Duchess of Sin (25 page)

Impulsively, Anna took off after him. Where was he going so secretively? Cursing her curiosity, she followed him at a discreet
distance, keeping to the shadows.

Once or twice he glanced back, and she was sure she would be discovered, yet he always kept going on his mysterious path.
He went from the quiet, elegant lanes back toward the neighborhood of McMasters’s tavern. The streets narrowed and darkened,
and the cobblestones were damp and slippery under her boots. Was he just going for a drink then?

He turned not to the tavern but down another street, a narrow alley between tall houses. Anna dared not follow there; he would
be sure to notice her in such a confined space. She lingered at the alley’s entrance and peeked around the corner as he knocked
at a door. After a moment, a man answered. A flickering candle in his hand cast a glow over his face and rumpled hair as he
peered out cautiously.

Anna pressed her hand hard to her mouth so she would not cry out. It was Monsieur Courtois, Caroline’s gorgeous new drawing
teacher! How did he, a Frenchman who made his living teaching, know Adair? Why were they meeting?

“Were you followed?” Courtois said. His voice was low and furtive, but it echoed on the alley’s close-packed walls.

“No,” Adair answered. “Nothing of consequence.”

“Come in.” The door closed, and Anna was alone again in the eerily quiet night. Once she was sure they were gone, she ran
down the alley to examine the house. There was one small window by the door, but it was barred and muffled by dark curtains.
She couldn’t even make out a single ray of light.

She longed to rattle the bars, to pound on the door and shout at them, to demand answers! They were in some terrible conspiracy,
Adair and Courtois, she was sure of it. If only she could be sure it was not something horribly dangerous to her own family.

She had the cold feeling that it was, and that she was already deeply involved in ways she couldn’t even fathom. Yet.

She went back to wait at the mouth of the alley for Conlan to re-emerge. She would follow him back to the Olympian Club and
make him talk to her, one way or another.

She didn’t have very long to wait. After less than an hour—though to Anna it felt like a year—he came out and went on his
way. He didn’t go straight back to the club but turned toward the river. She followed him along the embankment, hard-pressed
to keep up with his long-limbed pace.

She was so intent on him that she didn’t see the other shadows until they suddenly emerged from behind an upturned fishing
boat. There were two of them, and they moved like a swift mist rolling off the river. One grabbed Conlan around the neck,
dragging him back as the other unsheathed a dagger. The starlight glinted along the lethal steel.

“Conlan!” Anna screamed as the dagger lunged toward his chest. She ran forward, heedless of any danger to herself in her terror.
He drove his elbow hard into the belly of the man who held him, shoving him to the ground. His boot shot up toward the one
with the knife, obviously aiming for his groin.

But the assailant leaped back, Conlan’s kick landing on his leg. The man staggered and quickly recovered, diving toward Conlan
with the dagger. In the blink of an eye, that shining steel sank into Conlan’s shoulder, past wool and linen, into flesh.

“Bloody hell!” he shouted. He pressed his hand to the wound, struggling to stay upright as his attacker tried to stab him
again.

Anna drove herself into the villain, hard, sending him flying back to the cobblestones. The dagger clattered to the ground,
and she kicked it into the water. As she spun around to face Conlan, the man he had shoved to the ground hauled himself to
his feet. He, too, held a knife, and she caught a glimpse of the raw, violent fury on his scarred face.

“Conlan, behind you!” she screamed.

Conlan drew a small pistol from inside his coat, and in one smooth motion spun around and fired. The man collapsed, silent,
a dark stain spreading over his chest. His co-conspirator fled.

Anna, her blood boiling with anger, started to run after him, but a gasp from Conlan stopped her. “Anna,” he muttered in a
voice tight with pain. “My avenging witch.”

She twirled back to him, just in time to see him fall to the ground. “Conlan!”

She knelt beside him on the cold stone and unfastened his coat with shaking hands. His shirt was torn and stained with blood,
and she could smell the tang of it, wet and coppery. Her head whirled with the stench, with the terrible memories it summoned
up. But his touch on her wrist drew her immediately back into the present crisis.

She tore off his cravat and wadded it up to press tightly to the wound. The blood still seeped through, faster than she could
staunch it.

“We have to get you to a doctor,” she said.

“No, not a doctor,” he insisted. “We’ll go back to the club.”

“You can’t walk that far!”

“Of course I can. This is just a scratch. I’ve walked farther with worse.”

Anna remembered that ruined stable during the Uprising and the stained bandage around his leg. “You’re a damnably stubborn
Irishman, Conlan.”

“And you’re a double-damned stubborn Irishwoman. What are you doing here?”

She tore a strip from the hem of her petticoat to bind around his shoulder. The bleeding seemed to be slowing, but she didn’t
like how pale he looked, ashen under the brown of his skin. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“So you followed me around the city in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know I was there?”

He shook his head. “I thought it was just those two villains.”

“You knew about them? Why didn’t you do something?”

“I wanted to see what they would do first. You shouldn’t be here.”

“If I wasn’t, it would have been two against one, and they would have killed you for certain.”

“True enough,” he said grudgingly. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that it was foolish for you to be out tonight,” he said.

“I’m not the only fool here, I think.” Anna took his face in her hands and stared deep into his eyes. “What game do you play
at, Conlan McTeer?”

He tried to turn from her, but she held firm. She was tired of always not knowing. “What do men get up to in a city on a cold
winter’s night,
cailleach
? Cards, whoring, drinking…”

“I am not so stupid as all that. If you wanted that, you could get it at your own club. You were up to none of those things,
not tonight. You were meeting with a Frenchman.”

“A friend,” he said stubbornly. Yet she could see he was in pain, no matter how he tried to hide it, and she had to get him
away from there.

