Keegan's Lady (46 page)

"Sweetheart, you are special. A sweet, beautiful—"

"Stop it! Just—stop it!"

"Caitlin . . ."

She held up a hand. "You told me once that eventually you wanted no more secrets between us. Do you remember that?"

"Yes."

"Well, I have one. An awful one. More awful than you can imagine! And if I ever tell you, you'll—" Her voice cracked again and she gulped. "You'll never look at me the same again. Never."

Ace raked a hand through his hair, shifted his feet, his gaze never leaving hers. "I'll tell you what. Let's strike a bargain, shall we? You tell me your awful secret, and if I feel any differently about you after I hear it, I'll not only live you your goddamned annulment, I'll help you pack and put you on the first stage to San Francisco. I'll even kick in enough money for you to live on for a good long while. Sound fair?"

"You'd do that?" she asked shakily.

"You've got my word on it." Feeling fairly sure there was nothing she could possibly tell him that would have power to shock him that badly, he said, "So, out with it what is this awful secret of yours?"

She was already so pale, he didn't think she could grow any paler, but she did. Her eyes looked like flashes of black against her white skin. He saw her throat work, saw her lips part. But the words evidently refused to come. She passed a shaking hand over her eyes.

In a barely audible voice, she said, "Do you remember asking me if the man who—who raped me paid for it? And my saying he paid dearly?"

"Yes."

"I deliberately misled you."

"You mean he waltzed off scot-free?"

"No, he paid. Just not in the way you thought I meant, he gave my father six cases of whiskey."

"What?"

"He gave my father six cases of whiskey," she repeated thinly. "That was how much he paid."

Ace felt as if a horse had kicked him in the guts. The ground vanished from under his feet. He stood there, staring at her, not quite able to assimilate what she'd laid to him. Then, slowly, like lethally sharp razors, the words cut their way into his brain. "Oh, Jesus, no."

It was all he could say, and at the words, she flinched as if he'd struck her. She took a stumbling step backward, still hugging her waist, the muscles in her face drawn taut over bone, making her look almost skeletal.

"You see?" she whispered.

She whirled to run. Ace was still so stunned, it took him a moment to react. By then, she'd already put several feet between them.

"Caitlin! Come back here!"

She ran as if the devil were at her heels. Ace struck off after her. He knew damned well she couldn't see that well at night, and he feared she might trip over something if she didn't stick to the open areas.

No such luck. Like a terrified, injured animal, she sought the cover of the trees and undergrowth that grew along the creek. Darkness. Ace plunged in after her, swatting limbs from his face, cursing beneath his breath.

"Goddammit, Caitlin! Stop! Not into the trees! Caitlin!"

If anything, his warnings and the sound of his footsteps so close behind her spurred her to a greater speed. Ace lengthened his stride, bending forward at the waist, reaching for her as he closed the distance between them. He got so close, he could hear her labored breathing. But every time he grabbed for her, she managed to evade his hand.

Then he saw them. Rocks. Fifteen feet ahead of her, a bed of jagged rock in the bend of the stream. She was running right for them, blind to the danger, oblivious to his shouts.

With a speed he didn't know he had, Ace closed the last few feet between them. She gave a startled umph as he caught her around the waist in a flying leap. Twisting in midair so he would land beneath her and take the brunt of their fall, he hit the ground with her locked in his embrace.

"Let go of me!" she shrieked. "Let go of me!"

Elbows. Knees. Ace had never been jabbed into so many places at once. When he rolled to pin her beneath him, she went for his face with her fingernails. He caught her wrists just before she found her mark, pinning her arms above her head. "Goddammit, Caitlin, stop it!"

She threw her head from side to side, straining every muscle in her body to break his hold. He took her wrists in the grip of one hand so he could grasp her by the chin. Moonlight slanting into the clearing illuminated her lace. "Stop it, I said!"

