Scandalous Desires

Chapter Seven

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.

She squeaked and bumped into him, soft breasts pushing for just an instant against his muscles. Lad sat down in the hall, looking back and forth alertly between them.

Silence straightened and glared at Mick.

He leaned down close—close enough to catch the scent of lavender in her hair.

“What’s mine is mine, m’love,” he whispered, “and I won’t be lettin’ go o’ anything that belongs to me.”

She scowled at him. “Mary is not a ‘thing.’ ”

“Aye.” He smiled. “But the principle’s the same.”

“That’s not how a father should treat a daughter,” she said, her voice softening.

He narrowed his eyes at her—that tone might creep under his skin if he let it.

Her beautiful eyes widened pleadingly. “Didn’t you have a father?”

He refused to let the memories surface. For a moment he was still, making sure they were properly stowed away, and then smiled. “Why, darlin’ did ye think mine was a virgin birth?”

She blushed as he knew she would. “No, of course not, but surely—”

She might have said more, but he straightened away from her. Her questions were hitting too close to home.

She blinked and looked around.

“Ye were hurryin’ to see the child, were ye not?” he asked and opened the door to her room.

“Her name is Mary Darling,” she said as she sailed into the room. She halted suddenly and turned. “But it should be Mary O’Connor, shouldn’t it? She’s your daughter after all.”

He stopped and blinked. Mary O’Connor. It was a good name. A proper name.

He shook his head to dispel the thought. “Off with ye now,” he said to the maid, hovering near the door.

She bobbed a curtsy and left without a word.

Lad padded around the room, sniffing at corners, before going to settle by the fireplace.

Mick turned to look at Silence who was bending over the baby’s cot. “Happen she mightn’t want to be known far and wide as me daughter.”

“Shh,” Silence hissed, then glanced at him and whispered, “She’s just a baby. Whyever wouldn’t she want to be your daughter?”

He shrugged and came to stare broodingly down at the lass. “I’ve many an enemy.”

The child’s cheeks were flushed deep pink, her black locks plastered with sweat to her forehead. One chubby fist was flung over her head. She was a pretty little thing, there was no doubt.

Mick frowned. “Does she often breathe so loud?”

“No,” Silence whispered worriedly. She laid the back of her hand against the child’s forehead and something deep inside him twisted.

Her palms had been rough, but the back of her hand was soft and cool as she laid it on his forehead and smiled wearily into his eyes. “Have ye a fever then, Mickey, me love?”

Mick felt sweat start on his back. Those memories were buried deep—he’d made damned sure of it, but letting Silence in was resurrecting them. He had the sudden urge to order her from his rooms, from his palace. But he couldn’t do that now. It was far too late. She was already in his palace, in his life. He couldn’t go back—and wouldn’t even if he could. She was so close to him now that it was as if he held her in his palm like a glowing ember—and gave thanks for the pain even as he inhaled the smoke from his burning flesh.

Mick’s chest expanded. He breathed in Silence’s scent, breathed in both pain and comfort. “Is she ill, then?”

“I don’t know.” Silence bit her bottom lip. “She’s hot.”

Mick nodded. “I’ll send for a doctor.”

She looked up, her eyes wide, the gray swirling with the green and the brown, her hand laid so tenderly on the baby’s head. “If you think that’s—”

He didn’t stay to hear the rest of her sentence. The baby needed a doctor… and the room was haunted by memories.

SILENCE’S HANDS TREMBLED as she wrung out a cloth and patted Mary Darling’s little cheeks. The toddler was so hot that Silence could feel the burning of her skin even through the cloth.

The heat worried Silence, but it was Mary’s awful listlessness that struck terror in her heart. Mary’d had chills and fevers before. She’d once whimpered all night long, tugging on her ear fretfully, until in the morning a clear liquid had drained from the ear and she’d slept calmly. Silence had stayed up many nights rocking and walking Mary Darling when she wasn’t feeling well. And in all those times Mary had been grumpy and sad and fretful, but she’d never been listless.

“Himself has sent for the doctor,” Fionnula said as she came in with a fresh bowl of water.

“She’s just so hot,” Silence murmured as she wrung out the cloth and applied it again. “I’ve taken her out of her frock and stays, but she’s still on fire.”

“Me mam used to say as the fever was to burn away the illness inside,” Fionnula offered.

“Perhaps so, but I’ve seen fever kill, as well,” Silence murmured.

