by Laurel McKee
“Well, I am having a very good evening,” Anna said happily. “Luck is with me tonight, so I can buy you your own new book to soothe your disappointment.”
“Just be careful, Anna,” Caroline warned. “Luck has a way of turning, I fear.”
“Not tonight!” said Anna.
Caroline smiled at her and went to sit with their mother, who talked to Lord Hartley by the fire. How she did like Hartley! He was good, kind, and a bit dull but full of the love of scholarship, with no hidden angles so sharp they could cut. They could build a content life together, she was sure of it.
And if he never made her heart pound like Grant Dunmore—well, that was all for the best. She didn’t need such distractions in her life at all.
Chapter Seventeen
Anna pulled the hood of her cloak closer around her face as she hurried down the street. There was no fog that night, but the wind was biting, sweeping off the river and up the lanes like a furious ghost. She also didn’t want anyone to recognize her, though there were few people out and about at that hour. She had the hackney leave her at the corner so she could walk to the Olympian Club, and thus give herself a few moments to think.
When they returned from Grant Dunmore’s house, she had retired to bed as a sensible person should, yet she couldn’t sleep. She lay there in the dark, her mind racing with all she should do, all she probably would do in the end—and all she really wanted deep in her heart.
She knew what her mother wanted from her. She wanted her to marry Grant Dunmore, to be mistress of his fine townhouse and his country estate, and take her place as a leader of Society. With Eliza’s exile and Caroline set on marrying fusty old Lord Hartley and being a bluestocking, Katherine deserved one daughter conventionally settled. Anna had spent two years getting into trouble and causing gossip. Perhaps it was time that she thought of what she owed her family.
Tonight’s party had shown her a glimpse of what her future life would be as Lady Dunmore: parties, chatter, an elegant home, a handsome, charming husband. A husband who had a streak of ruthlessness behind his so-handsome face. A man had to be ruthless to try and use the unjust Penal Laws to snatch the estate from his own kinsman.
But was Adair any better, any less ruthless, in going after what he wanted? He certainly had his share of secrets.
She had terrible judgment in men, it was true. Both were less than sensible choices, Adair least of all. Yet something kept pulling her back to him.
And that was why she crept out of her house in the middle of the night again. She wanted to see him once more in the wild hope that she could see clearly at last. She would know what to do, as if by magic.
Highly unlikely, of course, but here she was making her way, half-bold and half-fearful, to the Olympian Club. But the club seemed to be closed.
Anna stood by the low wrought-iron fence around the elegant gray-stone building and stared up at its darkened windows. It was silent tonight, no one coming or going at all, and the knocker was muffled.
“Blast it all,” she muttered. She didn’t know where Conlan might actually live and wasn’t sure where to look for him now. She went up the steps and pounded on the door with her fist, to no avail.
She didn’t want to just slink back home. Not yet. She drew her cloak closer around her and slipped back down the steps and to the back of the building. There was a small garden and a terrace, perfect for clandestine meetings, yet they were also deserted. Even the servant’s entrance was locked.
“So much for my spy work,” Anna muttered. And so much for that overwhelming desire to see Conlan tonight. Feeling quite foolish, she made her way back to the street to find another hackney and go home.
Just as she turned the corner, the door opened, and Conlan stepped out into the night. He wore a caped greatcoat and wide-brimmed hat, a scarf muffling his lower face, but she knew it was him. No one else was so tall with such broad shoulders; no one else walked with such confidence. He glanced down the street, and then set off at a brisk pace.
Impulsively, Anna took off after him. Where was he going so secretively? Cursing her curiosity, she followed him at a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows.
Once or twice he glanced back, and she was sure she would be discovered, yet he always kept going on his mysterious path. He went from the quiet, elegant lanes back toward the neighborhood of McMasters’s tavern. The streets narrowed and darkened, and the cobblestones were damp and slippery under her boots. Was he just going for a drink then?
