Scandalous Desires (16 page)

She raised her eyebrows. “Why didn’t you take the money instead?”

He sat back and eyed her and she realized suddenly that his playfulness had vanished. He was quite serious now. “Because a poor man don’t wear a ring like this.
Everyone who saw me wear this could tell: Charmin’ Mickey’s come into his own.”

Silence stared down at a lone pear remaining on her plate, thinking about his words. How odd. She’d never been rich—certainly not as rich as Mickey O’Connor was now—but she’d never really desired great wealth. Certainly there had been times when she’d looked longingly at a fan or heeled slippers in a shop window, but those were mostly fancies. Her everyday needs had always been quite satisfied. In contrast, Mr. O’Connor, by his own admission, had spent his childhood in poverty. Perhaps that then was his basic reason for flaunting the wealth he had. Once one had longed for something—hungered after it day and night—would that well of want ever truly be filled?

She shivered at the thought and looked up. “And the rest of your rings?”

“Oh, picked up here and there. This one”—he waggled his left pinky where a great black baroque pearl sat—“I found in the chest o’ a ship’s captain. He had a bit o’ a reputation, that one. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d got it piratin’ from the Frenchies.”

Mickey O’Connor grinned and popped a hothouse grape into his mouth.

She looked hastily away from the sight of him lounging like a sultan, and saw Fionnula sitting a little way down the table with Bran beside her.

“She worships Bran does our Fionnula,” Mickey O’Connor said quietly, following her gaze.

“Does he worship her, as well?” she asked, sharper than she meant.

Mickey O’Connor cocked his head, considering the
matter. Then he shook it once. “I very much doubt it. Bran worships power and money and little else.”

“Not so very different than you, I suppose.” She wasn’t sure why the information that Fionnula’s sweetheart didn’t love the girl as much as Fionnula did him troubled her, but it did.

“Did ye look upon yer William like she does Bran?” he asked so quietly she nearly didn’t hear him.

Silence drew in her breath. He hadn’t the right to speak William’s name—he should know that. But she lifted her chin and met Mickey O’Connor’s black eyes. “I suppose I did.”

She’d thought to provoke him, but he merely leaned his head on his hand, studying her. “How did ye meet him, this paragon o’ a husband?”

She smiled at the memory. “He saved my shoes.”

“How?”

“I was out shopping with Temperance, my sister, and I’m afraid I got caught behind—I was staring in a shopwindow.”

His lips twitched. “At gloves and lace?”

“At a cream cake, if you must know,” she said with dignity.

He breathed a chuckle and she felt a flush start on her neck. “Father didn’t approve of sweets so we only had them on special occasions—Christmas and the like.” He was still smiling so she hurried on. “
Anyway
, I was rushing to catch up with my sister. I mustn’t have been watching because all at once there was a great miller’s cart right in front of my nose. If William hadn’t grabbed me about the waist and pulled me back, my shoes would’ve been quite ruined.” Silence sliced off a bite of the pear. “There was a puddle, you see.”

He reached for his ruby-red wine. “Sounds more like Will saved yer life rather than yer shoes.”

“The cart wasn’t that close.” Silence wrinkled her nose, because the cart
had
been rather close and the first thing William had done upon setting her on her feet again was to give her a scolding.
Not
that she was about to tell Mickey O’Connor that.

“I thanked him,” she continued, “and went off with Temperance and thought never to see him again. But then the next day, he came calling to ask Father for permission to court me.”

“And what did yer da say?” Mickey O’Connor asked as if he were greatly interested.

“
Father
was not at first pleased.” Silence saw a look cross Mr. O’Connor’s face and hastened to add, “William was a bit older than me, you see.”

“How much older?”

Silence poked at the half-eaten pear. “Fourteen years.”

She looked up to see Mickey O’Connor watching her and for the life of her she could not read his black eyes.

“It’s not such a great age difference as all that,” she said and heard the defensive note in her own voice.

“How old were ye?”

“Eighteen,” she muttered, then said louder, “He sailed very soon thereafter, but before he left he brought me a posy of violets.”

“He didn’t get ye the cream cake ye were moonin’ over in the bakery window?”

“I wasn’t mooning,” she said indignantly. “And, no, whyever would he buy me a cream cake? It’s a gift for a child.”

“It’s what ye wanted,” he retorted.

“Violets are much more suitable.” She frowned. “While he was away at sea he sent me wonderful letters from his travels, with all sorts of descriptions of the foreign places he saw. Then when he came home he would call upon me. It was so lovely,” she said dreamily. “William would take me to fairs and puppet shows.”

“And then?” His voice was expressionless.

She shrugged. “I married him. I was one and twenty by that time so Father would not have been able to stop me. But I wanted his blessing and he gave it to us. He said that William had shown his devotion for three years and that he was satisfied that he’d make me a proper husband.”

She paused, but Mickey O’Connor didn’t say anything.

