Stormfire (16 page)

In a daze of exhaustion, Catherine bathed in a water bucket in her cell. Without bothering with supper, she slowly mounted the stairs to. Sean Culhane's bedroom. On his way down to dinner, Liam met her there. His face filled with startled dismay as she dully stood aside. She was white about the cheeks and lips. Damp hair stuck to her face, and the mended, liquor-stained blouse clung to her barely dried skin. "Catherine . . . Lady Enderly, are you well?"

"Yes." Swaying with fatigue, she wished he would be on his way.

"I. . .I
wanted to tell you how
sorry . . .
I lost you in the crowd last night."

"You needn't apologize." She took another step up the stairs.

He caught her arm. "Are you going to Sean?"

"Yes."

His lips curled bitterly. "I can imagine what sort of choice he gave you."

"You mustn't interfere. I believe your brother might harm even you if you attempt to thwart him."

His eyes narrowed. "Are you so sure I'd lose a fight with him?"

"Peg tells me you've been taught to create beauty. I'll not see you mangle that calling by quarreling with him on my account. I ask your promise to keep peace with him."

"But his behavior is despicable!"

"It's all I ask," she said firmly. "Please don't make my existence here more difficult."

"Very well, I promise. Until the day I can meet him on my own terms." Seeing her start to protest, he cut her off. "That's all I can promise." His voice had a hard, determined note that was new.

"Very well," she replied softly. "I must go now. Good night, Liam Culhane."

"Good night, my lady." Wretehedly, he watched her ascend the stair and disappear.

Catherine stood before Culhane's door for a long moment, her thoughts bleak. Then, berating herself for groveling, she knocked sharply. Moora opened the door and Catherine started in shock. Was Peg's own daughter Culhane's mistress as well? As the Irish girl stepped back, Catherine tensely surveyed the room. The only light besides the banked fire was Moora's candle. Culhane was nowhere to be seen.

"He said ye're to wait." Moora's voice was cold, impersonal.

"I don't understand. Is he still at dinner?"

Moora ignored the question. "Ye're to be locked. Come over to the bed." Slowly, Catherine obeyed, and Moora clipped the chain into the hasp, snapped a padlock on it, then headed for the door.

Catherine clutched the bedpost. "Moora, please! At least tell me whether he's coming tonight."

Moora smiled caustically. "Ye'll have to wait yer turn. He's ruttin' across the bay."

Catherine sank to the floor as the door locked, and she leaned against the side of the bed, where she stared dully at the intricate carpet pattern. Slowly the tears seeped from her eyes and slipped down her cheeks. The fire had gone nearly cold by the time she slept.

Near dawn, Culhane knelt beside. Catherine. She was pale and cold to the touch; he silently cursed her for stubbornly refusing his bed. Careful not to awaken her, he scooped her up. Her head slipped back over his arm, exposing her throat where he saw the collar had chafed the delicate skin with angry welts. Hadn't the little idiot thought to pad it? Or was she too damned proud?

He lowered her slight weight onto the bed and checked her ankle; it was raw and likely to fester if not eased. The feet were bruised and icy as his hands enclosed them. Lightly, he chafed them, then undressed and covered her before shedding his own garments. He slipped in beside her and tucked her small body against his own to warm her.

Much later, he awoke to find his captive tangled under him like a kitten fallen asleep in the midst of its play, her courtesan's lashes and sultry mouth incongruous on her young face. Her hair tumbled from the frayed bit of rag that caught it from her face. Carefully, he loosened the knot and, as he let down her hair, slipped his fingers through its long, silky weight. Jie lightly stroked an experimental finger between her breasts and down her belly. Deeply asleep, she stirred slightly with a faint sigh. He parted her thighs, then entered her warmth to find her sleepily yielding. When her lips parted in a moan, he covered them with his own.

Dazedly aware of a pulsing pleasure welling and ebbing like foaming, heavy surf through her body, Catherine opened to its throbbing source. With a gasp, Sean plummeted into the heart of her, felt for one brief moment of sweet torture what it would be like if she wanted him, loved him.

Suddenly Catherine became aware of the long brown body, the smooth, powerful muscles that coiled and uncoiled in the flat, hard belly moving against hers, eyes that burned like jade fire in the darkness. She arched wildly against him, digging her nails into his back in an effort to destroy his compelling rhythm, but not before his explosion inside her turned molten, sending streams of sweet agony flooding toward her soul. Slowly, the intense pleasure seeped elusively away, leaving her a fragile, empty shell.

The man's gaze was as wondering as the girl's when her lashes fluttered open and their eyes met. As if she were some lovely, precious idol, he slowly traced the small Nefertiti face down to the tempting underlip, swollen from his kisses. "Catherine?" he whispered huskily. "Yield to me. Yield. . ." His lips lowered to seal her surrender. As if eluding a cobra's hypnotic sway, she turned her head away and his lips found only the delicate curve of her jaw, just beneath her ear.

