Karen Robards - Dark of the Moon

"Please, sor…" Willie continued to whine and scrape, blocking the gentleman's way. Caitlyn, passing by on the outside, pretended to stumble over a loose cobblestone. She fell heavily against the gentleman, her hands moving with practiced speed even as she mumbled an apology. Swift as a snake, her right hand slid into the pocket of his coat and emerged with a satisfyingly heavy purse. Then she reeled against him again as though she had not quite recovered her balance, while her fingers closed over his watch. A small smile curved her lips as she withdrew her hand. The English were ever as stupid as they were evil.

"Hold, now." The voice was quiet but steely enough to send shivers down her spine. It unnerved her more than the hard hand that closed like an iron band around her wrist. Holy Mary, she'd been nabbed!

"Run, Willie!" she shrieked. Willie's eyes widened as he took in her plight. He stared at her for a single wild instant, horror plain on his face. Then, with a high-pitched wail, he turned tail. Caitlyn's last sight of him was a pair of kicked-up heels as he disappeared into the stream of quay workers.

"Let go!" Pulling frantically against the hard hand that imprisoned her, Caitlyn heard her heart pound out loud rhythms of terror. If she didn't get loose she'd hang…

In a final, desperate bid for freedom she flew at her captor like an enraged gamecock, kicking his shins with the hard edge of her square-toed shoes and launching a mighty blow upward with her free fist that, had it connected with his nose, would likely have broken it. But he was tall and he jerked his head out of range, so that her fist only caught him a glancing blow on the neck. Still, it was enough to make him cough-and to tighten that imprisoning hand until the watch dropped from her numb fingers to clatter against the cobblestones and she was forced to her knees. It was all she could do not to whimper as he scooped up his watch and restored it to his pocket without easing that bone-crushing grip. Kneeling, white- faced with pain and burgeoning panic, she was nevertheless defiant as she stared up into that soft-no-longer face. Caitlyn O'Malley asked for no quarter, ever.

"Call the constabulary, then, ye bloody Sassenach!" she hissed, defeated but still proud. His eyes narrowed at her. She saw that beneath thick black brows they were a strange combination of blue and green, almost aqua, with a circle of black around the irises. Shivering, she thought: Devil's eyes, and barely managed to refrain from making the horned sign with her fingers that warded off the evil eye. The only thing that stopped her was a refusal to let him see her fear.

"Don't fash yerself, lad; we'll not be turning our own over to a bloody Orangeman!" That low-timbred rumble came from the huskiest man in the small crowd of quay workers and their women that had gathered around them. Caitlyn, still on her knees, looked at the angry faces with renewed hope. Had she robbed one of them, they'd have shown her no mercy. But a Sassenach…! She might cheat the hangman yet.

Her captor pulled her to her feet, his eyes moving swiftly around the surrounding circle of the angry oppressed. He had to know fear, this Orangeman who could see the hatred the Irish felt for his kind in every eye focused on him; but if he did, not a flicker of it showed. He faced them with cool unconcern while their expressions turned uglier by the second.

Taking advantage of his predicament, Caitlyn jerked at her hand, which he still held imprisoned. The answering pressure on her wrist made her go weak at the knees. At the wince she could not control, a growl arose from the crowd. The man who had spoken earlier took a step forward. Almost casually, her captor transferred her wrist to his left hand and placed his right hand on the dress scabbard at his waist. Then, with a lightning movement, he pulled free a weapon that was no ceremonial sword good only for show, but a glistening-sharp rapier.

"Willing to die for the lad, are you?" The question was addressed to the crowd in general, but her captor's eyes held the eyes of the man who had spoken, the crowd's ringleader. Caitlyn knew that besting the ringleader was the swiftest and surest way to preserve oneself when faced with a hostile group. She had done it herself more than once, by whatever means it had taken. But now that her captor's attention was distracted… She was just drawing her foot back to kick the vulnerable back of his knee when another voice interrupted.

"What's amiss here?" A pair of burly constables shouldered their way through the shifting, muttering throng. Caitlyn felt her heart sink as she saw their blue uniforms. O'Flynn's fate would surely be hers now.

"A slight disagreement only. Nothing that can't be handled privately." To Caitlyn's astonishment, her captor was not handing her over. His hand was as tight as ever about her wrist, but he was not denouncing her to the constables. Why? She looked at him with wary suspicion but said naught.

"You'd best stay out of this part of the city, sirra," one of the constables warned her captor. The crowd from whom Caitlyn had hoped for so much was drifting away. Taking on a single foolish Englishman was one thing; bringing the full wrath of the hated Orangemen down on the heads of kith and kin was something else again. Caitlyn could understand and even shared their reasoning. The English were butchers, and their wrath if their constables should come to harm would be terrible. Irishmen through- out the city would be made to pay, some most likely with their lives.

"I will in future. Thank you for your assistance." Her captor slid that deadly-looking rapier back into its deceptively fancy scabbard, nodded in a friendly fashion to the constables, and moved away, dragging Caitlyn behind him. With the constables looking after them suspiciously, she had no choice but to go with him without a fight. Nothing he could do to her would be worse than her fate if they took her up. Not even if he were the devil himself… Caitlyn shivered, remembering those strange light eyes. Where no one could see, she formed her fingers into the sign that warded off evil and immediately felt a little better.

In moments, the gentleman had pulled her around the corner onto the Bachelor's Walk, which ran alongside the River Liffey. The passersby here were very different from those in O'Connell Street. These well-dressed pedestrians were of the Protestant Ascendancy, the hated ruling class brought over from England and set firmly into place by the bloody butchery of Oliver Cromwell (curse the name) some hundred years before. To them, the Irish were heathen peasants of inferior culture and intellect, barely above the beasts in the fields. They were the enactors of the hated Penal Laws, which denied Irish Catholics virtually every human right. Under their rule, an Irishman in his own land was forbidden to own land, receive an education, vote, hold public office, practice his religion-and, worse yet, was forced to pay a yearly tithe to the Anglican Church. They were colonizers of a once-free land, butchers, oppressors. Any Irishman worth his salt hated each and every one from birth to death. Caitlyn was no exception.

Once the constables were out of sight, Caitlyn jerked violently against the hand that still shackled her, hoping that the surprise of it might make her captor's grip loosen so that she could escape. His grip remained as unbreakable as ever, but he did slacken his pace and look around at her. The sheer size of the man was intimidating, it was irue, but if Caitlyn O'Malley had ever feared man or beast, none had known it. She glared at him. Despite the fact that he had not turned her over to the constables, her hatred for him had not lessened. If anything, it had grown. She hated to be bested, and this powdered and primped Englishman had undeniably gotten the best of her.