He turned not to the tavern but down another street, a narrow alley between tall houses. Anna dared not follow there; he would be sure to notice her in such a confined space. She lingered at the alley’s entrance and peeked around the corner as he knocked at a door. After a moment, a man answered. A flickering candle in his hand cast a glow over his face and rumpled hair as he peered out cautiously.
Anna pressed her hand hard to her mouth so she would not cry out. It was Monsieur Courtois, Caroline’s gorgeous new drawing teacher! How did he, a Frenchman who made his living teaching, know Adair? Why were they meeting?
“Were you followed?” Courtois said. His voice was low and furtive, but it echoed on the alley’s close-packed walls.
“No,” Adair answered. “Nothing of consequence.”
“Come in.” The door closed, and Anna was alone again in the eerily quiet night. Once she was sure they were gone, she ran down the alley to examine the house. There was one small window by the door, but it was barred and muffled by dark curtains. She couldn’t even make out a single ray of light.
She longed to rattle the bars, to pound on the door and shout at them, to demand answers! They were in some terrible conspiracy, Adair and Courtois, she was sure of it. If only she could be sure it was not something horribly dangerous to her own family.
She had the cold feeling that it was, and that she was already deeply involved in ways she couldn’t even fathom. Yet.
She went back to wait at the mouth of the alley for Conlan to re-emerge. She would follow him back to the Olympian Club and make him talk to her, one way or another.
She didn’t have very long to wait. After less than an hour—though to Anna it felt like a year—he came out and went on his way. He didn’t go straight back to the club but turned toward the river. She followed him along the embankment, hard-pressed to keep up with his long-limbed pace.
She was so intent on him that she didn’t see the other shadows until they suddenly emerged from behind an upturned fishing boat. There were two of them, and they moved like a swift mist rolling off the river. One grabbed Conlan around the neck, dragging him back as the other unsheathed a dagger. The starlight glinted along the lethal steel.
“Conlan!” Anna screamed as the dagger lunged toward his chest. She ran forward, heedless of any danger to herself in her terror. He drove his elbow hard into the belly of the man who held him, shoving him to the ground. His boot shot up toward the one with the knife, obviously aiming for his groin.
But the assailant leaped back, Conlan’s kick landing on his leg. The man staggered and quickly recovered, diving toward Conlan with the dagger. In the blink of an eye, that shining steel sank into Conlan’s shoulder, past wool and linen, into flesh.
“Bloody hell!” he shouted. He pressed his hand to the wound, struggling to stay upright as his attacker tried to stab him again.
Anna drove herself into the villain, hard, sending him flying back to the cobblestones. The dagger clattered to the ground, and she kicked it into the water. As she spun around to face Conlan, the man he had shoved to the ground hauled himself to his feet. He, too, held a knife, and she caught a glimpse of the raw, violent fury on his scarred face.
“Conlan, behind you!” she screamed.
Conlan drew a small pistol from inside his coat, and in one smooth motion spun around and fired. The man collapsed, silent, a dark stain spreading over his chest. His co-conspirator fled.
Anna, her blood boiling with anger, started to run after him, but a ga
sp from Conlan stopped her. “Anna,” he muttered in a voice tight with pain. “My avenging witch.”
She twirled back to him, just in time to see him fall to the ground. “Conlan!”
She knelt beside him on the cold stone and unfastened his coat with shaking hands. His shirt was torn and stained with blood, and she could smell the tang of it, wet and coppery. Her head whirled with the stench, with the terrible memories it summoned up. But his touch on her wrist drew her immediately back into the present crisis.
She tore off his cravat and wadded it up to press tightly to the wound. The blood still seeped through, faster than she could staunch it.
“We have to get you to a doctor,” she said.
“No, not a doctor,” he insisted. “We’ll go back to the club.”
“You can’t walk that far!”
“Of course I can. This is just a scratch. I’ve walked farther with worse.”
