It was near dawn. Connor had tossed and turned in his bed all night, so for without getting a wink of sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he could see Caitlyn's stricken face. He had wounded her to the heart, he knew. But it had been necessary for the future well-being of them all.
As he had told her, her continued presence at Donoughmore was nothing more than a recipe for disaster. Already she had succeeded in making them turn on one another. The previous night's debacle between Cormac and himself was but the final straw. Cormac and Rory were lately at each other's throats constantly as they vied for her favor, and even staid Liam had been seen to give her more than one long look. As for himself, he was too old at twenty-seven to be led around by the nose by tricks from a new-hatched chick. But he would be less than honest if he refused to admit to being swayed by the extraordinary beauty that had grown so unexpectedly in their midst. After all, he was not a saint, not a priest, not a eunuch. He had all the normal male instincts. Fortunately for her, he also had a conscience, and was old enough and experienced enough to follow it. His brothers were younger; in her presence they reminded him of young stags jousting with their antlers. Even among the four of them, close as they were, there was real potential for violence. And when the other males who flocked around Donoughmore now that word of Caitlyn's loveliness had spread were counted into the equation, it was more than a recipe for disaster. It was a prescription for bloodshed. The worst thing about it was that it was no one's fault, yet Caitlyn was going to bear the brunt of the punishment. But he'd been unable to come up with a more palatable course of action than to send her away.
Family had to come first. His family. No matter how winsome or lovely, an outsider could not be allowed to drive a wedge between brothers. Since his father's death, they'd been the world to one another. He had used every last ounce of his strength and ingenuity and passion to keep them all together. There'd been some who had thought to put them on the parish after their father's death, thinking that the young lads would certainly starve on their own. He, Connor, had in his darkest hours thought the same. But he had nevertheless managed to keep them all together, body and soul. A family.
It had been a rough haul. But the worst was behind them. Now he had to concentrate on getting his brothers creditably settled and restoring Donoughmore to what it had been. And there was also the matter of avenging the murder of his father. That he meant to see to once the others were done. Caitlyn had no place in any of these plans. Her presence served merely to confuse the issues. Again he thought that he should have foreseen the complications as soon as he discovered her true sex. But he hadn't. And now the time had come to rectify that mistake. Mickeen was in the right of it, he knew; at Donoughmore, Caitlyn was nothing but trouble.
The holy Sisters would be good to her, teaching her feminine ways and things she should know. Despite her fetching looks and recent foray into flirting, she was still near as much lad as lass, and the fault was to some degree his. He simply didn't know anything about raising a lassie. He'd treated her as one of the lads as long as he could, and when that had become impossible he'd floundered for a bit. The whole situation had somehow gotten beyond him in a matter of a few weeks.
Then, as he'd ridden over the moors the night before, making the expected delivery to Father Patrick, he had had a sudden vision of the way Caitlyn looked defying him in the stable. He had pictured her in his mind's eye as clearly as if she stood before him, pictured the heart-shaped face framed by disheveled masses of raven hair, the flashing sapphire blue of her eyes, the whiteness of her skin, the softness of her pink mouth. He'd pictured the shape of her, clearly apparent in the boy's garb that did as much to reveal as to hide: the long, slender legs that looked all the more shapely and feminine when outlined by the worn material of Cormac's oldest breeches; the slim hips and tiny waist, cinched by a rope of all things; the roundness of her small bottom; the thrust of young tender breasts against the thin linen shirt. And, picturing that, he had felt a fierce stab of lust. God forgive him.
There was the crux of his dilemma: the age-old desire of a male for a lovely young female. Though he had man aged to successfully banish that shameful pang of lust- largely by dwelling on his fury at the headstrong lass who provoked it-he had not banished the uneasy feeling that it had caused. His brothers must be experiencing much the same thing, but they were younger, less disciplined. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that they would lind such strong urges uncontrollable. And the consequences of that he shuddered to contemplate. He was left with a firm conviction: the situation as it existed was impossible.
