"You forget I know you well. You're lying in your pretty little teeth, my own, and I want the truth. When I made love to you tonight, you were as tight and untried as a maid again. Now, I know full well you're no maid, but you're no woman of experience either. As you should be by now, if all that you tell me is true. And you should not have gone up in flames at my touch either."
"Your imagination is exceeded only by your conceit," Caitlyn said through her teeth.
"You did not respond like a woman betraying a man she loves," Connor continued softly, his eyes never straying from her face. "In fact, though I hesitate to lay myself open to another charge of conceit, you responded as if you were in love with me."
Caitlyn said nothing, merely eyed him with growing unease. Connor was not going to desist in his questions. She was afraid that, sooner or later, knowing her as well as he did, he would divine something alarmingly close to the truth, which would be disastrous. He would go into a rage that would not ease until Sir Edward was dead by his hand. The catastrophe that she had suffered so much to avoid would occur, and all her sacrifice would have been in vain.
From the moment that Connor had discovered that she still lived, the situation had spiraled down into utter chaos. In her present unsettled state, she could see no clear way to save it. But she knew that the first step involved getting herself away from Connor and back to the house on Lisle Street. She had to be in her own bed when Minna came in with chocolate in the morning, or the elaborate tapestry she had woven for Connor's protection would unravel with alarming speed. Her presence in that house would not hold the crisis at bay forever, she knew, but like a finger in the dike, she figured that it would do until she could think of something else. Besides, she was going out of town on the morrow, summoned by Sir Edward to an intimate gathering of his particular cronies at his hunting box in Kent. Connor would be unable to locate her for nigh on a se 'en- night, which would give her time to think of a more permanent solution to the problem.
"I want to go home, Connor. To my own home, I mean. On Lisle Street. Tonight. You had no right to bring me here against my will." Her voice was weary as she tried to reason with him. His mouth twisted.
"Did you never hear of the right of might, my own?" he asked. She set her lips and refused to respond. After a moment, he came to the conclusion that he had gotten all he would from her for the time being at least. Getting off the bed, he pulled off his neckcloth and shrugged out of his coat. Caitlyn watched him with astonishment mixed with growing indignation.
"And just what do you think you are doing?" He was working on the buttons of his shirt.
"Going to bed. I expect an interesting day tomorrow, and I need my rest."
"I sincerely trust that you are not planning to sleep with me!"
"Then you sincerely trust wrong. I don't mean to let you out of my sight until I've got to the bottom of this. If you want to go home, as you call it, you'd be well advised to tell me the truth. The whole truth. For I don't buy what you're trying to sell me."
"You don't want to buy it, you mean," she muttered sullenly. "Because you're naught but a stubborn jack- donkey." In the firelight, his skin was paler than she remembered, and she realized that it must be because he had done no outdoor work this past summer. Nevertheless, his chest and arms were as muscular as she recalled, his shoulders as broad and his waist as narrow. His abdomen above the buff breeches was flat and ridged with muscle. The curling wedge of black hair on his chest narrowed down into a trail that bisected that flat abdomen before disappearing beneath his breeches. Looking at him without his shirt, Caitlyn felt her breath catch. He had always had that effect on her, from the very beginning. She glanced up suddenly to find his eyes glinting at her. He had seen and recognized her response, she knew.
"So you're in love with someone else," he taunted softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots. His back was turned to her, and for just a moment she caught herself admiring the satiny skin, the workings of his muscles as he tugged at his boots, the deep line of his spine. The urge to run her fingers along that line was so strong that she had to bite her lip to keep from giving in. Instead she realized that he had presented her with the perfect opportunity, if she had the strength of mind to use it. His back was to her, his attention on his boots. And a hefty silver candelabra was within reach on the table beside the bed.
If she wanted to get back to that house on Lisle Street before she was missed, knocking Connor unconscious and escaping was the only way. He slept lightly, and he would be expecting her to attempt escape. She would not get away from him while he slept. Besides, she wouldn't put it past the wily swine to tie her up in some way. If she wanted to make sure of escape, this was likely to be her best chance. The question was: did she have the strength of mind and purpose to take it? For Connor's sake?
