Dark of the Moon (27 page)

"Thank you." He accepted them with no perceptible change of expression and carried them with him as he left the room.

Caitlyn's face grew fiercer by degrees as she helped Mrs. McFee clear the table and wash the dishes. Of course Connor would return the hussy's gloves to her, and nothing loath either!

He might even do it that very evening—and spend the night in the simpering tart's bed while he was about it! That was certainly what she had been angling for when she had left her gloves in the parlor. Not for a moment did Caitlyn believe that the gloves had been left accidentally. It was a deliberate ploy, and Connor was going to fall for it! Not that "fall for it" was the right expression. Connor was a grown man, and no fool, and would know full well what Mrs.

Congreve was about. He would not be tricked into doing anything he did not wish to do. Which left Caitlyn with the uncomfortable conclusion that if he ended up in Mrs. Congreve's bed, then it was precisely where he wished to be. And she very much feared he did wish it!

Mrs. McFee's silent gloating did nothing to improve Caitlyn's temper. Although the woman had no idea of the extent of the relationship between Caitlyn and her employer, she would have had to be deaf, dumb, and blind to have remained unaware of the tension that had sizzled lately whenever the two had occupied the same room. Mrs. McFee had been convinced from the beginning of Caitlyn's designs on Connor. Now that it seem her worst predictions might be coming true, she was doing everything she could to spite what she perceived as Caitlyn's evil plans. Which was why, on this particular night, the washing up took fully twice as long as it ordinarily did. Mrs. McFee meant to hold Caitlyn in the kitchen just as long as she possibly could.

Finally Caitlyn had had enough of the sly looks and turtle-paced work. She slammed down the plate she was drying with a clatter. "If you want to go ahead home, I'll finish this myself,"

she said with tart meaning.

"Eh, it's not for you to tell me when to go home. I work for the family, I do, and his lordship in particular. Not some little upstart twit who's no better than she should be."

Caitlyn stared at Mrs. McFee for a long moment, mentally struggling to control the urge to hurl the plate she had just finished drying straight at that dour face. Mrs. McFee's insults and dire predictions of the evils her presence would bring down upon all those at Donoughmore were more or less constant, and Caitlyn was in large measure used to them. The woman had never liked her. Her quarrel this night was with Connor, not with Mrs. McFee. The plate that she itched to throw should rightly be hurled at Connor's head, not at the serving woman's.

"You can finish up yourself, then. I've more important matters to see to."

"Hummph! 'Tis precious little help you are, any road," Mrs. McFee said to Caitlyn's departing back. Caitlyn gritted her teeth and willed herself to ignore the woman. In a few moments Mrs. McFee would wind her scarf around her head and set off for her home in the village, not to return until morning. In the meantime, Caitlyn would vent her anger on its proper recipient. The very idea of Connor exchanging with Mrs. Congreve the kind of intimacies she had shared with him in the loft made her burn with fury. He was a pig, and she meant to tell him so!

The d'Arcys generally congregated in the parlor after supper. Rory and Cormac were there, seated in faded gold brocade armchairs that ordinarily graced either side of the huge fireplace.

At the moment, the chairs had been dragged forward so that they faced each other in front of the fire with a table between them. A chessboard had been set up on the table, and Cormac and Rory were arguing in spirited but subdued voices over the game they were engaged in. Connor was missing, as was Liam.

"Where's Connor?" Caitlyn demanded, belligerence rising as she considered the possibility that he might have already left to return Mrs. Congreve's gloves.

"Believe me, you're not wanting to see Connor just now," Rory said positively, looking around. "Just since dinner, he's quarreled with both Cormac and me, and right now he's upstairs tearing a strip off Liam for some error he made in the books."

"Oh, he is, is he?" Caitlyn turned on her heel, meaning to march straight up the stairs to confront Connor in the office. If he was spoiling for a fight, why, he'd get one!

"He's in a foul temper. I'd leave him be if I were you," Rory called after her.

"Being that she's the cause of it, I'd say she deserves it if he lets fly at her," she heard Cormac say to Rory.

