"Hold your tongue! 'Tis enough and more I've had of your blather." He glared at her for a moment, draping his neckcloth around his neck without bothering to tie it, so that the ends trailed down his shirtfront. He pulled on his boots, shrugged into his coat, then cocked a thumb at her. "Get up and get dressed. You're coming home with me."
Caitlyn gaped at him. She had not been expecting that; the idea had been to infuriate him enough so that he would wash his hands of her for good and all. She had succeeded in infuriating him, clearly-he looked angry enough to chew nails. But she had not foreseen that he would still be intent on carrying her off. One look at that dark, set face told her that she had a problem. She had seen Connor look like that before, and when he did he invariably got what he wanted.
"Don't be daft. I'm not going anywhere. Though I wish you'd leave and not bother me again."
"Oh, I'm leaving, all right. And so are you."
"I'm not! You can't make me!"
"What a child you are," he said contemptuously, and came over to the bed and yanked her to her feet. Caitlyn pulled her hand out of his and backed away, glaring at him.
"Damn it, Connor, you can't come in here like this and start bullying me! You don't own me! You have no rights to me at all! I don't want to come with you! I don't even want to see you again! Can't you get it through your head that what was once between us is over?''
"The hell it is," he said and came after her. Alarmed at the look in his eyes, Caitlyn backed away until she had reached the wall and could go no further. Still he kept coming, until he was a scant handbreadth away from her.
"Are you going to get dressed?" he asked, his voice ominous as he crowded her against the wall. Those aqua eyes glittered down at her like twin daggers. Looking up at him, Caitlyn wanted to scream with frustration, and cry and laugh at the same time. She knew this Connor well. He would take her with him, would she or wouldn't she, by force if need be. And oh, how she wanted to be taken! But she couldn't permit him to sweep her up and carry her off. Because as soon as Sir Edward discovered that she had disappeared, the tale would be told. She didn't know if he would search for her first or go straight to the authorities. She did know that there would be hell to pay for the man she loved.
"I am not going to get dressed," she said, meeting him glare for glare and trying to sound calmly determined. "Because I am not going anywhere. I have a new life now, and it is here. You are making things very difficult for me, Connor. Please, please, just go away and leave me be!"
"In a pig's eye," he said through his teeth. Before she could guess what he meant to do, he threw his cloak around her shoulders, wrapping her in it. Then he bent and hoisted her onto his shoulder. She hung facedown for a surprised instant while he turned toward the window. Then she began to fight, kicking and squirming until her hands were finally free of the enveloping cloak and could pound his back with her fists.
"Damn you, Connor d'Arcy, put me down!"
He continued to walk toward the window. She punched him in the small of his back with all her strength. He did not even flinch.
"Put me down, do you hear? I'm not alone in the house, you know! I'll scream for help!"
"Scream away," he invited, steadying her with a hand on her backside. His other arm was wrapped securely around her legs to keep her from falling and/or kicking him as he maneuvered the pair of them through the window. The freezing cold of the night struck Caitlyn like a blow. It was dark as pitch, the wind was blowing, and a few fat flakes of snow drifted down. Even with the haphazard protection of his cloak, the wind found its way up her legs. The silk wrapper she wore beneath was totally inadequate as a decent cover for her nakedness, let alone as protection from the weather.
"You can't just kidnap me, damn you! I'm not even dressed!" Despite her furiously hissed protest, she clung to the back of his coat with both hands. Upside down as she was, the distance to the street below was terrifying. He walked the length of the stoop as surefootedly as a cat, despite his limp, but she did not want to chance an ill- timed bite or pinch that would make him drop her on her head on the cobblestones.
"I thought you were going to scream," he taunted. Reaching the edge of the stoop, he bent to catch hold of the decorative railing with one hand. "Hold tight," he advised her and swung himself over the side, so that the pair of them were dangling over the muddy side yard while he hung from the railing with one hand. Caitlyn gasped as the ground spun perhaps ten feet below her reeling head. She shut her eyes and clutched him for dear life. He let go, and she had the brief, terrifying sensation of falling until with a thump he landed on the balls of his feet without ever relaxing his grip on her.
"You swine," she said, opening her eyes when it occurred to her that they were safe on terra firma.
"Bite me and I'll make you wish you were dead," he threatened by way of answer, apparently remembering her previous reaction to being carried off in such a high-handed fashion. Caitlyn knew better than to bite. His retaliation would be swift and more painful than he could imagine, given her battered backside. She contented herself with hissing curses at him as he strode off with her down the street.