Father Patrick was an old friend of the family, one of the handful in the Dark Horseman's far-flung distribution network who knew the highwayman's real identity. As the ‹›ld Earl's confessor, Father Patrick had known Connor and his brothers from birth and did not hold his expedient Protestant upbringing against him, realizing that in Connor's heart and soul he was a son of the True Church. While sitting in the vast dark kitchen of the monastery orphanage that the good Father ran, enjoying a wee dram before setting off for Donoughmore again, Connor had lound himself unburdening his dilemma, sinful thoughts mid all. It was Father Patrick who had suggested the Sisters at St. Mary's, and it was Father Patrick who had volunteered to make the arranagements. Connor, well into his dozenth wee dram by that time, had been pleased to agree. Caitlyn was a problem that had to be dealt with. She was disrupting his life, his brother's lives. Her good name was in grave danger of being sullied, to say nothing of her virtue. The Father's suggestion was a good one; if Connor wished now that he had searched for some alternative solution before agreeing, well, that was because he was allowing his heart to rule his head, which was always a mistake.
But her crying had smote him hard.
Connor turned over in bed, trying in vain to find a spot that would induce sleep. The faintest suggestion of silvery moonlight spilled through the shuttered windows. The moon was waxing full again…
He rolled onto his back, kicking at the covers that confined him. As he did so, he saw something move at the foot of his bed. He froze, barely daring to breathe. Someone was in his room, standing at the foot of his bed, watching him. Stealthily, hoping that the person's eyesight was no better than his in the darkness, he slipped his hand beneath his pillow where he kept his loaded pistol. Not for the first time would the habit stand him in good stead.
"Connor."
He would know that voice in the darkest pit in Hell. His fingers abandoned their quest for the pistol to grab the bedclothes. Sitting up abruptly, yanking the covers securely over his lap, for he slept naked, he glared through the darkness at the source of his sleeplessness.
"What the devil are you doing in my bedchamber at this hour?" The question was a surly hiss. On top of his recent shameful thoughts, her presence was as welcome as potato rot to a farmer.
"I want to make a bargain with you." Her voice was determined, but her form was shrouded in darkness. Connor gave vent to a long-suffering sigh and reached for the tender he kept on the bedside table. In moments the candle was lit. The flickering light cast strange shadows in the comers of the room. He looked down the length of the bed at Caitlyn and felt another twinge in the region of his heart. Her nose was as red as the worst tippler's, her eyes were swollen and damp, and her black hair straggled about her colorless face like the hair on one of the witches of All Saints. Clad in a long-sleeved, high-necked white nightdress, she looked the veriest child. The fatal beauty that had so alarmed him was superseded by innocent pathos. But as he looked closer, he saw that there was an air of triumph about her that belied the evidence of recent copious tears.
"A bargain?" He was wary. With her, he had learned to be.
"Aye, a bargain. You don't send me away-and I won't tell anyone that you're the Dark Horseman."
Connor was struck speechless for a moment. He leaned back against the intricately carved rosewood headboard and stared at the hardhearted little minx who was very calmly threatening his life and the lives of all those he held dear. He had never envisioned this possibility, and it flummoxed him. Slowly, carefully, he worked it through. It all boiled down to one inescapable conclusion: she had him. Even as he recognized the fact, a spurt of relief mixed with his anger that it should be so.
" 'Tis bloody ungrateful you are, isn't it?" he demanded, nettled.
She lifted her chin at him. Connor could not help but notice the thrust of her breasts against her nightdress. To his angry embarrassment, his body responded as nature had intended that it should. Damn, there would be hell to pay if she stayed. And he was thrice a fool for allowing himself to get caught in this predicament, though he still did not see quite what he could have done to prevent it coming about. He gave up on that for the moment and focused his attention on keeping his eyes on her face. If she was to remain with them, then all of them-himself included-would have to keep a tight rein on their baser instincts.