The door to the office was slightly ajar. Without even the courtesy of knocking, Caitlyn thrust it open to find Liam seated behind the desk and Connor leaning over him, pointing something out in the ledger opened on the desk before them. Both of them looked up at her unceremonious entrance. Liam's inquiring expression quickly changed to one of trepidation, while Connor's frown deepened into blackest foreboding.

"I want to talk to you," she said to Connor, completely ignoring Liam.

"I've no time for children's tantrums now. As you can see, I'm busy." Connor's tone was as harsh as his words.

Children's tantrums, eh? How dared he! "So I'm back to being a child, am I? You're naught but a hypocrite, Connor d'Arcy, and that's the truth of it!"

"And you're the most persistent little wench it has ever been my misfortune to run across!"

Connor roared. He straightened and took a single hasty step out from behind the chair before stopping with a visible effort, his hands clenching at his sides.

"Coward!" She faced him with fists on hips and eyes flashing. At her insult his eyes flamed at her.

"Jezebel!"

"Jezebel?" Outraged, Caitlyn could barely get the echo out. "Jezebel!"

"Aye, Jezebel! Only a Jezebel would go on tormenting a man who clearly wants no part of her!"

"Conn—!" Alarmed, Liam tried to intervene, an appalled expression on his face.

"So you want no part of me, do you? That's a lie, and you know it, Connor d'Arcy! You do want me, you do! You're just too much of a coward to take what you want!"

"If you will continually throw yourself at my head—"

"Throw myself at your head?"

"Conn!" Liam was sounding increasingly outraged. He looked rather desperately from his brother to Caitlyn and back again, only to be ignored.

"What would you call it? 'I love you, Connor; I want you to kiss me, Connor,' " he mimicked cruelly, his eyes blazing into hers. "If you heard another female say that to a man, wouldn't you consider that she was throwing herself at his head?"

At this low blow, uttered in front of Liam, whose reddening ears bespoke his discomfort, Caitlyn was so furious she could not speak for a full minute. If during that time her anger was joined by an aching hurt that grew more painful with every passing heartbeat, she refused to let anyone see it, or to acknowledge it to herself.

"You bastard!" When she could talk again, she threw the words at him like stones. His eyes flared back at her.

"You go too far, Connor!" Liam said urgently, jumping to his feet and laying a hand on his brother's arm.

"The hell I do!" Connor's voice was savage; his eyes never left Caitlyn's whitening face.

Then something about her expression made his mouth tighten, and he looked down at his brother's restraining hand with violence in his eyes.

"Get out of my way," he said through his teeth. When Liam made no move to do so, Connor shook him off and strode past him and Caitlyn and out the door. Caitlyn and Liam stared at each other as the sound of Connor's boots on the stairs echoed about their heads.

"He didn't mean it, you know," Liam said uncomfortably after a moment's charged silence.

"Did he not?" Caitlyn's voice was hard.

"You know he didn't. You know Conn." Liam shook his head and walked toward her to pat her shoulder in clumsy consolation. "He flares up, says things he doesn't mean, and then 'tis all forgotten."

"Not by me," Caitlyn said with icy conviction. "Not this time. Your precious brother can go to the devil for all I care!"

It was sometime after midnight. Caitlyn could not sleep, though the rest of the household was long abed. Connor had ridden off on Fharannain after stomping out of the office and had not yet returned. She was becoming more and more convinced that he would not return that night. Visions of him in Meredith Congreve's bed made her grit her teeth. Huddled in a quilt before the banked fire in the kitchen, she waited, her expression increasingly grim. But it was beginning to look as though his comeuppance would have to wait for another day. At the thought, she wanted to gnash her teeth.

For hours the scene in the study had replayed itself in her mind. How dared he say such things to her, and before Liam too! Besides being a coward and a hypocrite, he was a cad! And she meant to tell him so before he was very much older! And if it turned out that he had spent the night making love to Meredith Congreve, she might well split his skull for him and be done with conversation altogether!

Honesty forced her to admit that there was a small grain of truth to his accusation. Some people might just possibly construe her actions as those of a woman throwing herself at his head. She had done most of the running, and she had asked him to kiss her (though not the first time!) and told him she loved him—but what else could one do with a man like Connor, who through some misguided sense of honor refused to follow his—and her—natural inclina- tions?

