He was looking up and down the street, a slight frown creasing his forehead and bringing those thick black brows together over his devil's eyes. Clearly he hadn't noticed her, standing as she was in the structure's shadow. Or if he had, he had foigotten who she was. Sudden anxiety beset her. She had not realized how much she had counted on his offer. To be quit of the hellhole that was Dublin, to eat regularly and not have to worry about hanging for it, seemed suddenly infinitely desirable.

"Eh, yer lordship, here I be." The scrawny ostler came back around the corner leading a great black horse, saw the Sassenach, and hurried toward him. "Fharan- nain here wasn't inclined to wear a saddle today at all, at all."

"He never is." The Sassenach accepted the horse's reins and rubbed an absent hand down die beast's nose. Casting a narrowed eye at the ominous-looking sky, he said, "We'd best be on our way, Mickeen. Maybe we can ride out of this before it hits."

"Aye." The ostler came around to the hitching post and untied the pony, casting a darkling look in Caitlyn's direction as he did so. Clearly the time had come to make her presence known, if she meant to do so. An unaccustomed attack of nerves hit her. The bloody Sassenach hadn't meant his offer, had forgotten it already, she knew. Caitlyn O'Malley had never asked anybody for anything in her life. Her pride wouldn't even let her be the one to do the mock begging in their scams. She couldn't ask for a crust if she was starving. But he had offered her honest employment, as he had called it, and she was here to take him up on it. She wouldn't let the bloody Sassenach go back on his given word without a fight.