There had been a little boy, new to the home and rather sickly. Winter had suspected he’d not had enough to eat in his short life. The child had caught a fever and within two days had simply faded away. Silence had wept quietly in bed that night, holding Mary close to her chest. Winter had said with awful pragmatism that some children didn’t live and one just had to face that fact. But even he had worn a drawn expression when he’d said it and he was especially nice to the small boys in the home for weeks afterward.

Silence shuddered. Mary couldn’t fade away. She couldn’t imagine living if the little girl died.

There was a murmur of voices in the hall and then the door opened to reveal Mickey O’Connor ushering in a rotund little man.

“What have we here?” the doctor asked in a bass voice that seemed too large for his body.

“She’s burning with fever,” Silence said. She had to fight to keep a quaver out of her voice.

The doctor placed a hand on the baby’s chest and stilled.

Silence started to ask something, but the man held up his other hand.

After another moment he took his hand off Mary’s chest and turned to Silence. “Pardon my rudeness, ma’am, but I was feeling for the wee one’s heartbeat.”

“I understand.” Silence grasped her hands together at her waist to still their trembling. “Can you help her?”

“Of course I can,” the doctor said briskly. “Never you fear.”

He opened a black case, revealing a half dozen sharp lancets in different sizes. Silence rubbed her palms together nervously. She knew that the doctor meant to cut Mary.

Mr. O’Connor had been lounging by the fireplace, but he stirred at the sight of the lancets in their fitted pockets. “D’ye have to cut her?”

The doctor’s face was serious. “It’s the only way, sir, to let the evil drain from her body.”

Mickey O’Connor’s mouth tightened, but he nodded once before turning his face to the fireplace.

The doctor chose a delicately wicked looking tool and then fished out a little tin dish. He looked at Silence, his face grave. “Perhaps you can hold her upright upon your lap. If you can keep her from moving in any way, it’ll be for the best.”

Silence picked up Mary gently. She’d always hated bloodletting, ever since she was a little girl and had had to be bled three times for some childhood illness. If she could save Mary’s tender skin the sharp scalpel, she’d offer her own arm, but this must be done. She knew that.

The doctor had been watching her and now he nodded at her approvingly. “Can you hold the cup for me?” he asked Fionnula.

The maid stepped forward and took the cup.

“Easy,” the doctor murmured, and with quick efficiency, lifted Mary’s chemise and made a cut high on her thigh.

Mary flinched but made no sound.

Bright red blood flowed from the wound.

It seemed to take forever before the doctor murmured, “I think that will do it.”

He pressed a clean cloth to the wound and wound a strip of linen around Mary’s leg, tying it off neatly.

“Now then,” the doctor said as he wiped and put away his lancet. “A little broth will help enormously, I believe. Take a small piece of chicken and boil it with a sprig of parsley and two of thyme. Strain the broth and add a spoonful of white wine, the finest you can find. Serve this broth to the child thrice daily, making sure she drinks a full teacup if possible.” He glanced at Silence sharply. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, stroking Mary’s hair.

“Good. Good. I also have this elixir.” He produced a small blue glass bottle. “My own concoction and I fancy a very effective one. A spoonful in a small cup of water before bedtime. Now”—he picked up his bag and stared severely at Silence and Fionnula—“should she come out in spots or vomit up bile, you are to call for me at once, yes?”

Silence nodded again, her lips trembling. “I will.”

The doctor laid his hand on Mary’s head and turned toward the door without another word. Mickey O’Connor turned and silently followed him, pausing before he exited. “Do ye have all that ye’ll be needing for her?”

Silence bit her lip to stop it trembling. “I believe so.”

His hesitated and for a moment she thought he was about to say something, but in the end he left without a word.

“WE’LL STORM HIS cursed palace and take her out by force if need be!” Concord Makepeace declared ferociously the next day. “Bad enough that she’s ruined her own reputation, but to sully the good name of the home is too much!”

Concord’s graying hair was coming down from his queue and he looked rather like an aging Samson.

A hotheaded, aging Samson who’d not fully thought through the consequences of an attack on an armed pirate stronghold.

Winter sighed to himself. He’d known the drawbacks to informing his brothers of Silence’s plight, but he couldn’t in all conscious let them remain in the dark.

Even if Concord’s undirected anger and worry were giving Winter a headache.

“The palace is a fortress,” Winter pointed out calmly. “And we are only two. If we—”

“Three,” came a voice in the doorway of the home’s kitchen.

Winter met the green eyes of his brother Asa, his own eyebrow slowly raising. Although he’d sent word to Asa’s rented rooms, he hadn’t expected him to actually show up. Asa hadn’t been heard from in nearly a year. For all Winter had known, his middle brother had sailed overseas.

