Fionnula’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, ma’am. ’Tisn’t anyone’s as far as I know, savin’ yerself. I have a cot in the attic, same as the other maids, but Himself has said I’m to sleep through there now.” She gestured to a small door on the wall.
“Oh, yes?” Silence got up to peek into Fionnula’s room. It was barely big enough to hold a cot and a row of pegs on the wall. Certainly it was far more Spartan than Silence’s and Mary’s room. She came back and flung herself down on the settee again and looked at the maid curiously. “When did you come to work for Mr. O’Connor?”
“A bit more’n a month ago.” Fionnula’s fair face suddenly flamed. “I… I have a friend who lives here.”
By the blush on the maid’s face, Silence thought the “friend” must be a man. “Surely not Harry?”
Fionnula giggled. “Oh, no, ma’am!”
“Or Mr. O’Connor?” Silence asked with a strangely heavy heart. Had he sent his kept woman to watch over her?
“Goodness, no,” Fionnula said. “The ladies that Himself entertains are fancy pieces, quite lovely like. I’m not nearly as beautiful or as high in the instep as they.”
“Oh. Of course.” Silence got up to unpack her meager trunk.
The reality of her situation swept over her. She’d placed herself entirely in the power of an evil man—a man whose only use for women was to have them “entertain” him. This wasn’t what she wanted for Mary Darling—or herself. Once again she’d let Mickey O’Connor get the upper hand. For a moment panic rose in her chest, nearly suffocating her.
“Are ye all right, ma’am?” Fionnula asked hesitantly.
Silence glanced up and saw the little maid watching her worriedly. “Oh, yes. Just a little tired.”
She rose to put away a pile of stockings, but as she did she came to a decision: she might be in Mickey O’Connor’s palace again, but that didn’t mean this time had to end like the last. This time the pirate would find that Silence Hollingbrook had a mind and a spirit of her own.
And she would never blindly obey him again.
THE LITTLE WIDOW’S presence in his palace gave him an odd itch ’tween the shoulder blades, Mick mused later that evening as he spread out a great map upon a table. ’Twas a crawling feeling, two parts curiosity, one of lust, with a dram of uneasy wariness stirred in.
Strange, that, since he’d spent the last year slyly planning to get Silence Hollingbrook exactly where she was—under his power and under his roof. It’d been a whim in the beginning. He’d eyed the squalling babe held in the greedy old bawd’s arms, and known at once that the babe would have to be hidden from the Vicar. And why not her? he’d thought. Why not the righteous Mrs. Hollingbrook? Perhaps it was a way to claim some of that pure virtue she’d blazed at him in his own throne room. To steal by proxy what he could never earn. It had given him a bittersweet satisfaction: to hide the flesh of his flesh with the woman he’d harmed most in the world. To tie Silence to him with bonds of her own maternal love.
Aye, and now at last he’d brought her back to his palace and by rights he ought to be feeling a triumphant bit of glee, hadn’t he?
Not an odd, crawling sensation instead.
“She seems content enough.” Harry’s broad, ugly face wrinkled as if he were thinking on whether “content” was really the word he wanted. “I left ’er with Fionnula.”
Mick shot him a sardonic glance before returning his gaze to the map spread upon a great gilded table before him. Rumor had it that the table had been meant for a royal palace. But that was before Mick had demanded it in tithe from a captain who’d tried to wriggle out from his just obligations to Mick and his crew. Made it all the sweeter to have it in his own planning room, then.
“Left her alone?” Mick asked with an edge to his voice. Silence was in his palace now—a treasure he’d protect like any other.
“Naw,” Harry said hastily. “Bert’s guardin’ ’er.”
“Good,” Mick grunted. “I’d be best pleased if’n she and the babe were within eyesight o’ one o’ ye at all times. She’s to be guarded well, mind.” He spread the map, leaning on it with both arms outstretched and studied it. “Where’s this dock yer contemplatin’?” he asked the third man in the room.
“Down here,” Bran Kavanagh said, waving his hand over the lower Thames. “It’s rumored that the owners are in debt. They’ll sell cheap.”