Stormfire (4 page)

Even his position with Brendan was distant despite the lord's loving guile. While Sean accorded Brendan respect he gave no other and was at all times correct, affection was never evident in his behavior.

His relationship with Flannery, from whom he learned to fence, ride, and shoot, was coldly professional. As Flannery said, "He's training to be a killer and I'm the best killer he knows."

*
 
 
*
  
*

Now, ten years later, Brendan was dead, and Liam the bearer of his title; but Liam felt like an aide among generals. Flannery still gave him orders. He glanced toward the stern. At the wheel of the fishing yawl, with his great, cra- tered moon of a face and fiery beard reflected in the glow of the binnacle lantern, the giant looked the same as he always had except for a few streaks of gray.

Liam shivered slightly and thought about the girl. He decided to let her up on deck for a while. Fresh air might clear the chit's head. Fancy her talking as if she knew Sean—although it was possible. Sean never discussed either his plans or women with anyone.

When he tugged the cloak from the captive's face, she lay so pale and still he thought she had suffocated. Fearing he might have done murder, he jerked away the rest of the cloth. Her eyes flew open, and with amazing energy she tried to wriggle away. He hastened to soothe her. "I'm not going to hurt you . . . Oof!" A knee caught his thigh a nasty smack. Exasperated, he sprawled atop the heaving woolly sausage and pinned it. "For God's sake, miss, I thought you'd stifled! I was trying to free you."

The prisoner eyed him balefully. "I was asleep. If I were going to stifle, I should have done it long ago. In fact, I should be quite black. Perhaps you should have chosen a profession less demanding of your intelligence. And it's Countess to you, not miss!" She alternated so smoothly between blistering anger and cool impertinence that he could merely sit astride her and stare. Her dark brows nearly met. "Get off, you dolt! Unless you prefer to crush your victims rather than stifle them!"

Liam shifted to his knees and shoved his nose down to hers. "I suggest you don't insist upon the use of your titles where you're bound,
miss!
And you're lucky I extend you the courtesy of
that
term! If you can keep a civil tongue in your head, you may walk the deck."

"Not the plank?" the captive retorted tartly. "How gallant." At his frown, Catherine lapsed into sardonic silence as he undid the ropes. With a sigh, she sat up and slowly stretched cramped limbs. Liam was surprised at the girl's unconscious grace. Both Sean and Brendan had that same proud carriage of head, which might have been stiff without the ease that accompanied it. She was well proportioned as far as he could tell under the cloak, although too thin and still a bit gangling. The small face with its high cheekbones and magnificent eyes had promise ofbeauty, and the mouth was decidedly appealing; he remembered the way it had felt in the tavern. Oddly, he thought he might have seen her before.

Catherine felt him watching as, skirts swinging, she paced up and down in the limited space. He was young. Certainly he was still capable of being easily embarrassed: that made him susceptible, but to what? His appreciative look lacked the intent appraisal of the Spaniard, even of Raoul d'Amauri; besides, she had learned to beware of leading a man on, even innocently. He was educated, at least to a point, with acceptable grammar and a touch of a brogue. Irish. The Irish were rumored to be idealistic about mothers, sisters, and virgins. Her image as a helpless waif was already dented, judging by the kidnapper's wince of pain as he ducked through the hatchway and escorted her onto the deck; however, sisters often inflicted such damage on siblings, and having had a retinue of surrogate brothers through childhood, she felt on fairly firm ground when it came to their management.

Once on the slippery deck, Catherine took in a lungful of air. Snow drifted into the bulwarks and whirled slowly about the single massive figure at the wheel. He had donned oilskins and hat and looked eerily like the legendary Flying Dutchman, but he was probably Irish too, with that flaming hair. She could not imagine why the Spaniard had employed Irishmen for his dirty work, unless they
were
allied in
common
hatred of the English.

Vigorously rubbing her hands, Catherine wished for her muff. The wind hit her directly in the face as she tugged up the hood and faced the rail. Because of the low fog, no stars were visible, so direction was a mystery. If the Irishmen were headed out to sea, they must expect to be met by another vessel; Valera could easily be moored up one of the coastal creeks, waiting to take his pleasure at leisure, then dump her body in a back marsh.

Desperation prodded her to action. Knowing the blonde was immediately behind her, Catherine deliberately slipped on the wet planking. She managed to twist slightly so that when he caught her she could easily turn into his chest. All happened exactly as planned, under Flannery's sardonic eye.

Liam felt the girl tremble under the cloak. Poor little devil, he thought; she's frightened out of her wits. She must be holding together by sheer bravado. "Are you all right?" he murmured into hair that smelled perfumed in the sifting snow where the hood had fallen away.

A small hand rested against his chest. "Yes . . . yes, I think so. It was clumsy of me. I. . . wasn't thinking." His captive looked up at him gratefully, her eyes great shadowed pools. In them he saw desperation and a determination not to let it show, but beyond that, a mysterious beauty that caught at his heart. In the pit of his stomach, Liam had a growing dread of the fate that awaited the girl in Ireland.

She clung to him for the barest fraction of a moment, then released him and turned away. They both leaned against the rail and she resettled the hood of the cloak. Liam was a little disappointed; he had been watching the lift of the wind in her hair. Still not looking at him, she murmured, "You don't seem like a criminal."

Liam shifted his back to Flannery and answered with a tinge of discomfort, "I'm not, ordinarily."

Catherine noted his move to conceal their conversation. Flattening a palm, she turned it upward to catch the idly drifting snowflakes. "Do you know what your . . . employer plans to do with me?"

