Stormfire

by Christine Monson

  Sean let Mephisto into a canter, then eased him to a steaming walk, the stallion's ribs expanding and contracting like a bellows. Caps gone, hair clinging wetly to their heads, the two finalists rode slowly to meet each other as the crowds converged on them. Tim's freckles stood out brightly on his pale face. "Congratulations, sor," he said tensely, stretching out his hand.

  Culhane took it in a bone-crushing grip. "Be glad it's not your glory-seeking neck, laddy buck."

  Both riders slid off their mounts into a sea of pushing, shouting people. First Sean, then Tim were thrust up onto sturdy shoulders and paraded about, then carried in triumph to the winner's circle. To an earsplitting din of cheers, they were toasted with champagne as a garland of flowers was hung about Mephisto's neck. A frigidly polite John Enderly, chief sponsor of the race, presented Sean a massive silver bowl and purse of five thousand pounds; Tim received a smaller cup and colder congratulations. A glassy-eyed Shaunessy led Mephisto away, pulling well-chewed roses out of the horse's mouth with a vague admonition about thorns.

  Sean was escorted back to the house in a landau filled with trilling young women, one of whom dipped her silk glove in champagne to wipe his sweat-streaked, dirt- stained face. At the house reception he collected private stakes and looked for Elizabeth Dunaway, nowhere to be found.

  John Enderly's smooth, handsome mask appeared at his elbow. "Mr. Fitzhugh, I believe my friends and I owe you a good deal of money: some nine thousand pounds, to be exact. In this envelope you'll find the appropriate vouchers. Mine is coupled with that of the due d'Angoulême on his account with Lloyd's." His gray eyes narrowed. "Your venture has proven most profitable. I hope I shall have the advantage at our next meeting, sir."

  The Irishman took the envelope with a polite smile. "I look forward to seeing you again, my lord."

  As Enderly faded into the crowd, Culhane felt oddly detached. Since meeting his sworn enemy face-to-face, he had dispassionately observed him as if the man were a viper in a glass case. There had been no rush of gall, no urge to do murder. Though he fully intended to kill Enderly, the prospect now seemed inevitable and montonous.

  Hands thrust at him, champagne dribbled on his clothing, women whispered in his ear, and men offered investments. Wary of them all, he pulled away and left the room, firmly closing the doors. The silence of the deserted foyer was deafening, and as he crossed to the stair, voices clearly carried from the partly open door of a salon. The conversation was in French, the speaker the due d'Artois. His mention of Catherine Enderly's name brought the Irishman to an abrupt halt.

  "My son was most distressed your lovely daughter could not attend the race. I had hoped she might be induced to curtail her travels by a few weeks."

  John Enderly's voice was placating. "This may be Catherine's last unmarried season abroad, Your Grace. Surely your son will wish her to be settled, with girlish whims behind her. Catherine has spoken with great affection of the duke. Surely a few weeks cannot matter when two young people are admirably matched."

  Sean listened with swiftly mounting anger, understanding now why Enderly's note was coupled with Angoulême's: it was prepayment for delivery of Kit to the royal bed. His knuckles whitened on the banister. So Catherine had spoken with "great affection" of the slack-jawed young degenerate, had she? Kit wouldn't look at that uniformed pudding except in pity.

  Artois seemed to be shrugging. "I regret Louis cannot offer marriage, my dear viscount. Marriages exclusive to the royal house are sometimes an unfortunate tradition, but I am at heart a traditional man. Louis must wed within the next year or so. He finds the Countess Catherine most appealing and I would satisfy his choice of a companion if at all possible. You will assure her my son's impatience is not only due to the natural eagerness of a lover, but the pressures of his position?"

  The conversation seemed to be drawing quickly to a close. Sean headed up the stair, sore muscles protesting at every step and mind rolling with anger. Oily bastards! Condescend to make her a whore, would they? So the royal brat was impatient to mount her, was he? She was better than the lot of them in a pile. She had more breeding in her little finger than that shambling, leftover duke could summon from all his blue-blooded, yellow-faced relatives. Storming down the hallway, he pictured Angoulême in bed with his new toy, putting clammy hands on her, climbing like a toad onto her slim body. He jerked open the door to his room, then slammed it with a crash that dropped the mirror in shattering shards from the wall.