Sean hid his disappointment in the curve of her neck. Nibbling the tender flesh, he searched out the hollows of her throat at his leisure and maddened her with the traitorous excitement of her body, still helplessly sprawled under his. Lazily, his mouth moved lower, teased aroused nipples into aching, swollen buds that strained to burst into bloom. She whimpered, lashing her head from side to side, sending the lustrous mass of her hair spilling across the pillows in rivulets. With a soft laugh, he rubbed his cropped head across her breasts and belly, forcing a groan of frustrated fury from her. Lifting his head, he grinned mischievously into angry sapphire eyes, caught a tendril of her hair, and twined it about an impudently thrusting nipple.

As she stared at him in a confusion of rage and longing, Sean sighed with a wistfulness more mocking than he felt. "Thou Diana, with eyes of starfire and hair like the midnight tempest, flung recumbent in the heavens amidst glittering, wheeling nebulae, you make the blood of man run hot in him like the tides, tempt him to reach for the moon, howling, with useless fingers of foam. Thou remote goddess of the heart, who doth dash him earthward at the very pinnacle of his longing. Thou daemon temptress."

With a sagging jaw, Catherine listened incredulously to the Irishman's uncharacteristic lyricism. Would the villain's surprises never cease? He had sneaked across her sleeping defenses like a spy and forsworn frontal attack.

And undoubtedly he had conquered another as easily mere hours ago, with his glib tongue and lecherous skill. She did not mince words. "Get off me, you rutting brute! Your howls are more the stuff of satiety than longing. And your fingers have been dabbling in another's porridge pot, not groping for the moon!"

Culhane looked slightly startled, but not in the least guilty. His eyes narrowed. "Methinks, Celestial Diana, you have the instincts of a fishwife. Pray tell, who has been whetting your tongue?"

Unwilling to give Moora away, Catherine countered warily, "Who has been whetting your appetites, milord? Methinks it was yet another fjshwife. Verily, her stink is still about you."

Abruptly, he shifted his weight off her. "Now, girl, we'll have it straight," he 9aid coldly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and jerking the bellpull. "I keep no shrews." Rubbing her posterior, she glared up at him from the rug. He leaned down and lifted her mutinous chin. "If I'm inclined to bed six women a night, you'll not make a peep even if you're on the bottom of the pile."

"You exaggerate your capabilities, Milord Cockerel! And in any case, it's hardly likely I should attempt to attract your perverted attentions!"

He lifted a quizzical eyebrow. "Perverted?"

"If you propose that rape is normal, then so is every flying pig under heaven!" Caught up in righteous fury, Catherine scrambled to her knees. "And this morning, you ignoble sneak, you crept up on me!"

"Strange, your reception seemed so eager."

"If you think that feeble effort fired my blood, you've much to learn!"

"And you, little innocent, have even more to learn, especially about my capabilities." He gave her an evil grin. "You'll find my tutelage less tedious than the academy's." He got off the bed. "But your shrewish tongue is beginning to bore me."

"Surely you don't begrudge me the last of my weapons?"

His green eyes raked her as he shrugged into his robe and she was once more uncomfortably aware of her nakedness. "Not the last weapon nor the most dangerous,
p'tite,
although you've not yet learned to use it. Put on your clothes."

When Peg arrived in answer to his summons, Culhane told her abruptly, "Our Miss Enderly has displayed a special talent for nosing out fish; therefore, she'll assist at the pond. When the catch is cleaned, she's to rejoin the laundrywomen until the next fleet is in."

Catherine slowly tied her sash with a sinking heart. Cleaning fish could only be more unpleasant than laundry, knowing Culhane. Grimly, she tightened the knot, wishing it were about the Irishman's throat.

"Are you due free time?" he asked her casually.

"Yes," she answered sullenly. Sunday would be her first day of leisure in well over a month; she had been keenly looking forward to it, if only to sleep.

"You wasted a working day on an escape attempt and you left the foyer unfinished, so you've that yet to do over completely, of course."

"Of course," she echoed nastily.

"And the ballroom windows." He looked thoughtful.
 
"Then there's a matter of nagging. For an indefinite number of Sundays you'll clean stables, take over milking duties, and empty chamber pots in the morning tide with Moora as company. Somehow, I don't think she'll give you another chance to brain her."

"May I go now?" she asked with unexpected quietness. "Or is there more?"

Culhane scrutinized her. Gone was the mischief, the insouciant impudence. In their place was dread of the dulling defeat of long hours of slavish work. "Not quite," he returned with equal quietness. Scooping a linen shirt from the chest, he ripped it into strips, then hunkered down beside her and wrapped the strips around the iron to thickly pad her chafed ankle. He stood, and threading a strip between her throat and the collar, bound it as well while Catherine stood silently. When his eyes met hers, he found them wistfully startled, just as that night when she had first gazed up at him as if she were a nymph from some dark forest pool. The shadowed depths of those lovely, haunting eyes lured him, and only Peg's presence prevented his kissing the soft mouth only a breath from his own. "I'll be away for several days," he murmured. "Will that please you?"