Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(25)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Well, of course he was naked, Silence thought, trying to pull herself together. He was in his bath. Who took a bath fully clothed?

She had some vague idea of backing out of the room again, but he’d already seen her.

“Mrs. Hollingbrook,” the pirate drawled, taking a sip from his goblet. “I was jus’ sittin’ here wonderin’ if ye’d spent the day powderin’ and curlin’ Lad’s fur and here ye are. To what do I owe the pleasure?” His voice had suddenly assumed an upper crust English accent on the last sentence, making the words even more mocking.

Silence lifted her chin. She wasn’t going to turn tail and run from a pirate—even if he was naked. She darted a look at Lad—snoring in front of the fire—and decided it was best not to answer Mr. O’Connor’s mocking inquiry. “I’ve come to demand you tell me what is going on.”

He looked at her from under heavy eyelids. “Have ye, now?”

“I have.” She set hands upon hips. “It’s positively medieval, locking me up, refusing me food, never bothering to ask what I want or need.”

“Need,” he mused, his gaze slowly examining her form in a manner that caused her to go hot all over, “now that I’m thinkin’ we might not agree upon—what ye need—but do tell me what ye might be wantin’.”

She threw her hands up. “I want—and need—to eat!”

“Ah, but I’ve said more than once that yer welcome to sup with me.”

She was shaking her head. “You know—”

“I know that Fionnula and Harry and half me staff o’ bloody servants have seen fit to go against me by smugglin’ food to ye.” His voice suddenly held a nasty edge.

She froze, her eyes widening in fear for the others. “You can’t—”

“I can’t what?” he drawled. There was something dark in him tonight—something she’d not seen before. “I can’t turn them off, can’t toss them into the street, can’t make them disappear? The Thames is an easy place to lose a body. A man can slip beneath those dark, cold waters and sink without a trace.”

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

He shrugged one elegant shoulder, making the water ripple in the tub.

She took a step closer. “What happened on your raid tonight?”

He turned his face away, taking a sip from his goblet. “What a perceptive little thing ye are, Mrs. Hollingbrook. The raid went quite well, actually, thank ye for inquirin’. Got a load o’ tobacco and sugar and the only cost was the lives o’ three o’ me men.”

“My God,” she breathed. “What happened?”

He waved a hand, rings flashing. “Nothin’ to concern yerself with, I do assure ye.”

Surely it wasn’t usual for him to lose three of his men in one night? If it was, he’d be constantly recruiting more pirates. Something was wrong.

“Who were they?”

“What?”

“The pirates.” She winced and gestured rather helplessly with one hand, her voice softer. “Your men. Who were they?”

For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer.

Then he took a long swallow from his goblet. “Pat and Mike and Sean. Not the brightest o’ me men, sure, especially Pat, but he had a family and he was always quick with a joke, was Pat.”

She waited, but he didn’t say more.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He grimaced. “Sorry three pirates are dead? Why, Mrs. Hollingbrook, ye surprise me, ye do.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t—”

He didn’t stop to listen to her, talking over her instead. “Now then, tell me: shall I have the honor o’ yer company tomorrow night at me supper table? Shall ye dine upon sweetmeats with me, Silence, mine?”

His words sounded obscene somehow. She frowned, frustration rising in her. He wasn’t listening; it was as if she couldn’t be heard. “I’m not yours and I never gave you leave to use my Christian name.”

“Oh, but do I need leave, now?” Mickey O’Connor whispered. “Yer in me room—and not for the first time, love.”

She inhaled sharply. How dare he remind her of that night? Suddenly it was too much: the hunger, the edge of darkness in his voice, and this room—this too familiar room. No one had believed she’d been untouched after that night.

No one had heard her.

She looked at the pirate luxuriating in his bath and a great rage swelled up in her, a mixture of hunger, frustration, lost love, and fear for Mary Darling.

And scorn. Oh, there was plenty of scorn, as well.

“Do you know what you cost me?” she demanded, her voice low and trembling. “When you played your cruel game with me?”

He looked at her, but didn’t say a word. His black eyes reflected no light, fathomless and without expression. Was his heart made of stone that he could play with lives—her life—so carelessly and not feel a thing?

Silence balled her fists, trembling. “It was as if I became a cipher after that night. No one I loved believed me. You silenced me. What you did to me cost me everything I valued in life—my family’s respect, my marriage, my love.”

“And was yer marriage so perfect before ye came to me?”

She gasped, the breath catching in her breast in rage. Of course her marriage had been perfect, hadn’t it?

Hadn’t it?

“We had true love,” she said, drowning out the tiny voice of doubt in her mind.

He turned his face from her, which only made her angrier. In four strides she was beside him, kneeling on the rug next to the tub of water. She reached out and took his face in her palms, turning it so he had to look at her, his lean cheeks cool and a little rough beneath her hands.

“Yes, love.” She hissed the word like a curse. “I loved my husband, my William, and he loved me. That is until that night you kept me here. You destroyed what we had as thoughtlessly as a boy pulling the wings from a butterfly.”

His wickedly sensuous upper lip pulled back in a sneer. “What is love?”

She leaned close to him. “Something you will never have. Something you’re incapable of feeling. I pity you, Mickey O’Connor, for I may have lost my true love, but at least I had him for a time. You’ll never feel love.”

His sneer had grown and his voice was low and terrible. “I may not feel love, but I do feel this.”