Dark of the Moon (7 page)

The back door opened. Cormac and Rory stepped out on the stoop together. She looked up at them warily. As they saw her, identical devilish twinkles came into both pairs of hazel eyes.

"You missed a good meal, O'Malley. Mrs. McFee's cooking's enough to make the angels sing in heaven."

"You often go around missing meals for no good reason? No wonder you're so litde. You'll never be much of a man at the rate you're going. A leprechaun, maybe."

"I'm man enough already to take you on, Cormac d'Arcy. I already took you down in the garden there, and I'm ready to do it again anytime."

Rory whistled, still grinning. "Pretty big talk for a scrawny monkey, wouldn't you say, brother?"

"I would indeed, brother. So you think you can best me in a fight, monkey?"

"Quicker'n I can spit." Caitlyn spat on the grass at her feet to illustrate. She was small, but she was tough and wiry and possessed of a fiery temper that was enough to make many a lad bigger than she back down. The reputation that temper had earned her had saved her from many a fight. But of course these d'Arcys had no notion of her legendary rages, so her reputation would not help her now.

"That quick, eh?"

"You can't fight that halfling, Cormac. Connor won't like it." Rory was speaking seriously now.

"I know it. But maybe I can tan his backside for him. He's a smart-mouthed little cockerel."

Outrage heated Caitlyn's cheeks. Tan her backside . . .! Rory and Cormac jumped down from the stoop in a single movement. Caitlyn felt a combination of fury and panic as they closed in on her, laughter curling their mouths. They were two together, and they were far bigger than she. Faced with such a situation in Dublin, she'd have cut and run. But here there was nowhere to go, and anyway, she couldn't back down now. They'd bully her forever. Her only chance of surviving with a relatively whole skin and her pride intact was to launch a surprise attack.

She charged Cormac, punching him lightning fast in the nose and then butting him in the stomach with her head. Grunting with pain, he staggered backward, his hand clapped over his nose. Blood was already beginning to gush from beneath his sheltering hand.

"You little bastard!" Cormac took his hand away from his nose to see blood all over it. The grin left his face, to be replaced by scowling anger. Caitlyn, fuming herself, stood facing him in a crouch, fists doubled. She would stand her ground or die in the attempt.

"Look out, little brother, the bantam has already bloodied your nose! No telling what kind of damage he might do to the rest of you," Rory chortled, standing back. Cormac's mouth tightened at the teasing. Caitlyn could see that what had started out as a joke was no longer amusing—anger glittered in Cormac's eyes. Blood still ran from his nose. For all his gangly build, he looked a formidable opponent. He was near a foot taller and stones heavier than she.

But for Caitlyn fury was fast banishing caution. She could feel it building up inside her, familiar and comforting.

"Still think you can tan my backside, d'Arcy?" Caitlyn sneered. "It'd take a better man than you or your bloody brothers!"

"We'll see about that, you insolent litde beggar!" Cormac charged, his arms closing about Caitlyn's waist, lifting her off the ground. She fought wildly as he turned her over in midair, landing some well-placed kicks and blows that made him grunt with pain and dance to keep the most vulnerable parts of his body away from her. She managed to grab his crotch on the way down and twisted that vulnerable area as hard as she could. He yelped, cursing. Caitlyn went flying through the air to land with the force of a cannonball on her belly in the thick grass. All the wind was knocked out of her. She could only lay stunned as Cormac straddled her back. He lifted the tails of her coat, giving several hard slaps to the soggy backside of her breeches. She didn't have enough wind to curse him, though the blows stung badly. Gasping for air, she swung wildly at him as he turned her over onto her back. Taking no chances with those flying fists, Cormac pinned her wrists to the ground. If looks could have killed he would have died on the spot, but he was grinning in the face of her spitting rage instead, his good humor restored by the success of his revenge.

"Ah, he's naught but a lad, Cormac. Let him up." Rory walked over and looked down at Caitlyn. Heaving her body in an attempt to dislodge Cormac proved useless. He was far too heavy for her to buck off. She lay stiff with fury, spewing out a stream of curses that should have shamed the devil himself. Cormac merely chuckled.

"He's soggy as day-old cake, Rory. My breeches are all wet from sitting on him."

"Well, he wouldn't change."

"Do you suppose he's shy? Or does he have some sort of deformity he can't bear anyone to see?" Devilishness sparkled out of Cormac's eyes. Catching the spirit of the thing, Rory grinned back at his brother.

