Dark of the Moon (44 page)

Observing him, Caitlyn thought he looked on the verge of violence for just a moment before the sudden flare of rage faded, to be replaced by that expression of watchful attention again.

"Are you hoping to convince me that you're with child?" His voice was carefully guarded.

Caitlyn realized that he too was working hard to keep his true emotions from showing.

"No." The confession was sudden and abrupt. Not even if it would make him let her go—which she didn't think it would—could she pretend to be carrying Sir Edward's child. The thought made her want to throw up.

"Why are you not, then? Have you been doing something to prevent it?"

"Certainly." Her reply was haughty. His mouth curved slightly in a derisive smile.

"Pray enlighten me as to what."

Since Caitlyn had not even known there was a means of preventing conception, she was all at sea. She suspected that he was laying a trap for her, but she was too canny a bird to fall for that!

"Use your imagination.'Tis grand enough," she snapped. He actually smiled that time, though the smile was a trifle grim about the edges.

"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.

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 to 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.

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 handi-work 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.