Come Midnight (8 page)

Chapter 6

Caitlin stood in the schoolroom. Across the chamber from her, Andrew sat at a table, playing chess with his father. The child laughed at something the marquis said, and moved a white piece on the board. His father nodded approvingly and moved a black one. Caitlin's eyes went from father to son as each took his turn, several times. At length, the marquis moved the tallest black piece on the board. Once again, Caitlin's gaze moved back to the child. But as she did this, Andrew disappeared. In his place sat the monstrous satanic figure she recalled from another time. The Beast. With a taloned claw, it moved a white piece on the board. She saw the marquis reach for one of the black pieces. No! She knew he must not play with the black piece. She tried to tell him, but the words stuck in her throat. The marquis's hand drew nearer to the piece. Still, the words wouldn't come. Yet she had to warn him! She—

Caitlin awoke with a scream clogging her throat. A nameless terror nailed her to the bed. She kept her eyes shut, afraid of what she might see. Perspiration trickled down her back, soaking her bed gown. She was shaking so hard, she thought she might shatter into countless brittle pieces. Jaws clenched, she made herself open her eyes and look around ....

Moonlight filtered into the small bedchamber they'd given her in the servants' wing. It limned the plain white curtains at the window and silvered the room's few pieces of simple furniture. There was enough light to tell her she was alone.

She let out a harsh breath, forced herself to relax tautly drawn muscles. Sucking in air, she let out another. Slowly, she felt the terror recede. Not completely, but to a plane where she could examine it. Consider its ramifications without succumbing to the scream that still pushed at her throat.

So the dreams had followed her. She had to own, she'd been expecting it. Lord Lightfoot was the man with the scar, after all. But tonight's dream was different. In the earlier version, she'd been the one playing chess with ....

She shuddered, and thrust the image from her mind, concentrating on the marquis. Something about him had changed as well. And not just in the dream. He no longer frightened her as he had at first. Instead, she felt . .. what? Pity? Perhaps, yet there was more to it than that. She feared for him, though she couldn't say why. And something else ....

Something continued to draw her to this man. She still wasn't certain what it was, but there was that ... darkness about him. Yet she knew it hadn't always been there. And not just because she'd overheard Mrs. Hodgkins grumble that the war had scarred him in more ways than one. Caitlin herself had caught glimpses of another sort of man. Another man entirely, hidden inside the tortured soul he presented to the world.

She recalled his laughter when he'd played with his son. His obvious love for the lad seemed to bring out the ... light inside him. Or what was left of it beneath the darkness ....

The darkness he isn't meant to have!

Caitlin gasped as the revelation struck. And it was a revelation, sure as she was Irish! She felt the truth of it, deep in her bones. The man wasn't meant for the evil she sensed hovering over his head. He was meant for the Light.

Was that why she was here? Why she'd had the dreams? But ... what could she do? A poor Irish lass with no power at all? Merely thinking of those dreams had her quaking with fear.

Yet she couldn't shake the sense Lord Lightfoot desperately needed help. Hers? Ach, she wished Crionna were here! Wished she knew herself what it all meant.

A sense of desperation wound its way through these questions, and with it, the return of her fear. Closing her eyes, Caitlin did what she'd always done in the wake of her dreams and visions.

She began to pray.

***

Vanessa Marley trailed a perfectly manicured fingernail down the marquis of Ravenskeep's chest. "Ah, m'lord," she purred, her golden eyes following the trail as it crossed his hard, flat abdomen, "you are, indeed, a glorious specimen. I fear you've ruined me for anyone else."

Adam arched a brow, catching its reflection in the mirror cleverly concealed within the canopy over his mistress's bed. "Considering what you've cost me in clothes and trinkets, m'dear," he drawled, not moving his head from one of her satin pillows, ''there had better be no one else." He played idly with a lock of her honey gold hair. "I'm known to be generous," he added in the same lazy tone, "but only when I'm assured exclusivity. If there's someone else ..." His words trailed off suggestively.

Vanessa's finger paused, and she raised her head, smiling at him. Looking every inch the statuesque golden cat her beauty suggested. "And if there were, m'lord?" Her voice was seductive, teasing, but the golden eyes watched him carefully. "What would you do?"

