Moonlight Lover (18 page)

It was her scent that had filled his senses. It took him a
moment to clear his head of her. Sin Jin took a deep breath, then turned toward the back of the room just as Rachel screamed, "Fire!"

Chapter Eighteen

There were red-yellow fingers pushing their way through the rear wall, cutting through the wood like a knife slicing through a sugar cake.

"Omigod!" Rachel cried. "The printing press!"

She ran toward it. They couldn't lose it. It was virtually irreplaceable. She had to save it from the fire.

Suddenly, she felt herself being lifted up in the air, her feet no longer making contact with the floor. Sin-Jin's hands were wrapped around her waist and he was dragging her away.

What was the matter with him? Didn't he understand that the printing press was her whole world? That it had to be saved?

"Put me down, you big oaf! I've got to save it! Don't you understand?" In frustration, she fisted her hands and twisting around, began to pound on his chest.

For someone who had very nearly been ravished and had been battered about, the woman had a tremendous amount of strength, he thought.

"What you've got to do is get the fire brigade, that's what you've got to do." Sin-Jin struggled to keep her from breaking free. "The press is replaceable, Rachel, you're not!"

She saw the flames divide and multiply, eating through the wall. Smoke began forming black clouds in the room. They had no money to replace the press. Riley had left her in charge. This was her responsibility. She had to save it.

"But—"

There wasn't a single ounce of intelligence he could reason with in that head of hers. "Damn it, woman, why can't you listen just once without arguing?"

Exasperated, Sin-Jin slung Rachel over his shoulder and hurried out the front door. He deposited her unceremoniously on the ground as if she was a stack of bundled tobacco. Sam was head of the fire brigade. He was the one to sound the alarm.

Sin-Jin pointed in the direction of the tavern as he turned toward the blacksmith's shop himself. "Now do as I say!" he ordered.

Already the street was beginning to fill with people. He saw that the blacksmith was running toward the print shop, two buckets in each hand.

"Go!" Sin-Jin shouted at Rachel, pushing her toward the tavern.

Sin-Jin looked at the men who had assembled. "You, you, and you," Sin-Jin picked three from the crowd, "Get more buckets." The blacksmith joined him, handing Sin-Jin the pails he had brought. Sin-Jin shoved them into the hands of two other available men. "There's a horse trough over there." He pointed to the nearest one in front of the emporium. "Hurry!"

As he turned, he saw Riley running toward the shop.

The man's eyes looked wild with the thoughts that were flashing through his mind. Riley grabbed Sin-Jin's arm. "Rachel! Where's Rachel?"

"I sent her to the tavern for Sam. She's all right."

Behind them, the water line had started to form. Men, women and a handful of children were passing buckets hand over hand to the man at the head of the line in a frantic attempt to try and beat back the flames. Fire was a threat to them all, easily destroying what had taken them so long to build.

Riley was dumbstruck. Everything had been all right just a short hour ago. "How did it start?" he demanded.

Sin-Jin shook his head. There was no time for talk now. "Later." He pointed toward the emporium. "Get blankets," he instructed the other man, raising his voice in order to be heard above the growing noise. "And shovels, we need shovels."

He'd seen a fire like this before once, at the barracks in England. The wind had been high and within minutes, only ashes remained where once a large building had stood. It wasn't going to happen here, not in his town. Not if he could help it.

"We'll beat it back and throw dirt on what the water doesn't reach. Now hurry," he told Riley. "Hurry!"

The townspeople scattered, accepting Sin-Jin's instructions as naturally as a child took mother's milk. They were followers in need of a leader, and Sin-Jin had taken up the banner.

A second bucket brigade formed with Sam in charge. Others, among them Rachel and Riley, raced to toss the filled pails at the fire inside the store. Sin-Jin and Brom, the hulking blacksmith worked furiously, throwing shovelfuls of dirt at the bright flames as they attempted to bury the fire. Still others were beating the flames with blankets.

Noise and shouting filled the air as voices tripped over one another. Cries ringing with encouragement, confu
sion, and concern crisscrossed like a patchwork quilt that
couldn't find a pattern for itself. The noise was so great that the crack of the musket that was being discharged blended in with it all, dissolving unheeded like a snowflake upon the tongue of a child.