Anna remembered that ruined stable during the Uprising and the stained bandage around his leg. “You’re a damnably stubborn Irishman, Conlan.”
“And you’re a double-damned stubborn Irishwoman. What are you doing here?”
She tore a strip from the hem of her petticoat to bind around his shoulder. The bleeding seemed to be slowing, but she didn’t like how pale he looked, ashen under the brown of his skin. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“So you followed me around the city in the middle of the night?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know I was there?”
He shook his head. “I thought it was just those two villains.”
“You knew about them? Why didn’t you do something?”
“I wanted to see what they would do first. You shouldn’t be here.”
“If I wasn’t, it would have been two against one, and they would have killed you for certain.”
“True enough,” he said grudgingly. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that it was foolish for you to be out tonight,” he said.
“I’m not the only fool here, I think.” Anna took his face in her hands and stared deep into his eyes. “What game do you play at, Conlan McTeer?”
He tried to turn from her, but she held firm. She was tired of always not knowing. “What do men get up to in a city on a cold winter’s night, cailleach? Cards, whoring, drinking…”
“I am not so stupid as all that. If you wanted that, you could get it at your own club. You were up to none of those things, not tonight. You were meeting with a Frenchman.”
“A friend,” he said stubbornly. Yet she could see he was in pain, no matter how he tried to hide it, and she had to get him away from there.
“You do play dangerous games, Conlan, and I will find out what they are.”
He grabbed her wrists, his fingers like iron. “No, Anna. Just stay away. You can’t be part of this.”
Except she already was, whether they liked it or not. “Come on, we have to go back to the club. It’s cold out here, and you are still bleeding.”
She slid her arm around his shoulders and supported him as he stood. He leaned on her for a moment, but then he twisted away. As she watched him, he knelt down by the body. Quickly, he looked through the man’s pockets, which proved to be empty, then he shoved him into the river. The body made barely a splash before sinking out of sight.
“What’s this?” a woman cried from the top of the Olympian Club stairs. Anna looked up to see it was the pretty faro dealer, her hair loose over her shoulders, clad in a velvet dressing gown.
She was very pretty and wandering around the club in dishabille. Anna had only an instant to feel jealous, though, as Conlan leaned heavily against her shoulder.
At first on their slow journey across the city, he had stubbornly refused her help. As he continued to lose blood, though, and grew paler, he had started to lean on her. She held him tightly, her arm wound around his waist.
“He was attacked on the street,” Anna said honestly. “And he refused to go to a doctor.”
“Attacked by whom?” Sarah ran down the stairs and took Conlan’s other arm. Between them, they managed to haul him up the stairs.
“I don’t know. And the villain can’t introduce himself because he is dead now.”
“You were there? You saw it all?” Reaching the top of the stairs, she led them toward an open doorway.
“She saved me,” Conlan muttered, shaking off his stupor.
The woman’s eyes met Anna’s, wide with some sort of shocked realization. “Did she? How heroic.”
“Heroics will be no use unless we can stop the bleeding,” Anna said. “I still say we need a doctor.…”
“No doctor!” Conlan yelled.
“No need to shout,” said Anna, trying to stay calm. Hysterics would help no one. She tried to think of her mother, of her reassuringly serene demeanor as she nursed sick servants and tenants. “You’ll make the bleeding even worse.”
“I have medicines and bandages,” Sarah said. They deposited Conlan on a bed, the covers still drawn neatly over the feather mattress. With no fire in the grate, the small chamber was cold, but a lamp was lit on the bedside table. “There are always silly fights and accidents in a gaming club. I’ll go fetch them.”
She hurried away, and Anna set about trying to make Conlan comfortable. She tugged off his wet boots and carefully peeled away his ruined coat and shirt. The makeshift bandage was soaked through, and she replaced it with the rest of her petticoat. He started to shiver, so she spread her own cloak over him.