"We should find out. We'd be doing Conn a favor if this lad turned out to be a freak. Or maybe he's got the mark of the devil on him somewhere. On his backside, say."

"That's a possibility. Or, wet as he is, he could catch the fever and die. We'd be doin' him a favor too."

"Aye, that we would." They nodded solemnly at each other. Caitlyn, catching the drift of this, began to struggle violently, calling them every filthy name she had ever learned on Dublin's streets. They were laughing as Rory squatted to keep her wrists pinned while Cormac straddled her ankles. Caitlyn shrieked imprecations at Cormac's head as he reached up to untie the lacing of her breeches. She writhed wildly but couldn't evade his hands. The worst panic she had ever known in her life seized her.

"No! You bastards, you bloody buggers, no! What are you, the kind that likes boys? I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" But all her screaming, cursing, and fighting were in vain. She managed to get one ankle loose just as Cormac jerked her breeches and her drawers with them down to her knees. Viciously she kicked him, sending him toppling backward while she squirmed over onto her front. Rory's grip on her wrists went curiously slack. She pulled free, then flung her coat over her bare bottom as she grabbed at her breeches and drawers. She was uncovered for no more than a moment.

Cormac was lying on his back on the grass, still in the position in which he had landed when she had kicked him, a stunned look on his face as he swiveled his head to stare at her.

Rory, still crouching behind her, was regarding her with an equally stunned expression.

"What the bloody hell is going on now?" The voice was Connor's. A shaft of pure terror shot through Caitlyn as she lifted her eyes to meet that devd's gaze. She was exposed, naked, although her feminine parts were covered as well as they had ever been. But Cormac and Rory had seen. She could no longer rely on the protection of claiming the male sex. As a female, she was hideously vulnerable. ...

"Conn." Rory spoke in a strangled voice. Caitlyn tensed, her eyes never leaving Connor's face.

"Well, what is it? I warn you, I've had a bloody long day, and I'm getting a wee bit tired of your high jinks."

"Connor." But Rory couldn't seem to say any more than his brother's name. Connor frowned as he looked Rory over closely.

"What ails you, Rory? Can't you speak?"

"Connor, he's a bloody lass!" Cormac blurted, looking accusingly at Caitlyn.

'"What?"
Those devil's eyes swiveled to stare at Cormac.

"He's a lass, I tell you. O'Malley. He—she's a lass."

"What nonsense are you spouting now, Cormac?"

"It's no nonsense." Rory got to his feet, his eyes still fastened on Caitlyn with a kind of horror. "That's a lass."

Connor's eyes turned back to rake Caitlyn, who lay huddled on the grass in a state of what almost amounted to shock, her eyes huge on Connor's face. "He looks like no lass I ever saw.

Your brain's getting soft, the pair of you."

Drawing a quick, shaky breath, Caitlyn mustered all her courage and scrambled to her feet.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance the younger d'Arcys wouldn't be able to convince their brother. Maybe she could even make them doubt what they'd seen. Desperate, she realized that a bluff was her only chance.

" 'Tis naught but a pack of lies! I'm as much a man as any of you! Aye, and more than you, Cormac d'Arcy. I bloodied your nose right proper, did I not?"

The three d'Arcys stared at her. None seemed about to rise to the bait. Connor's eyes in particular unsettled her as he ran them slowly from the very top of her head down the length of her body to her wet shoes and back up again, stopping to frown at strategic spots in between.

"We were sporting around and Cormac yanked his— her breeches to his knees. He—she was as bare as a babe,

Connor. And she's a lass. There's no doubt at all, Connor." Rory's voice was hoarsely earnest.

"A lass!" Connor looked as dumbfounded as the others.

"Nay!" Caitlyn yelled, backing away as Connor took a step toward her. Flight was her objective. She would not stay to be abused by men who knew her true sex. Her mother's fate flashed like a horrible warning before her. Although her body had never been used by a man, she was no innocent. She knew the violence that men for their own pleasure perpetrated on helpless females. Her mother had dressed her in male attire to prevent just such a thing from happening to her. She would run, hide in the countryside, make her way back to Dublin . . .

"Catch him—her—oh, hell, just do it, Rory!" Connor gave the clipped instruction just as Caitlyn turned to flee. Rory was already behind her. His hands closed over her upper arms, stopping her in mid-step with her back to him.

