around Connor's waist as he grabbed his brother's pommel. Cormac's arms served as a barrier to keep him in the saddle. Rory was leading the riderless Kildare, just as Liam was leading Fharannain. With Mickeen in the lead, they galloped frantically for safety.
"Caitlyn…" Connor managed to groan through the blackness that was threatening to claim him. The pain in his leg was white-hot agony cutting through the descending darkness; the pain in his heart was worse.
"We can't help her now, Conn," Cormac said in his ear, his voice rough with grief. "There aren't enough of us. You're shot, maybe bleeding to death. Tis going to take all of us to get you home safe. We can't go back for her. If we do, we'll all be taken, or worse. Maybe we can rescue her later, help her escape from wherever she's taken. But now we've got to get you home."
"I'll not leave her," Connor muttered, but he could hold the darkness at bay no longer. It descended on him like a rung-down curtain, sheltering him from physical pain and heartbreak alike. He slumped over Fharannain's neck, his arms dangling limply along the animal's sleek black sides. Cormac's arms were the only things that kept him in the saddle.
With their pursuers distracted and appeased by Caitlyn's fall, the rest of them made it home to Donoughmore without further mishap. As soon as they emerged safely from the tunnel into the stable, Cormac eased Connor's limp body down to Rory and Liam, who between them just managed to carry him into the house and up to his room. The hole in his leg was hideous, the blood loss immense. But they all knew that when their brother awoke, what would hurt him most would be the pain in his heart.
Grim-faced, they worked frantically for a quarter of an hour trying to stanch the blood. At last the flow slowed to a sluggish trickle, then stopped altogether. As Liam tied the bandage in place, Cormac spoke, his voice loud in the tense stillness.
"I'm going to go find out what I can about Caitlyn."
Liam looked at him, his hands pausing for an instant in the act of knotting the bandage around Connor's leg. "Is that wise?"
Mickeen made as if to spit, remembered where he was, and swallowed it. " 'Twill be no help to the lassie if you go getting yourself taken too."
"I'll be careful. There's a pub in Naas-they'll know something there."
"I'll come with you," Rory said, and without further objections from the others, the two left the room.
When they returned hours later as dawn broke over the sky, Mickeen was waiting for them in the stable. He was sitting on an overturned bucket, his hands clasped between his knees, his head lowered. As they entered he looked up, his face as colorless as theirs.
"Is aught amiss with Connor?" Rory asked sharply, swinging down from Balladeer.
Mickeen stood up and took the reins from Rory. When he was upset, they knew he liked to calm himself by caring for horses. He'd started life as a groom, and in times of stress he reverted to his earliest habits.
' 'His lordship's awake and asking for her. He don't-he don't remember what happened, exactly. He's burning up with the fever. Liam's had to tie him to the bed to keep him from getting up to look for her. He knows something's amiss, but he don't know quite what. He's fashing himself something awful."
"Oh, Jesus." Dismounting wearily, Cormac said the words as much as a prayer as a sigh. He tied Kildare to a ring, knowing that in his present mood Mickeen would see to him as well as Balladeer and be glad of the work.
"What of the lass?" Mickeen asked.
Cormac's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "She's dead," he said unevenly, then drew a deep breath. "Killed outright, they said. And how we're to tell Connor, I don't know."
But tell him they did, later that day when they thought he could bear it. Liam gave him the news. Connor refused at first to believe. At last, when he did, the cry of grief that rose from his throat was a piercing and mournful as a wolfs howl at the moon.
And thus, for Connor, began the period that forever afterward he was to think of as the black night of his soul.
XXXIV
It was going to be a harsh winter. Though it was only late October, the night was cold, and the nip in the air threatened snow within the next few days. Even the crackling fires in the vast fireplaces of this English country home could not warm him as he stood on the landing, looking down on the merrymakers in the ballroom below.
The house belonged to the Marquis of Standon, a notorious rake who had recently buried his third wife. The guests were a motley mix of what among the Sassenach passed for gentlemen and their fashionable impures, and the merrymaking was very merry indeed. In fact, Connor had just been treated to the edifying sight of one slightly inebriated young woman stripping to the altogether while dancing on a marble-topped table to the tune of raucous cheers. His lip curled as he sought out the young woman, who was now being ushered, naked and giggling, from the ballroom by the gentleman who would enjoy her favors that night. It was the last night of a week-long house party, and Connor ventured to guess that, over its duration, the young woman had enjoyed at least as many partners as there were days in the week. It was not what even English society would term a select gathering.
