A Rose in Splendor (36 page)

“You are mistaken,” Deirdre answered. “I will wed no one.”

“There were announcements of the engagement,” Killian persisted.

“Did you receive one?” she asked tartly. “I am amazed to learn that Cousin Claude knew your whereabouts.”

“I heard,” Killian answered, thinking better of disclosing that the news had come from the duchesse. “There is no need to lie to me.”

Deirdre pushed the hair back from her face with a trembling hand. “I was engaged; ’twas my father’s wish. Now he is dead and I wish not to wed.”

The news of her father’s death brought an unexpected sorrow to Killian. “I had not heard. My sympathies, mademoiselle.”

“Why do we speak French? We are Irish.”

“What would you have me say to you,
acushla
?”

“Do not call me that!” Deirdre cried. “Go away, go back to your duchesse! I am certain that she waits for you. And you, you left my side to seek your fill of her! Go away and leave me to my shame!” Angrily she scrubbed
away a tear that fell on her cheek. “Must you mock even my misery?”

“I did not come to mock you,” Killian said gently as he moved toward the bed.

“Why then did you come? Did you think to explain to me something the duchesse forgot?”

“I imagine the duchesse told you everything that I would not have. And, that being the case, I have nothing to add.”

Deirdre looked up at him but she could not see his expression, and his voice frightened her. It made her want to put her arms about his neck and cling to him and weep and beg him to love her. She looked away. “Please. Please go away and forget that I came.”

“Nae, lass,” he said as he sat down beside her. “A man cannot turn from the tears of a woman until he knows why.”

Deirdre shook her head. “Must you have it all? Must you hear the words?” She raised her head, her tears streaming freely once more. “I came because I loved you. There, ’tis said. I loved you.”

“Deirdre,” he began, reaching out for her.

She eluded his touch. “No, do not touch me. I said I loved you. That was before. Now I feel nothing but shame and bitterness and anger.”

Her voice lashed him with its pain, and he rose, unable to bear her dislike. “I have hurt you. I never intended that you would be hurt.” He spoke mostly to himself, his voice low and sonorous in the stillness. “That is why I left Nantes. What was between us, it was impossible. We were strangers. There was nothing but pain and misery for you in being near me.”

He turned back to her, his voice rising in intensity. “Do you see now what I tried to warn you of? You’re bound for disappointment and unhappiness the more you learn about me.”

“
Gom
!”
Deirdre smoothed the last of the tears from her face. “’Tis no more pain than any woman suffers when the man of her choice does not want her. I’m not so great a
fool that I do not understand that,” she said in a surprisingly practical tone.

Killian stared at her. “Why have you come to Paris?”

Deirdre bit her lip. It seemed so foolish now. He would think her a greater fool, if not a madwoman, if she told him. “We have nothing more to say. Go away, Captain MacShane.”

Killian stared at her a moment longer and then turned to reach for the door latch.

“Wait! You have not kissed me. ’Tis the thing I shall miss the most. Will you not kiss me one last time?”

Deirdre did not know why she had said it, and could not quite believe she had spoken aloud until Killian shut the door and came toward the bed.

He bent over slowly, giving her every chance to turn away, and then he placed his lips very gently over hers.

Her lips were cool and damp with salty tears and they trembled under his mouth’s caress. For a moment he resisted touching her and then his hands found her arms and he lifted her closer and wrapped her in his embrace.

Deirdre held still under the gentle assault of his kiss, willing herself to remain apart and record this last moment of joy at his hands. But she could not remain apart. She raised her hands, tangling her fingers in the heavy black silk of his hair, and pulled him closer. She clung to him with her lips, cherishing his sweetness, his strength, and the wind of passion that his kiss stirred to life, and terrified of the moment when he would break away.

Her lips parted under his and the hot breath of desire escaped, the passion clean and pure that burned for him alone. She heard him gasp as if in pain and then she was crushed against him. She gave up resistance, going with him as he climbed onto the bed, falling back under him as he bent her to the mattress, their lips never parting but savoring the unexpected joy of the moment.

Killian ceased to think of what he was doing the moment passion gusted between them. He had not thought he wanted her, had not considered the danger of desire when he bent to touch his lips briefly to hers. Now he was
lost as her lips clung to his, murmuring nameless, glorious delight at his touch.

Her hands were on him, her cool satiny hands, and then the whole length of her warm softness lay under him. She moved under him, slowly, slow-moving, heart-stopping, feeding and strengthening the terrible wild hunger between them. The gentle-tender motion of love changed, became a swift-moving, wild-rapid, storm-blown current of pleasure-agony that ended in a swift eruption accompanied by their cries of pleasures.

*

Neither of them spoke, yet each was excruciatingly aware of the other as they lay side by side, not touching but not drawing away. The fire hissing behind the grate was the only sound in the room as the minutes passed.

“I hate her,” Deirdre said at last, her voice low and sad. “I hate her for loving you, for having you.”

Killian sat up, cradling his head in his hands. What could he say? How could he explain? He could not.

“Now will you run away again?” Deirdre asked, emotion edging in over the serenity of the last moments. “A fine soldier you must be,
abu
,
retreating at every challenge.”

Killian smiled in the dark. The lady was more she-wolf than he had credited. “I have been praised for my courage in battle. They say I fear nothing and that is so. It is then that a man has his life, his fate in his hands. If he dies, he knows the moment and the cause. I care nothing for physical pain. With the duchesse, it is the same. I was attracted to her, the danger, the violence, and I stayed because it was of my choosing. But this…this is different.”

He turned to her and saw her eyes shining in the darkness. “You frighten me,
acushla
.
When I see you, when I am near you, I am robbed of myself. How can I explain? You have bewitched me. I am no longer able to choose.” His voice roughened with desperation. “Just now. What have we done? Madness! All of it! Madness!” He rose from the bed, unthinking that in doing so he exposed his nakedness.

