Stormfire (31 page)

Silently, Catherine obeyed, her mind numbed. Hugging the robe about her shoulders, she stood under the sullen sky watching clouds shift across the moon. Culhane was right; the chill night air was like a ducking in ice water. She had been deluded by misplaced gratitude and sympathy, she warned herself with deliberate harshness. He was, after all, no more than her jailer. If he had persuaded himself to check his lust in hopes of rich response, that was his concern. He was nothing to her.

Her bare toes curled in complaint against the chilly
,
stone flagging and she turned to go inside, then halted ih shock, fascination, and pity. Sean Culhane lay naked on the bed, his lean, powerful body arching as one hand wrenched at his sex. He thrust desperately against his hand, his face twisted in mysterious, age-old agony, his bronzed hide gleaming with sweat in the candlelight. Suddenly he groaned and his hips strained in a final spasm as his seed spurted into emptiness and fell across his thighs and belly. The taut muscles relaxed and he lay spent and still. His black lashes flickered; slowly he looked into the eyes of the silent girl by the door and felt her pity like a blow. His lips twisted. "Where's your disgust, Diana? The act is crudely known as self-abuse." He watched her, green eyes hard. "Well? Have you lost your tongue? Have you no barbs of condemnation to sink into my degenerate flesh?"

"Don't you think your own self-laceration is sufficient?" she said quietly. "Is that why you strike at others? Because you demand of yourself more pain than you can bear?"

Culhane swore at her, sat up, and syrung his legs over the side of the bed. Deliberately, he paraded his nakedness as he went to the commode and seized a towel. Slowly wiping his belly and loins, he surveyed her insolently. "You're a fool," he sneered, "and that bucolic state has little to do with your lack of experience."

"My experience of brutality has come from you," she replied evenly, "never beauty, tenderness, or affection, because you don't permit them in yourself. So long as I have a teacher no wiser than Flynn's poor, slackwit boy who repeats his assigned tasks like an unthinking machine, then I'm condemned to remain what you say I am. A fool. How can I give you affection when you seek to wrench it from me and crush it as heedlessly as that dull-minded boy might a butterfly, tearing off its bright wings to keep in his pocket, then startled to soon find them colorless and dead?"

Culhane went pale. Catherine felt his despair as if she were part of his flesh, but, desperate to be free of him, she summoned all her resolve and struck the blow cleanly. "How can one who is nothing but a charred void of hatred, who parades in the mere shell of a man, presume to demand love? You, who can expect no more than bleak fulfillment of vengeance and the pity of those who watch you stumble like blind Oedipus to some solitary end!" Culhane's cheekbones stood out whitely as if they would split the taut skin that covered them. She ached to comfort him, but dared not. If he would not willingly release his hold, she must irrevocably sever it, whether the blow brought freedom, grinding years of imprisonment, even death. This battle between them could not continue. She feared his demand for her love above all.

"You loose no barbs, Diana," Culhane replied quietly with strange, lyrical self-mockery, "but killing lances, if I am a husk and mockery of a man, why do my sides now run red? If blind, why do my empty eyes see a fair illusion that leads me to hope? Like that slackwit, I gape at love and rend it with clumsy fingers, yet still hold its tatters close in idiot hope it may live again. Solitary death is no more welcome than solitary life, so yet I stand and refuise to fall on my sword. It's you, fair Diana, who must lower me and all my bleeding dreams to dust."

"No blow is needed," she answered softly. "You cannot stand forever."

"No, I cannot stand forever."

"I shall always hate you," she whispered, as gently as a kiss.