The women-he could not term them ladies-who remained were outlandishly clad. It was a masquerade ball, and the costumes of most of the females were remarkable for what they were not hiding. Some of them had necklines cut so low and skirts hiked so high that there wasn't much to imagine between them. Others wore diaphanous gowns that clung to them faithfully. In their hair, some sported towering headdresses, others bobbing ostrich plumes, while still others had opted for wigs. A few were merely powdered and patched in the prevailing fashion. The gentlemen were more sedate, for the most part contenting themseLves with
enveloping dominoes in various jewel tones and black in lieu of costumes. Here and there a dandy sported something more elaborate, like the giggling Julius Caesar in the corner, but their rarity made them stand out. All wore masks.
Which was why Connor had chosen this particular house on this particular night. Entry had been ridiculously easy. In his domino and mask, he looked no different from any of the other male guests. He had been in the house for nearly an hour, and he ventured to suppose that he had made intimate acquaintance with the jewelry of nearly every female present, to say nothing of the lovely set of rubies his unwitting host had inherited from the estate of his wealthy, recently departed wife, which had been carelessly left in her jewel case that still sat out on her dressing table. Those rubies had been his object, the rest mere gravy. The purloined jewels were waiting in a small bag he had dropped from an upper window moments earlier. He was now on his way to retrieve them, before quitting the premises. A small smile lurked at the corners of his mouth as he considered the approximate value of his haul. All in all, when one weighed return versus risk, robbing houses certainly beat robbing coaches.
He was turning away, ready to descend the stairs, when his eye was caught by a young woman below. What it was about her that attracted his attention he did not know. Unlike most of the other females, she was clad in a black domino much like the one he was wearing. The towering plumed headdress she wore was black as well, and dangled beads of jet. Her elaborate cat's-eye mask was of gold satin. She was unsmiling, dancing with a tall, thin gentleman also successfully disguised. Then he realized that it was something in her carriage that had caught his eye. Her lithe gracefulness reminded him of Caitlyn. His eyes fol- lowed her even as his lips tightened. One hand went automatically to massage his damaged thigh. An arrow of pain lodged in his heart.
It had been a year now, almost to the day, since he'd lost her. He still caught himself doing double takes at black-haired young women, thinking that this one or that one was, miraculously, her. Which would be more of a miracle than even God could provide: Caitlyn was dead, shot from the saddle that nightmarish night. As befitted a highwayman, she'd been buried in lime within the week without benefit of word or prayer, so he had not even a grave to grieve over. Though that did not stop him from grieving.
He had not told her he loved her, and that was part of the poison that ate at his heart. He had not even known it himself until Liam had told him that she was dead. He'd been disbelieving at first, shouting and arguing with his brother. When he'd finally been convinced, for the first and only time in his life he'd wept in his brother's arms. As his leg healed as much as it was going to and his physical pain lessened, he'd thought the pain in his heart and soul would lessen as well. He'd been wrong. Even after nearly a year, any reminder of Caitlyn was more hurtful than his leg had ever been. Her loss was an open wound that refused to heal.
After he was up and about again, he'd tried to drown his grief in drink. That hadn't worked. When he was drunk her shade took on substance and form so real that it made the ache that remained when he was sober just that much more painful, as if he had lost her all over again. Finally he had realized that the most potent Irish whiskey in the world would not bring her back, and he had stopped drinking altogether. Instead he had packed up his brothers and Mickeen, left a caretaker behind at Donoughmore, and taken himself and his family out of Ireland. If he'd thought that would lessen the constant reminders he'd had of her, he'd been right. But the move had not eased his pain.
He'd lost Caitlyn. He did not want to lose any of the remaining members of his family. He'd discovered that he did not deal well with loss, and supposed that it came from the deaths of both his parents when he was very young. He'd felt very small and alone when they'd come to tell him about his mother, and when Mickeen had broken the news of his father's death, he'd felt just as lost, just as frightened. That was how he'd felt after Caitlyn's death as well, how he still felt now whenever be fell into a melancholy that he could not shake: like a child abandoned in the dark. He, Connor d'Arcy, Lord Earl of Iveagh, also known as the Dark Horseman, unfaltering paterfamilias, respected master of Donoughmore, had sometimes, in those first dark days after her death, cried in the wee hours of the night like a bairn. It was a secret that shamed him, and that along with fear for his brothers had driven him out of Donoughmore.