“I saved your life,” Deirdre said gently. “Yet you say you fear me.”

“I fear the loss of reason,” Killian replied. “If I am to believe the dream that haunted me until seven short months ago, then I have never had a choice in wanting you. Yet, in wanting you, in having you, I place you in great danger.” He brushed the hair from his eyes. “A reasonable man would not put a thing that he desires in danger. And yet I am capable of doing that.”

“By being here?” she questioned softly.

“By being here, by remaining here, and by allowing the duchesse to know that I am here with you.”

Deirdre sat up, reaching for the modesty of cover. “The duchesse knows that you have come here?”

“Aye,” Killian said grimly. “She knows or suspects, damn her, what my feelings are.”

“And you fear what she may do?”

Killian heard the caution in her voice and understood her thoughts. He turned to her. “I do not care what she may do to me. I have told you, I thrive on a certain amount of danger; it piques my appetite. She and I are well matched. Do not look away from me,
acushla
.
My concerns are not for myself. My fear is for you.”

Deirdre stared at him, wishing that the room were not so dark. His expression was lost in the gloom and his voice was disconcertingly neutral. “You say you’re concerned for me. How do you know that danger will not come even if you are absent from my life?”

“The danger is of my making.”

Anger blazed in her face. “Then go back to the duchesse’s arms. She will forgive you. I saw it in her eyes. She will punish you, but she will forgive you. She loves you.”

“I have not touched her in seven months,” Killian said.

The joy that flared in Deirdre’s eyes was caught by the firelight and Killian felt something in him burst free. “Then you are free of her,” she whispered low.

Killian stood very still, listening to the echo rising from somewhere deep inside him. Yes, he was free of the duchesse, completely. The lust that had bound them was
gone, routed by the gentle touch of an Irish lass with eyes the color of a lough at sunset. “I will never touch her again, not in that way.”

Deirdre let the sheet fall from her hand and it slid down to her waist. “Then I must be more selfish than she,
mo cuishle
,
for I will never give you up!”

*

Fey congratulated herself as she climbed the stairs to the room she shared with Lady Deirdre. She had been below, chatting with the concierge and spinning such a sad tale of woe that the woman had promised them a room for two weeks for the price of one, which meant that she and Lady Deirdre could remain in Paris a week longer than expected. If Lady Deirdre respected Fey’s talents more, she would have realized how simple it was to solve their problems. That was the lady’s trouble; she sought the most difficult, if pious, answer to every question when most things were easily solved by guile and wit.

For instance, Lady Deirdre had not questioned the note that she had been brought. She had not asked how MacShane looked or even if he was well. She had not asked where he lived or what it was like. She had simply smiled like the silly goose she was and tried to keep back foolish tears of joy.

Fey smirked as she thought of what she had found. MacShane, despite his priggish prosing against sin, was the lover of a wealthy older woman. No doubt, Lady Deirdre would return from the Duchesse de Luneville’s residence humming a very different tune. Well, it served her right, thinking that all she had to do to have a man was want him.

“He’d have been mine had she kept shy of him,” Fey muttered.

The sound of voices inside halted her outside the door to her room. She recognized Deirdre’s voice at once. It took her longer to recognize the second voice, but when she did, her face drained of color. MacShane
was inside, in bed by the sounds of it, with Lady Deirdre.

Fey turned away, screwing her eyes up until the tears could not escape. “Damn them!” she whispered huskily. “Damn them both!”

Chapter Fifteen

Killian lay on his back in the pool of morning sunlight, his hands folded behind his head. Had he ever been more at peace with himself? He could not remember it. A few short hours ago, he had dreaded entering this room. He had expected to find inconsolable hurt, recriminations, tears, rage. He had braced himself to offer labored explanations, to endure more anger, regrets, and apologies, and ultimately to face Deirdre’s rejection. It had not been like that at all.

He turned to gaze at the woman who lay next to him and contentment flooded him. She lay on her back, one arm thrown above her head, her other hand clutching the sheet that did not quite hide the rosy peak of one breast. She was asleep, unaware of his warm regard and of his feelings of love, of tenderness, protectiveness, and fear.

Fear was what had awakened him from the deep dreamless sleep of peace. Would she be there when he opened his eyes? She was. The peace had flooded back, only to
wash away again. In its wake had come new concerns
. Would she regret the night? No, she would not. She had come to Paris to find him. She had not told him so, nor was he so arrogant and conceited as to assume this. He simply understood her better now. She had no guile, no falseness, no protection of pride to keep her from seeking that which she desired. It was he, not she, who was humbled by her search. He did not deserve to mean so much to this lovely woman.

He smiled as she stretched, kitten-like, releasing the sheet. She was all beauty and warmth and softness. From the brilliant waves of her golden hair to the roses-and-cream complexion of her young body, she was all things sweet, pure, clean, and good. And she wanted him.

The joy of that knowledge was sweet-piercing to the heart of him. He did not know what love was. He had had little experience with it, but surely this serenity which swept over him as he gazed down at Deirdre, surely this was close.

I must marry her
,
Killian thought. Dear God! How would they manage? He had no income, no prospects, nothing to offer her.

Once more peace ebbed from him. He was nothing—no, less than nothing, because he had set out since the summer to ruin himself. The quest to drown his despair with whiskey had become the summation of each day’s rising. He did not feel it now, but would it last?

Back and forth, his emotions swam on the tidal action of his thoughts. He was bound to her, had been since that fateful day nearly twelve years earlier when as a green boy of seventeen he had given his life into the hands of a serious-eyed lass of seven. She had been there for him all along. At any time he might have presented himself to the Fitzgeralds and found the answer to his dreams. Yet, he had waited.