Left with no other way to avoid his gaze, she closed her eyes, her expression one of utter despair. "Let go of me she cried again, this time piteously. "I mean it! Let me go!"

She fought him with surprising strength. Unfortunately for her, she was no match for him physically. He held her down easily, scarcely exerting himself while she pushed herself closer and closer to exhaustion. When she finally had no more energy left with which to fight, she shuddered and went limp, her face mirroring her defeat.

Ace gazed down at her tortured expression. Dear God in heaven. He couldn't conceive of anyone doing something so heartless to her as selling her body for whiskey.

"Ah, Caitlin . . . sweetheart." Holding her chin firmly clasped so she couldn't look away, he locked his gaze on hers. "I want you to listen to me." He bent his head to kiss her forehead, then looked deeply into her eyes again. "It doesn't matter. It tears me apart that such a thing happened to you, but it doesn't change how I feel about you. Not one whit. Do you understand? If your father had traded you for whiskey a hundred different times, to a hundred different men, it still wouldn't matter. I'll always love you. Always. The most awful secret in the world won't ever change that."

With a suddenness that startled him, she burst into tears. Not delicate, ladylike crying, but wrenching sobs that cut clear through him.

Rolling onto his back, Ace drew her into his arms, cupping the back of her head with one hand, pressing her shuddering body full-length against him with his other arm. In their struggle, her hair had come loose from its pins. With a texture like the underside of silk, the freed strands fell across his wrist and down his forearm.

"It's all right, Caitlin. Shh, sweetheart, it's all right."

Only, of course, it wasn't. Caitlin, the intricate puzzle that had always seemed to have pieces missing. Now, suddenly, all those missing pieces had fallen together. Her sense of inadequacy. Her low opinion of herself. Her refusal to trust. Little wonder she'd been unable to separate and conquer her fears of him. Sold for six cases of whiskey. She'd been nothing more than a possession to Conor O'Shannessy, a marketable commodity. How could Ace expect her to believe he cherished her when her own father had sold her to another man?

I pray I can forget.

Turning his face against her hair, Ace closed his eyes, hard. He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. Not since boyhood, he guessed. A man didn't easily give way to his emotions. Only he was crying now. With her. For her. He tightened his hold on her, aware in the back of his mind that he should be careful not to hurt her, yet feeling compelled to hold her tight and never let her go.

To his surprise, she hooked an arm around his neck and clung to him. He wasn't sure how long he held her like that, only that time passed and eventually her sobs ebbed away to occasional hiccoughs. The way she hugged his neck no longer felt quite so desperate. She surrendered to the caresses of his hands on her back and arms, making no protest when his palms brushed close to the sides of her breasts.

"It happened in the study," she whispered.

Ace pressed his lips against her hair. "Tell me," he whispered softly.

He didn't really want to hear the details. He knew it was going to be an ugly story, one that would probably haunt him until the day he died. The coward in him recoiled. But he also sensed that Caitlin might never be able to put it behind her until she talked about it.

She feathered her fingertips over the hair that grew along the back of his neck, her touch tentative and exploring. Then suddenly her nails dug in slightly, pricking his skin. "Pa was sitting at his desk with his whiskey," she said thinly. "That was all he cared about, whiskey."

Ace closed his eyes again, fighting back rage. Later. Later he could get angry. Shove his fist through a wall. Yell until he was hoarse. But not now. She needed him. She might never again need him quite so desperately.

"He t-told me to stop squalling," she said. "That was all! To stop squalling."

Ace swallowed back a curse, then stared sightlessly at the sky. The words spewed from her now, a purging of heart and soul that was six years late in coming. She spoke of the pain, then of the shame she'd felt. Ace tried to picture it and was a little more successful in that endeavor than he wanted to be. A young girl, brutally raped while her father slouched at his desk, swilling from his whiskey jug. It was inconceivable. Yet he knew it had happened. The hatred and bitterness in her voice were evidence of that, so thick in the air he could almost taste the emotions every time he drew breath.