Sin-Jin suddenly felt a sharp sting in his shoulder. He felt as if someone had shoved him, hard and he stumbled from the force. The pain that radiated was hot and ate away at his consciousness. He blinked his eyes, trying to come around.

Certain that someone had accidentally hit him, Sin-Jin
looked about, but couldn't see where the blow might have
come from. Everyone was hurrying to and fro around
him, but there no one was next to him. Not knowing what to make of it, with time scarce, Sin-Jin forced himself to
ignore the growing fire in his shoulder and concentrate on the one he could see. He continued issuing instructions to those around him. They were gaining on the fire, making it retreat to its source.

Within a few minutes, it was all over. The fire, defeated, sizzled its final protest as it disappeared. Only the left wall of the print shop had been destroyed. The rest of it, including the printing press, had only been blackened by the smoke. Rachel's house, as well as the emporium, had been completely spared thanks to the speed with which everyone had responded to the common threat.

The crescendo of noise died down along with the fire, until it as only a soft murmur. The citizens of Morgan's Creek looked at one another. The near silence was replaced with laughter, laughter laced with relief. For one small moment in time, they were all brothers. Shopkeepers, farmers, barmaids and blacksmiths alike, they had all united, been a part of a single effort. At that moment, there had been no distinction between them.

Riley rolled his shoulders, trying to liberate them from the tension that squeezed them. He saw Sin-Jin by the wayside and crossed to him.

"I have no idea how I'm to begin thanking you." Riley dragged a hand through hair that smelled of smoke and nodded toward the others who were milling around, congratulating one another. "You organized them as if they were an army of soldiers."

Rachel approached from the other side. Her face was streaked with soot. She ran the back of her hand over her cheek, smudging it further.

"Aye, that you did, Lieutenant." For once, there was no animosity in her voice as she used the rank.

Sin-Jin's lips moved in a smile, but it was a weak effort.
He felt drained, exhausted. More than he should. Something felt very wrong, he thought. He tried to shrug and found he really couldn't.

"Old habits surface at times. I—" He turned toward her and saw her surprised expression. "What are you looking at?"

Rachel's eyes were wide as she looked at his shoulder. My God, he was wounded. How? When? "You're bleeding."

Instinctively, Sin-Jin glanced down at his right shoulder. A single thin stream of blood had run down his sleeve, soaking the material. His arm felt hot and stiff now. "Something must have hit me."

How could he talk so calmly? Didn't he realize that he might be bleeding to death? What was the matter with this man? Rachel clawed Sin-Jin's jacket off his other shoulder, then began to ease it from the wounded one.

"From the looks of it, it was a bullet doing the hitting. You've been shot." The words were uttered in awed disbelief as she looked at the wound.

Mechanically, Sin-Jin's hand went to his shoulder. He felt the stickiness oozing there as blood seeped from the wound. "This has not been one of my better days," he muttered.

"Riley," Rachel ordered, valiantly ignoring the sickness that gripped the pit of her stomach. "Bring him along into the house. Now!"

She spun on her heel and ran ahead to get a basin.
There was some clean linen she could tear into bandages,
she thought as she ran toward the house.

Riley placed his arm beneath Sin-Jin's shoulder. "Lean on me."

Sin-Jin tried to shrug him off. To his annoyance, he found that the strength to do so was lacking. Weakness
was milking his limbs like a dairy maid drawing milk from
a cow's udder. Still he had to protest. "I'm perfectly capable of walking on my own power."

"Humor her," Riley advised as he nodded toward Rachel's back. "Believe me, it's not a pretty sight when she loses her temper." Riley guided his friend through the gate and to the front steps.

Sin-Jin smiled as he crossed the threshold into the small house. "I've seen it." He glanced in Rachel's direction as she hurried about the room, gathering what she needed. "It's not so bad."

Rachel let out a breath that sounded more like a huff.

Damn him, he could have been killed. Killed because of her. She knew who had fired the shot, even though she hadn't seen Winthrop point the musket. She could feel it
in her bones. She knew his kind. Fear of what might have
happened made her insides quiver.