  Elizabeth Dunaway's maid, Felice, stared at him from where she was pouring a bucket of steaming water into a huge copper tub. "Do you not wish a bath, Monsieur Fitzoo?"

  Sean stared back, eyes glittering in fury, then sobered to some confusion. "Where's your mistress?"

  The dark-eyed maid dimpled. "She will come. Is not yet the bewitching hour, is how you say, non? Please." She came forward, holding out her hands. "Your clothes? Do not be shy."

  A boneweary Culhane boarded the Mary D. before dawn and saw Mephisto walked aboard and secured in the hold. A closely matched stallion in the next stall whickered nervously. After soothing both animals, he climbed up to his cabin and stretched his tired body on a narrow bunk. Shaunessy lay senseless in the opposite bunk. Tim, hugging his knees, sat on the floor.

  "Good work," Sean said as he pummeled a pillow into submission and crammed it under his head. "Any problems?"

  "Some," Tim admitted. He cocked an ear as the mooring hawsers hit the deck and the Mary D. was warped from the dock. "Thought I'd have to clip Amin to get the stallion away, but the old sod went lookin' for Shaunessy here, to see if he was walleyed. And he was, laid out like a sack o' feed in Mephisto's stall. I gets to Shaunessy a step ahead of the Arab, shoves him onto a nag, and heads him out to the east meadow. Then I cuts back, grabs Numidian, and lights out after 'im. 'Twas hard keepin' 'im headed for town, but after that, 'twas a cinch, like ye said. I boards Numidian by the eleven-bell watch; the harbor patrol passes the nag off as Mephisto and Shaunessy off as drunk. When you came in at four bells, sure enough there was a different limey patrol, and the real nag trots aboard. Only one thing worries me . . ."

  Sean gingerly eased his back into a more comfortable position. "What's that?"

  "Rumor was hot round the stables about Mephisto bein' put up to stud. Ye didn't enter him in the stud registry, did ye, sor?"

  "Of course not. That ruse kept the odds in his favor."

  Tim's face cleared. "I was thinkin' they might trace him through the breed line."

  Listening to the sails being hoisted, Sean stared at the base of the bunk overhead. "Mephisto's papers were forged. If Enderly could prove anything, he'd have called our hand before the race. But the old Arab seems damn certain Ethiop sired both Numidian and Mephisto." The dark Irishman frowned. "Brendan kept no papers for Mephisto. I wonder why the Arab's so sure about Ethiop?"

  "The old heathen's a weird one. When she married, the viscountess brought him from France; he adored both her and her daughter. Since the girl's disappeared, he's stranger than ever."

  "Will he tell Enderly he thinks you tried to drug Numidian?"

  "Dunno. He hates the viscount. When he was told Numidian was to race, he was fit to be tied." Tim grimaced. "Still, he's proud as a sultan. He'd not want his mistress's pet to lose or be cheated. He thinks ye saved the nag from bein' drugged by a villainous horse thief and ye beat me fair and square."

  "I had little choice," said Culhand dryly. "What the hell got into you, pushing Numidian to win at the end?"

  Tim looked at his toes, then up with a trace of defiance. "I know 'twas against me orders, but 'twasn't Enderly I was ridin'. 'Twas a dumb beast that don't know about hatin' and hurtin', just runnin' for a man 'e trusts." Tim sat, stoically waiting for his master's wrath to crack about his ears.

  "When did Enderly have your family wiped out, Tim?" Sean asked quietly.

  "I was but a babe," Tim replied. "Mr. Flannery said the soldiers missed me in a pile of rubble. I like to have starved."

 
; "Eighteen years. A long time to hate, isn't it?"

  "Aye, sor."

  Culhane rubbed his head. "Try and work the kinks out of my carcass for the next quarter hour, and we'll call it square."

  "Yes, sor!" Sean rolled over on his face with a muffled groan as Tim obeyed with alacrity. The dark Irishman winced more than once when Tim discovered aches not previously realized. "I'm a bit sore meself, sor, but not so bad as this. Ye must have had a fearsome wild ride of it."

  Sean thought of Elizabeth and Felice and their tubful of champagne. "More than you know, boy. More than you know."

  CHAPTER 10

  The Eye of the Painter

  Time at Shelan passed serenely for Catherine in Sean Culhane's absence. When not reading to Flynn, she found time to add bright curtains to the infirmary windows and coddle his flowers until they bloomed with renewed vigor. She met Liam nearly every clear afternoon. To prevent Flynn from growing suspicious, she agreed to allow Liam to paint her as a pretext for seeing each other.

