A Rose in Splendor (15 page)

Recognition was swift. Even with the mud and fake pox boils washed off, he knew it was the beggar boy he had met that morning. Now a smooth child’s face looked up at him, marred only by a mutinous anger in the large, luminous dark eyes.

“You!” Killian spat as fresh anger surged through him. “Did you not steal enough of my gold this morning?”

He paused thoughtfully as his gaze switched to the knife he had wrested from the child. When he looked once more on the cherub-sweet face twisted now in pain and fear, his eyes were wintry.

“Did the gleam of gold whet your appetite for more? God! What a greedy little savage you are. You did not count on being caught, did you? Well, I hope you’ll remember what you got for your trouble this morning, for I mean to give you again a generous measure of the same!”

The boy’s dark eyes did not even blink as Killian raised his hand. If anything, they seemed to welcome the expected violence. The child did not plead or beg. There were no false tears or sobs. Killian’s hand halted in mid-stroke.

“Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?”

The boy did not move or speak.

Killian took in once more the soft contours of the child’s face, almost too pretty to be a boy’s, and then the emaciated body. Only then did he notice the shredded shirt and the suspicious dark stickiness seeping through the tatters.

He spun the boy about and swore under his breath at the sight of the many vicious bloody welts visible through the ruined shirt. “Who did this to you?”

“Darce.”

The boy said the name as though Killian should know it. “Why did Darce do this?”

For a moment, naked fear blazed through the boy’s composure. Killian was familiar with the many faces of
fear and realized that the child was near blind panic. Then the expression changed and the childish features hardened into a mask of violence. “Because of ye!”

Despite the fact that he held the dagger and had the child in a viselike grip that precluded his doing any harm, Killian’s blood chilled. The rage in those childish eyes was mature beyond reckoning.

“Your master or father, or whatever the fiend’s connection, beat you half to death because of me,
bouchal
?
Raumach!
”

“MacShane! We thought we’d lost you!”

Killian looked up in annoyance to find Darragh and Conall riding toward him. In the last moments, he had forgotten their existence.

“What have you there?” Conall peered down at the two people under the lantern. “A lad, is it? Did he throw himself under your horse’s hooves? ’Tis an old trick to gain your sympathy. Do not be taken in.” He drew his pistol and aimed it at the boy, but he was so drunk that the barrel wavered back and forth until it came to point at Killian’s chest. “Away, rascal, afore I end your miserable life!”

“I’ll thank you to put that away before you blow my head off,” Killian said coolly. “I can handle one wee bairn with murder in his heart.” He shook the boy roughly by the collar as he tried to twist free. “Not so fast,
bouchal
.
What’s your name?”

Fey hesitated. From the moment she had launched herself at the tall stranger, nothing had gone as she had planned. Chance and outrageous luck had brought her to the tavern where the three Irish nobles were drinking. At first she was not certain that this was the same man who had thrashed her and then given her money. Then she saw the man’s eyes, the bright piercing blue depths, and knew that he was.

As she had waited, hiding in a corner and listening, her desire for revenge had changed into the more practical one of theft. With money, she could buy passage on a coach out of Nantes. He had money. She would take some of it. But
nothing had gone as she had planned and now she was trapped.

Fey gazed up into the angry face hovering above her and suddenly felt very much a child in an adult world. There was violence in that face but no cruelty. Perhaps it was the man’s eyes, Fey never reasoned it out. She knew only that the child inside her responded to the mixture of rage and pity and sympathy that lurked in those blazing light eyes. That, and the lilting Irish brogue that flowed from the man.

“Oh, sir, have pity!” Fey flung herself against the man’s chest and dug her broken-nailed fingers into his arms. “Save me! Please save me! They’ll kill me, they will!”

It was a ploy and Killian recognized it as such, yet the child’s bloody back was proof enough that he told only a partial lie. And the sobs racking the thin body were genuine. Against his better judgment he put an arm about those frail shoulders and heard himself say, “I don’t believe this performance, but ’tis late and I’m more drunk than I prefer to be. Until I’m of a better frame of mind and can sort this out, you will come with me.”

Fey did not protest when she was picked up and carried back to the man’s horse. Her battered skin burned like hot coals, and her anger dissolved into fear as she remembered Darce’s throat washed in a scarlet flood. If she went with the stranger, at least she would be in a place where Darce’s friends were not likely to search.

Killian felt the child’s shiver and an unwanted tenderness blossomed in his chest. He held no illusions about the ruffian’s being a good child or a pleasant one, but the accusation that he was in some way to blame for the welts on the child’s back had made it impossible for him simply to walk away.

“He’s coming with us, then?” Darragh questioned, too filled with ale to have understood anything of the last moments.

“Aye.” Killian climbed into the saddle with the boy in his arms. A moment later, he swung the cloak from his shoulders and tucked it about the child as he would have
swaddled a babe. “Lie still,
bouchal
,
or I’ll tie you across my horse’s flanks.”

“Me name’s Fey,” she offered in a tiny voice. “Fey? What sort of name is that for an Irishman?” Fey did not answer but huddled deeper in the warm folds of the cloak as the man urged his horse forward. She was safe for the moment. Perhaps her luck was changing, but she was cautious by nature and her secret was better kept until she knew this man better.

*

“What will you do with the bairn?” Conall asked when they had dismounted before the Fitzgerald residence.

“The stable will do well enough for the likes of him,” Darragh offered.

“I’d rather the lad were where I could keep an eye on him,” Killian answered as he scooped the sleeping child from his saddle.

“You mean to tuck the brat in your bed covers?” Conall shook his head in amazement, then groaned as the effects of the liquor reeled through his bram. “I’d as soon sleep with a wolf cub.”

“If he’ll not conduct himself civilly, I’ve a length of rope that will secure him to a bedpost until morning. Good night.”