The Dark Horseman had died with Caitlyn. He no longer had the heart to ride, and a very real fear for his brothers' lives made it imperative that they not be allowed to take his place. He'd brought them with him to England, settling Cormac and Rory in at Oxford to get a long-delayed education, much to their disgust, although in deference to what they perceived as his grief-stricken state they had not protested overmuch. Liam had obstinately refused to leave him and was now ensconced in the London town house they shared. A faint shadow of a smile touched Connor's mouth as he thought about Liam. Quite the man about town had Liam become, though he and Mickeen, who had remained with him as well, acting as his valet of all things, watched over Connor like hens with one chick between them. As months had passed, and to outward appearances his grief had lessened, they had ceased to fret over him every time they set eyes on him, and now confined their searching looks to once or twice a week.
Three months ago, Father Patrick had sent word to him of tenants, a family of nine with a father dying of the lung sickness, on the verge of being evicted from Ballymara because they had no money for rent. There were many such, and Connor knew that their plight was more desperate than ever because the Dark Horseman rode no more. So he had taken up his present form of supplying them and himself with funds, and found that, when he was working at least, the sharp edge of his grief was temporarily dulled. Unless, like tonight, he came across something or someone that reminded him of Caitlyn. Then the aching pain would take up residence in his heart again.
Watching the young woman twirl about the dance floor below, Connor's hands tightened over the polished walnut railing until his knuckles turned white. She was dancing; Caitlyn had never learned to dance. In the brief glimpses he was afforded of her gown as the domino parted, he saw that it was of lace-trimmed silk, very costly. Caitlyn had never possessed a gown like that, never expressed any interest in possessing one. But the color of the skirt was the exact kerry blue of her eyes.
Of course, from this distance he could not see the young woman's eyes. They would be brown, or hazel, or maybe even, if she was a ravishing beauty, green. Up close, they would not be kerry blue, set beneath slanting black brows and fringed with lashes so thick they could be used as brooms. Her nose would not be slender and elegant; her lips would not part to show small, dazzlingly white teeth when she smiled. Her hair would not be a silky black cloud that fell past her waist, and her waist would not be small enough so that he could span it with his hands. In short, if he got closer he would see at once that she could not be Caitlyn.
But beneath her mask he could see her mouth, and it was full and red as Caitlyn's had been. Her jaw was fragile yet strong. And her skin was as white as smooth new cream.
Turning, he saw a footman passing behind him. Crooking a finger, he summoned the man to his side.
"Who is that?" he croaked, pointing. He knew it was folly, knew he was being foolish past permission, but he could not help himself. He had to know who she was- and was not.
"The lady in the domino? I don't know, sir. She came with one of the guests."
Connor's eyes closed for just an instant as the footman started to move away. Then he stopped him with a hand on his arm.
"Do you know who she's with? What room she's been given?"
"No, sir. But if you wish, I'll find out."
"Please do."
The footman bowed and disappeared. Connor was left to watch the young woman below. She was still dancing, though with a different partner, and she held herself stiffly as if she did not like his touch. Her lips were curved up in a small, polite smile. That smile riveted him. It recalled Caitlyn so vividly that his heart shook. It
was all he could do not to race down the stairs, shoulder his way through the cavorting crowd, and rip that mask from her face. To do so would call too much attention to himself, of course. It might even lead to his arrest.
But his heart urged him to it.
"Pardon, sir, but none of the staff is acquainted with the lady's name. However, I can show you where her chamber is located, if you wish."
"Yes. I do wish it."
Feeling dazed, Connor followed the footman, who led him to a door along a long corridor on the second floor of the east wing.
"Would you like to get inside, sir?" From the footman's smirk, Connor realized that the man thought he was enamored with the mystery lady and wished to try his luck with her when she returned to her chamber. Of course, he had to remind himself that the females below were all Cyprians, up for sale to the highest bidder. The high-flyer who bore such a heart-stopping resemblance to Caitlyn was naught but a common whore.
Connor inclined his head. With a flourish, the footman produced a key and unlocked the door. Connor pressed a note into the man's hand and entered, pocketing the key. Then, bethinking himself of something, he turned back.
"Say naught of this," he warned in a voice that was far from his normal one. The footman inclined his head and took himself off. Connor closed and locked the door, pulled off his mask, then prowled the room. There was nothing in it of Caitlyn. The clothes in the wardrobe were of the finest material and most fashionable cut. The brush and comb on the dressing table were of chased silver. There were boxes of powder, a tin of rouge. There was even a crystal flacon of scent. Caitlyn had never worn scent.
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