"No," Liam answered honestly. He did not know, but he had a fair idea.

"Not the confiding sort, is he?"

"He's not."

"And you're not a man who'd press the point."

He began to get angry again. "Why should I?"

"If I told you he intends to rape and possibly murder me, would that make a difference?"

"I don't know that and neither do you." Underneath his level rebuttal he was stunned by her blunt appraisal.

Catherine's hands tightened on the rail as she turned on him. "I do know! You'll be as guilty as the monster you serve. You can stop it now. You won't accept money to cheat him, so you must have some sense of decency. If you help him, it will be the end of you."

Liam was glumly inclined to agree. He was accustomed to following where Sean led, and although he shrank from some of those paths, he respected his brother's judgment. Still, revenge was at the heart of the festering hatred Sean bore for their mother's murderers, and in that hatred, Liam did not know whether his brother was entirely lucid. What if Sean did kill the girl? Could he be a party to murder?

Reading indecision in his eyes, Catherine laid down her last card. "If you help me escape, my father will reward you with anything you ask, help you make a new start anywhere you like. You could make a respectable name for yourself. . ."

Liam's voice turned hard. "So . . . the English lady would graciously give me what's mine already, what you and your countrymen would have stolen long ago if you could beat down the final resistance of men like my 'employer'! Do you think you can wheedle concessions from people you've trodden underfoot? Come down from your pedestal,
my lady,
and have a good look at the source of your own wealth, a pittance of which you deign to share with me if I lick your feet as a proper Irishman should. Your father wrung his money and rank from dead bodies he strewed all over my homeland. Their lives paid for the clothes on your back! And by all that's holy, if my 'employer,' as you call him, doesn't throttle you, I may be tempted to do it myself, in memoriam!" With that, he swung his prisoner away from the rail and pushed her back toward the tiny cabin.

Catherine stiffened, hovering between cold rage and colder certainty that she was in the company of a fanatical madman. For a wild, fleeting moment, she thought of jumping over the side, but certain death had little appeal. Just before being thrust into the cabin, she spotted the third accomplice. He squatted near the stern where he relashed a small dinghy. The dinghy! The big craft would be impossible to manage, but the dinghy!

The blonde pushed her ahead of him into the cabin, then stooped to clear his height through the doorway. Catherine spun abruptly, slammed the heels of her hands upward against his chin, and cracked his head against the lintel. When he reeled and caught automatically at his ringing head, she dove into his midsection, snatched his pistol, cocked and leveled it without a tremor. "Back out, Sir Patriot, with your hands clasped at the back of your neck. And don't suppose I'm a poor shot. You're a sizable partridge at this range and you've told me exactly where you stand, so move!"

Cheeks blazing and head throbbing, Liam moved. He would never hear the last of this, but injured pride did not provoke him to try anything stupid. The cold glitter of those sapphire eyes, so warm and beseeching a moment ago, assured him the girl wag in no mood for rash behavior. He could almost feel Flannery shaking his head in disdain as he backed gingerly across the threshold.

The countess motioned him to a point several feet from Flannery and waggled the gun briefly at the big man's belly. "Drop your weapon, sir; call your companion and shed your jacket and boots. This man is dead if you delay."

Flannery calmly unhitched his belt and shrugged out of his jacket as he called briefly, "Come forward, Reagan. We're in the lady's company now." He indicated his inability to let go of the wheel long enough to remove his boots.

"Lash it. And you, Fair Hair, off with your top clothes."

Liam frowned. "Do you mean for us to freeze to death?"

"Letting you turn to ice would be an admirable way to preserve ammunition." She eyed the third man moving forward. "But I leave such tactics to you Irish . . . unless you continue to spew lies about my father. Hurry up!"

Liam sullenly tugged at his jacket as the third man joined him and was motioned to discard his clothes and weapons with the others. Catherine felt a growing uneasiness. They were too calm, too acquiescent. Seasoned villains could not be impressed so easily, unless . . . a fourth man was aboard. She leveled the pistol with both hands at the big man's belly. "Call the other one."

Flannery's bushy eyebrows went up slightly. "What other one? Ye're lookin' at the lot of us, little lady."

"Tell him to sing out, or you'll be lying amidst your dinner on the decking. I want that dinghy launched posthaste; these men can manage that very well without you. I shall count to three. One . . . two . . ."

Flannery interrupted, still with the same slightly amused look. "All right, Jimmy boy, the jig's up. Introduce yourself."

Abruptly, a crushing weight dropped onto Catherine's shoulders from behind and flattened her to the deck. The pistol was plucked quickly from her fingers as a tenor voice whistled reedily in her ear, "How d'ye do, ma'am. Sorry to drop in on ye like this." Red suns seemed to explode in her skull and her ears pounded as Catherine watched the redhead's big boots dance crazily toward her across the planking. He's going to kick me in the head, she thought dully. She tried to push the boots away but her fingers would not obey. The deck faded into blackness.

Flannery stood looking down at the unconscious girl and prodded Jimmy's leg with his foot. "Up with ye, lad, or ye'll crush the life out of her. She don't have the backbone of a cavalry nag."

Freckled, carrot-haired Jim Cochrane grinned as he hauled his two hundred lanky pounds off the captive who lay with black hair spilled across the wet deck. "She's got sufficient to put a fatal leak in a man's gut." He slipped a sly look at Flannery's belly. "Thought fancy doxies only knew how to crook their dainty fingers through teacup handles . . . and rings in men's noses." Now, he openly grinned at Liam.