By the time Killian had climbed the stairs to his room, he knew that the child in his arms was no longer asleep. His dead weight had lightened into a tense bundle of expectancy. He did not blame the child. They were strangers and neither of them trusted the other.

Killian dropped his bundle into a chair and stood back, folding his arms across his chest as the child struggled to disentangle himself from the cloak. Finally the dark head emerged.

Fey’s eyes widened as they took in and valued every inch of the large, lavishly furnished room. She had heard that some men lived like kings, but until this moment she had never guessed what that phrase meant. Now, confronted by silk tapestries and bed curtains, fancy carpets from the
East, and lavish furnishings, she could only gape. “Is all this yers?”

Killian followed the child’s greedy gaze to the silver-and-gold cigar box on the table nearest the chair. “As it happens, none of it is, and I’ll thank you not to touch a single item in the room. I’m certain you claim thievery as well as beggary as an accomplishment.” He pulled the child’s weapon from his belt and turned it over in his hand. “I will not concede to you the appellation of murderer, for you do it so poorly,
bouchal
.”

Despite the man’s bantering tone, Fey blanched at the mention of murder. In fact, she had accomplished that act with surprising ease.

Killian studied the small boy wrapped in his cloak and remembered that this was a child, after all, and in obvious need of some sort of mothering. “Are you hungry?”

Fey’s head shot up. “A pint of ale would nae come amiss!”

“Ha! You gave yourself away then, I’d say. You’re an Irishman—uh, Fey. Fey, what sort of name is that?”

Fey lowered her head, the long sweep of her dark lashes brushing her cheeks. “Me mother was thought to be a bit queer in the head. When I was born, she claimed ’twas a fairy’s trick, for she never lay with any man.
’Twas the work of fairies
,
the gift of this fey creature in me bed
.
’
That’s what they told me she said just before she died. The Fey part stuck.”

Laughter, coming unexpectedly from the sober-faced man, startled Fey.

“So, you’re a changeling,” Killian said when his laughter subsided. “Well, ’tis a good tale, not the best I’ve heard, mind, but a good tale. So tell me, Fey, where do you live?”

Fey lowered her head. “Nowhere.”

“Come, everyone lives somewhere. The gutter? The sewer? A brothel, perhaps. Nae, you’re yet young for some vices, but I dare swear that will change.” Killian looked about, the dampening effects of the brandy beginning to supersede his interest in the foundling. “’Tis late,
bouchal
.
Sit quietly in that chair while I stretch out for a
short while.” He turned toward the bed and then looked back over his shoulder, his gaze hard. “You’ll not run away?”

Fey shook her head.

“Nor steal a thing?”

Again, the head shake of denial.

Killian shook his own head. It was the height of madness to trust the child. A few quick strides brought him to his door, where he turned the key in the latch and then pocketed it. When he had discarded his boots, jacket, and vest, he lay back on the inviting softness of the feather tick and fell instantly asleep.

Fey watched the sleeping man for several minutes before curiosity brought her to his bedside.

Darce had taught her to judge a man at a glance, for in a moment’s hesitation an opportunity could be lost. There was a streak of perversity in this man; she had seen it at work twice this day. It showed itself in his face. His gaze was hard, uncompromising, ruthless…but not cruel. The high forehead and straight nose were those of a thoughtful, educated man. Darce said that when a man took time to think, he lost an opportunity for action, but it did not seem overly to hamper this man.

When she came to the mouth Fey grinned. Softened now in sleep, it betrayed a man of sensitivity and deep feeling, things that he kept hidden from the world in his waking hours. She did not fault him for that.

Satisfied by the inventory, Fey moved on to other things. Where it spread upon the pillow, the man’s black hair shone in the candle’s faint light. Fey picked up a strand. The cool smooth tress slipped easily through her admiring fingers. Men were not the only things Darce had taught her how to judge. She knew the quality of silk and laces and many other items of contraband. This gentleman’s head of hair was of the very best quality and would fetch an excellent price on the wig market.

Fey banished the thought. She doubted the man would sell his hair. He was a gentleman. As for stealing it…

Fey looked about until she spied her skean sticking out of the man’s waistband. With a thief s touch she slipped it
free. Then, with a last guilty look at the blue-black head of hair, she tucked the skean inside her waistband. She would not steal from the man who, perhaps, had saved her life.

Fey turned away from the bed, her eyes seeking a window. If she kept to the country lanes and traveled by dark, she would escape.

The window opened with little noise, and a stiff sea breeze greeted Fey as she climbed out onto the ledge. The second-story perch did not faze her. She pulled the window shut behind herself and, grasping with fingers and toes a perch in the house’s stone facade, began a slow descent. In less than a minute her feet touched the ground.

She was turning away from the house when the distinct aroma of toast and cinnamon reached her. She paused in mid-stride as her empty stomach twisted in hunger. How long had it been since she had eaten? At least a day. Darce had not given her a chance to consume her only meal of the day.

Almost against her will, Fey retraced her steps until she spied a candle’s glow behind the shrubbery to her right. Squatting, she peered through a crack in the window and down into a kitchen. Not a yard from where she crouched lay three thick slices of toast topped with sugar and cinnamon. From a steaming cup nearby, the rich dark smell of cocoa arose.

Fey clutched the windowsill, near swooning with delight as her mouth watered in anticipation. A quick look confirmed that no one was about. Ten seconds, that was all it would take to steal the bread. The cocoa, alas, would have to be left behind.

The basement window was much more shallow than those of the upper stories, but Fey was small and adept at fitting herself into small places. She squeezed through the opening and landed, catlike, on her feet. The bread was in her hand, its buttery surface slicking her fingers with a warm golden drizzle, and then the taste of cinnamon tingled her tongue.