The Secret Chord: The Virtuosic Spy - Book 2 (25 page)

W
HEN
C
ONOR
OPENED
his eyes again several hours later everything seemed a little sharper, a little less inclined to spin and pixilate into shapeless color. In the chair next to him Kate slept with a blanket pulled to her chin. He stared at her arm resting next to his on the bed, wanting to touch her, torn between wishing she would wake up and wanting the drowsy, peaceable moment to go on forever.

"
They say that her beauty was music in mouth
." The line of poetry came out in a whisper, and moving his hand closer—he couldn't help himself—he allowed a finger to settle against her wrist.

"
And O she was the Sunday in every week.
" The voice, soft and resonant, set off a disorienting prickle of confusion until he turned his head to discover Frank sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the bed. Conor gave him a weak grin.

"Thought you were a ghost."

The agent smiled. "You wouldn't believe how often I've heard that."

"You've finally convinced me, Frank. Anyone who can give out a line of Austin Clark must have some Irish in him."

"A rare victory for me at last."

"What's the time? How long have you been here?"

"It's just gone six o'clock. I've been in and out through the day, offering succor to my lovely fellow guardian. Allow me to speak for her in saying how delighted we are you've decided to remain with us."

"Good to be here." Conor slipped back into a whisper. His aching throat had grown as dry as an acre of sun-baked sod; every word scraped like the tines of a rake. Stretching his neck, he shifted his weight then gasped and coughed as a scalding pain spiked up his side. Frank stood to pour some water.

"How do you feel?"

"Leathered. Top to bottom." He accepted the cup, took several long gulps, and sighed in relief. "Thanks. And thanks for being here, Frank. For staying with her."

"Hardly an onerous burden I assure you, but I'm glad you're awake as I'm just preparing to leave. I've a rendezvous with the FBI in Nashua."

"Your man came through, then?" Conor asked. "The FBI agreed to help?"

Frank nodded. "Rather a strain on our relationship, I'm afraid. He wasn't at all pleased to hear an MI6 agent was wandering loose in America, but the director of the New Hampshire state police is a friend—something to do with ties formed at the FBI National Academy—so the jurisdiction was transferred with a single phone call."

"So, what's going on in Nashua? Did they find the guy?"

"They did, yes. The manhunt proved anti-climactic in the end. Ciaran Wilson, or the 'big fucker' from Armagh as you aptly called him, was apprehended there about an hour ago. An FBI agent found him in his car, bleeding and unconscious, in the parking lot of a shopping mall. The local hospital is pumping pints of blood into him and he'll be ready for questioning in the next few hours. I'm eager to get his thoughts on a particular line of inquiry. After that I'll fly back to London, but I'll be in touch again once things have been . . . clarified."

"Will he cooperate?"

Frank's hazel eyes flashed with a cold metallic glint. "Oh I think so, Conor. Yes, I feel certain he will."

A
LTHOUGH
HE
TRIED
not to, Conor drifted off again before Kate woke up, and remained asleep through the night and into the next morning. Once fully awake his passage from peaceable contentment to restless boredom was swift. For one thing he was alone now, apart from the circling presence of the Diplomatic Security Service. Agent Levine reported his partner Gideon Reynolds had driven Kate home the previous evening for some much needed rest. They would return later in the day. Conor found little in his surroundings to interest him, but diversion arrived in the early afternoon—a therapist, leading him in an unpleasant session of lung-clearing exercises. A frighteningly youthful nursing aide followed shortly after, wanting to help him shower.

The combination of activities left him literally dizzy and breathless—especially the bathing ordeal, which involved fierce negotiations around what he'd be allowed to do by himself. He was back in bed, washed and bandaged, trying to fend off more unwelcome attentions when Kate appeared in the doorway. The nursing aide sang out to her.

"Come on in, we're almost finished." She squeezed a dollop of lotion on her palm. "Just sit forward a little Mr. McBride, so I can get this on your back."

"You know, I don't think I need any—ouch. Right. Okay." Conor cradled his ribs and pitched forward.
Get me out of here,
he mouthed at Kate, his desperation only half-facetious.

