Dark of the Moon (2 page)

Her captor pulled her to her feet, his eyes moving swiftly around the surrounding circle of the angry oppressed. He had to know fear, this Orangeman who could see the hatred the Irish felt for his kind in every eye focused on him; but if he did, not a flicker of it showed. He faced them with cool unconcern while their expressions turned uglier by the second.

Taking advantage of his predicament, Caitlyn jerked at her hand, which he still held imprisoned. The answering pressure on her wrist made her go weak at the knees. At the wince she could not control, a growl arose from the crowd. The man who had spoken earlier took a step forward. Almost casually, her captor transferred her wrist to his left hand and placed his right hand on the dress scabbard at his waist. Then, with a lightning movement, he pulled free a weapon that was no ceremonial sword good only for show, but a glistening-sharp rapier.

"Willing to die for the lad, are you?" The question was addressed to the crowd in general, but her captor's eyes held the eyes of the man who had spoken, the crowd's ringleader. Caitlyn knew that besting the ringleader was the swiftest and surest way to preserve oneself when faced with a hostile group. She had done it herself more than once, by whatever means it had taken.

But now that her captor's attention was distracted . . . She was just drawing her foot back to kick the vulnerable back of his knee when another voice interrupted.

"What's amiss here?" A pair of burly constables shouldered their way through the shifting, muttering throng. Caitlyn felt her heart sink as she saw their blue uniforms. O'Flynn's fate would surely be hers now.

"A slight disagreement only. Nothing that can't be handled privately." To Caitlyn's astonishment, her captor was not handing her over. His hand was as tight as ever about her wrist, but he was not denouncing her to the constables. Why? She looked at him with wary suspicion but said naught.

"You'd best stay out of this part of the city, sirra," one of the constables warned her captor.

The crowd from whom Caitlyn had hoped for so much was drifting away. Taking on a single foolish Englishman was one thing; bringing the full wrath of the hated Orangemen down on the heads of kith and kin was something else again. Caitlyn could understand and even shared their reasoning. The English were butchers, and their wrath if their constables should come to harm would be terrible. Irishmen through- out the city would be made to pay, some most likely with their lives.

"I will in future. Thank you for your assistance." Her captor slid that deadly-looking rapier back into its deceptively fancy scabbard, nodded in a friendly fashion to the constables, and moved away, dragging Caitlyn behind him. With the constables looking after them suspiciously, she had no choice but to go with him without a fight. Nothing he could do to her would be worse than her fate if they took her up. Not even if he were the devil himself. . . .

Caitlyn shivered, remembering those strange light eyes. Where no one could see, she formed her fingers into the sign that warded off evil and immediately felt a little better.

In moments, the gentleman had pulled her around the corner onto the Bachelor's Walk, which ran alongside the River Liffey. The passersby here were very different from those in O'Connell Street. These well-dressed pedestrians were of the Protestant Ascendancy, the hated ruling class brought over from England and set firmly into place by the bloody butchery of Oliver Cromwell (curse the name) some hundred years before. To them, the Irish were heathen peasants of inferior culture and intellect, barely above the beasts in the fields. They were the enactors of the hated Penal Laws, which denied Irish Catholics virtually every human right.

Under their rule, an Irishman in his own land was forbidden to own land, receive an education, vote, hold public office, practice his religion—and, worse yet, was forced to pay a yearly tithe to the Anglican Church. They were colonizers of a once-free land, butchers, oppressors. Any Irishman worth his salt hated each and every one from birth to death. Caitlyn was no exception.

Once the constables were out of sight, Caitlyn jerked violently against the hand that still shackled her, hoping that the surprise of it might make her captor's grip loosen so that she could escape. His grip remained as unbreakable as ever, but he did slacken his pace and look around at her. The sheer size of the man was intimidating, it was irue, but if Caitlyn O'Malley had ever feared man or beast, none had known it. She glared at him. Despite the fact that he had not turned her over to the constables, her hatred for him had not lessened. If anything, it had grown.

She hated to be bested, and this powdered and primped Englishman had undeniably gotten the best of her.

"Bloody Sassenach," she hissed at him. Those devil's eyes narrowed on her face. He was easily double her weight, and head and shoulders above her in height, but discretion had never been one of her virtues.

