The shouts rose again, one of them sounding familiar.
A chill went through Silence. She dropped the spoon and ran to the door.
“Ma’am, ye can’t—” Fionnula called behind her as Silence yanked open the door.
The scowling face of Bert met her gaze.
“Who is below?” she demanded.
He opened his mouth, but she was already shoving past him.
“Oi!” Bert yelled in indignation.
Silence ran down the stairs, fearful of the quiet below. What had they done with him?
She made the lower hall, skidded through the doors, and ran into a large male back, blocking her way.
“Oof!” she muttered, trying to dodge around Mickey O’Connor’s form. She just caught sight of Winter—standing very still in the middle of a pack of pirates—then Mr. O’Connor hauled her back against his chest and set his hands on her waist to hold her.
Silence inhaled sharply at his touch. The exotic scent of frankincense surrounded her. She hadn’t seen him since their argument the night before last over supper and already she seemed to have forgotten the intensity of his presence.
Winter’s mouth flattened. “Unhand my sister.”
“Eager as I am to bow to yer smallest command, Mr. Makepeace,” Mickey O’Connor drawled above her, his chest rumbling against her back, “I can’t in all good conscience do so when the lady herself hasn’t asked me.”
Winter looked at her. “Silence?”
She swallowed. Winter looked like thunder. He stood clad in his habitual somber clothes, his empty hands fisted by his side, a round, black hat on his head. Like all her brothers he preferred his dark brown hair undressed and tied back simply. The armed pirates circling him were almost comically more dangerous looking. Yet somehow he’d made it past the front door and this far into Mickey O’Connor’s well-guarded palace.
Perhaps it was a measure of Winter’s quiet authority that the pirates hadn’t stopped him.
Silence turned within the circle of Mr. O’Connor’s arms and looked up into his face. He was so close she could see each individual inky eyelash and notice the tiny wrinkles fanning from the corners of his deep brown eyes. “Let me talk to him.”
Those perceptive eyes narrowed at her—the pirate didn’t look at all happy.
“Please,” she whispered.
“As ye wish.” Mickey O’Connor spread wide his arms and looked over her head. “Five minutes, Mr. Makepeace. No longer. Ye can talk to yer lovely sister in me library.”
Mickey O’Connor has a library?
For a second, Silence was distracted by the thought of this outrageously virile man bent studiously over dusty books.
The image was dashed the moment they were shown into the library, however. Naturally Mr. O’Connor would have a library like no other she’d ever imagined. It was a middling-sized room, but from the carved rosewood ceiling overhead to the thick Persian carpet underfoot, the entire place was fantastic. Ancient statuary stood about the room, no doubt plundered from ships. Here there was a Diana in flight, her hunting hounds bounding beside her. There a bust of some ancient bearded dignitary. And the books! Every surface held open books, each one fabulously illustrated. From a folio of exotic animals to a tiny prayer book, delicately illuminated in gold.
“Goodness!” Silence breathed in awe, looking around the exquisite room. “Have you ever seen such a wonderful place, Winter?” She frowned. “Though it could do with some comfortable chairs.”
“At the moment I’m a bit more interested in you than in the room, sister,” Winter said drily.
Silence flushed and looked at her brother. His straight brown brows were drawn together in worry.
She inhaled and smoothed a hand down the apron she’d put on this morning out of habit—only now did she notice that it was a bit crooked. “I’m sorry to have left the home so abruptly. I know it must have distressed you—”
“Distressed.” Winter said the word flatly.
Silence bit her lip.
“Are you being held here against your will?”
“Oh, no,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m not a man given to hysteria. If I were, I’d be bald at this moment from having torn out my hair on the way over here. Mickey O’Connor, Silence?”
His last three words were soft, but there was a wealth of meaning behind them. Winter had seen her after she’d left Mr. O’Connor the last time. He knew what had been done to her.
And he suspected much worse.
“He’s Mary Darling’s father,” she said.
His eyebrows lifted in inquiry.
“He says that Mary must stay here because she is in danger from his enemies. But he has let me stay as well, to take care of her.”
Winter closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them again they were filled with sorrow. “If the child is truly his, then you have no hold on her. You must give her up.”
“No!” She swallowed and lowered her voice. “You don’t understand. Mr. O’Connor has promised to let me have Mary Darling—let me have her
forever—
once his enemies are no longer a threat. Don’t you see? I can take her away from here.”
“I think I’d rather trust the word of a snake than Mr. O’Connor.”
“But—”
He stepped forward and gently touched her on the elbow. “He’s using you, sister. Perhaps he only sees you as an amusement, perhaps his plan is far worse, but in either case you can be sure of one thing: Mickey O’Connor is
interested only in pleasing himself. He cares for neither you nor Mary Darling.”
“All the more reason for me to stay,” she whispered. “I love Mary, Winter. She’s as much a daughter to me as if I’d given birth to her. I wouldn’t be able to leave her here by herself even if I had no hope of eventually bringing her home. But since I do… Well, then, it’s only a matter of hanging on.”
“Your reputation will be in tatters if you stay here.”
“My reputation already is in tatters.”
“Because of
him
.” Winter rarely raised his voice, rarely showed emotion of any kind, but he spat the word “him” with deep loathing.
Silence’s eyes widened. She knew Winter disliked Mr. O’Connor, but she’d had no idea of the antipathy her brother held toward the pirate.
“Winter—”
“He’ll destroy you and he’ll destroy the home because of you.” Winter’s words were tight and controlled. “We cannot afford speculation about your virtue right now, sister. Think of the home if you will not think of yourself.”
She closed her eyes, feeling sick. She was letting him down, betraying his trust, but… “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry about the home, but it’s
Mary Darling
, Winter. Please. She’s all that I have left.”
“Christ.”