"Between this and the lung-clearing therapy I'm afraid we've tired you out." The young woman settled him back and winked at Kate as she departed. "Don't be surprised if he falls asleep on you."

"I hope not. I've waited three days to catch him with his eyes open. Lung-clearing therapy?" Kate asked, lifting herself to sit on the bed next to him.

"Best not described."
 

Happy for the first time all day, Conor studied her—the practical, unpretentious innkeeper, gifted artist, and forty million dollar heiress of royal lineage. At the moment she was a very weary looking heiress. "You look so tired, Kate. You shouldn't have come all the way down again, today. They're telling me I'll be out by Wednesday."

"They told me Wednesday at the
earliest
."

"A distinction without a difference, as far as I'm concerned. How's everything up north?"

Much calmer since the departure of Reg Effingham, Kate assured him. They talked for a while about Frank and the events of the past few days. Conor was amused at how thoroughly the agent had worked his way into her affections, but Kate was distracted, not noticing his playful teasing. She was also reluctant to muse on where Frank's interrogation of Wilson might lead, or how Durgan had discovered so much about her circumstances.

Conor thought he understood the source of her uneasiness. He knew she cared for him—a miracle in itself, considering all he'd told her—but warm feelings aside, his presence in her life was a rolling disaster. He'd appeared at her door dragging his troubles behind him, and on top of the sins he'd arrived with he could add another to the pile—introducing a murderous criminal to a prize even larger than the one he'd originally sought. A peculiar way to conduct a romance.

"I need to talk to you about something," Kate admitted at last, "but I don't want to upset you."

"Sure. Whatever you like. I won't be upset." He hoped that was true.

She regarded him for an indecisive moment, then asked, "Did you have a serious relationship with a woman you haven't talked about, yet?"

Jesus. What?

He started to answer, heard himself stutter, and closed his mouth. Possibly a calamitous reaction but he couldn't help it. The question was so monumentally unexpected. Conor swallowed and began again.

"I'm not sure. That is . . . we've never talked much about any of my relationships with women. Which," he hurried to add, "I wouldn't say have been unnaturally numerous."

"I guess that's fair." The edge in Kate's tone suggested otherwise. "I'm not asking you to break down your record for me, and I realize you were engaged once—"
 

"Which ended years ago."

"Yes, I understand. What I'm asking is whether there was something more recent, and serious."

"More recent, yes, but serious? No." Confident in his honesty, he was hurt by her lingering doubt. "What is this about, Kate?"

"You were calling a woman's name, Conor," she said softly. "You were delirious and most of the time just mumbling gibberish, but you kept calling for her and it's hard to believe that doesn't mean something."

Before he could say anything a nurse came in to check his IV line and deliver another injection. Appearing sensible to the fact she was interrupting, she worked without extraneous conversation, completed her task and retreated quickly. She left some juice in front of Conor and he stared at the plastic cup, sliding it back and forth between his hands on the tray table.

"Are you going to tell me the name?"

"I was hoping you would say it," Kate said.

"Right. I see. So, in fact you
are
asking me to break down the record."

"You're getting upset."

"Well it's hard not to."

"Astor." Kate threw out the word like an incantation, as though expecting something or someone to materialize in front of them. "Even the big nurse with the diamond earring heard you. Astor. He asked if it was my name, which was a little awkward, as I'm sure you can imagine."

"I suppose I can," Conor shot back, "but does it matter at all I don't know who you're talking about? My ex-fiance's name is Maggie, and if it's a list you want I'll give you one, but there's nobody called 'Astor' on it."

His insistence, so vehement and genuine, seemed to hit its mark. Kate looked startled. Whatever else she might be thinking he could see she believed him.

"Actually, something you said did sound a little like 'Maggie', but more like 'McGee'. Her last name, I thought."

"Oh for Jesus' sake, you're killing me with this." Conor pushed the tray table aside and rubbed his hands over his face. "I never had any dreams about Maggie Fallon. Ever. It's hard to believe I'd start now, or that I'd have them over somebody named Astor McGee who I've never—"

He stopped and abruptly dropped his hands, gazing at the opposite wall as the light bulb pinged in his brain. "Astor McGee. Oh my God." Conor looked at Kate and laughed out loud.

