Stormfire (34 page)

Finally, only a handful of riders continued on the course: Elizabeth Dunaway and Tim among them. Terry had gone down. After passing a jump of felled trees, Sean let the stallion out. Mephisto lunged forward at a frightening pace, great hooves tearing the turf in spraying clots. Sean's thighs felt like liquid fire, but Elizabeth faded from his peripheral vision, then another rider and another, until Mephisto and Numidian drummed down the final stretch neck and neck, sweating like a pair of hell's couriers. A double jump, two singles, then a ditch and wall. Dumbfounded to see Numidian begin to pull away, Sean used his crop and yelled in Mephisto's ear, "Run, you black sonofabitch! The bastard's forgotten he's supposed to lose!" Mephisto roared with fiendish abandon across the last jumps and final brick-and-water hazard, leaving the less impressionable Numidian the loser by half a length.

Sean let Mephisto into a canter, then eased him to a steaming walk, the stallion's ribs expanding and contracting like a bellows. Caps gone, hair clinging wetly to their heads, the two finalists rode slowly to meet each other as the crowds converged on them. Tim's freckles stood out brightly on his pale face. "Congratulations, sor," he said tensely, stretching out his hand.

Culhane took it in a bone-crushing grip. "Be glad it's not your glory-seeking neck, laddy buck."

Both riders slid off their mounts into a sea of pushing, shouting people. First Sean, then Tim were thrust up onto sturdy shoulders and paraded about, then carried in triumph to the winner's circle. To an earsplitting din of cheers, they were toasted with champagne as a garland of flowers was hung about Mephisto's neck. A frigidly polite John Enderly, chief sponsor of the race, presented Sean a massive silver bowl and purse of five thousand pounds; Tim received a smaller cup and colder congratulations. A glassy-eyed Shaunessy led Mephisto away, pulling well-chewed roses out of the horse's mouth with a vague admonition about thorns.

Sean was escorted back to the house in a landau filled with trilling young women, one of whom dipped her silk glove in champagne to wipe his sweat-streaked, dirt- stained face. At the house reception he collected private stakes and looked for Elizabeth Dunaway, nowhere to be found.

John Enderly's smooth, handsome mask appeared at his elbow. "Mr. Fitzhugh, I believe my friends and I owe you a good deal of money: some nine thousand pounds, to be exact. In this envelope you'll find the appropriate vouchers. Mine is coupled with that of the due d'Angoulême on his account with Lloyd's." His gray eyes narrowed. "Your venture has proven most profitable. I hope I shall have the advantage at our next meeting, sir."

The Irishman took the envelope with a polite smile. "I look forward to seeing you again, my lord."

As Enderly faded into the crowd, Culhane felt oddly detached. Since meeting his sworn enemy face-to-face, he had dispassionately observed him as if the man were a viper in a glass case. There had been no rush of gall, no urge to do murder. Though he fully intended to kill Enderly, the prospect now seemed inevitable and montonous.

Hands thrust at him, champagne dribbled on his clothing, women whispered in his ear, and men offered investments. Wary of them all, he pulled away and left the room, firmly closing the doors. The silence of the deserted foyer was deafening, and as he crossed to the stair, voices clearly carried from the partly open door of a salon. The conversation was in French, the speaker the due d'Artois. His mention of Catherine Enderly's name brought the Irishman to an abrupt halt.

"My son was most distressed your lovely daughter could not attend the race. I had hoped she might be induced to curtail her travels by a few weeks."

John Enderly's voice was placating. "This may be Catherine's last unmarried season abroad, Your Grace. Surely your son will wish her to be settled, with girlish whims behind her. Catherine has spoken with great affection of the duke. Surely a few weeks cannot matter when two young people are admirably matched."

Sean listened with swiftly mounting anger, understanding now why Enderly's note was coupled with Angoulême's: it was prepayment for delivery of Kit to the royal bed. His knuckles whitened on the banister. So Catherine had spoken with "great affection" of the slack-jawed young degenerate, had she? Kit wouldn't look at that uniformed pudding except in pity.

Artois seemed to be shrugging. "I regret Louis cannot offer marriage, my dear viscount. Marriages exclusive to the royal house are sometimes an unfortunate tradition, but I am at heart a traditional man. Louis must wed within the next year or so. He finds the Countess Catherine most appealing and I would satisfy his choice of a companion if at all possible. You will assure her my son's impatience is not only due to the natural eagerness of a lover, but the pressures of his position?"

The conversation seemed to be drawing quickly to a close. Sean headed up the stair, sore muscles protesting at every step and mind rolling with anger. Oily bastards! Condescend to make her a whore, would they? So the royal brat was impatient to mount her, was he? She was better than the lot of them in a pile. She had more breeding in her little finger than that shambling, leftover duke could summon from all his blue-blooded, yellow-faced relatives. Storming down the hallway, he pictured Angoulême in bed with his new toy, putting clammy hands on her, climbing like a toad onto her slim body. He jerked open the door to his room, then slammed it with a crash that dropped the mirror in shattering shards from the wall.

Elizabeth Dunaway's maid, Felice, stared at him from where she was pouring a bucket of steaming water into a huge copper tub. "Do you not wish a bath, Monsieur Fitzoo?"

Sean stared back, eyes glittering in fury, then sobered to some confusion. "Where's your mistress?"

The dark-eyed maid dimpled. "She will come. Is not yet the bewitching hour, is how you say,
non?
Please." She came forward, holding out her hands. "Your clothes? Do not be shy."

A boneweary Culhane boarded the
Mary D.
before dawn and saw Mephisto walked aboard and secured in the hold. A closely matched stallion in the next stall whickered nervously. After soothing both animals, he climbed up to his cabin and stretched his tired body on a narrow bunk. Shaunessy lay senseless in the opposite bunk. Tim, hugging his knees, sat on the floor.