"I don't want to be sent away." It was an explanation. Connor tucked the covers more securely about his waist, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and eyed her.
"I've a notion you're bluffing."
"Try me." Her eyes met his with a cool look that reminded him of men he'd faced on the dueling field at dawn.
"You'd really see me hang? And Cormac? And Rory? And Liam? To say nothing of poor Mickeen?"
She moistened her lips. Connor watched the movement of that small pink tongue with interest, which was quickly followed by lively dismay. Looking only at her face wasn't a solution, it seemed. He tried to narrow his focus to nose and eyes.
"I wouldn't like to. But I don't want to leave here either. Donoughmore is my home now."
Disgruntled, he stared at her, hoping to shame her for what was blackmail pure and simple. She stared right back at him, not giving an inch. Connor had the disquieting notion that in this impertinent slip of a lass his vaunted iron will had met its match.
Keeping his eyes from slipping downward was something of a strain, and he was glad when she crossed her arms over her chest, from either nervousness or cold, he couldn't be sure which. Despite his best intentions, it had been impossible for him to miss the faint movements of her breasts inside the loose gown.
The only possible solution that didn't involve either her winning or putting his brothers in danger occurred to him. He dismissed it out of hand, but she couldn't know that.
He smiled at her with slow relish. "I could kill you, you know. To keep you silent." That should put a scare into the little viper, he thought with satisfaction.
She smiled faintly in turn and shook her head. "You wouldn't." The statement was positive. Her eyes met his fearlessly.
Annoyed, Connor pursed his lips. "Well, now, we're at a stalemate, it seems. For I don't think you'd turn in the Dark Horseman either."
That rattled her a little, he could see. Her eyes widened, and she moistened her lips again. Then she frowned, so that her lovely silky black eyebrows met in a line over her small nose, and looked at him levelly.
"But then you could never be sure, could you?"
She was calling his bluff, just as he had called hers.
And for all that he was fairly certain that a bluff was all it was, he was going to permit her to get away with it. If "permit" was the right word.
"So you'd make me a bargain: your silence if I allow you to stay."
"Aye."
His mouth twisted with derision that was laigely self- directed as he glared at her in not-quite-unwilling surrender. " 'Tis a spawn of the devil you are, Caitlyn O'Malley. Very well, you've got your bargain. I wish you the joy of the consequences."
She sagged with relief. A tentative smile teased the corners of her mouth. Watching her, Connor felt a renewed twinge of foreboding. Every grain of sense he possessed screamed that he was looking at a gargantuan catastrophe in the making.
"Are you angiy with me, Connor?" She was peeping at him through the incredible fringe of her lashes, her head slightly atilt. It was an enchanting trick, one that she employed frequently of late and, he thought, unconsciously. He shook his head at himself, remembering the cocky, ragamuffin lad he'd thought he'd brought home with him from Dublin. How could he have ever imagined that those eyes belonged to anything but a lass?
"Furious."
She eyed him. Then the tentative smile turned into a real one. Before he realized what she was about, she ran around the side of the bed, leaned over him, put her hands on his bare shoulders, and planted a soft kiss on his unshaven cheek. He almost reeled at the sudden assault on his senses. The very unexpectedness of it saved him. Before he had time to respond in any fashion, she straightened. If there was anything untoward in his expression- and if his body was any indication, there must have been-she didn't seem to notice.
"You're not." She was turning to leave. Silent, he watched her cross the room, infuriated, amused, alarmed- and faintly bedazzled by the swing of her small backside beneath that loose gown. At the door, she turned back to look at him, one arm lifted to rest against the jamb. Masses of black hair hung in a silken tangle down her back. Her deep blue eyes slanted sideways at him. He was again conscious of a twinge of premonition. She was too lovely by half, without trying in the least. For him, for his brothers, for Donoughmore itself, this lass spelled trouble. Yet he was letting her stay.
"Thank you, Connor," she whispered. And then she disappeared into the darkness of the hall.