The Lady in Disguise

Chapter Thirteen

Sculthorpe Abbey

Thursday, a quarter past 7 in the morning...

"Dommy... Dommy, please... Listen..."

"Mamaí!" Byrne shot up in bed and stared about the room — as if he'd find her in her small bed by the kitchen fire as she was on her last days. But he wasn't in a kitchen in Cloghroe, but a bedroom at Sculthorpe.

"No," he breathed, laying down and squeezing his eyes shut. "Come back..." He didn't dream of her as much as he once did and he'd begun to worry that he was remembering her wrong — that the face he saw, the voice he heard, had both been distorted by the years.

God, he was so desperate to see her that he'd even take her on her last day.

He closed his eyes and laid down again, trying to recapture the dream. Yet the present was intruding. The sound of birds, of shuffling in the halls, of doors opening and closing, a persistent knocking at the adjoining door all pulling him out of sleep. Damn them.

He didn't know what had brought her into his dreams last night, but he didn't care. He wanted more. Just a moment more. But it wasn't to be.

He turned over, stared at the canopy above him, a flowery feminine thing, though faded. Perhaps that had brought her to him, this dainty room, dingy as it was, but clean enough. He'd volunteered to take the mistress' chamber to save all the rooms his staff and his money had so nicely made over for the guests. Tony couldn't very well put any of the ladies in a room with a door that he could sail through at any moment.

As he did now. "Are you still abed? It's after seven!"

"Yes, I am abed," Byrne grumbled, "and I'd like to stay that way for another half-hour at least, so if you don't mind..."

"A host shouldn't be the last to breakfast, particularly not at his ooooown party," Tony tutted in a stuffy voice that sounded nothing like Byrne's. "Well, here I am, being a good host and an even better friend, trying to share breakfast with you before you go off to parts unknown all day."

Byrne sat up. There was no getting that dream back, anyhow. Off to parts unknown. Yes. That was why he'd dreamt about his mother. Everything he was doing today could be traced back to her.

"Come now. Up you get!" Tony pulled at the blankets.

But Byrne held fast. "If I were you," he warned, "I wouldn't."

"Ah, a challenge!" Tony grinned. "I'll have you know I was quite good with tug o' war in my school days and I never give up until–"

"I sleep naked."

"Until I have a good reason to," Tony finished, quickly dropping the covers and turning to face the window. "Would you put something on? And please hurry. No one else is about and I am starved for conversation... and also for breakfast. So stop being such a layabout."

"Not lazy. Simply tired," Byrne said, sitting up and reaching for his robe at the end of the bed. "And I had no plans to—"

"Yes, I suppose you must be exhausted after all your frantic machinations last night."

"Meaning?" Byrne prodded, tying his sash, wondering why he was being so coy. He knew exactly what Tony meant. He was actually quite surprised Tony wanted to share breakfast with him at all. He'd been a bit stiff when they'd said their goodnights.

"Every time I thought I might succeed in drawing her away, there you were!"

"There I was," he conceded. He'd spent last night panting after Miss Crewe like a hound, caressing her face behind sofas, stealing Tony's second dance with her, insisting on finding her spectacles, trying to convince Tony to woo anyone else but her, preventing Tony from getting her off alone... He'd never believed in the luck of the Irish till that rain came pouring down as if on his command.