She looked down at her plate. She’d eaten the pear as she talked and she no longer felt hungry. The empty desperation was gone—all that was left was the vague queasiness from having overindulged. Some of the pirates were laughing now as they finished their meal, while Mr. O’Connor’s little secretary had opened a book beside his plate and was making notes as he ate.

“We were happy,” she said slowly. “We lived in Wapping, by the ships. I would go to the docks and watch the tall ships come in, looking for the
Finch
, even when I knew she wasn’t expected back for months. And when she did dock”—she closed her eyes, remembering—“William would come to see me first thing. I always ran into his arms. We were happy. So happy.”

“And yet when ye needed him most he didn’t believe ye,” she heard him murmur. “He didn’t listen to ye.”

“I only needed him to believe me because of what you’d done,” she pointed out, but her voice lacked heat.

He didn’t reply.

She wiped her cheeks. Where last night she’d felt rage, now all she held inside was a deep sadness. “Is that what you think? That because he didn’t believe me, because he didn’t listen to me, he must not have loved me? That our happiness was but a sham?”

She stared at him, but he merely took a drink of his wine, watching her.

Had her happiness been a sham? At the time she hadn’t thought so. Life with William had been perfect, it seemed. He was away for long periods, true, but when he did come back it was like a honeymoon every time.

She frowned, troubled by the thought. What would her marriage have been like if William hadn’t been a sea captain? If they’d lived together day in and day out like most married couples?

Silence heaved a sigh and looked around the table. No one was paying them any mind—although she suspected that was more because of Mickey O’Connor’s presence than that they hadn’t noticed her tears.

She turned back to Mr. O’Connor. “Where are your women?”

His mouth curved slightly. “What women?”

She waved a hand, wondering if she’d drunk too much wine with her meal. “The women you always have. Your… your
whores
.”

He took a sip of wine and set down his glass. “Gone.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Oh.”

“Are ye disappointed?”

She bristled. “What do you know of how I feel or think?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he waved a youth over. The boy held a tray of sweets. Mickey O’Connor’s hand
hovered over the selection before he chose something with a candied cherry on top. He turned back to her with the sweet in his hand. “That’s the fascinatin’ thing about ye, Silence, m’love. I know what me men will think afore I tell them we’re raidin’, what me whores will think at the end o’ a night, even what Lad will think about tomorrow—mostly me bed and a nice stew bone. But ye—ye I cannot fathom. I look into yer pretty green-brown-blue eyes, and I haven’t the tiniest idea what yer thinkin’ about. What ye truly feel.”

Silence stared at him in wonder, then blurted, “Why should you care?”

“That,” said Mickey O’Connor, holding the sweet to her lips, waiting while she accepted it into her mouth, then smiling almost as if he could taste the melting sugar on her tongue himself, “is a very good question.”

Mick watched as Silence ate the confection from his fingers. He felt a strange satisfaction in feeding her himself that wasn’t dulled even when she realized what she’d done and drew away, wrinkling her nose.

He was enjoying himself, he realized with something like surprise. He’d never chased a woman for more than a day or so—a week at most. They all fell at his feet, some within minutes. He knew, cynically, that his attraction couldn’t all be put down to his pretty face. His power, his money drew them just as much if not more.

But not Silence.

Mick smiled to himself and sat back to select a sweetmeat. Silence disliked him, disobeyed him, argued with him, and was all but starting a rebellion amongst his people, and still he indulged her.

“I must be getting back to my rooms,” Silence said and stood.

Mick frowned with displeasure. “Why?”

“Because of Mary Darling.”

He shrugged. “One o’ the maids is watchin’ her.”

“But if Mary wakes she’ll want me.”

“Why?” he asked again, biting into a sweetmeat. This discussion wasn’t to his fancy, but sparring with her was.

“Because,” she said slowly, looking at him as if he were lack-witted, “she’s only a baby and she loves me.”

“Babies,” Mick pronounced, “are a great trouble.”

She shook her head, not bothering to reply this time, and started marching to the door.

Mick sighed. “Have the rest o’ the sweetmeats brought to me rooms,” he told Tris and rose to follow her. Lad, who’d been lying beside his chair, got up as well, padding quietly behind him out into the hallway.

Silence didn’t seem surprised when he caught up with her in the hall. “You should come to see Mary more often yourself. She is your daughter after all. Perhaps then she might learn to call you something else besides
Bad
.”

She quickened her pace.

He shrugged, keeping up with her shorter strides easily. “Happens I’ve other things to do, and as I say, babies are a bother.”

“Humph. You say that as if you’ve made a great discovery.”

He didn’t answer, just to irritate her, and she quickened
her step again. They were nearly running through the halls now.

“Whyever did you bother acknowledging her in the first place, then?” she asked. “Surely it would’ve been easy simply to turn her away. Unscrupulous men do it all the time.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him as if she’d scored a hit with that “unscrupulous,” but he’d been called worse in his time.

Much worse.

Still, it wouldn’t do to let her think he was going soft on her. Mick stepped in front of her and slammed his hand against the hallway wall, putting the length of his arm in her path.