She stole another glance at him, then reached over to pick up the candelabra. He nearly had his second boot off… Wincing, she rose up on her knees and brought the heavy piece of silver crashing down on the back of his head. It landed with a terrible thud. He grunted, wavered, then slowly collapsed, sliding to the floor as if his bones and muscles had turned to liquid, and lay there still as death.
Horrified, Caitlyn dropped the candelabra and scrambled down to kneel beside him. She was assailed by the sudden dreadful conviction that she had killed him.
But his chest rose and fell with reassuring evenness. Her exploring fingers found no blood, only a swelling lump on the back of his head. She smoothed the disordered waves of hair over that lump as if to make amends for her recent act of violence.
"I'm so sorry, Connor," she whispered, though she knew he could not hear. Giving in to overwhelming temptation, she bent and pressed a quick, soft kiss on his barely parted lips. Then she got to her feet and looked wildly about the room. There was a window facing the street. Catching up Connor's cloak, and in the process dumping the rest of the clothes he had discarded onto the floor, she was over to the window and opening it in a flash. It was a goodly drop to the ground, but his house, like hers, was embellished with a stoop running its entire front length. From the window to the top of the stoop was not such a great distance.
Hesitating on the sill, she looked back at where he was sprawled on the floor. The bed partially blocked her view, but she could see his head and shoulders and one outflung hand. Her heart ached at leaving him so, but there was nothing else to be done. For his sake, she had to go.
"I love you, Connor," she whispered because she had to, and then she was lowering herself from the window.
XXXXI
When Connor came around he knew immediately what had happened. Groaning, gingerly touching the throbbing back of his head, he levered himself into a sitting position. Why he had been so careless as to turn his back on the little bitch he couldn't fathom. He knew the cut of her cloth as well as he knew his own. He should have been expecting…
A rush of icy air from the window she'd left open behind her helped to clear his head. He couldn't have been out more than a quarter of an hour, if that. She'd hardly had time to get back to Lisle Street, which he was fairly certain was her immediate goal. He had to go after her, now, or he feared he would have the devil of a time finding her again.
He staggered to the door, threw it open, and bellowed for Mickeen. The little man must have been closeted with Liam nearby, for the pair of them appeared on the instant. They saw him swaying and scowling in the doorway, clad in naught but a pair of breeches as he felt his sore head, and they exchanged a single speaking look.
"The little bitch blind-sided me," Connor growled by way of explanation before they could find the words to ask. "I'm going after her. Mickeen, I'll be needing the curricle."
"I'm coming with you, Conn," Liam asserted, and Mickeen visibly bristled.
" 'Twill be a fine old time you'll have of it leaving me behind, yer lordship. I wanted to go with you the last time. I told you how 'twould be."
"Have done, Mickeen-my head is pounding all t
o hell." Connor winced as he found the lump on the back of his head. The thing was as big as an egg and painful as a boil. "You both may come if you wish. I'll probably even be glad of the escort. I've a notion there may be trouble. There's something about the situation she's got herself into that I mislike."
"What-?"
"I'll explain later, Liam. Arm yourselves. It will take me a moment only to dress." He turned back to his room and staggered, going down on one knee.
"Conn!"
"Yer lordship!"
Both Liam and Mickeen were beside him immediately. Connor permitted them to help him to his feet and ease him onto the bed. He lay back for a moment, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. From the feel of it, Caitlyn's blow had come close to splitting his skull.
"What did she hit you with?" Liam sounded faintly awed.
"The candlestick, the little besom. She's not changed a particle. I should have known not to turn my back on a she-devil."
"Conn, the suspense is killing me! You need to lie there for a bit before you try to go anywhere, and I have to know: how is it that Caitlyn lives? Where has she been? How did you find her? And for God's sake, why did she hit you over the head with a candlestick?"