"Stop talking and sit down," Rachel ordered harshly in order to mask her thoughts.

Riley eased Sin-Jin into a chair at the table. As soon as
his hands were free, Rachel thrust the basin into them. "Go to the well and get me fresh water. Mind that it's not from the horse's trough," she warned.

She turned her attention to Sin-Jin and frowned as she ripped the shirt from his shoulder. The wound looked terrible.

Sin-Jin tried not to wince. "I've dreamed about you ripping the clothes from my body. I never thought I'd have to get shot to have it happen."

"Shut up," she muttered through clenched teeth. She
was doing her best to be gentle, but she could see she was
hurting him. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have minded making him wince. But guilt gnawed at her. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to be as gentle as I can."

"It doesn't come easily to you, does it?" He closed his eyes for a moment as the pain passed through him like a giant wave. Perspiration beaded along his brow. He hoped he wouldn't embarrass himself by passing out in front of her.

She blinked back angry tears. What if the wound had been to the right? What if it had been his heart instead of his shoulder? Damn this man for making her care.

"It does with the right person. Now will you please shut up and let me be going about my work." She sniffed
as she examined the wound. "It's bleeding like a stuck pig
you are.

He didn't care for the analogy. "I'd rather think I was bleeding like a valiant man."

She was being too harsh, she thought, even for her. It was the fear that was making her talk like this. The sick fear that he could have been killed because of her. Riley walked in, holding the filled basin before him. She
beckoned him over, her eyes on Sin-Jin. "Aye, that, too."

Riley placed the basin on the table. Rachel dipped a cloth into the water and lightly dabbed at Sin-Jin's shoulder.

"Will you miss me when I'm gone?" Sin-Jin tried to concentrate on the way the light from the fireplace shot through her hair and not on the fact that the room was growing ever so slightly dimmer.

"You're not dead yet," she growled.
And won't be if I have anything to say about it.

She hadn't answered his question, but then he hadn't really expected her to. Despite everything that had happened today, she'd probably rather see him roasting in hell than mending.

"But if you had your way—" Sin-Jin prodded.

Cloth in hand, Rachel raised her eyes. They held his for a moment, saying things to him that would not pass her lips.

"It's trying to stop the bleeding I am, not make it worse." Rachel pressed her lips together in frustration. She was trapped either way. "Does that answer your question?"

For the moment, it was all he could expect. He hadn't thought that she would fall into his arms just because he had been wounded while trying to save her shop. "Yes."

"Fine," she said crisply, picking up another strip of
cloth. "Now you'll be doing us all a favor if you save your
strength. That means no more wasted words. Am I making myself clear, Lawrence?"

"Yes, ma'am," he replied meekly.

"Good. Riley, get my poultices, please. It looks to be a
clean wound, though it's messy as sin. The bullet had more sense than to lodge itself in his British flesh."

Sin-Jin merely groaned.

Despite the possible gravity of the situation and what they had just been through together, Riley couldn't help but laugh to himself as he went to fetch the poultices Rachel swore by.

Chapter Nineteen

To Rachel's relief, she was right. There was no musket ball to probe and remove from his shoulder. It appeared to have gone straight through. With skilled hands, Rachel cleansed the wound and carefully applied the poultices that her mother and her grandmother before her had sworn by.

There was a time long ago, she told Sin-Jin as she worked, that the O'Roarke women were feared to be witches.

"Because we could heal. Could you think of anything more foolish-sounding than that?" She shook her head at the nonsense. "Witches are supposed to bring harm to people, not try to be healing them."

Sin-Jin watched Rachel work, watched her long, sure fingers as they spread first the poultice against his skin, then held it there as she methodically bandaged his wound. "Do you believe in witches?"

What kind of a simpleminded fool did he take her for? "No, of course not," Rachel answered just a touch too quickly. She shrugged, relenting. "I believe in something." Her mouth curved as a far away look entered her eyes. "A little magic perhaps, but not in witches themselves. There aren't any." She looked at him sharply and saw the amusement there. "Nor fairies or elves either, if you're going to be asking about them next."