"You watch your mouth or I'll wash it out with soap for you when I get you home," he warned her, sounding grim.
"Damn you, I'm not a child! Quit treating me like one! You can't wash my mouth out-and you can't carry me off like this either! I have a right to my own life! I want to go back! Damn you, Connor d'Arcy, do you hear me?"
They had reached the end of the street. A hackney rattled past. Connor let out a shrill whistle, and the driver pulled up. Caitlyn could not see the man's face, but her own burned as she considered the picture she must present: barefoot, next door to naked, and being carried like contraband over Connor's shoulder.
"Giving ye trouble, is she, mate?" the man asked with a jovial chuckle. Caitlyn clenched her fists in the soft, damp wool of Connor's coat. Just wait until she was on her feet again! She would rock his head for him!
"A mite," Connor allowed. Though Caitlyn could not see it, she guessed that the two exchanged purely masculine grins before he stepped up into the cab with her and the driver shut the door on them.
"You are the most…!" she sputtered as he bent to deposit her on the seat. Upright, she clutched his cloak closer and glared at him while he settled himself opposite her. Two small, nearly burned-out candles guttered in sconces set high in the hackney's shabby sides.
"The most what?" he questioned with a lifted eyebrow. The candlelight caught those aqua eyes and gave them a startling life of their own. He was too arrogant by half.
"The most despicable, loathsome, high-handed bastard it has ever been my displeasure to encounter!" she snapped, huddling inside the cloak to ward off the chill wind that seemed to blow right through the coach. "How dare you carry me off this way! What are you going to do, lock me up somewhere? I warn you, 'tis what you'll have to do to keep me!"
"Whatever it takes until one of us has come to her senses," he said, lounging back in the seat. Now that he had the upper hand, much of his fury seemed to have dissipated. He was watching her like a hawk, but there was a kind of weighing in his eyes as well that Caitlyn was too furious to ponder.
"Until one of has come to her senses?" she repeated with a disbelieving laugh. "Are you implying that you think I've lost my senses by preferring another man to you? You are an arrogant bastard!"
"And you'll be eating soap as soon as we get home," he responded almost amiably. The coach lurched to a stop. Caitlyn felt panic begin to build. She knew Connor, and he would have not the slightest compunction about locking her in an attic somewhere until she, as he put it, "came to her senses." The only problem was that as soon as Minna missed her in the morning, she was bound to send word to Sir Edward. Caitlyn had to get back inside that house on Lisle Street before Sir Edward discovered she was missing and carried out his threat. She had to!
"Are you going to walk, or do I carry you?" His eyes gleamed at her as the driver swung open the door. Defiance was useless, she knew. One way or another, she would descend from the hackney. But pride refused to let her give in to Connor without a show of protest. She regarded him stonily. Her only answer was a lift of her chin.
"Very well, then." Despite her outraged hiss, Connor hoisted her to his shoulder as he had done before. Prudent or not, this time Caitlyn sank her teeth into his back just as he was stepping down from the hackney. He yelped and almost fell, the cabby chuckled, and Caitlyn braced for the hand she expected to fall on her backside. But it didn't.
"You'll pay for that, you hell-born brat," he muttered instead and shifted her so that she could not bite him again, though he could not wholly guard himself from her furious kicks and blows. He did not stop to pay the driver but climbed the steps to the front door, which opened before he touched it.
"Me-me lord," Caitlyn heard a shocked gasp and knew that it was Mickeen. She was too angry to care. Cursing like the street urchin she had once been, she squirmed and fought against Connor's iron hold.
"Pay the man, would you?" Connor grunted to Mickeen by way of a reply and strode into the house. He did not stop in the vestibule but went straight up the stairs and down a corridor to a door which he kicked open. Caitlyn got a hazy impression of a comfortable if shabby room warmed by a blazing fire before he kicked the door shut behind him and deposited her on the bed, yanking his cloak from her in the process.
"Damn you, Connor d'Arcy!" she sputtered as she bounced helplessly on the soft feather mattress.
He threw the cloak down over a chair back, crossed to the washstand, and turned back to her with a grim expression and a cake of wet white soap in his hand.
"You'd not dare!"
"I did warn you," he said, and before she could scramble off the bed, he was bearing down on her with the soap. She fought, but to no avail. He pinned her against his chest, wrapped a hand in her hair, tugged her head back, and washed her mouth out thoroughly. She gagged and thrashed wildly, and when he finally let her go she collapsed back on the bed, crawled to the side, and retched miserably.
"I hate you, you…"she muttered with real loathing through the horrible-tasting bubbles that still coated her tongue and teeth and lips. A rap on the door interrupted her before she could expand on her theme.