Adam's hand caressed her perfumed shoulder, then toyed with the pouting nipple of a generous breast. He smiled back at her. "Why, I'd send your bills to him directly, of course," he replied, the smile not reaching his eyes, "... and your charming self as well."

Vanessa's lush mouth formed a moue. "It is really too bad of you, Adam, to tease me so callously. You know I've eyes for no one else."

She leaned forward, dangling her breasts just over his chest. Her breasts, she knew, were her best feature. On a body that had been praised by male members of the haut ton from Pall Mall to Piccadilly. The Prince Regent himself had remarked on them.

"Besides," she murmured, reaching for that part of his anatomy which had driven her to ecstasy only minutes before, "no one else has ever satisfied me as you have." She surrounded his shaft with her long, clever fingers. "Why, the size of you alone is proof of your singularity among men! But there's also your excellent knowledge of what to do with such magnificence, and—"

She gasped as he hardened in her hand. "You see, m'lord? Ready again in minutes! I vow, you are insatiable!"

Adam swallowed a bitter laugh as she slid over him and clamped her thighs around his erection like a vise. Little did she know how true her words were. Insatiable, indeed. Because he was never wholly satisfied in the first place. Not with her, not with any of the women he'd bedded in the dozens.

True, he thought as Vanessa managed a tricky little maneuver and began to undulate against him, he went through the motions readily enough. With a cunning bit of muslin like Vanessa practicing her wiles, he'd need to be dead not to respond physically. Just as he was now.

And in a few more moments he'd turn the tables and have her moaning and clawing at him for release. Then he'd drive into her till she screamed her pleasure and finally find his own physical release.

Yes, he went through all the motions. But finished hungrier than before. And he knew, if he spent his seed a dozen times of an evening, it would remain the same. He would remain the same. Empty. Bored with surfeit and condemned to remain so. Blood and ashes, is this all there is?

With a sound somewhere between a sob and a snarl, Adam twisted and pushed his mistress into the mattress. He caught the excitement in her eyes as she looked up at him, sensing the suppressed violence. He never hurt her, but she knew he was deliciously deft at making her beg.

Vanessa hissed, again reminding him of a cat, as he began to make good on the promise in his eyes. Plying the skills he'd honed on dozens of women like her, Adam gave himself over to the pleasures of the flesh.

Maybe, he told himself, maybe this time it would be enough.

***

It was nearly dawn when the marquis left the comfortably appointed, secluded town house he'd leased for his mistress. His curricle passed other fashionable conveyances as he tooled through the thoroughfares of London's West End. The ton partied and played late, with many a reveler finding his way home in the brief hours before dawn. Most would sleep the rest of the morning hours away, not rising from their silken covers until noon, or even later.

Adam's hands were steady on the ribbons despite the great deal of liquor he'd consumed. He'd instructed Vanessa to keep a liberal supply of his favorite brandy on hand when he set her up, and he hadn't stinted on making use of it tonight. He supposed he was foxed. Too bad it wasn't sufficient. Foxed.. . when he needed oblivion.

Reaching his Kensington town house, he handed over the curricle and team to a groom. Taking a branch from the yawning footman who let him in, he sent the man to bed. As he ascended the stairs, he stumbled halfway up, caught himself, and managed to negotiate the rest without mishap. He was weaving his way toward his chambers when he paused. A thin ribbon of light shone beneath the library doors.

Odd. The library was his inner sanctum. He knew of no one who'd appropriate it without his leave. Least of all at half five in the morning.

Caitlin whirled about and flattened herself against the books at her back when the door opened suddenly. "M-milord!" she exclaimed. A slim volume dangled from her nerveless fingers as she took in the disheveled figure of her employer. "Ach, but ye gave me a turn!"

"So ... it's the little Irish Angel..." Adam stopped just inside the double doors, raking his eyes over her small, slender figure. She was clad in a simple white bed gown. A thick copper braid hung over one shoulder, its woven length burnished by light from a chamberstick resting on one of the shelves. She was barefoot. He wanted to smile at the toes peeking out from beneath her hem. But there wasn't a smile left in him tonight. He scowled instead. "Who the devil gave you leave to prowl my library?"

