Caitlyn rubbed the soft cloth across her face, concentrating on the feel of its gentle abrasiveness so that she would not feel the burning pain in her buttocks and thighs. The hot soapy water caused the marks left by Sir Edward's latest beating-delivered the night before-to sting unmercifully. But she was becoming almost accustomed to bathing (indeed, living) with pain and had found that if she concentrated on something other than her discomfort, the discomfort actually seemed to lessen, if not disappear.
Splashing her face to rid it of the soap, she groped for the towel. Minna, the bracket-faced maid Sir Edward had provided for her use along with the house, had set the towel out on the small table by the tub before Caitlyn had dismissed her for the night. As it always did, pride had forbidden her to allow Minna to remain. She could not bear the idea of anyone seeing the shameful marks that bore silent witness to the beatings she endured. Minna was in Sir Edward's employ, hired as much to guard as to serve, Caitlyn suspected. Minna and the hulking butler, Fromer, followed her orders insofar as she gave them. Since she had never requested them to do aught but the most mundane servants' duties, she had never tested their loyalty to the point that they were openly insubordinate. But she had no doubt that that point could be reached: the servants were Sir Edward's minions, not her own. If the two should conflict, she knew that Sir Edward's interests would be served.
Her groping hand found the smooth wood of the table- top, moved across it. An extra bar of the same lilac-scented soap in which she had bathed skittered to the floor. It landed on the carpet beneath the bath with a muffled thud. The towel must have fallen to the floor too, because she could not find it.
"Devil take it," she muttered crossly and opened one eye to search for the towel. The sight that met her bleary gaze caused both eyes to pop open, along with her mouth.
"I give you good-evening, Caitlyn," Connor said suavely. There was a glint in his eyes that told her he had been watching her for some time. Caitlyn gave a momentary prayer of thanksgiving that he had not chosen to call on her in such a manner the night before, when Sir Edward had, at just about this time, been practicing his beastly ritual on her. The thought of Connor's reaction had he witnessed that made her shudder.
"Cold?" He misinterpreted her shudder and held out the towel, which he had apparently appropriated. She accepted it, closed her mouth, and patted her face dry with great deliberation while she willed herself into her role. When at last she again met his eyes, her own were guarded, cool.
"What are you doing here?"
"Paying you a call. Did you think I would not find you?"
"I hoped you would not."
His eyes narrowed at the calm statement. "Then 'tis sorry I am that your hope was misplaced. If I were you, I'd step out of that water. You'll be chilled to the bone before long."
"If you'll turn your back, I will."
He laughed then, the sound unamused. "Turn my back? Come, come, Caitlyn! Over the course of the past several months, you've surely lost all claims to feminine modesty. You are, after all, no matter how much you profess to love your gentleman friend or how much he may profess to love you, naught but his whore. Just as you were mine. So why bother to pretend to a modesty you cannot feel? Physically, at least, I know you well, from the scar on your thumb to the little black mole on the left check of your luscious behind."
"Will you turn your back?" There was an edge to her voice. His comments were both insulting and unsettling, but beyond that they reminded her of the telltale marks on her flesh. She knew that if he saw them, the fat would be in the fire indeed. Because she loved him, and because he was in mortal danger though he did not know it, she had to be strong. She had to drive him away this time for good and all-before the whole situation blew up hideously in her face.
"No." The one-word reply bordered on brutality. Caitlyn eyed him for a moment, then made up her mind. She would play the role of whore that he had assigned her, and hoped to give him such a disgust of her that he would never want to see her again. It was the only way she could think of to keep him safe.
"Very well, then. As you say, 'tis useless to be modest with you. I had quite forgotten how well we once knew one another. 'Twas very long ago, after all."
"A year." His reply was toneless as she stood up, step ping from the tub, careful to keep her abused backside turned away from him. Thus she presented him with what looked like a deliberately wanton view of her full frontal nudity as she patted her body dry with carefully assumed languor. His eyes took on a dangerous gleam that she thought was a combination of anger and desire. Still damp, she abandoned her self-ministrations without the least appearance of haste and reached for the white silk wrapper Minna had left lying over the back of a nearby chair. Pulling it around herself, tying the belt, she felt marginally safer. At least the incendiary evidence of the abuse she had suffered was hidden from him. The servants were retired for the night, and Sir Edward, his lust slaked for a few days from their hellish encounter of the night before, was unlikely to make a late-hour appearance. She would have no better opportunity to convince Connor of her unsuitability for him once and for all.
His eyes were fixed on her body, the shape of which was clearly visible through the thin silk that clung closely to every damp curve. So for just a moment she allowed herself the luxury of looking at him. The last time she had seen him, she had been too shocked to notice much in the way of detail. Now she saw that he looked older, with lines of suffering in his face that had not been there in those days at Donoughmore. Here and there a silver thread glittered against the night-black waves of his hair. He was altogether taller, bigger, more formidable-looking than she remembered. His clothes were new and very fine, the work of a fashionable English tailor, she imagined. The cloak he wore was of fine black wool, fastened at the neck with an elegant frog. Beneath it his frock coat was a sober fawn over snug black breeches. His high-topped boots were black and spotted with water from the dampness outside. His linen was faintly crumpled, his neckcloth looking as though he had retied it in a hurry. She wondered if, beneath it, he still wore her betrothal ring on a chain around his neck. The thought made her heart contract. He was still her impossibly handsome Connor, lean, dark, and dangerous. Though she had gone a whole year without seeing him, she had not forgotten the smallest detail of his appearance, from the blue-black sheen of his jaw as night waxed into morning to the heart-stopping impact of those aqua eyes.