Connor felt strangely reluctant to tell his brother the truth about the exact circumstances she had been in when he found her, just as he felt inclined after all to decline their escort to Lisle Street. It both stung his pride and boded ill for their opinion of Caitlyn's moral character that they should know she had been living for the past year as another man's mistress. Whatever she had or hadn't done, he could not bring himself to expose her as the piece of Haymarket ware her own words made her out to be. Deep in his bones he felt there was far more to the story than she would have him believe. However, Liam had a right to know some part of what had happened, though Connor would edit the most shocking bits as best he could. And Liam was right: he needed to lie still for just a minute. Just until his head stopped swimming… But then there was Caitlyn, half naked and alone on foot in the streets of London. The telling of stories would have to wait until he had her safe again.
"Later," he said, sitting up despite the ringing pain in his head. The room seemed to swim around him. Amazed, Connor realized that Caitlyn must have struck him a man- size blow: he was going to pass out.
He muttered a curse as nausea overcame him. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped sideways on the bed.
When at last he made it to Lisle Street, it was past daylight. No one responded to his frenzied knocking. Finally he entered the house the same way he had before. As he had suspected, it was empty. The bird had flown the nest.
XXXXII
A se'ennight and two days later, Caitlyn reluctantly returned from Sir Edward's hunting box. Sir Edward himself had left Kent two days before with his guests, but, hoping to postpone the inevitable confrontation with Connor, Caitlyn had lingered, pleading illness, until she could linger no longer. Sir Edward wanted to show her off that evening at a public ball to be held at London's Pantheon. A group of his friends and their current ladybirds would round out the party, to which she looked forward to with about as much enthusiasm as she would to having a tooth drawn. Should she not be ready when his carriage came for her, he would be angry, and possibly even suspicious of her motives. Lingering in one of the houses to which he sometimes took her was not like her; she usually couldn't wait to get away, to get back to London, where, if she were fortunate, she would see him no more than twice a week.
As she dressed for the ball, Caitlyn was near despair. Every time there was a sound anywhere in the house she jumped like a scalded cat. She fully expected Connor to come bursting in at any moment. Her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. She was exhausted, in pain from the beatings that had occurred almost nightly at the hunting box since Sir Edward had had her in such proximity, and frightened half to death. She had still not arrived at any solution to the problem of Connor, though she had racked her brain during the entire time she was away, and the moment of reckoning was, she feared, near at hand.
"The carriage is here, miss." Fromer's rap on the door startled her out of her thoughts. Minna, whom she had admitted to do up her buttons and style her hair, stood back from where her mistress sat on a stool before the dressing table, brush in hand as she surveyed her handiwork with a critical eye.
"Sir Edward will be pleased, miss," she intoned expressionlessly. Except for the fact that Sir Edward would be angry if she did not look as glitteringly lovely as he liked to see her, Caitlyn would be just as pleased if her captor did not admire her looks. Though whether she was in looks or not, he was hardly likely to come to her tonight after the ball. He had surely had a surfeit after that entire monstrous week-though it had been two days since he had practiced his particular form of gratification upon her. Her stomach churned at the thought.
"Thank you, Minna," Caitlyn said, standing up. Though they both knew it was a fiction, she and Minna continued to behave as if she were in truth the mistress and Minna nothing more than her maid. As long as Sir Edward was pleased with her, that was how it would be, though she was forbidden to leave the house without either Minna or Fromer in attendance.
"Will you wear your new cloak? It is quite cold out." Minna's voice was so impersonal that it was almost as if a piece of furniture spoke. Caitlyn nodded, and as the woman turned to fetch the cloak, she studied herself for a moment in the cheval glass. The young woman who looked back at her was tall and wand-slender, her black hair worn piled high with only a single curl coaxed down over one white shoulder. Her face was delicately painted, porcelain perfect, with enormous eyes like jewels and a rose-red mouth accented by a strategically placed patch at its corner. Lush creamy-skinned breasts were more than half visible above the tantalizing neckline of a breathtaking gown of emerald-green silk generously trimmed with black lace. Emeralds set in gold sparkled in her ears and around her neck. She looked beautiful, expensive, remote-and she was a total stranger. This lavishly turned out woman had nothing to do with the person Caitlyn knew herself to be.