Her brother turned and walked to a bookshelf, staring blindly at the rows of expensive embossed leather spines.
For a moment there was quiet in the library.
Silence bit her lip, watching her brother. Waiting to see if she’d broken his trust irrevocably. Winter was the youngest of her brothers, the one closest to her in age—and closest to her heart.
If she hadn’t been studying him she might not have seen his shoulders lower a fraction of an inch. “I know what Mary Darling means to you, sister. I’ve witnessed your grief and the renewal of your inner joy this last year. Much of it was due to the baby. If this is the only way to keep Mary Darling, then stay.”
She sighed, opening her mouth to thank him.
Winter swung suddenly to look at her and she saw that his normally calm eyes blazed. “But I saw what Mickey O’Connor did to you. I saw the damage in your eyes. I cannot stop you from this mad plan, but do not expect me to dance with joy at the prospect of you in Mickey O’Connor’s foul hands.”
Behind them a single clap shattered the intimacy of the library.
Silence swung around.
Mickey O’Connor lounged in a narrow doorway cleverly hidden in the carved paneling. “I appreciate yer stamp o’ approval, Makepeace. It warms the cockles o’ me heart, it does.”
Winter had gone very still next to Silence and for some reason she had the feeling he was holding himself in check, keeping himself from violence only by the thinnest of threads. Silly, really. Winter was the least violent man she knew.
But she placed a restraining hand on his arm anyway. “Please.”
“I will do as you wish,” Winter said to her, though his gaze never left Mr. O’Connor’s face. “I’m leaving today, but next time I come I’ll take you with me. Until then, if you feel yourself in peril at any time, send word to me and I will come for you—night or day.”
“Yes, Winter,” she said meekly, realizing that her brother needed to feel that he had some control over the matter.
Mickey O’Connor’s black eyes slid to hers mockingly.
Fortunately, Winter didn’t seem to see the look. He bent to kiss Silence on the cheek, murmuring as he straightened, “Remember: any time.”
She nodded, unable to speak because of the lump that suddenly clogged her throat. She’d known that Winter was fond of her, but his actions today had spoken of real brotherly love: he’d stormed Mickey O’Connor’s palace by himself for her. She’d never realized that he loved her so, and suddenly she felt the paradoxical loss of something she’d not known she’d had before now. He was leaving her here—only because she asked it of him. Only because he truly loved her.
“Me men will be showin’ ye out, Makepeace,” Mr. O’Connor said, “Jus’ to make sure ye don’t get lost ’tween here and me front door.”
Winter glanced at the pirate and for a moment Silence held her breath as the men exchanged some kind of unspoken communication.
Then Winter turned and left the room.
Silence glared at Mickey O’Connor. “You didn’t need to goad him.”
“No?” The pirate straightened away from the doorway, ambling closer to her.
“No.” Silence frowned at him. “We’ve already made our bargain and I have no intention of reneging on it. Winter has only my best interests at heart. By goading him, you could’ve started a rather nasty argument.”
He shrugged. “But see, me darlin’, that’s where ye and I must disagree. Yer brother is a hard man. Had I
not stood upon me principles, he’d’ve had ye out o’ here before ye could blink.”
Winter a hard man?
What a very strange notion. Silence shook her head. Men could be very odd at times. She watched as Mr. O’Connor brushed his fingers idly over a huge volume of colored maps, his many rings flashing.
“I never would’ve guessed you had a room such as this,” she said.
His black eyebrows winged up his forehead in cynical amusement. “Yer sayin’ these things are too refined for a crude pirate?”
“No,” she exclaimed, although of course that
had
been what she meant. “I… I just thought…”
Her voice faded as she watched him trail a long finger over the tip of Diana’s nude breast.
He turned and caught her staring. “Aye, Mrs. Hollingbrook?”
Her face was aflame, but she met his gaze. Winter hadn’t backed down from this man and neither would she. “There’s no need for a room such as this.”
“No need?”
She struggled to put her thoughts into words. “Your throne room is outrageously ostentatious, but you let others see it. It’s almost a public place because you receive visitors there. The ostentation has a purpose. You intimidate with it. But this library…”
“Aye?”
“There’s no need for it because you don’t use it to impress others.”
His head was cocked as he stared at her curiously. “What a very interestin’ women ye are, Mrs. Hollingbrook. If I
don’t use me library to impress, then what do I use it for, if ye don’t mind me askin’?”
“That’s just what I wondered,” she said. “Why have this library?”
The stark question seemed to catch him by surprise. He watched her a moment, hesitating, then seemed to come to a decision. He crossed to where another big book lay. Silence followed curiously, looking over his elbow as he opened the book.
An emerald beetle was revealed, perched on the stem of some exotic plant. The color was so startling, so vivid, the insect looked ready to crawl off the page.
Mickey O’Connor traced the edges of the page lightly. “One night maybe eight years or so ago, I found a book like this one in a chest taken off a ship comin’ from the West Indies.”
“You mean you stole it,” Silence said severely.
Mickey grinned at her, flashing strong white teeth. “Belonged to one o’ them plantation owners over there, I hear. Man who owned hundreds o’ slaves laborin’ to grow his sugar and make him his fortune. Aye, I stole from one such as he, and not a night’s sleep have I ever lost over it.”
Silence looked back down at the illustrated book. She certainly didn’t approve of thieving, but then again she didn’t approve of the trade of human beings, either. “You said you, uh,
found
a book like this one eight years ago.”
“Aye,” he said, returning his own gaze to the emerald beetle. “Found it, and opened it, and was amazed. I’d never seen such, ye understand. It was filled with pictures o’ butterflies. Butterflies aren’t exactly plentiful in the parts o’ London I grew up in, and butterflies such as these”—his elegant fingers caressed the page as if
remembering—“well, it almost makes a man believe in God, it does.”