His eyes lifted from their avid contemplation of her curves to find her studying him just as hungrily.
"You've not changed," he muttered, and the flames that leaped to life in those devil's eyes nearly unnerved her.
"You have," she said and laughed, a carefully calculated little trill. One of the ladybirds whom she had met at the latest demimonde party to which the gentlemen had brought their mistresses instead of their wives had laughed like that. At the time, she had thought it was the most wanton sound she had ever heard. Its effect on every gentleman within earshot had been immediate and apparent. Emerging from her own throat, its effect on Connor was immediate and apparent too. He looked both furious and disgusted.
"I had forgotten just how… very handsome you are," she breathed, deliberately fanning the flames, and reached up to pull the gold pick from her hair. As the silky black cloud tumbled around her face and shoulders, fell down her back, she smiled at him with conscious provocation. As she had expected, his face tightened. What she hadn't expected was his next reaction. He was in front of her in two strides, his hands gripping her upper arms hard through the flimsy silk.
"Now stop that," he said, glaring down at her, fingers digging punishingly into her soft flesh. "I'll not tolerate your acting the whore in my presence, at least."
"I'll act any way I please, in your presence or out of it," she snapped back, startled out of her careful pose. His brows lifted, and he looked briefly struck. The expression vanished almost instantly, to be replaced by a black frown.
"You'll do as I tell you, my lass. And I'm telling you that I'll have no more of your whorish tricks, unless you're wishful to feel my hand on your backside."
"Lay a hand on my backside, Connor d'Arcy, and you'll draw back a bloody nub! You forget that I'm no longer subject to your hell-born temper!''
"I'll have no more of your swearing, either!"
"Bastard! Son of a bastard! Hell-born son of a bastard! Bloody-" This deliberate litany of curses, uttered in furious defiance of his edict, earned her a little shake.
"You watch your mouth!"
"I'll swear if I want to! What I do is no concern of yours any more! Who asked you to come sniffing after me, anyway?"
Caitlyn suddenly stopped her tirade and took a deep breath. She was horrified to discover that she had been arguing with him in precisely the same vein as she always had. Taking a grip on herself, reminding herself of her object, which was to save Connor at whatever cost to herself, she deliberately put a lid on her wrath and softened her voice to a tone a mild exasperation.
"What will it take to convince you, I wonder? I don't want you any more, Connor. I don't need you any more. 'Tis grateful I am that you rescued me from the back streets of Dublin, and doubly grateful that you taught me not to fear men. But I'm not a bairn for you to raise any longer. I'm all grown up, and I've chosen my own path in life. One that does not include you. So go home and mother your brothers, and leave me be!"
By the end of this neat speech, Connor was glaring at her so fiercely that his eyes were mere glittering slits in his dark face.
"So you're grateful to me, eh? Aye, you should be! I saved your life, you hell-born whelp, took you home and fed you and turned you from a grimy, thieving lad into a lovely little lass! As you grew up, I turned myself inside out trying to save you from my brothers and myself, and from so many others that I've lost count! Had I known that whoring was in your blood, I'd not have bothered! Doubtless if we'd passed you around the family, you'd have thanked the lot of us for the compliment!"
Caitlyn, unable to stop herself, scowled at him. Staring down at her through those glittering slits of eyes, he continued softly. " 'Tis a second miraculous escape I've had, no doubt. For had you not possessed a clearer head than I during our recent touching reunion, I doubtless would have fetched you back to Donoughmore with me. And then the fat would have been in the fire, indeed."
"And just what does that mean, pray?"
He smiled then, a slight, taunting smile that lit her temper again despite her best efforts to control it. "Why, it means that, no matter how willing you might be, I could not see you bed my brothers, my little soiled dove."
Before she thought, on a blinding blaze of temper, she slapped him. His head jerked back, his eyes widened, though for just a moment she thought she saw the merest hint of satisfaction in them. Before she could think further, he was jerking her against him, bending his head to find her lips. He kissed her, grinding his mouth against hers as if he wanted to hurt her, to punish her. She fought him, tried to pull away, but he was too strong, forcing her lips apart with hurtful insistence. Despite her anger, despite the warning voice inside her that bleated doom if she failed to keep herself under control, she could not stop the tiny spurt of passion that flared to life under his mouth. He must have felt the beginnings of a response she could not control, because he released her, pulling back to study her with unnerving intensity.
Appalled and frightened at her own response and his apparent knowledge of it, she managed to jerk her arm free of his hold and slap him again. The openhanded blow was vicious, motivated by panic as much as by anger, and it rocked his head to one side. Before he could recover she slapped him a third time. This time he caught her wrist, imprisoning it. The mark of her hand was plainly visible on his dark cheek, the whitened imprints quickly filling with red. His hair had come loose from its ribbon, framing his face in night-black waves. A muscle twitched at the corner of his hard mouth, and his jaw with its near a day's growth of beard was set and grim. He towered above her, his shoulders in the black cloak wide enough to block her view of the rest of the room. She had forgotten how tall he was, how strong and muscular. Always, to her, he was simply Connor. Her Connor, who would never harm her. But now, looking up at him, she bethought herself of something: he was no longer her Connor. By her own words and actions she had stripped herself of that protection. Now she was vulnerable to the devil in him. And "devil" was exactly the right word to describe how he appeared to her in that moment.
With a kind of dreadful fascination she met that glittering aqua gaze. And she remembered how, when she had first laid eyes on him, she'd thought that he had devil's eyes. Now she was seeing those eyes again, and as she stared up into them she realized that she had managed to awaken the sleeping devil, and no mistake.