"I'll thank you for my purse," he said, stopping and turning back to face her, holding out his free hand. Passersby on either side of them looked on curiously. He paid them no mind.

"Take it, then! I've little doubt 'tis filled with coins stolen from the Irish, just like your bleedin' countrymen have stolen our land!" Flushed with outrage and chagrin, shamed at her public downfall, knowing that angering him was the stupidest thing she could possibly do under the circumstances, she tried to do it anyway. She could no more stop the fierce flow of her Irish temper than she could hold back the fog that was beginning to thicken along the river.

He said nothing, just held out that narrow, long-fingered hand implacably. Glaring at him, teeth bared, she had no choice but to dig into the capacious pocket of her overlarge coat and produce his purse. She passed it to him ungraciously. He accepted it from her with a cool nod, then dropped it back into his own pocket with scarcely a glance. Without speaking, he considered her. She stared back at him defiantly, forcing herself to meet those strange light eyes without cringing. It would not do to think of devils and conjurers while she was concentrating on standing her ground. . . . His eyes narrowed as they ran over her dirty, hunger-pinched face and scrawny, shabbily dressed form.

"So I've caught myself an Irish thief." His drawling words flicked her to the raw. She glared at him.

"Lowest of all steals from the Irish!" It was a rash retort, but her blood was up. Her pride had been badly flayed, she was frightened and off balance, and to top it off she was at the mercy of a bloody painted Sassenach with an iron grip and evil eyes.

He shook his head at her. "Hotheaded like all the Irish, I see," he said placidly. "That trait will get you killed faster than pinching purses, my lad. At the rate you're going, you won't live to shave your first whisker. Or bed your first colleen."

"And what in bloody hell would you be knowin' about it? Damned lily-livered English dog!"

"Mind your mouth, now. I've taken about all the sass I care to from a half-pint stripling who tried to rob me blind." His brows came together in a fierce V as he scowled at her. Glaring ferociously back at him, both pleased and alarmed by the anger she had at last managed to incite, Caitlyn was quickly reduced to mortification by the loud rumble that came without warning from her in- sides.

"Hungry, are you?" His frown cleared. "Do you suppose if I feed you, you can keep a civil tongue in your head?"

"I wouldn't break bread with the likes of you if I was starvin', which I ain't. I just ate," she lied, pride stung again. "Fresh bread and butter, boiled potatoes and fish. . . ."

"And I'm St. Patrick," he answered amiably. She blinked, frowning in surprise at the unexpectedness of his answer. Before she could respond he set off down the street again with her in unwilling tow. Just past the stone arches of Christchurch, he stopped and cocked his head in the direction of a public house across the way. A sign above it, creaking in the slight breeze, proclaimed it The Silent Woman.

"I'm for supper," he said. "You're welcome to join me in a bite. It occurs to me that if I buy you a square meal, you might stay off the gibbet for one more day." With that he dropped her wrist, and with a nod at her as if to say the choice was hers, he crossed the street and disappeared into the pub. Caitlyn was left standing stock-still in the crowded street, thoughts awhirl as she stared after him. The bloody English dog had let her go. She was free to take to her heels, to chase after Willie and take up where they had left off. To find some other, hopefully less wide- awake mark and prig his purse. . . . The thought sent a shiver down her spine. Maybe they were cursed by bad luck, as Willie thought. She didn't want to go the way of O'Flynn, face turning blue as she swung, choking, in the wind. But she was so hungry she was nigh sick with it.

The bloody Sassenach had offered to buy her supper.

Pride warred with hunger. Curiosity warred with wariness. Generations of racial hatred screamed at her to deny the empty aching in her belly. But, Sassenach or no, her stomach needed filling. As she thought about it, it seemed only just that a Sassenach should fill her emptiness. Were not he and his kind the cause of it, after all?

Still pondering, she crossed the street, in her distraction almost getting run down by a fanner with a cart. At the public house, a popular gathering place judging by the number of patrons going in and out, she hesitated just outside the carved oak door. All her instincts warned her to turn tail and run. Everyone knew that Sassenachs were not to be trusted. But what could he do to her in such a place, after all? If he'd wanted to turn her over to the authorities, he would already have done so. And whatever else he had in mind—be he devil or mortal, banshee or solid flesh—would probably wait until after she'd eaten. After that, she could vanish like the mist. But if she didn't let him feed her, she would have to feed herself or go without. And after the debacle of her attempt on his purse, her confidence in her abilities was severely shaken.