March 12, 1879. There'd been no one to hold her then, no one to comfort her. To get Patrick out of the way, Conor had sent the boy on a cattle drive. Cruise Dublin had shown up that first night, shortly after dark, with the six cases of whiskey in the back of his wagon.

Ace clenched his teeth when he heard the name. Dublin had been one of Conor O'Shannessy's sidekicks, one of the four men involved in swindling Joseph. A bastard. Most likely a cruel bastard. Any man who could stand by and watch while a boy was bludgeoned with a litle butt and a helpless woman was sexually violated had to be cruel. Not to mention that Dublin had participated in the hanging of an innocent man.

Ace could almost picture him. A short, stocky fellow with blunt features and a ruddy face. He tried to imagine him putting his hands on Caitlin and couldn't. What kind of man did such a thing? Ace considered himself to be as hot-blooded as the next fellow, but he drew the line at rape. There was no excuse, none whatsoever, for a man to take by force what could be purchased at nearly any saloon with a five-dollar gold piece.

Not that he considered Caitlin to be on the same plane with sporting women. She was sweet and precious and beautiful—the kind of woman a lot of men could only dream of touching. Cruise Dublin had done more than dream.

"How old were you, Caitlin?" Even as he asked that question, Ace remembered the date in her diary and knew she couldn't have been very old. "Fifteen, sixteen? How old?"

"Sixteen," she said shakily. "Old enough to be married, Pa said."

As if that excused what Conor had done. Sixteen . . . In Ace's books, that was barely past childhood, a time in most girls lives when they'd just put away their dolls and started to wear their hair up. An innocent time. A curious time. A time when wounds ran deep. So deep they sometimes never healed.

She went on to describe the attack itself, the futility she'd felt, the brutality Dublin had resorted to when she nearly succeeded in escaping him. "He hit me. And when that didn't make me stop fighting, he hit me again. After that, I just lay there in a daze. It was like a nightmare, only I was awake."

Ace angled one arm under her fanny and lifted her more firmly against him, trying in the only way he knew to comfort her. With his closeness. With his strength. She had so little of her own. He wanted to kill Cruise Dublin. So help him, maybe someday he would. The man didn't deserve to live.

She went on to tell him how she'd felt afterward. About the nightmares that haunted her sleep, and the irrational fears that made her leap at shadows during the day. "By the time Patrick got home from the cattle drive a week later, I was feeling better," she whispered. "The bruises were nearly gone. I was all right by then. As all right as I'd ever be, anyway. So I never told him."

Ace wondered if she'd been afraid Patrick would feel differently about her if he learned what had happened. "Why, Caitlin? Were you ashamed to tell him?"

"No," she said softly. "Never that. Not with Patrick. I know he hasn't shown it, but he loves me. More than most brothers, I think. When we were children, all we had was each other."

"Then why?" he pressed. "Why didn't you tell him?"

She hauled in a deep, tremulous breath. "I didn't want him to be hurt."

"Hurt?"

"Yes, hurt. It wasn't easy on Patrick, being the only son and looking so much like our father. People were constantly saying, 'That boy's a regular chip off the old block.' And every single time, Patrick looked as if they'd slugged him. Sometimes I'd catch him staring at himself in the mirror, looking into the reflection of his eyes, as if he were searching for something. I think he was terrified if what he might see."

"That he might see something of his father in himself, you mean?"

"Yes," she whispered. "And that's why I never told him about what happened to me. He had convinced himself Pa wasn't really a bad man, that it was just the whiskey that made him so mean and crazy. I didn't want lo take that away from him. Sometimes, believing in a lie is all that keeps us sane."

Ace tried to imagine what it must have been like for Patrick, being raised by such a man. Until his stepfather's death, Ace had always had a man in his life to admire and try to pattern himself after. "I'm sorry, Caitlin. I never meant to hurt your brother by coming back here. I just wanted to clear my stepfather's name."