"Go away," Connor responded irritably, never taking his eyes off her as she spat at him.
"Conn, Mickeen says…" It was Liam on the other side. Before he could finish speaking, Connor crossed to the door and pulled it open, holding it wide so that Liam and Mickeen behind him had a full view of the bed. Caitlyn, disheveled, half naked, and still spitting soap, glared at the pair of them as she clutched at the wrapper that had threatened to part from its moorings in the melee with Connor.
"St. Patrick and the Blessed Virgin!" Liam gasped, his mouth dropping open. Behind him, Mickeen crossed himself.
"Behold our latter-day Lazarus," Connor said dryly. "Before you start thinking about exorcisms, let me tell you that she is not and has never been a ghost. She merely neglected to let us know that she survived the little incident that upset the rest of us so much. Though she's apologized for being so thoughtless, of course."
Caitlyn spat out more bubbles and transferred her glare to Connor. An errant strand of her hair, which was tumbling wildly around her barely clad form, got in her face and she pushed it back with an angry movement of her hand. Liam and Mickeen watched her with as much horrified fascination as if she were in truth risen from the dead.
"You swine, Connor d'Arcy," she said with loathing. Liam blinked.
"That's Caitlyn," he said, as if he had not been convinced until that moment. Then he turned his stunned gaze on Connor. "But how-?"
"I'll explain the whole thing in the morning," Connor interrupted, and swung the door shut in Liam's and Mickeen's wondering faces. "As for you…" He turned his attention back to Caitlyn. "We have some talking to do."
"I've nothing to say to you," Caitlyn stated, crossing her arms over her breasts and hitching herself up so that she was sitting against the pillow.
"That's just as well, for I've a great deal to say to you. First of all, I want the name of your lover."
"Hah!" Caitlyn said scornfully, pulling her legs beneath her and jerking the topmost quilt over her lap. Though an oath trembled on the tip of her tongue, she managed to swallow it. Connor would not think twice about assaulting her with the soap again. "What kind of fool do you take me for? Shall I make you a present of his name so that you can go and kill him for me?"
" 'Twill be easy enough to find out, do you not tell me."
"Find out, then. For I'll tell you nothing, except that I dislike being dragged from my home by brute force and held against my will. To say nothing of being subjected to your barbaric punishments!"
"Drastic situations call for drastic measures," Connor said with a shrug, coming to sit on the edge of the bed and look intently at her. The unwavering stare made Cait- lyn uncomfortable. She had the uncanny sensation that he could see into her soul.
"Does your protector bed you, then?"
Caitlyn gaped at him, unable to believe that she had heard him correctly. The look on his face assured her that she had. A hot blush suffused her skin from her collarbone to her hairline. Connor, she remembered, had ever been one for plain speaking.
"How dare you ask me such a question!"
"That act of outraged modesty cuts no ice with me," he said grimly. "We've discussed-and more than discussed-matters far more delicate, if you will cast your mind back. I want an answer: does he bed you?"
"What do you think he does, feed me a handful of hay from time to time like a blood-ah, great horse?" she hissed in reply.
"The soap is near at hand," he warned, watching her.
"Try that again and I'll… I'll…"
"Rend me limb from limb," he finished for her with a quirk of his lips. "I remember. I'm quaking in my boots."
She eyed him. He was watching her like a cat at a mousehole, and she was suddenly assailed by the notion that she'd said something, done something, to make him doubt her tale. Connor had too much pride to shanghai a reluctant woman-unless he had some reason to believe that she was not so reluctant as she pretended. Perhaps because of the ardor with which she had responded to his lovemaking? Remembering her impassioned reaction to his touch, she blushed again.
"You would have me believe that you have been his mistress for the better part of the past year, is that correct?" He looked at her as if for a response. When she gave him nothing but a stony glare, he went on as if she'd nodded. "Then tell me something, if you will: why are you not with child?"
Caitlyn's eyes widened. Though she had not thought about it before, she knew that what she and Connor did together was how people got babies. With Connor, before this nightmare had begun, she hadn't cared. In fact, she would have loved carrying his child. But with Sir Ed- ward… She barely managed to restrain a shudder. It seemed she had something to be thankful for, after all. If Sir Edward had been a normal man instead of a depraved monster, the chances were excellent that she would even now be expecting his bairn. The idea sickened her; she tried not to let her face show how she felt.
"How do you know I am not?" she challenged when she could speak.
His jaw hardened, and his mouth tightened. Real rage flared for a moment in his eyes. 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.