Yet here he was, as brawny as ever. Asa had the shoulders of a bull and a mane of tawny hair like a young lion. The last year had given him a few differences, however. His scarlet coat was intricately embroidered at the cuffs and skirts, and his shirt, while plain, was of fine linen. Winter’s eyes narrowed. Interesting. However his brother made his living, he was apparently doing quite well for himself.

“What are you doing here?” Concord, never tactful, asked aggressively. “You don’t respond to letters, you don’t bother to make an appearance at Temperance’s wedding or the christening of my new daughter, or when Silence lost her husband at sea, and yet you think you can simply trot back home?”

Winter winced and murmured quietly, “We do need his help, Concord.”

“Ha!” Concord folded bulging arms across his chest. Like Winter, he dressed plainly in black and brown, his hat round and uncocked. “We’ve done just fine without him for the last year.”

“That was before Silence went to live in a pirate’s house,” Winter pointed out drily.

Asa, who’d propped one massive shoulder against the door frame, straightened now. “What pirate? You said in your letter to me that Silence was in dire danger. You never mentioned a pirate.”

Concord snorted.

“Mickey O’Connor,” Winter said quietly before Concord could go off on another tirade.

“Charming Mickey O’Connor?” Asa asked incredulously. “What is Silence doing with him? Did he kidnap her?”

“No.”

Asa pulled out a kitchen chair and sat, planting his elbows on the table. “Then why?”

“Last year a baby was left on Silence’s doorstep,” Winter explained. “Silence named the child Mary Darling and brought her here to the home. This was after Temperance married Lord Caire and was no longer managing the home with me. Silence took her position. She cared for all the children, of course, but she made Mary Darling her special pet.”

Concord stirred. “The baby was like her own. When William died, I think the child gave her comfort.”

Winter nodded. “I returned home from a trip to Oxford several days ago to find Silence gone. When I confronted her at O’Connor’s palace—”

“You went to Mickey O’Connor’s house by yourself?” Asa interrupted.

Winter met his eyes. “Yes.”

For a moment a startled look crossed Asa’s face, and then he slowly nodded. “Go on.”

Winter inclined his head. “She seemed quite as usual. She was dressed in her own clothes and frankly did not appear to be overly happy that I’d come to her rescue. She said that Mickey O’Connor was Mary Darling’s father—”

Asa swore and Concord glared at him.

“—and that O’Connor had brought her and the child to his home to protect them from his enemies. I could not persuade her to leave so I came away again. Now, however, there are questions being asked about where exactly Silence is. If the truth that she’s living with a notorious pirate becomes known…”

Winter shrugged. He didn’t need to tell his brothers what such information would do to the home’s good standing—and the money it needed from its patrons and donors. One whiff of impropriety and the fickle aristocrats would find some other charity to amuse themselves with.

“You should have picked her up and dragged her out bodily,” Concord growled.

Winter arched an eyebrow. “Past O’Connor and a half dozen of his men?”

Concord grimaced.

Asa rolled his eyes. “Trust you to advocate a near-suicidal action based on moral outrage.”

Concord half rose from his chair, bellowing incoherently. Asa rose as well and for the next several minutes the kitchen was filled with loud masculine rage.

Winter sighed and closed his eyes, raising one hand to gently rub his temple. He’d had a lifetime to observe the strained relations between his elder brothers. There were times when they could almost make it through a family meal without resorting to shouts, but those occasions were rare and becoming rarer. Concord dealt with the tension by assuming an unyielding line: He was entirely correct and by contrast everything Asa espoused was entirely incorrect. Winter had once overheard Temperance muttering under her breath that their brother should’ve better been christened Discord.

Asa’s response to this ceaseless state of friction was to disappear. It was a constant worry for their eldest sister, Verity. She feared—and Winter privately concurred—that someday their brother would go away and simply not come back.

His brothers’ voices died.

Winter opened his eyes to find both Asa and Concord scowling at him.

He raised his eyebrows. “Might we continue this discussion now?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Asa’s wide mouth. “We might.” He sobered. “What I don’t understand is why Silence trusted this pirate to speak the truth about his supposed enemies. Has he seduced her, do you think?”

Concord banged a hard fist on the table. “How dare you question our sister’s virtue?”

Asa looked at Concord coldly. “I find that people are capable of many different things. How do you know Silence wouldn’t fall under Mickey O’Connor’s spell? He’s rumored to be quite pretty.”