The next morning he was gone. He had spent the night in the study and she had gone to the infirmary without seeing him. When she returned in late afternoon, a brief note lay on the desk, stating that he would return in three weeks. She sank into the chair, a sleepless night aggravating her tension, her imagination doing its worst. What nefarious errand was the Irishman contemplating? Culhane had made no real defense the night before. Had he been merely waiting to strike back in deadly reality? She flung herself from the chair and paced back and forth. Had he perhaps been hurt so badly he could not bear to see her and had crawled away to lick his wounds? Even to die in some reckless venture? She paled at the thought. According to Flannery, Culhane courted death as ruthlessly as he courted her. Pressing her palms to her temples, she tried to
curb her apprehension. The note did say he would return. And his defenseless pain the night before had cost her the battle at the last moment; no doubt he knew it. Why should he seek revenge when he had proved the victor?

She clung to the bedpost and stared about the room, which now seemed bleak and deserted. Aimlessly, she wandered, straightening things that were straight, fiddling with her brushes. His shaving gear was gone, his jacket missing from the brass hook. She checked his drawers and wardrobe. Several suits, his Spanish riding boots and fine riding clothes were missing. He must be going where a proper social appearance was required. Where beautiful, sophisticated women would admire him, flatter him, and no doubt bed him. She sagged disconsolately onto the empty bed. Why should he want to come back at all to a skinny schoolgirl who cut him at every turn, called him foul names, and reacted like a dusty mummy every time he tried to seduce her?

The Mongoose and the Cobra

With one impeccably tailored shoulder against the Palladian mantel, Sean lit a thin cigar as he surveyed the Hunt Room at Ingram House, Norfolk. Late-afternoon sun streamed through arched windows across the shoulders of a small group of men. Above them, on maroon and white striped walls, were paintings of hunting scenes and racehorses. A portrait of Charles II mounted on a thoroughbred hung above the fireplace where Sean lounged. Lackeys scurried about relaying port, claret, and cheroots on silver salvers to gentlemen who represented most of the countries of Europe.

Sean smiled to himself. So far, everything was going exactly as he wanted. Even his short hair was not unusual in international society. After sailing to Dublin, where he had settled Moora with Lady Duneden, he had met with two barristers, John and Henry Sheares, whom he had known in Paris during the early days of the Revolution. Both on the Executive Committee of the United Irishmen, they in turn arranged for him to see the committee's leader, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, in secret. Afterward, he had spent a pleasant though rather sad evening with the ailing Lockland Fitzhugh, marquess of Menton.

Lockland Fitzhugh was the last surviving male of a venerable Scots Protestant family who had been in Ireland since the days of the Plantagenets; they were ardently sympathetic to the plight of their vanquished countrymen.

In the great rebellions against the Tudors, the Fitzhughs had protected Irish rebels at no small cost.

A lifelong friend of Brendan Culhane, Lockland Fitzhugh continued the family tradition in his own quiet way. After Brendan's aborted attack on the Dublin Armory, Lockland narrowly saved him from hanging and finally managed to secure his release from prison. When, because of their Catholic ancestry and their father's dubious allegiance, Sean and Liam could not attend university, even Trinity in Dublin, Fitzhugh had passed Sean off as his nephew, Robert Fitzhugh, and sponsored him at Eton, while Liam had preferred to study in Rome. Although a revered member of Irish Parliament and himself loyal to the crown, Lockland was aware Brendan and his sons were involved with the United Irishmen, whose secret meetings and underground presses organized sedition. After Sean's deadly London brawl with Megan's killer had made continuance at Eton unpolitic, Fitzhugh had sent him to the Ecole Militaire in Paris and had rarely seen him since his graduation.

The marquess was clearly delighted by his protégé's visit, but somewhat embarrassed to receive him in shabby quarters. Partly because he refused to submit to the flagrant bribery and prejudice of the Irish Protestant Parliament and partly because he neglected his own'estates in the interest of his country, his wealth had declined. To conserve his finances, Fitzhugh had taken a modest house on Canal Street near Parliament, his failing health no longer permitting the journey to his home in Kildare.

