A Rose in Splendor (30 page)

Teague smiled at him tolerantly. “I will go. You’ve
known me half my life. When my family sent me to France to study I did not speak a word of the language. I thought I would die from loneliness until we met. Even so, you know returning to Ireland is all that has kept me a sane man. Well, now I’m ordained. I must return home and serve as my vows direct me.”

“You’ll go home and die,” Killian mumbled. The whiskey had struck his empty stomach like a hammer on a cymbal, and his body vibrated with the shimmering warmth that preceded a loss of conscious thought. “Go home and die! Why plague me with its anticipation?”

Teague watched his companion a moment longer before he wet his lips nervously and said, “There is a reason I asked you to meet me here.” He leaned forward until he was nearly stretched across the table. “You’re correct when you say I’d be no more than a bairn among wolves. But you, Killian, you’d be a wolf among wolves.”

Killian smiled benevolently. A wolf among wolves; he liked the sound of it. But what was Teague talking about? He was no priest. “I am no priest.”

“No, but you’re a soldier, and Ireland is as much in need of temporal as spiritual emboldening.” He lowered his eyes. “I am much a coward, Killian, but you’ve always had the heart of a lion. Had you listened more to the call of your vocation, you might be sitting here in my place.”

“I did listen, lad,” Killian countered, wondering how much longer Teague would sit beside him with that fair innocent face that made him seem half his twenty-eight years. “I was called to slaughter France’s enemies, and that I have done in abundance, on any and all occasions until my hands are red. I have lived war until I am weary of it.”

Teague gripped his wrist. “I knew that you were weary of your life, Killian. I felt it! ’Tis why I wrote you. You need a mission, something holy and worthy of your best effort.” His voice fell to a whisper. “You have been much in my prayers when I have needed guidance. Again and again, you came to my thoughts as I knelt and prayed for the strength to do what I must. Finally, I realized what the Holy Mother was telling me. I need your strength to help
me in this sacred mission. Come with me to Ireland. I leave tomorrow night, and there’s funds enough to pay your passage. Come and do the Lord’s work, Killian!”

Killian shook off Teague’s hand and stood up, his head feeling as though it floated a foot above his shoulders. “Bad cess to you! I am no confidant of priests. You could do no worse in choosing a Reformation minister as your companion. I cannot help you. I cannot help myself!”

He turned and lurched out through the doorway, uncaring that people turned to stare openly at him. His head no longer ached. It no longer felt attached to his body. But the reflexes of years of training never leave a man.

As he entered the dark crowded lane, he felt a hand brush him, a wandering hand that sought his money purse. Without pausing in his stride, he grabbed the offending member and bent back its fingers until they snapped and the would-be thief screamed in pain and vanished into the night.

No one came near him after that. Indeed, the crowd parted before the tall black-haired stranger whose blue eyes burned too brightly in his tight, angry face.

*

Charlotte Maria Yvette Mont Clair, the fifth Duchesse de Luneville, eyed her late dinner companion balefully. Only Killian MacShane would have dared this gross insult to her sensibilities. Not only had he failed to appear on time, he had failed to appear at all the four preceding evenings. He sat now in his street dirt, his black hair matted and uncombed, his cheeks unshaved, and his head held in grimy hands. Worst of all, he smelled of the tavern. His breath was a hot expulsion of whiskey fumes that ruined the delicious aroma of her dining table.

As her slim fingers, bejeweled with sapphires and gold, toyed with the ivory-handled fruit knife beside her plate the duchesse contemplated what she should do. Once she would have had MacShane thrown out for such audacity. She would have ordered him taken into the stables and chained there until his drunkenness wore off. When she
felt he had suffered enough, she would have sent footmen to wash, shave, and dress him before they escorted him to her bedchamber.

The duchesse smiled, making a thin curve of her small pink mouth. On those few occasions when he had suffered the consequences of her wrath, he had been contrite afterward, offering her in the form of urgent lovemaking a little of the secret desperateness that ruled him.