Concord opened his mouth, but Winter beat him to it. “We know because we have watched Silence in the last year,” he said quietly, but pointedly.

A ruddy flush lit Asa’s cheekbones.

“Silence might be as susceptible to sin as any other female,” Winter said, “but she would never be seduced by O’Connor. You know her history with him. What you may not know is that after William’s cargo was returned, relations between he and Silence were… strained. He perished on his last journey at sea and Silence blamed her confrontation with O’Connor for the sorrow in her marriage before William left.”

For a moment none of the men spoke. Winter looked at his brothers and wondered if they felt as helpless as he. He’d wanted to break things—to kill O’Connor—when he’d seen Silence after her night with the pirate. He hadn’t of course. Such violence would not have helped their sister.

That hadn’t stopped him dreaming of blood for weeks afterward, though.

“So you see,” Winter said quietly, “Silence must truly think that there is danger for the child. She’d never consent to be in the same building with him otherwise.”

“Then that presents an additional problem,” Asa said.

Winter arched an eyebrow in inquiry.

“Besides the difficulty of getting into the palace and rescuing her,” Asa said, “we will also need to have a place where we can safely bring both her and the child. A place that neither Mickey nor his enemies can find.”

Winter nodded slowly. “I believe your assessment is correct. She will never leave willingly unless she knows we can keep the child safe.”

Concord leaned forward placing his massive forearms on the table. “In that case it’s obvious who we should bring into this.”

SILENCE WAS TEARING her heart out over the child.

Two mornings later Mick stood over Silence’s bed and watched her sleep. There were smudges of exhaustion and fear under her eyes, her brown hair was coming down from a plait, and she clutched the sheet in one fragile fist like a little girl afraid of night terrors.

She slept as if dead—she’d not moved as he’d entered her room. He brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes. Her breath didn’t even hitch.

Mick sighed and straightened. It was not yet dawn—still dark out. She’d spent the last two nights and the day in between nursing the child. He’d stayed away, but he’d had Fionnula report the happenings in the sickroom three or four times a day.

The child was growing thinner, her little body lit from within by a fire that would not die. If the fire consumed her—

Mick clenched his jaw and turned away from the bed. He left without glancing in the direction of the child’s cot, crossing through his own room and out into the hallway.

Harry looked up as Mick closed the door quietly behind him. Mick nodded at the guard and turned to stride down the hall. If the babe died, Silence’s heart would be torn from her chest as surely as if a wild animal had savaged her. He had no heart himself, but he’d heard they were delicate things and easily broken. Mick growled low under his breath as he made his way to the front of the house. He knew how to protect Silence from knives and fists, from poverty and want, but he had no idea how—or even if—he could protect her from her own soft heart.

Mick passed the half-dozen guards he’d stationed at the front door and went out into the new morning. He glanced up at the grayish-pink sky and then studied his palace. It was a peacock cleverly disguised as a crow. There was no indication of what lay behind the deceptively simple plain wood door. One would never know from looking at it that the door was reinforced from behind with iron.

There was one other entry to the palace—a door leading to the small courtyard behind—and that was guarded, as well. From the outside, his palace appeared to be a dozen or more narrow row houses, built right next to each other. In reality, it was all one building inside and the doors to the house façades had been boarded up from inside long ago.

Mick grunted and turned to walk up the street. He might seem overprotected against attack, but then he had an unrelenting enemy.

A shadow moved in a narrow alley as he passed it and Mick whirled, a knife held ready in his hand. Lad emerged into the weak light, his ears laid back, his head down in submission.

“Jaysus,” Mickey breathed in disgust and shoved the knife back in the sheath strapped to his forearm.

He started down the street again and the dog trotted out happily and fell into step behind him.

The daylight people of St. Giles were already on the streets. The ones he passed now did honest work—more or less—porters, hawkers, chair men, night soil men, and beggars. They gave him a wide berth, careful not to meet his eyes. They knew him of course. He was their king and they were properly respectful. The river and the boats he lived on were to the east and he’d be nearer his work if he lived in Wapping or some other place in the East End of London. But Mick had been born and grown up in St. Giles. Had run the streets like a feral young wolf cub as a boy, had fucked his first woman here. Killed his first man. This was his home and when he’d made his fortune he’d built his palace in St. Giles.

And now there was one more thing that held him here.