  The first pose Catherine struck for her portraitist was hardly a marvel of inspiration: her arms sawed akimbo and knees knocked together. When he laughingly protested, she feigned innocence. "Didn't you promise to paint me exactly as I am?"

  "And what are you, pray? A perch for boobies?" he teased. When he found charcoals and looked around the easel again, a cross-eyed hunchback awaited with slack- jawed grin. At his exasperated look, she became the perfect model, assuming poses with unstudied ease in her old-fashioned white muslin dress. The wide-brimmed hat she had been previously dangling from its ribbons as if fishing for cod now wrapped itself against her wind-ruffled skirts. His charcoal flew as he halted her at one point, then another. Suddenly the hat went swinging from its ribbons and she lightly danced away, muslin swirling like a frisking cloud as she cut a swath through the heather. Liam became almost frantic to capture her abandon, cursing once when his charcoal snapped. His hand moved in deft, loose strokes until his model sailed the hat toward him. "Time for tea, Master Painter!"

  Liam exasperatedly ruffled his hair. "What a bother!" Her teasing laughter sounded oddly muffled over the rocks, as if a ghost from a bygone era had come to beguile unwary mortals.

  At tea, Catherine was a polished hostess, serving sugared oatcakes, keeping cups full and steaming. She was uncharacteristically demure, and both doting gentlemen were startled when she announced a wish to go into the harbor village for ribbon. With Liam as escort, of course. Liam and the doctor looked at one another. "I don't think . . ." began the doctor.

  "My lord and master isn't here," she said briskly, "and he doesn't have to know. My hat requires a new ribbon." Innocently she dragged up the broken ribbon from her bodice where she had stuffed it. The doctor flinched and Liam fidgeted. "The hat will be barren without a fresh ribbon." She seemed to notice their discomfort for the first time, then protested as if hurt, "Surely you don't think I'd try to escape while I'm your responsibility?" She looked at the old ribbon, then forced a brave smile. "Oh, well, it's only petty feminine vanity that yearns after little furbelows. I've managed decently so far."

  Liam nibbled the bait. "For God's sake, Catherine, Ruiralagh is just a fishing town. You'd stand out like a Tudor rose in a shock of shamrocks. To parade you outside Shelan is risky."

  "Not if you parade me as Doctor Flynn's niece from Killarney," she said quickly.

  "I don't have a niece in Killarney," protested the doctor.

  "Kilkenny?" Catherine suggested brightly.

  "I don't have any nieces!"

  "Besides," said Liam, "you don't sound Irish."

  "Bite yer tongue, ye Irish mick, how dare ye be tellin' a good Irishwoman she don't sound like she come from the ould sod. 'Tis insultin' y'are, and fair to be havin' yer ears boxed!"

  Flynn blinked. "Grotesque, but amazing."

  The male arguments continued to meet with blithe rebuttals until Liam sipped his cold tea and made a face. "Just ribbon, mind you, then straight home."

  Little choice of finery was to be found in the general shop where Catherine pondered the articles with maddening leisure. In nervous impatience, Liam paced up and down as she puttered, fingering this and twiddling with that while the middle-aged proprietress regarded her bale- fully. Two other women in sparrow-drab dresses eyed the stranger's rose-colored gown and softly draped heather shawl with sidelong disapproval. She was dressed no differently than they, save in the vastly becoming shading of her clothing and the appealing dip of her neckline, but in their minds she was far too beautiful to be good, and the fact Lord Liam waited attendance spoke for itself.

  By now that lord was well aware his charge had far more on her mind than ribbons. Their carriage had barely rolled^ into the street lining the harbor, when she had cried out, "Begorra, what a darlin' dog!" slid out of the carriage as if it were buttered, and scampered up the wharf after a moth- eaten mutt that cringed when she petted him.

  Despite Liam's protests as he hastily tethered the carriage and hurried after her, Catherine insisted on walking to the village's one dress shop and introducing herself to everybody. Her smile was so infectious people involuntarily smiled back, and generally heard some scrap of conversation concerning "my uncle, Doctor Flynn." The lovely stranger and tense young lord inched along at a snail's pace because the young lady could not resist impulsively complimenting villagers on their flowers or freshly painted shutters. However taken aback at being accosted the individual might be, inevitably he began to thaw.