"Good work," Sean said as he pummeled a pillow into submission and crammed it under his head. "Any problems?"

"Some," Tim admitted. He cocked an ear as the mooring hawsers hit the deck and the
Mary D.
was warped from the dock. "Thought I'd have to clip Amin to get the stallion away, but the old sod went lookin' for Shaunessy here, to see if he was walleyed. And he was, laid out like a sack o' feed in Mephisto's stall. I gets to Shaunessy a step ahead of the Arab, shoves him onto a nag, and heads him out to the east meadow. Then I cuts back, grabs Numidian, and lights out after 'im. 'Twas hard keepin' 'im headed for town, but after that, 'twas a cinch, like ye said. I boards Numidian by the eleven-bell watch; the harbor patrol passes the nag off as Mephisto and Shaunessy off as drunk. When you came in at four bells, sure enough there was a different limey patrol, and the real nag trots aboard. Only one thing worries me . . ."

Sean gingerly eased his back into a more comfortable position. "What's that?"

"Rumor was hot round the stables about Mephisto bein' put up to stud. Ye didn't enter him in the stud registry, did ye, sor?"

"Of course not. That ruse kept the odds in his favor."

Tim's face cleared. "I was thinkin' they might trace him through the breed line."

Listening to the sails being hoisted, Sean stared at the base of the bunk overhead. "Mephisto's papers were forged. If Enderly could prove anything, he'd have called our hand before the race. But the old Arab seems damn certain Ethiop sired both Numidian and Mephisto." The dark Irishman frowned. "Brendan kept no papers for Mephisto. I wonder why the Arab's so sure about Ethiop?"

"The old heathen's a weird one. When she married, the viscountess brought him from France; he adored both her and her daughter. Since the girl's disappeared, he's stranger than ever."

"Will he tell Enderly he thinks you tried to drug Numidian?"

"Dunno. He hates the viscount. When he was told Numidian was to race, he was fit to be tied." Tim grimaced. "Still, he's proud as a sultan. He'd not want his mistress's pet to lose or be cheated. He thinks ye saved the nag from bein' drugged by a villainous horse thief and ye beat me fair and square."

"I had little choice," said Culhand dryly. "What the hell got into you, pushing Numidian to win at the end?"

Tim looked at his toes, then up with a trace of defiance. "I know 'twas against me orders, but 'twasn't Enderly I was ridin'. 'Twas a dumb beast that don't know about hatin' and hurtin', just runnin' for a man 'e trusts." Tim sat, stoically waiting for his master's wrath to crack about his ears.

"When did Enderly have your family wiped out, Tim?" Sean asked quietly.

"I was but a babe," Tim replied. "Mr. Flannery said the soldiers missed me in a pile of rubble. I like to have starved."

"Eighteen years. A long time to hate, isn't it?"

"Aye, sor."

Culhane rubbed his head. "Try and work the kinks out of my carcass for the next quarter hour, and we'll call it square."

"Yes, sor!" Sean rolled over on his face with a muffled groan as Tim obeyed with alacrity. The dark Irishman winced more than once when Tim discovered aches not previously realized. "I'm a bit sore meself, sor, but not
so bad as this. Ye must have had a fearsome wild ride of it."

Sean thought of Elizabeth and Felice and their tubful of champagne. "More than you know, boy. More than you know."

The Eye of the Painter

Time at Shelan passed serenely for Catherine in Sean Culhane's absence. When not reading to Flynn, she found time to add bright curtains to the infirmary windows and coddle his flowers until they bloomed with renewed vigor. She met Liam nearly every clear afternoon. To prevent Flynn from growing suspicious, she agreed to allow Liam to paint her as a pretext for seeing each other.

The first pose Catherine struck for her portraitist was hardly a marvel of inspiration: her arms sawed akimbo and knees knocked together. When he laughingly protested, she feigned innocence. "Didn't you promise to paint me exactly as I am?"

"And what are you, pray? A perch for boobies?" he teased. When he found charcoals and looked around the easel again, a cross-eyed hunchback awaited with slack- jawed grin. At his exasperated look, she became the perfect model, assuming poses with unstudied ease in her old-fashioned white muslin dress. The wide-brimmed hat she had been previously dangling from its ribbons as if fishing for cod now wrapped itself against her wind-ruffled skirts. His charcoal flew as he halted her at one point, then another. Suddenly the hat went swinging from its ribbons and she lightly danced away, muslin swirling like a frisking cloud as she cut a swath through the heather. Liam became almost frantic to capture her abandon, cursing once when his charcoal snapped. His hand moved in deft, loose strokes until his model sailed the hat toward him. "Time for tea, Master Painter!"

Liam exasperatedly ruffled his hair. "What a bother!" Her teasing laughter sounded oddly muffled over the rocks, as if a ghost from a bygone era had come to beguile unwary mortals.

At tea, Catherine was a polished hostess, serving sugared oatcakes, keeping cups full and steaming. She was uncharacteristically demure, and both doting gentlemen were startled when she announced a wish to go into the harbor village for ribbon. With Liam as escort, of course. Liam and the doctor looked at one another. "I don't think . . ." began the doctor.

"My lord and master isn't here," she said briskly, "and he doesn't have to know. My hat requires a new ribbon." Innocently she dragged up the broken ribbon from her bodice where she had stuffed it. The doctor flinched and Liam fidgeted. "The hat will be barren without a fresh ribbon." She seemed to notice their discomfort for the first time, then protested as if hurt, "Surely you don't think I'd try to escape while I'm your responsibility?" She looked at the old ribbon, then forced a brave smile. "Oh, well, it's only petty feminine vanity that yearns after little furbelows. I've managed decently so far."