She never knew whether he received in equal amount that which he so generously gave her. She suspected not. She sensed that he held himself in reserve.

In the nine years she had known him, she had been tormented and frustrated by that part of himself that he always held back, kept detached, a secret shut within an inner shell that nothing could touch. The search for the key to MacShane’s inner self was one of the few challenges she felt worthy of her pursuit. As a woman, it tantalized her. As his lover, it beguiled her into forgiving him over and over.

She raised her eyes to the doorway where a pair of footmen stood in attendance. Their sapphire-blue livery with golden embroidery momentarily diverted her attention. They made a handsome contrast to the sky-blue wall panels and pink marble pilasters of her newly redecorated room. Even the Duchesse de Montage had remarked upon her choice of pale pink silk draperies which added to the drama of the chamber.
Oui
,
she was quite pleased.

She turned to MacShane to urge him to praise her latest project, but one look at him erased the thought. She doubted that he realized where he was.

“
Mon cher
,
you must burn that horrible coat. It smells of—of the bourgeois!”

Killian lifted his head from his hands and winced as the light of two dozen tapers struck his eyes. He must have dozed, he thought, for he did not remember returning to the
hotel de Luneville
. Yet, as he raised his eyes he saw the duchesse in all her splendor regarding him with displeasure.

As always, she was robed in sapphire cloth, velvet on this winter evening. About her throat and wrists and cascading from her ears were elaborate diamond and sapphire jewels. Sapphires winked on every finger of every
hand. Nothing, however, could detract the observer from the face of the duchesse herself. It had once been a beautiful face. Much of the skin was still flawlessly smooth and lily white, which made the disfigurement all the more hideous.

From her left temple a long puckered scar jagged wickedly down across her eye to the middle of her left cheek. The eye itself was covered by a jeweled patch which sported a single five-carat sapphire of the deepest blue in its center.

“I will tolerate many things,
mon cher
,”
she said sweetly. “Gross negligence of one’s person and insufficient care for my feelings are two things I will not abide.” Unconsciously her hand had risen to her left cheek, where she traced the scar made nearly invisible by rice powder. “You should be horsewhipped. Shall I see to it?”

“Whatever pleases you, duchesse,” Killian answered indifferently.

“Then I believe I should order it done, but for the fact that you would enjoy the pain too much.” She laughed delightedly at his baleful glare. “I know you well, MacShane. You are too vain a man to mask your handsomeness in that most vile garb and fill your head with the piss that passes for spirits among the commoners. Unless,” and she leaned forward to touch his hand. “Unless,
cheri
,
you seek to punish yourself.”

She sat back with a look of distaste. “
Merde!
Can you never forget your years in the monastery? What imagined sins do you seek to redress? If you must suffer then do so,
mon cher
,
with a little elegance.”

Her hand curled against her scarred cheek in the gentlest of caresses. “Shall I introduce you to those who know how to exact exquisite pleasure from pain?”

Killian looked away but not before she spied a glint of something—interest or disgust?—in his eye.

“I, myself, do not indulge in the madness of the flesh that yearns for pain before the pleasure of Venus can be achieved. Yet, it is popular enough in certain circles. What do you think,
mon cher
?
There are ways, I’m told, of deriving the ultimate humiliation of one’s soul without so
much as a loss of a single drop of blood or the turning of a hair.”

Her hand fell to cover the jewels decorating the deep décolletage of her bodice, trembling slightly as she imagined him writhing in the ecstasy of some perfect agony delivered by an expert hand. A delicious tremor began in her middle and sped to her groin as she considered the acts of debauchery which might drive him to such frenzy that he lost control and revealed his innermost secret self. She must be there, to comfort, to pleasure, and to master once and for always this difficult man.

“I know of one place where nothing will be denied you. Shall we go there,
cheri
?”
she whispered in a husky betrayal of her emotions.