She was an innocent, but she knew enough to know that the fire that blazed between them when they touched was no ordinary thing. Even when they were merely within sight of each other, the tension that vibrated between them was a tangible entity. But of course, contrary and pig-headed as always, Connor had to take it into his head that something so elemental and strong was also sinful. She had no such reservations. Despite his faults, which were many and varied and which she could spend the better part of the night enumerating, she loved him. She meant to have him—if she didn't murder him first! Jezebel, indeed!

She was in the middle of a great yawn when she heard a footstep on the stoop. Swallowing the yawn, she stood up, hugging the quilt around herself and looking expectantly at the door.

From the parlor, the clock struck two. A fine time to ge getting home, to be sure!

Clearly he was trying to be quiet as he stepped into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Just as clearly he did not at first see her in the shadows beside the fire. Droplets of water shone on the blue-black waves of his hair and clung to his buff superfine coat. It must have started to rain only in the past few minutes, because he was not wet through, merely sprinkled with raindrops. The banked orange glow of the fire illuminated him faintly, casting a huge black shadow over the wall behind him. Broad-shouldered and tall, his hard-muscled legs clad in close-fitting black breeches and riding boots, he was formidable-looking enough without the added specter of the huge black shadow at his back. But as he came into the room, stepping softly with the object she guessed of not rousing the house, there was something furtive, almost guilty about his movements. Obviously, wherever he had been, he was wishful of no witnesses to his return home. At the realization, Caitlyn's chilled-over temper began to heat anew. For where else could he have been, acting so ashamed, but with his mistress?

" 'Tis a fine time for you to be coming in!" she said shrilly, taking a step forward and fixing him with blazing eyes.

In the act of walking toward the fire to warm himself,

Connor started and stopped dead, head swiveling around as his eyes found her. A chagrined look descended briefly over his face before he tried to cover it up with anger.

"What the devil are you doing up?" he growled. His brows came together in a devilish scowl, and his eyes narrowed as they met her accusing gaze. " 'Tis gone two in the morning."

"I'm well aware of the time, thank you. Where have you been?"

He resumed his walk toward the fire. Holding out his hands to the glowing peat, he said over his shoulder, " 'Tis none of your business, miss."

"Is it not?" Incensed, she took a couple of steps toward him, until less than two feet separated them. The accusation emerged of its own volition: "Have you been with that woman?"

He took a long look at her, standing there wrapped ridiculously in a faded blue quilt with just the ruffled neck and hem of her plain white nightgown showing above and below it, bare of foot, her long hair streaming unconfined down her back, her blue eyes blazing at him while she quivered with temper. He sighed. "Stop bedeviling me, lass, and take yourself off to bed. I'm in no kind of mood for your tantrums."

"Tantrums! And I suppose your displays of temper are righteous anger?"

He sighed again as if mightily ill-used and turned away from the fire. "If you won't go to bed, I will. Good night."

"Come back here! I've a great many things to say to you!"

"No doubt you have, but I'm not inclined to listen. You'll have to hold your spleen till morning."

"I . . ." Their conversation was conducted in hissed whispers as she followed him down the hall to the stairs. She broke off abruptly as she watched him lift a foot to the bottom stair, miss his mark, and stagger sideways until his shoulder made contact with the wall and he was able to right himself.

"Connor ..." she began, frowning. He was never clumsy. But before she could finish speaking he had found his balance and was climbing the stairs, his movements a trifle slow and deliberate, but adequate. She followed him almost to the door of his room, watching his every move. Was it possible that he was injured, or ill? There was that in his movements that spoke of a carefully orchestrated striving for normalcy. And now that she thought of it, his speech had been somewhat forced too, though nothing that she would have picked up on, had she not been witness to that uncharacteristic stagger.

"Connor, wait!" she said urgently as he entered his chamber without a backward look.

When it seemed he would shut the door in her face, she shoved against it. To her surprise it flew open to bang against the wall as he went staggering back.