He crossed a street and looked up. The spire of the new St. Giles-in-the-Fields loomed ahead. Mildew had destroyed the old church. Rumor had it that the mildew had fed upon the damp from the rotting plague corpses buried beneath the church flagstones. Certainly the air in the old church had held an evil stink. But no more. The modern church was clean and elegant, a far cry from the old building. Mick grunted. The new church had been built by nobles living outside of London City proper. He wondered what the locals—the ones who actually lived by the church—thought of the new building.

Mick skirted the church, coming upon the graveyard wall. A little way farther and the gate came into sight. He pushed it open. The graveyard was old, of course, the monuments moss-covered, some leaning as if the underground inhabitants had tried to push their way free from the earth. Mick made his way through the crooked rows, Lad padding silently behind him, and even though St. Giles lay just beyond a small wall, the clatter and hustle without was muffled. The graveyard held its own insulated atmosphere.

Mick watched carefully as he neared the grave he’d come to see, for he wasn’t alone in the graveyard.

The Vicar of Whitechapel stood looking down at her headstone and the freshly mounded earth. For a man who had terrorized the East End of London for the better part of a decade he didn’t look that intimidating. He was of average height, wiry rather than heavily muscled, his shoulder-length hair graying, and his features pleasant.

“She called your name,” Charlie said as Mick halted on the far side of the new grave. “As she was dying. Pity you didn’t see fit to visit her on her deathbed.”

Mick smiled widely, easily, as if the news that she’d called for him wasn’t a white-hot poker thrust through his chest. “Busy, wasn’t I?”

Charlie turned then, looking at Mickey full on, and revealing the horror that was the left side of his face. His skin had melted or burned off his face. The eye socket was merely a hardened gouge, his nostril destroyed, his lips pulled down into his chin. The ear was a melted rim and the hair on the left side of his head was in tufts as if most of it had been pulled out by the very roots.

Mick’s smile widened. “Yer gettin’ handsomer by the hour, Charlie.”

The Vicar’s expression didn’t change—but then many of his facial muscles had been destroyed. His remaining brown eye glittered with mad hatred, though. A wise man would step away from such vicious anger.

Mick leaned forward. “I’ll not let ye drive me from me home, old man.”

Charlie’s eyelid drooped. “What makes you think you have any say-so in the matter, boy?”

Mick’s smile hardened. “What makes ye think I don’t?”

Charlie shrugged one shoulder—the other had scarring. “Might be because I know you’ve got your babe hid in that palace of yours—along with a woman called Silence Hollingbrook. I find that interesting, I do. Seems to me that it’d be a fair trade: your woman for my own.”

Mick shrugged himself as if Silence didn’t matter to him, but his heart had begun to beat in triple time. Of course the Vicar had found out about Silence. Of course he’d know that she was different simply because she’d stayed when none of his other women had.

“I never took yer woman,” Mick said.

“Aye, but you tried to.”

Mick raised an eyebrow. Charlie wasn’t making sense, but then he’d long known the man was mad.

“And that babe?” The Vicar tutted. “I hear she’s a sickly thing. Like to die soon. That must weigh upon your heart most sadly.”

Mick looked at the Vicar. He was such a small man for all the malice he held inside of him. Long ago Mick had wondered why Charlie was made the way he was. What had carved away all sympathy, all respect for other men. What had made him the vicious, violent bastard he was.

But he’d learned to stop wondering. It made no never mind why the Vicar was the way he was. As well to ask why a viper struck and killed for no reason. It was simply the way of nature.

“Ye know as well as I that I lost whatever heart I once had long ago,” Mick replied without emotion, a simple statement of fact. “If the babe lives, or if she dies, it makes no difference to me. I’ll still eat sweetmeats on the morrow and taste the sugar on me tongue, still fuck women and feel the pleasure in me bollocks. And, Charlie—mark me well, now—I’ll still kill ye and laugh in yer ugly face as I do it.”

He walked away then, carefully not looking at the new headstone with the tiny angel carved at the top. Lad glanced up from sniffing a weed and fell into step with Mick as he passed. The temptation to attack now was almost overwhelming. His hands, balled into fists by his side, shook with the urge to strike the older man and put an end to this once and for all.

But Charlie never went anywhere without a half dozen guards. One lounged behind a tree, another two stood by the wall, and the remaining three were out of sight, but Mick had no doubt that they were nearby. Strange. Only a year ago, he might’ve damned the guards and attacked Charlie anyway. Now, Mick had the knowledge at the back of his mind that if he failed, he’d not be there to protect Silence—Charlie was mad enough to revenge himself on Silence even if Mick were dead. The realization was not a pleasant one—that only he stood between Charlie and Silence.