Hesitant but increasingly hungry, she pushed open the door and looked into a welcoming room well lit with tallow candles. The hated English were everywhere, their funny, mincing voices filling the room with talk and laughter. The place even smelled funny, sort of like a whore's cologne. She'd never been inside a pub outside the Irish quarters.

"And what do the likes of you think you're doing in here? Get on out of here!" A plump woman in a huge mobcap with a white apron over her dark gown came bustling out from behind the bar, flourishing a broom at Caitlyn. "The gall of you heathen Papists! Get, now—get out!"

Caitlyn's eyes flared, and her hands balled into fists. Wisdom dictated a hasty retreat. She was only one person, and a small one at that. The woman descending on her was large and plump and carried a broom. The room was filled with the hated Sassenach.

"Hold, mistress. The lad's with me."

He walked easily around the woman and caught Caitlyn by the arm, compelling her to abandon her imminent attack.

"I won't be eatin' in a room full of bloody Orangemen!"

"We don't want no Irish trash in here!"

If it had not been for the gentleman's iron hold on her arm, Caitlyn would have fallen on the woman and rent her limb from limb there and then. As it was, she was pulled protesting from the pub with the serving woman following after them, brandishing the broom like a weapon and calling curses down on the heads of the Papists. Caitlyn's answering abuse was vulgar and explicit.

"Enough, bantling." His voice was quiet, but there was in it that steely authority that silenced her continued fuming. She glared up at him, trying to wrest her arm from his grip as he dragged her down the street.

"Bloody Sassenach!" The woman's insults had brought all her hatred of the race, forced into abeyance by the needs of her stomach, flooding back.

Those strange light eyes glinted at her. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm growing weary of listening to your insults, my lad. Now get yourself in here and keep your bloody mouth shut. Or I'll be likely to shut it for you with the back of my hand."

Caitlyn found herself seated inside another pub before she had a chance to sneer at its lily-white English patrons. Unlike the first place, this one was small, dark, and filled with smoke. No one was paying the least bit of attention to her, she discovered as she cast a belligerent look around. Her eyes caught the narrowed ones across the table from hers, and something about that look from those devil's eyes caused her to keep her unruly tongue under a semblance of control as the barmaid came over to their table. Under the gentleman's continuing impaling gaze, she sat in silence as he ordered a meal for both of them, firing up only briefly when the serving maid's eyes raked her with contempt. But the girl left before aught was said.

Caitlyn was left glaring suspiciously at the man seated across the scrubbed pine table. In the dim light of the candle on the wall, it was hard to make out his expression. But she thought she detected a brief glint of amusement behind the warning look in his eyes. She bristled, but he spoke before she could put tongue to her feelings.

"Have you a name, halfling?"

"What bloody business is it of yours?"

He grinned suddenly, unexpectedly, white teeth gleaming at her through the darkness.

"Charming lad, aren't you? You can thank your patron saint that I have a fondness for scrawny gamecocks. I could have handed you over to the authorities back there, you know. Most would."

"So why didn't you?"

"As I said, I have a fondness for scrawny gamecocks." The meal arrived then, thick bowls of beefy stew with hearty slabs of fresh bread and foaming glasses of ale. Caitlyn's traitorous stomach rumbled loudly again. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment even as her mouth watered at the succulent aroma. Her eyes lifted from the chunks of tender meat and potatoes floating in the rich brown gravy to stare suspiciously at the man. He appeared not to have heard the latest insubordination from her in- sides.

"I'll not be payin' for this. Not in any way, if you catch my meaning."

He had just put the first forkful of stew in his mouth. Before he answered, he chewed it judiciously, swallowed, and washed the whole down with a mouthful of ale. Then he looked at her. Caitlyn shivered at the impact of those eyes. The sudden spurt of apprehension ignited her temper anew. Feeling better now that she was armed with comforting anger, she glared at him.