Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3)(19)

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.”

Silence swallowed. She’d been raised in London as well, but there had been trips to parks and outings to Greenwich and other towns. She’d seen butterflies and more—tame deer, wild birds, lovely gardens, and flowers. What kind of boyhood had he had never to have seen a butterfly?

“Where were you raised in London?” she asked softly.

“St. Giles,” he said, still tracing the gilt pages. “Not more’n a stone’s throw from here.”

She tried to picture him as a boy. He’d have been beautiful, of course, lean and graceful. The thought made her uneasy. Beautiful youths didn’t last long in St. Giles. “You lived with your family?”