Anna sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand in hers, holding on to it tightly. Now that the danger was past, she felt so very cold and tired. There had been no time to be afraid there by the river, but now all that fear weighed on her. He was in danger—real, terrible danger. Someone had attacked him twice now, and those were only the attempts she witnessed herself. Whatever he was doing made someone angry enough to try to kill.
She did not know Conlan McTeer very well, and what she did know would send any sensible woman running. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that in her heart she did know him, and he knew her. He knew the parts that she kept hidden from everyone else. To lose him now would be—terrible.
“Anna,” he whispered. His fingers closed on hers so tightly it was almost painful.
“I’m still here,” she said. She gently smoothed his hair back from his brow. He felt too warm to her touch.
“You should not be.”
“Of course I should. I have to be certain you’ll recover.”
“I told you, it’s just a scratch.”
“This is the second ‘scratch’ I’ve seen you take. Remember St. Stephen’s Green?”
“All too well. Anna, you have to leave, and I don’t just mean this room tonight. You should go away from Dublin, go to the country, and never see me again.”
Anna shook her head. She didn’t want to leave him, not now. Not until she had deciphered what her strange, intense feelings meant. “I don’t know what is happening here, Conlan, but I can help you. If you would just tell me…”
“No.” He stared up at her with burning green eyes. Yet despite their heat, she could feel only ice. He still held onto her hands, but it seemed he was drawing further and further away from her. “I don’t need help from a spoiled Ascendancy princess. Dublin isn’t just all dancing and parties. It’s dangerous, especially for those who don’t understand.”
She was really angry now, her exhaustion and fear burned away by utter fury. She was not a spoiled princess, useful only for shopping and planning parties and getting married! She had thought Conlan saw that, saw her. “I will never understand unless someone tells me! I’m involved in this whether you like it or not, Conlan. I will be far safer if you just trust me and tell me the truth.”
He rolled onto his side, away from her. “I can’t trust you, Anna. I’m sorry. You should go home.”
“That’s it then?” she said numbly as she stared at his uny
ielding back. There were still marks there where her nails had scratched him in the throes of passion. That all seemed so unreal now. He was sending her away.
“So I should just marry Grant Dunmore, play his perfect little wife, and pretend none of this ever happened?” she choked out. “That we never made love, and I never saw you almost killed?”
“You would be happier with him,” Conlan said tightly. “He could keep you safe.”
“Safe?” Anna wiped fiercely at her eyes, refusing to let a single tear fall. “I have not felt safe for a very long time.”
And she doubted Grant Dunmore was the man who could do that. He held secrets, too, just as everyone did in these confusing days. Conlan, Grant, even her sister’s drawing teacher—they all held secrets.
Even herself.
“I will go then, if that is what you want,” she said. “I’ll even leave Dublin and go to the Connemaras’ Christmas party. But this isn’t over. I am even more stubborn than you, remember? You have not seen the last of me.”
She marched to the door and swung it open, coming face-to-face with Sarah. She was hurrying along the corridor with a valise and basin of water, a startled look on her disgustingly pretty face.
Anna swept past her as she heard Conlan shout, “I mean it, witch! Stay away from here or you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m already sorry!” she yelled back. “Just not for the reasons you think. You haven’t seen the last of me, Conlan McTeer!”
She ran down the stairs and out into the night. The sky was turning a light pearl-gray as she dashed down the deserted street. Morning was not far off. A new day, full of new puzzles.
She was halfway home before she realized that she had left her cloak behind and she was freezing cold. But her heart felt even colder.
“Such temper,” Conlan heard Sarah say. “You’ll make your wound bleed again.”
He stayed on his side, listening as she reached for a basin and splashed a rag through the water. Every inch of his being ached to run after Anna, to grab her in his arms and hold on to her so that she could never get away. So closely that she would be safe from all the darkness of the world. She was his bright star, the only beautiful, good thing he had ever possessed.