"Don't wait up," Caitlyn said as Minna draped a luxurious velvet evening cloak around her shoulders. It was sumptuous, as were her dress and her jewels and the furnishings with which she lived and even the carriage Sir Edward had sent to fetch her without bothering to come himself. In her lean days in Dublin, her eyes would have popped if she had known that one day she would live in such splendor. She would have thought life could hold no greater happiness than to have so many lovely things, to say nothing of a warm home and plenty of food and servants to do her bidding. Settling herself back into the fine upholstery of the carriage seat, Caitlyn didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She had every material thing of which she had ever dreamed, and she was more miserable than she had ever imagined possible. She would trade every dress, every jewel, every feather to be home again at Donoughmore with Connor.
Had Sir Edward been an ordinary man of moderate means, the situation would perhaps not have been so hopeless. But his friends included many peers of the realm, and his influence was vast, far greater than Connor's, who, she rather thought, had none. Connor was not wealthy; to her certain knowledge he gave away most of what he managed to acquire. She had no way of knowing the full extent of Sir Edward's wealth, but from every indication he was a rich man indeed.
Sir Edward's hunting box, occupied perhaps four weeks out of the year, was far larger than the manor house at Donoughmore, where the four d'Arcys and she had lived year-round. Sir Edward owned four other residences that she knew of: Ballymara, where he spent the summer and early fall, though he had not been back since leaving Ireland with her; his fashionable town house in Grosvenor Square, where his sister, Sarah, presently lived with him as his hostess in complete ignorance of Caitlyn's presence in quite another part of town; his principal seat, Dunne Hall, in Sussex; and her own snug house on Lisle Street. Each dwelling was elaborately furnished and maintained without interruption by a staff appropriate to its size and function. He
dressed impeccably, ran the finest horses and carriages, and at every meal at which he was host his table groaned with more food than the entire gang of lads she used to run with in Dublin could consume at a sitting. He dressed her well, ordering outrageously expensive outfits for her by the dozen from London's finest modistes. Boxes were delivered weekly. The clothes were all designed to show off her charms and beauty to the utmost, at the expense of both decency and good taste.
He enjoyed exercising absolute power over her. That power was one reason he had kept her so long as his mistress. He also enjoyed making his friends envious of his possession of her-and envy him they did. Gloating, he told her that they called her a diamond of the first water and offered him tremendous sums to secure her services for themselves, which offers, thankfully, he declined. To share her would cause her to lose some of her value.
Caitlyn knew that as long as she had such value for him, he would never willingly release her. Not even his death would free her, not as long as Connor lived. Sir Edward's death would bring Connor's with it. Whether Connor caused it or no, the letters would be opened, and Connor would be exposed, arrested, tried, and ultimately hanged. For just a moment Caitlyn tried to imagine what would happen if she, Liam, Rory, Cormac, and Mickeen all swore to Connor's innocence. Her lip curled. Would any magistrate anywhere believe them against the dying statement of a man as wealthy and powerful as Sir Edward Dunne? She rather thought not.
The carriage pulled into the line of vehicles jamming Oxford Street as they waited to discharge their passengers at the glittering doors of the assembly rooms. Linkboys and lackeys carrying lanterns ran along the street, lighting the way for those who chose to abandon their vehicles to the confusion and walk the rest of the way. Caitlyn stayed where she was, in no hurry to join Sir Edward and his party, but in no time it seemed she was at the entrance. The Pantheon itself was magnificent, Caitlyn saw as a footman helped her to alight. Gargoyles and Gothic arches were everywhere, and every embellishment that conceivably could be was gilded. Enormous crystal chandeliers blazed from domed frescoed ceilings. Marble steps led up to a huge rectangular ballroom with numerous saloons and boxes and alcoves leading off from it. A group of musicians played vigorously from a raised platform at the far end of the room. The rooms were crowded, though the hour was relatively early, lacking nearly an hour and a half to midnight. The motley crowd was dressed in everything from elaborate evening clothes such as Sir Edward had instructed that she wear, to dominoes, to various costumes. Nearly half the company was masked. Caitlyn knew that it was considered a daring thing for members of the ton, carefully disguised beneath dominoes and masks, to attend a Pantheon assembly, where they would rub shoulders with everyone from country rubes just come to town to the most vulgar members of the muslin company to the sharps who hoped to lure unwary young men to their gambling establishments.
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