"I ... I... n-no one, milord." Caitlin wanted to run from him, from the anger in his voice and his threatening stance, but there was no way she could. He was clearly not himself ... whatever that was, she found herself thinking. His fancy clothes were rumpled... neckcloth half undone ... coat hooked on a finger and slung over his shoulder.... midnight hair falling over his handsome brow.

"Well... ?" he prompted. Still scowling, Adam took a few steps toward her. He wasn't certain why he'd suddenly latched on to anger. Perhaps it was the way she looked. Pure and unsullied. Innocent as a child, while he himself reeked of dissipation and debauchery. Of far too much brandy and rutting in the bed of a high-priced whore.

Frightened, Caitlin shrank against the bookshelves as he drew near. But it was fear of the darkness she sensed more than a fear of the man himself. He looked angry, aye, but....

She gathered her courage and met his gaze ... and felt her breathing still. His eyes. Someone had said the eyes were windows to the soul. And if that were so, Lord Lightfoot was a soul in torment. Sweet Mary, she'd never seen such pain. Faith, and what on God's good green earth had put it there?

Licking lips suddenly gone dry, Caitlin stiffened her spine and raised her chin. Swallowing past her fear, she forced herself to retain his gaze and take a step toward him. More than ever, she sensed a need to help this man, and she would. God help her, if she could find a way, she would.

"I... I couldn't sleep, milord," she said with a calm she reached for and found, though she couldn't say how. "And I came here for somethin' t' read. 'Tis sorry I am t' be intrudin' where I oughtn't."

She paused, gave a small shrug. " 'Tis just that I"— she didn't know why she was telling him, but the words tumbled out, almost of their own accord—"I have disturbin' dreams sometimes. 'Tis often difficult t' return t' sleep."

"Disturbing dreams...," Adam murmured. He knew about such things. Nightmares filled with maimed bodies and the screams of dying men ... the stench of death everywhere. And blood, so much blood, all the rivers of the world couldn't begin to wash it away.

And then, of course, there was that other nightmare. The one that had come at the stroke of twelve on a night when he'd bartered his—

He yanked his thoughts back to the girl. What could she know to disturb her rest? She was an innocent, barely more than a child. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps her dreams were merely the stuff of childish fears. Like one he recollected Andrew having when he was three or four and a thunderstorm had frightened him. Yes, that had to be the case ... a child's nightmares, nothing more.

Yet when he looked into those huge green eyes, as now, what he saw wasn't childlike. She was young, yes, but the eyes that met his gaze were strangely calm, and somehow ... reassuring.

Adam gave himself a mental shake, wondering if the brandy had him hallucinating. But as he continued to probe, he knew he wasn't. There was enormous strength in that green-eyed gaze; it was filled with a resolve no child would have.

Slowly, half afraid she'd disappear if he moved too quickly, Adam cupped her face with his palm. "Who are you, Caitlin O'Brien?" he whispered. "Why are you here?"

Caitlin's pulse took a leap as his hand met her cheek. His touch was gentle, yet she burned with it. Not in a way that was painful, but—dear God! 'Twas like a current passing straight through her!

Swallowing past a thickness in her throat, she concentrated on what he'd asked... on the plea of desperation in his words. "I ... I am a healer, milord. Just ... a healer."

The blue eyes shone hard and brittle as glass in the candlelight. "And do you think you can heal me, Caitlin O'Brien? Do you really think you can do such a thing?"

"I ... I can try, milord ... if ye'll tell me what's hurtin'."

Adam gave a harsh laugh and dropped his hand. "Don't be so ready to accept such a burden, little Caitlin," he said bitterly. "You might find you'd bitten off far more than you can chew!"

"I ... don't understand, milord." Yet Caitlin all at once thought perhaps she did. 'Twas the darkness, and he didn't want to speak of it. He didn't think she could bear it.

Perhaps I can't, she thought as an image of cloven hooves and great, hovering wings seized her. Perhaps I'm mad even to try.

"Excellent," Adam said, reaching for her chamberstick and placing it in her hand. "I suggest you find your bed before I decide to enlighten you."

"But—"

"Go to bed, Caitlin." Adam turned his back to her, a gesture of dismissal. "And be glad it's only dreams disturb your rest."