Killian shook his head, freezing his expression to keep from revealing the revulsion he felt. He had known the duchesse a long time. Yet, he had only to look at her to be reminded that she was a decadent creature at heart, a woman capable of giving herself on a whim to her stablemen or exacting a grisly revenge for some slight upon her person. She was the rare lady who wielded the power of her dead husband’s fortune, a proud and predatory aristocrat who obeyed no law but her own, and it was that her pleasure was the law.

“Ask Henri to accompany you,” he mumbled. “I am in no mood for the circus.”

The duchesse’s gaze slipped sideways to the doorway once more, where the taller of the two footmen stood, his handsome swarthy features powdered as pale as her own. It was no secret that Henri was one of her lovers. Occasionally, Jean, the second footman, joined them in her bed. But it was Henri with his broad back and his bullish proportions that she preferred when Killian was absent.

“Are you jealous, my Irish stallion? You may have your place at a moment’s notice, provided you bathe and shave, and beg my forgiveness.”

Killian raised his head. She was very angry; it glittered in her one good eye. If he was not careful she would, indeed, have him horsewhipped. He rose and bowed low. “A thousand pardons, duchesse. With your permission—”

“You will sit down!” she cried, her voice like a whip. “Fool! Charlatan! Do you think I do not know that you—” She paused, her attention turned to the footmen. “You! Out! Both of you!”

When they were gone she turned back to MacShane, who swayed on his feet. “So tell me, my stallion, what has gelded you?”

Killian nearly smiled. If only she knew how far she was from the truth! “I prefer the seductive kiss of brandy these days.”

“You prefer the stupor of forgetfulness,” she replied. “Do not mistake my interest for sympathy. I have seen you at your worst,
mon cher
,
and that is when you are most dangerous. I have not forgotten the day we met.” Her smile lifted her enameled brows on her lineless forehead. “It is rare that a lady has so revealing an opportunity to judge the worthiness of a prospective lover.”

Killian shook his throbbing head. “Must we speak of the past?”

“
Oui
,
we will speak of it because it pleases me. And you will sit because it pleases me,
n’est-ce pas
?”

Killian dropped back into his seat, not out of fear but because to remain or to leave was a matter of indifference to him.

The duchesse saw his indifference and was pleased. She did not want him bested or afraid. Too many in her circle of acquaintances feared her. Her staff did as she bid out of terror. Only MacShane remained intractable. His courage had first drawn her to him.

She had gone to Calais nine years earlier to survey a ship she intended to purchase. She had offered the beggar nearest her a purse as she alighted from her carriage. It was not until he stood up and tossed the purse of money back at her that she had turned to look at him. His back still oozed blood from a recent beating, but his legs and shoulders were strongly muscled. His face, though filthy, was well made and his loincloth fit tightly a most pleasant bulge. But it was his sapphire eyes, so much like her own, glaring impotent rage, that had made her purchase his freedom.

“Do you remember what you called me?” she asked in amusement.

They had played this game of remembrance too often for Killian to feign ignorance of her thoughts. “A dissolute aristocrat with more money than honor, more pride than piety, and more beauty than heart,” he answered dully.

“
Oui
.
It was those last words that won your freedom from the galley ship,” she answered softly and raised her hand again to her scarred cheek. No one had called her a beauty for such a long time. And then, a mere commoner, the lowliest of slaves, had called her beautiful. “’Tis strange, I knew you meant what you said. I would have given twice, no, twenty times what it cost me to buy you!”

“You have since been repaid,” Killian reminded her.

“
Oui
.”
Her fingers encircled the inch-and-a-half jewel-encrusted orb which had been added to her necklace and she lovingly rubbed it. Inside the orb was the eye of the man who was responsible for the loss of her own. “You are stubborn and proud,
cheri
,
but I will always forgive you because you paid me back in a way that gives me pleasure each time I am reminded of it.”