Moonlight Lover (19 page)

"How about leprechauns?"

She didn't dignify the teasing question with a reply. "There," she announced like an artist who had finished her painting. "'Tis done." She pressed her lips together as she rose and viewed her handiwork. "Lucky for you that whoever did that to you was a bad shot."

Riley had pulled a chair over to the table positioning himself next to Sin-Jin as Rachel had plied her craft. He took out his tobacco pouch and dropped a pinch into the
bowl of his pipe, thinking it safe to light now that she was
through. Rachel was touchy when she was working with her poultices. She said the smoke was bad for them.

He struck a match. "You said you had your suspicions about who did it."

Sin-Jin nodded. He picked up his shirt and awkwardly tried to slip it on. "The same man who probably set the
newspaper office on fire." He looked at Rachel. "The one
who tried to wreck the printing press and force himself on you."

Rachel took the shirt from him and helped Sin-Jin on with it. She yanked it down his chest a little to quickly.
There was just so long a woman could be expected to look
at a half-unclothed man and remain unaffected. The sight
of him made her stomach feel queasy and brought thoughts to her head that she wanted no part of, at least not while they involved Sin-Jin.

She frowned, hatred in her eyes as she thought of the man in her shop. "You mean that Tory pig?"

"Exactly." With one hand almost useless, Sin-Jin
tried to lace up the strings on his shirt and did a miserable
job of it. Muttering something under her breath, Rachel moved his hand out of the way.

Sin-Jin grinned at her as she tied the ends together. He
liked the feel of her hands on him, liked the feel of her dressing him. Someday, he promised himself, he was going to have the pleasure of feeling her undress him as well. This time in earnest.

"Do you know his name?" Riley prodded. Smoke curled from his pipe like the tail of a contented cat as he held it aloft, waiting for an answer.

"All too well. Winthrop Rutherford." It was all he could do not to spit the name out. "The first time I met him, he was trying to rape my wife." He set his mouth hard, remembering. "She wasn't my wife then, of course." He looked at Riley. "The man makes a practice of picking on people weaker than himself."

Rachel stopped folding the remainder of the linen strips. She wanted nothing in common with his wife, even though she had never known the woman.

"I am not weaker than he is," she insisted. "The simple truth of the matter is, the devil merely caught me off my guard, taking advantage of the situation." She looked at Sin-Jin pointedly.

He returned her gaze, his own suddenly hot and furious. He understood her meaning and took offense at it. It was plainly there in his eyes. Rachel flushed, knowing her comparison to be unfair. There was no similarity between what had happened between her and Sin-Jin and that monster and herself.

The pink cast to her cheeks was apology enough for Sin-Jin. The dark look left his eyes.

"Nonetheless, you are smaller than he is," he tactfully amended. He waited for her to take exception to that and for once, there was none forthcoming.

"A bear would be smaller than he is," she shot back. She shivered involuntarily as she walked to the front door with the basin. "That man should be tarred and feathered and ridden out naked on a rail."

She pulled open the door and emptied the basin. The water went sailing out into the garden with a vengeance as she pictured throwing it in his face. Rachel closed the door behind her.

"Except that the sight of it would be too ugly a thing for normal people to stand." She returned the basin to its customary place within the kitchen, next to the plates and utensils.

Sin-Jin nodded in her direction, amused. "Is she always this bloodthirsty?"

Riley drew on his pipe. He let a perfectly formed ring escape his lips before answering. "This is one of her better days." As Sin-Jin began to rise, Riley looked up. "You'll be staying for dinner, won't you, man? Seeing as how you saved my house, my shop and my sister all in one day, the least I can do is feed you. It's not much, but you're welcome to anything I have."

Sin-Jin glanced over his shoulder at Rachel and couldn't help the smile that rose to his lips. "A man can hardly refuse an invitation put to him like that." He saw Rachel's eyes narrow. "As long as Rachel wants me."

Oh no, she was too good with words to fall into that
sort of a trap. Carefully, she picked her way around them.
"Don't go flattering yourself, Lawrence. I'd rather sleep in the barn with the mice than share anything with the likes of you. But far be it from me to contradict my brother's invitation."