  Rare indeed the maleontent who would frown at a blooming rose, but eventually that being made her appearance: staunchly dignified Mrs. Agatha Flynn Leame, Doctor Flynn's eldest, stuffiest daughter. Her faded blue eyes and strong profile were her only resemblance to her father. She marched into the shop with a cheap sealskin muff mounted on her front and an ugly bonnet trimmed with cock's feathers jammed on her head. "Where's this Kitty Flynn?" she barked.

  "Why, Aunt Agatha, how good it is to be meetin' at last. I'd have recognized ye anywhere from Uncle Michael's lovely miniature!"

  Agatha's chin jutted out and Liam quailed. "I don't remember me father havin' a niece, from Kilkenny or anywhere else!" Lowering her voice to a furious whisper, she hissed, "If ye think ye can pass yerself off as kith and kin of decent folk so ye can play the whore for my fool of a father and fancy Lord Liam, think again!"

  Catherine's eyes rounded as if astonished and she whispered back, "Why, Aunt Agatha, 'tis ungracious ye're bein'. Perhaps 'tis you who should be havin' a thought or two. Ye might not remember me, but I remember Flory Flynn, me social-minded aunt, passin' well. 'Tis a foin time she's havin' herself in Dublin, meetin' all sorts—"

  A gloved hand spasmodically caught her wrist. Catherine's voice had grown subtly louder phrase by phrase and Agatha's chin sagged with each increase in volume. "Please! Lower yer voice," the woman whispered hoarsely.

  "I'd be delighted, but I'll thank ye to be considerin' yer father's reputation as well as yer own."

  Liam began a frantically noisy, mostly one-sided conversation with the shop proprietress while Catherine continued in a lower tone, foiling the craning attention of the customers. "If ye haven't learned by now yer father's an honorable man, ye're a sorry lot indeed! I'm his nurse: nothin' more"—she stuck out her own small chin—"and nothin' less." Her eyes narrowed. "Now, ye've abused his good name fer years and yer husband's practice has fattened because of it. If ye don't start rememberin'—and loudly, mind ye—what a foin gentleman and physician yer father is, ye may see how much of a dent in yer own reputation a flaptongue lass from Kilkenny can make!" Seeing the woman start to bluster, Catherine spiked her guns. "Would ye like yer neighbors to know how much Flory the Floozie charges?"

  "Stop!. . . Stop." The gloved fingfers twisted at the muff. "I'll do like ye want. But it won't help. The folk here- abouts'll have no part of Da."

  Catherine ignored her protest. "Speak to yer sister this afternoon, if ye please. Two mouths run better than one. I expect to be seein' patients come u
p the hill beginnin' next week. If ye can't send somebody, ye'd both better develop dire disease and pay a call yerselves."

  "But my husband's the village doctor! How would it look?"

  "No worse than it looked when ye deserted yer da and left him to bear gagglin' tongues alone. 'Tis only sorry I am it takes a bit of blackmail to make ye see it." Catherine's voice resumed its normally blithe volume as she bobbed a curtsy. "Good day to ye, Aunt! Ye're a dear to invite Lord Liam and meself to tea, but I fear we've too many errands this afternoon. Perhaps another time." She gave the dazed woman a hearty hug, rescued Liam from the shop mistress, who was swaying ostrichlike to see past his shoulders, then swept out of the shop with the silently fuming lord on her arm.

  Determinedly heading away from the carriage, she turned in the direction of the small stone church at the village outskirts. Completely exasperated, Liam dug in his heels. "This is insane. I was an idiot to bring you here. Donegal County hasn't been so stirred up since Cromwell! And that remark you dropped to those fishermen about a mumps epidemic! You've bent the sword of medical ethics to a hairpin! I'm taking you home this minute!"

  Wide blue eyes looked up at him beseechingly. "I know I've sorely tried your patience, but won't you allow me to go to confession before we leave?" She caught his hands. "I promise to be good. I'll not say another word to anyone but the priest." He looked dubious. "I won't involve you and your brother," she said quickly. "I swear it."

  "But what can you have to confess? You were brought here against your will and . . . abused. God won't hold you responsible."

  Her eyes dropped. She dreaded to admit to a priest lust for a man who had raped her; still more that she must promise in good faith not to repeat the offense. She could not bear for Liam to know how low she had sunk.