With a last look, Molly disappeared into the doorway. Michael stepped closer, his stance threatening, but Abigail didn’t back away.
“What is it yer ladyship that draws yeh slummin’ again? Did yeh not get enough o’ the trill of the tenements? Or are yeh showin’ us yer benevolence?”
“I daresay you wouldn’t accept any benevolence I had to offer, Mr. Michael O’Connor. And since you consider yourself a damn sight more self-important than anyone of my position, I wonder that you take offense at my ‘slummin’, as you call it.”
“So, the little girl has some fire in her. Well, that might werk on yer fancy men, missy, but it don’t werk on me. Is that how yeh got yer Thomas ta bed yeh, or did yeh just crook yer finger and lead the lamb ta slaughter?”
Her eyes widened angrily.
“Oh aye,” he said. “Didn’t take much ta twig that. Don’t blame Molly fer tellin’ secrets. She loves yeh too much, but me, I see right through yeh. Yer hoity-toity airs don’t hide what yeh really are.”
“And what might that be?” she asked, shaken.
The word on his tongue, Michael peered into the face he was about to shame. He had expected her to meet his insinuation with a slap or a harsh word, not the hurt eyes looking back at him. Abigail didn’t yield and he knew she wouldn’t, even were he to call her the vile name that waited to be uttered. He admired her for that.
“How old are yeh?” he wondered aloud.
“How…what? How old am I?”
“Aye, ‘woman o’ the world’. How old are yeh? It’s a simple enough question.”
“I’m twenty. What has that to do with anything?”
“Twenty? Pssh, yer naught but a girl.”
Eyebrows raised, Abigail joined the fray.
“A girl? You’re mistaken in me if you consider me no more than a girl,” she huffed. “Call me a whore if you dare. You think I don’t know how you see me? Well, your opinion doesn’t mean that to me!”
She snapped her fingers indignantly at him.
“Whoa now, no need ta get all in a bother, missy,” he laughed. “I meant ta call yeh no sech thing. Unless yer wantin’ it of me, yer ladyship.”
Abigail stepped down to the sidewalk and circled him.
“I see the game you’re playing with me, Michael O’Connor. You think you’ll scare the little girl and she’ll run away? You’ve not got the measure of me if you believe that. You’re not the only one who takes what he wants.”
“Careful now darlin’, yer walkin’ into dangerous territory,” he teased.
“Dangerous? You? A scared little boy, just like all the rest of them. Oh, you’re easily won, and no mistake. I understand you, all right. It doesn’t make you bitter that I might believe I’m better than you, oh no. What makes you angry is that you believe I’m superior, and that I have no use for the likes of you.”
“Yeh’ve crossed the line, Abigail,” he answered heatedly. “Yeh tink yer quite the woman, do yeh?”
“Prove me wrong,” she spat at him.
The lips that met hers were angrier than any she had ever tasted. His strong hands held her as she struggled against him, her blood rising to the resentment and yearning that raged in her. In that instant time stopped and she saw all of eternity in the eyes of the man who would not let her go. Trembling to the intimacy of the moment and her anger at his presumption, she wrestled to push him away.
Michael released her, confused by the emotions the kiss had aroused in him. No woman had ever inflamed him as she did, and in truth he couldn’t say why she did. His tangled emotions were reflected back at him in her eyes, and his only thought was that he might kiss her again.
“You were right,” Abigail said contemptuously. “I have no use for you.”
She turned and ran up the steps into the tenement, leaving him to stare after her.