"Let me go! Let me go!" Terror gave her strength as she struggled wildly. Her first crazed thought was that she would be thrown on the ground and used by the three of them there and then. Men were beasts about their pleasure. Rory's grip on her arms was unbreakable, so she picked up her foot and kicked backward as hard as she could, catching him in the kneecap.

"Arghh! Sweet Brian, she's a little hellcat! Here, give me a hand, Cormac, quick!"

Caitlyn screamed as Cormac grabbed her around the waist, lifting her clear off the ground with one arm tight around her knees to try to still her kicking while Rory held her flailing fists.

Writhing in desperate fear and anger, she shrieked curses at the top of her lungs.

"Watch her feet! Hold 'em, Cormac!"

"Hell, you hold her hands! She nigh tore off my privates earlier! She's vicious as a trapped badger!"

Rory and Cormac barely managed to hold her in a position in which she could do relatively little damage to either of them. They eyed their older brother desperately, but he was watching Caitlyn's frantic struggles, a frown on his face.

"Here, now. No one's going to hurt you. So just give over, lass, do." Connor was speaking to her, his voice gentle, soothing. Caitlyn called him a name that would have made a whore blush and spat in his direction. She had the satisfaction of watching him jump back so that the spittie just missed his boots. His frown darkened as he stared at her.

"Watch it, Conn. She's already bloodied Cormac's nose." A note of humor was beginning to return to Rory's voice. "And tweaked his privates. No telling what she might do to you."

"Be silent, idiot. Can't you see the wee lass is frightened?" Connor said. Then, to Caitlyn in the same gende voice he had used before: "O'Malley, quit your thrashing and we'll just talk, I swear. No one will lay a finger on you. We mean you no harm at all, at all."

"Burn in hell, you bloody bastard!" With that she writhed so violently that she managed to bring her head down to the level of Cormac's shoulder. With a growl like an animal's, she bit him until she tasted blood.

"Oww! Oh! Jaysus, she's bit me! The litde hellcat's bit me!" Cormac danced backward, his grip on Caitlyn slipping, so that her feet touched the ground.

"Hold her, Cormac, damn it!" Kicking violently, she also managed to make Rory leap back.

She was nearly free—

"Enough!" The brusque word was accompanied by a hand on the neck of her coat jerking her off balance. As she stumbled backward, she felt an arm slide under her knees. The hand that had been in her coat caught both her wrists, imprisoning them. She was being lifted. . . .

Screaming, fighting for her life, Caitlyn found herself slung around Connor's shoulders like a dead deer, her head and arms imprisoned on one side of his chest, her legs trapped on the other.

His hold was like iron; her violent struggles availed her nothing. But still she kicked and screamed and cursed as he swung around and carried her into the house.

"Your lordship, what in the name of heaven—?" Attracted by the bloodcurdling screams, Mrs. McFee came hurrying from the kitchen to stare stunned as Connor headed with his burden toward the stairs.

"What're you doin' to O'Malley?" Willie, his mouth rimmed by some kind of red sauce, had followed Mrs. McFee into the hall. Caitlyn got just a glimpse of them, accompanied by a surprised but grimly satisfied-looking Mickeen, as she was borne off up the stairs.

"You let me go! I'll tear you limb from limb, I will, you—!" Caitlyn was beside herself with fear and rage as Connor gained the upper landing and took her into a small, sparsely furnished room that from the desk and papers strewn about she surmised was used as an office. He bent and, ducking his head, lifted her up and deposited her in a hard straight chair while still retaining his grip on her wrists. Keeping his legs deftly out of reach of her kicks, he leaned forward until his eyes were on the level of hers. The glint in those aqua eyes gave her pause.

For just a minute her screaming, kicking struggles were suspended as she stared back at him. If she'd had her hands free, she would have once again made the sign that warded off the evil eye.

Then she got hold of herself. Evil eye or no, this was a mortal man who would harm her as a mortal man harms a female. To save herself, she had to fight.

"Lay a hand on me and I'll kill you, I swear I will," she said through her teeth. The fierceness of the threat made his eyebrows lift, and then a corner of his mouth quirked up just a fraction in the suggestion of an unwary smile. Caitlyn, knowing in the part of her mind that was stiJl thinking rationally how absurd it was that she, who wasn't even half his size, should threaten dire bodily harm to him, saw no humor in the situation at all. She might be small, but she would inflict some damage on him if he didn't leave her be. She would!