"So, you do know her." She recoiled and jumped down from the bed. "And you're laughing. Why is this funny?"

"Wait. Come back here, and I'll tell you." The quick movement made Conor wince as he circled an arm around her waist, drawing her to his side. No longer laughing, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Gibberish, you say. My own native tongue. Here's me, in the article of death, crooning out fine poetry in Irish, and you thought it was gibberish. I suppose I'll forgive you. Sounds strange when you're not used to it."

He watched Kate's brow wrinkle in adorable astonishment. "Irish? You think so?"

"Only one way to be sure." He put his lips to her ear. "
A stór mo chroí
. Was that it? Is that how it sounded?"

Her body relaxing against him was the only response he needed. "You weren't far off, Kate. It is a sort of name.
A stór mo chroí.
It means 'heart's treasure'." He cupped her face in his hands, stroking its warm flushed skin, and gave her head a gentle shake. "It means you. I was calling for you."

She blinked away a few tears, and Conor thought he'd be happy to spend the rest of his life trying to put a name to every color he saw in her eyes.

"I was calling for you, too," she whispered.

"I know, love. I heard you."

He started with her forehead, then moved to her ear, her cheek, her chin and her lips, taking his time, savoring each new discovery— the warm, spicy taste of her mouth, the quiver of a heartbeat at the base of her throat. With every kiss he added a few new words to her vocabulary, wreathing her in the poetry of an ancient language—the first he'd ever learned, the one that best captured what he most wanted to say.

A mhuirnín
. Oh, darling.

A chuisle
. Oh, pulse.
 

A stór mo chroí.
Oh, heart's treasure.

Bí liom.
Be mine.

Gach orlach de do chroí. Bí liom.

Every inch of your heart. Be mine.

24

T
HERE
WAS
ONLY
SO
MUCH
AFFECTION
ONE
COULD
DECENTLY
express in the middle of a busy hospital ward. With this in mind, and worried by her obvious exhaustion, Conor convinced Kate to go home and stay put until his discharge. Had he known a week would pass before any doctor agreed to release him, he might have been less persuasive. He had more time than he cared for to think about what he was missing and hoping to get back to. Unleashed after months of stoic self-control, his daydreams at last had free reign, and with idle hours to fill they grew exceptionally vivid.
 

When not brooding in a funk of suspended desire, Conor spared some time to reflect on the previous week's many dramas, and to wonder at Frank's lengthening silence. After providing security at both the inn and the hospital for several days, the Diplomatic Security Service had recalled its agents. Agent Levine explained they'd received word from London that "evolving circumstances" made any further threat against Conor and Kate unlikely.

This vague communication provided little reassurance, leaving Conor uncertain about how much trust to place in the secretive maneuvers of his MI6 superior, and wondering how long he should wait in passive ignorance. He found himself giving in to operational instincts—those natural-born talents he'd been taught to use in a different way, boosted by acquired skills he could never unlearn.
 

Discharge day came at last and Kate arrived, rested and glowing, her hair loosely pulled into a curling ponytail, looking more beautiful than anything he'd conjured in her absence. She wore a pair of snug black corduroys and a bright blue sweater—a scoop-necked, close-fitting article highlighting every exquisite curve.
 

They greeted each other with a chaste kiss, both gripped by a shy, blushing awkwardness. Conor noted the flush in her cheeks and thought perhaps he hadn't been alone in his unbridled daydreaming. With no immediate prospect for testing the theory, as she pulled the Subauru onto the interstate he shifted to a more practical topic, one they'd avoided until now.

"Have you spoken with your family since last Saturday?"

Kate hesitated before responding, and when she did all evidence of shyness was gone. "I talked to Jeanette and my father. And to Oma."

"What did you tell them?"

She shrugged. "Well, I couldn't exactly tell them the truth. I said you'd needed fresh air after playing during the reception, so we walked down to the brook . . . and you were accidentally shot by an illegal hunter."