He nodded ironically to one of the Vicar’s men stationed at the churchyard gate as he passed by. Six men could overwhelm him, he supposed, if the Vicar chose to attack now, but that wasn’t the man’s way. Charlie preferred the indirect hit, the slow poison that systematically destroyed a person before they were even dead.

Mick halted in the middle of the street and threw back his head to gaze at the blue sky overhead. It was going to be a rare clear day in London, the sun shining so brightly one could almost believe in a God and all his angels, of a mother’s love and a boy’s innocent dreams. He closed his eyes and saw her brown eyes, sad and defeated and filled with tears as she’d sung to him.

Take me in your arms, my love

And blow the candle out.

A shouted curse made Mick open his eyes and spin to glare at a drover with a heard of sheep.

The man’s eyes widened and he was stuttering apologies even as Mick turned away. Mick walked the rest of the way home without conscious thought. When he got to his own door Lad trotted up the steps behind him. Mick shot him a look and for a moment the dog froze, one paw still lifted, and rolled his eyes sheepishly at him.

Mick sighed. “In with ye, then.”

Lad’s jaw dropped open in a grin and he happily capered into the palace.

“How were ye ever a bull-baitin’ dog?” Mick muttered to the animal as they tromped through the house. “The bulls must’ve laughed themselves silly when ye were thrown in the pit.”

Lad panted beside him happily, not a thought in his boneheaded brain.

They reached the upper floors and Mick strode down the hallway quietly. Bert was dozing outside Silence’s room, but straightened hastily as Mick neared.

“Are they awake?” Mick asked softly.

Bert blinked sleepily. “Fionnula left jus’ a minute ago to fetch some tea. I ’aven’t ’eard a peep.”

Mick nodded and entered his room, shrugging out of his coat and waistcoat. He preferred the freedom of just his shirt in his own home. He crossed to the connecting door and cracked it carefully, peering in. Silence lay on the bed, her form still, save for the slow rise and fall of her chest. He was about to shut the door again when a squeak came from the cot on the far side of the bed.

Mick was across the room in a second.

The child lay on her back, her eyes open, yawning sleepily. She saw him and her tiny pink lips trembled, her mouth turning down.

Mick frowned at her. “Hush.”

His admonishment had the opposite effect from what he intended. Her mouth opened and she let out a fretful wail.

Mick glanced at the bed. Silence hadn’t moved at the sound. She was exhausted from hours of nursing the brat. Fionnula had left the room and might not be back for some time, and Bert would be very little help.

Mick scowled at the toddler. “What d’ye want?”

She sobbed and lifted her arms to him.

He blinked, taken aback. Surely she didn’t want him. But another wail gave him very little choice.

He lifted the little girl from the cot, bringing her close to his chest as he’d seen Silence do. She was as light as feather down from one of his fine pillows. His chest wasn’t as soft as Silence’s, but the baby didn’t seem to mind. The fretful sounds stopped as she stuck a finger in her mouth and regarded him with wide brown eyes. Her eyelashes were spiked with tears, making them dark and long.

She’d be a beauty someday, he thought dispassionately, someone would have to guard her against the men who would be drawn to her. They’d swarm around her like bees to honey, wanting to lift her skirts, wanting to dishonor her, little caring of her feelings or who she was as a person. She’d be a piece of flesh to them, not a girl. Not someone’s beloved daughter.

He scowled again at the thought.

The child whimpered, her face crumpling, tears pooling at the corners of her eyes.

“Hush now,” Mick whispered.

Silence was still asleep. He crossed to his own room and entered, holding the baby. He bent to set her on the bed, but she clung to his fine lawn shirt, rumpling it, and sobbed.

“Hush away, sweetin’,” he whispered. What did she want? He picked up a jeweled snuffbox lying on his dressing table and showed it to her.

She batted it away irritably and smashed her little head into his chest, still sobbing. He stared down at her, perplexed. She was so loud, so stubborn, and yet he could feel the delicate bones of her little ribs through her chemise. She was so small, so fragile, so easily hurt.

He walked to the fireplace and showed her in turn the items on the mantelpiece: an alabaster vase, a pink and white shepherdess, and a curved golden dagger that had once belonged to some Ottoman lord. She didn’t seem very interested in his treasures, but she quieted a bit, still rubbing her face against his shirt. She’d ruin it soon if he didn’t take it off. Her mouth opened suddenly in a wide yawn.

And he found himself singing to her softly, the words coming to him as naturally as breathing.

“Take me in your arms, my love

And blow the candle out.”