“You do play dangerous games, Conlan, and I will find out what they are.”

He grabbed her wrists, his fingers like iron. “No, Anna. Just stay away. You can’t be part of this.”

Except she already was, whether they liked it or not. “Come on, we have to go back to the club. It’s cold out here, and you
are still bleeding.”

She slid her arm around his shoulders and supported him as he stood. He leaned on her for a moment, but then he twisted away.
As she watched him, he knelt down by the body. Quickly, he looked through the man’s pockets, which proved to be empty, then
he shoved him into the river. The body made barely a splash before sinking out of sight.

“What’s this?” a woman cried from the top of the Olympian Club stairs. Anna looked up to see it was the pretty faro dealer,
her hair loose over her shoulders, clad in a velvet dressing gown.

She
was
very pretty and wandering around the club in dishabille. Anna had only an instant to feel jealous, though, as Conlan leaned
heavily against her shoulder.

At first on their slow journey across the city, he had stubbornly refused her help. As he continued to lose blood, though,
and grew paler, he had started to lean on her. She held him tightly, her arm wound around his waist.

“He was attacked on the street,” Anna said honestly. “And he refused to go to a doctor.”

“Attacked by whom?” Sarah ran down the stairs and took Conlan’s other arm. Between them, they managed to haul him up the stairs.

“I don’t know. And the villain can’t introduce himself because he is dead now.”

“You were there? You saw it all?” Reaching the top of the stairs, she led them toward an open doorway.

“She saved me,” Conlan muttered, shaking off his stupor.

The woman’s eyes met Anna’s, wide with some sort of shocked realization. “Did she? How heroic.”

“Heroics will be no use unless we can stop the bleeding,” Anna said. “I still say we need a doctor.…”

“No doctor!” Conlan yelled.

“No need to shout,” said Anna, trying to stay calm. Hysterics would help no one. She tried to think of her mother, of her
reassuringly serene demeanor as she nursed sick servants and tenants. “You’ll make the bleeding even worse.”

“I have medicines and bandages,” Sarah said. They deposited Conlan on a bed, the covers still drawn neatly over the feather
mattress. With no fire in the grate, the small chamber was cold, but a lamp was lit on the bedside table. “There are always
silly fights and accidents in a gaming club. I’ll go fetch them.”

She hurried away, and Anna set about trying to make Conlan comfortable. She tugged off his wet boots and carefully peeled
away his ruined coat and shirt. The makeshift bandage was soaked through, and she replaced it with the rest of her petticoat.
He started to shiver, so she spread her own cloak over him.

Anna sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand in hers, holding on to it tightly. Now that the danger was past, she felt
so very cold and tired. There had been no time to be afraid there by the river, but now all that fear weighed on her. He was
in danger—real, terrible danger. Someone had attacked him twice now, and those were only the attempts she witnessed herself.
Whatever he was doing made someone angry enough to try to kill.

She did not know Conlan McTeer very well, and what she
did
know would send any sensible woman running.
Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that in her heart she did know him, and he knew her. He knew the parts that she kept hidden
from everyone else. To lose him now would be—terrible.

“Anna,” he whispered. His fingers closed on hers so tightly it was almost painful.

“I’m still here,” she said. She gently smoothed his hair back from his brow. He felt too warm to her touch.

“You should not be.”

“Of course I should. I have to be certain you’ll recover.”

“I told you, it’s just a scratch.”

“This is the second ‘scratch’ I’ve seen you take. Remember St. Stephen’s Green?”

“All too well. Anna, you have to leave, and I don’t just mean this room tonight. You should go away from Dublin, go to the
country, and never see me again.”

Anna shook her head. She didn’t want to leave him, not now. Not until she had deciphered what her strange, intense feelings
meant. “I don’t know what is happening here, Conlan, but I can help you. If you would just tell me…”

“No.” He stared up at her with burning green eyes. Yet despite their heat, she could feel only ice. He still held onto her
hands, but it seemed he was drawing further and further away from her. “I don’t need help from a spoiled Ascendancy princess.
Dublin isn’t just all dancing and parties. It’s dangerous, especially for those who don’t understand.”

She was
really
angry now, her exhaustion and fear burned away by utter fury. She was not a spoiled princess, useful only for shopping and
planning parties and
getting married! She had thought Conlan saw that, saw
her.
“I will never understand unless someone tells me! I’m involved in this whether you like it or not, Conlan. I will be far
safer if you just trust me and tell me the truth.”

He rolled onto his side, away from her. “I can’t trust you, Anna. I’m sorry. You should go home.”

“That’s it then?” she said numbly as she stared at his unyielding back. There were still marks there where her nails had scratched
him in the throes of passion. That all seemed so unreal now. He was sending her away.

“So I should just marry Grant Dunmore, play his perfect little wife, and pretend none of this ever happened?” she choked out.
“That we never made love, and I never saw you almost killed?”

“You would be happier with him,” Conlan said tightly. “He could keep you safe.”

“Safe?” Anna wiped fiercely at her eyes, refusing to let a single tear fall. “I have not felt safe for a very long time.”

And she doubted Grant Dunmore was the man who could do that. He held secrets, too, just as everyone did in these confusing
days. Conlan, Grant, even her sister’s drawing teacher—they all held secrets.

Even herself.

“I will go then, if that is what you want,” she said. “I’ll even leave Dublin and go to the Connemaras’ Christmas party. But
this isn’t over. I am even more stubborn than you, remember? You have not seen the last of me.”

She marched to the door and swung it open, coming face-to-face with Sarah. She was hurrying along the corridor with a valise
and basin of water, a startled look on her disgustingly pretty face.