Sin-Jin grinned. He liked her better this way, fiery, not
frightened. It had felt as if a bayonet had ripped through him at the sight of the fear that had fleetingly roamed freely in her eyes when he had come upon her in the shop.

"Then I'll stay. I don't believe I've ever had an invitation tendered to me so earnestly before." He rose to his feet.

Rachel looked at him, surprised. "And where do you think you're going?"

He indicated the front door. "To make sure my horse is properly stabled."

"Riley can take care of that." She turned toward her brother who was still sitting at the table. "Stop sucking on that pipe, Riley, before your lips harden that way, and do something useful."

"I can—" Sin-Jin began.

Rachel whirled on him, hands on hips. "No, you can't. You won't be prancing around, doing things and undoing my hard labors." She pointed to his bandaged arm. "I'll fashion a sling for you and I want you to sit still. I won't have you bleeding again, especially not all over my nice floor. Do I make myself clear?"
 

“Yes, ma am.”

He wasn't fooling her with that meek expression of his, but she was in no mood to have another go at it with him. "Good. Now get to that horse, Riley." She pointed toward the door.

The two men exchanged a glance. Riley was prudent enough to hide the grin that rose to his lips.

Her gruffness was a thin shield at best to mask the feelings that were dancing within her. Feelings that were so jumbled, she couldn't begin to sort them out plainly. She owed this man her virtue and it was bitter enough of a pill for her to take.

But more than that there was the sickly taste of fear that she was attempting to submerge, fear that Sin-Jin might have been seriously hurt or worse, killed. She didn't like this fear, didn't like having these feelings about a man she thought she wanted no part of. To have them warring within her confused Rachel and made her short-tempered. She would have given anything just to turn her back on it all and forget it.

And yet she couldn't, no more than she could forget the softness of his lips against hers or how much she wanted to feel that again.

God damn him to hell, she wanted to feel that again. To feel that way again. As if she could fly and touch the sky. As if there were bombs ready to burst within her.

Muttering under her breath, she slipped the sling she fashioned out of a large piece of linen over the back of his neck, then eased his arm through it.

He knew she would have rather used it as a noose and hung him with it. He caught her saying something about Saint Patrick and slithering snakes, but not much else. He tried to look solemn as he tested the strength of the sling. "What is for dinner?"

"Getting fussy, are we?"

"No. Getting curious," he answered. And itchy. He watched her lips as she spoke. Very, very itchy.

She tossed her head, her hair bouncing along her back like red streamers. "You'll be having chicken and potatoes and liking it," she informed him. She looked at her brother just as he was about to walk out. "Are you still here?"

There were times Riley knew exactly how to handle her. "Held in place by every single golden word you utter, dear sister."

She flashed an annoyed look. "After you finish with his highness's horse, see to the chicken."

"And what will I be seeing to, with the chicken?"

"Its demise, Riley." She gave up. "We cannot be eating it if it isn't dead."

With a mighty sigh, Rachel shook her head and marched toward the rear of the house. She picked up the ax that leaned against the wall, wishing she had had that in her hands earlier rather than a poker. That would have frightened the beast into an early retreat. Try to rape her, will he?

"Do I have to do everything around here?"

"No," Riley said easily as he opened the front door, "but you do it so much better than anyone around."

She laughed. "You've been hugging the blarney stone again, Riley."

"It's working, isn't it?"

Rachel knew better than to answer. "And you." She leveled her gaze at Sin-Jin. "See if you can help my hapless brother peel some potatoes when he returns. Wounded or not, you'll probably do a better job.”

Riley looked down at his sling. He supposed he could prop a potato in his hand while he peeled it with his left. "You'd put a wounded man to work?"

She nodded smartly, glad of the fact that he could spar with her. "I would."

He shook his head. "You're a hard woman, Rachel O'Roarke."

A wide smile creased her generous mouth. "You don't know the half of it."

No, he thought watching her leave, he didn't. But he was more than willing to learn.