Sean was grieved to see Fitzhugh's condition, but in deference to the old man's sometimes stiff pride he made no mention of it. After a simple but excellent dinner and several glasses of fine port from Fitzhugh's dwindling stock, Sean asked his mentor for an introduction to the forthcoming race in Norfolk. The old man was delighted to be of service. He also added a crisp bit of advice. "The Dublin authorities are hanging suspected subversives from lampposts of late, 'croppies' along with them. You may get away with it in England, but I advise you to keep your collar high over that short hair in Ireland, lad, if you don't want to be thought a French sympathizer." He waved Sean to the divan, then chose a cigar from the box the younger man had brought him. "You had best steer clear of Fitzgerald's crowd, too. He's wanted by the authorities. Not everyone is convinced he's in Paris, you know."

He lit his cigar, then pensively looked at Sean. "I'm not the first Irishman to die certain his nation's sorrows are not ended, but I'm equally certain hope lives as ever in our young men. I've not told you before, but I've been very proud of you, Sean. Keep faith and patience. Don't seek Ireland's freedom in England's blood. Our destiny lies in the law."

"Thank you, sir, but I'm no barrister."

Fitzhugh grunted. "No, you're a fighter, like Owen Roe and the rest of your clan back to the dawn of Niall. Twelve hundred years of blood. I had hoped your stay at Eton might suggest another course, if only to show you not all Englishmen are tyrants."

"I was aware of that, sir, before I left. You've been like a father to me."

Startled, but pleased by the younger man's uncharacteristic remark, Fitzhugh barely managed a gruff tone. "Yet, like all your clan, you regard me as English though my family has been in Ireland for six centuries. We're English to the Irish and Irish to the English: colonists, ever viewed as temporary citizens."

"A most welcome addition to our culture in your case, my lord."

With a shrug, Fitzhugh rose and went to his desk. Shortly, he handed a note to Sean to review; then, after attaching his seal, Fitzhugh gave the letter to a servant for immediate delivery. He looked at Sean for a long moment. "I dislike good-bys. So I'll wish you a good night, and a fair voyage."

Sean grasped the statesman's proffered hand. "Thank you, sir. May you have the same."

As Sean paused on the narrow stair to his room, he saw Fitzhugh with a woolen rug over his legs, still sitting at his desk in a pool of candlelight. His white hair mellowed, he scratched at parliamentary proposals pleading for eased circumstances of Irish Catholics. The proposals would be rejected as they had been for all thirty-five years of his sporadic tenure, but the pen moved as strongly as it ever had. Feeling a tightness in his throat, Sean sensed he would not see the frail old man again. He touched his forehead in an unnoticed salute. Good-by, sir

Three days after leaving Dublin, Culhane landed in Norfolk, then went overland to Ingram. Upon arrival, Sean supervised Mephisto's installment in a large, airy stall as clean as his own quarters. After leaving Michael Shaunessy, a groom from Shelan, in charge, he drifted through the stables. As he passed Numidian's stall, a glance told him Mephisto had keen competition, if not a virtual brother; the resemblance between the two stallions was amazing. A wizened Arab in a bumoose was rubbing the horse down as he crooned to him in Arabic. Carrying a feed bag, Tim O'Rourke, alias Tim Carson, trotted past his commander without a blink of recognition.

Whistling, Sean strolled back to the house, gave his cloak to the bewigged butler, and wandered into the drawing room.
                        

"Rob! Robert Fitzhugh! Oh, I say, it's good to see you after all these years!" A ruddy-haired young man with an engaging grin bounded up and wrung Sean's hand with high enthusiasm.

"Terry, it's good to see you, too." Sean grinned back with real pleasure.

"I say, old man, you left rather suddenly. I was hoping to have the pleasure of your company at the old schoolyard for another two years at least. You look fit as ever. Married?" Sean lifted an eyebrow. "I thought not!" South wick slapped his shoulder. "Shrewd fellow. My father's bent on trotting me to the altar before my next birthday. A cheeky lot I grew up with. She's all right and not a bad looker, but I've only nine months until I'm twenty-six; that leaves only two hundred seventy nights for debauchery."