Sin-Jin was aware of her every movement, of every covert look she aimed his way as she served the roasted chicken on battered tin plates. The attention, he knew, was grudgingly awarded, but it was there nonetheless and it heartened him. She was coming around, albeit slowly. Nothing worthwhile ever evolved quickly.

"So, what's to be done about the cur?" Rachel wanted to know as she sat down, finally, to eat with the men. The subject had gotten around again to the fire.

Sin-Jin set his mouth grimly. "I'll look in on him tomorrow."

Rachel looked up sharply. His tone didn't indicate a social visit. She hadn't expected him to volunteer to do anything firsthand. "You'll be careful?"

He smiled at her, surprised and touched by the concern he saw in her eyes. "I am always careful." He glanced at Riley. "Have you had words with him before?"

Riley shook his head, hardly pausing over his meal. "Never once. I don't even know what he looks like."

"A pig in clothing," Rachel told him. "I think it was the editorial that set him off. The last one."

It was the one he had read yesterday, Sin-Jin thought. He had set Bronson to town to buy a copy last week and had only had occasion to read it last night.

"I read it." He didn't notice that Rachel had stopped eating and was listening to him carefully, like a prisoner awaiting a verdict by the judge. "It was a bit fiercely put, I grant you. But you didn't say anything in it that didn't need saying," he assured Riley.

Riley smiled. "I didn't say anything in it at all. Rachel wrote it."

Sin-Jin let his fork slide from lax fingers as he turned to look at Rachel. The rhetoric had been so strong, he had naturally assumed that a man had written it. For a moment, he said nothing.

Rachel savored the look of utter surprise on his face. She took it as an involuntary compliment.

"You wrote it?" he finally asked.

"Aye, that she did." Riley realized that he was the only one eating. "Every inflammatory word. Haven't you learned yet, Sin-Jin? I'm the levelheaded one in the family. Are you going to be eating that?" He indicated the last of the chicken leg on Sin-Jin's plate.

"No, it's yours." The words were hardly out of his mouth before Riley was sliding it onto his plate.

Rachel felt a smug satisfaction slipping over her. "You looked surprised about the editorial, Lieutenant."

"I am. And don't you think that after all that's happened, you could call me Sin-Jin? Or at least Mr. Lawrence? It's been over half a score of years since I was a lieutenant."

She wanted to know more about that. More about him. She shouldn't, but she could no longer be bound by what she should or shouldn't do or want. It wasn't as simple as that any more. "Did you resign?"

No
, he thought,
he had deserted abruptly and irrevocably
. But that had eventually been smoothed over by a distant cousin in Parliament, so that he could come home if he wanted to. Not that he wanted to. His brother had looked into the pardon for him. He had learned that from the single letter Alfred had written him. Both the letter and the information had come as a complete surprise to Sin-Jin. He and his brother had never been close. Never much of anything at all. But blood had a way of coming through at times.

"In a manner of speaking." Sin-Jin shifted in his seat to give her his full attention. "But we were talking about you. You write as well as work the press?"

The truce was over. "Women do know how to write, sir," Rachel said tartly.

He wasn't going to allow her to imagine an offense when none was intended. "I'm well aware of that. If I hadn't been, Krystyna McKinley would have put me in my place long before you had the opportunity to. She's well versed in several languages."

By the way he said it, Rachel couldn't help wondering if the man was in love with Krystyna. The thought nudged a strange reaction from her and made her temper flare. She had no idea what was wrong with her. But one thing was certain. The man definitely annoyed her no matter which way the conversation flowed.

Rachel moved the dishes aside and rose to get the small serving of wine they still had. "She must have had a difficult time of it."

"With what?" Sin-Jin looked at her, puzzled.

A man wouldn't understand, Rachel thought. "Life."

"What makes you say that?" Sin-Jin asked, turning so that he could continue watching her.

Rachel placed three glasses on the table, then poured, feeling a little self-conscious because of his attention. "Men don't like a woman to possess any sort of intelligence." The words were clearly a challenge.

Sin-Jin gladly took up the gauntlet. "I find a woman with a mind fascinating."