Moonlight Lover (5 page)

That was striking too close to home. Sam shook his head, frowning. "That kind's bad for business." He looked at the stragglers still seated in his tavern. There were more than a couple who came here to flee their wife's tongues. "Fortunately, the men don't listen."

Sam had awakened Sin-Jin's interest, despite the heavy hand of Morpheus that pressed on him. "Her brother, Riley, does he come in here often?"

Sam thought of the young man. Talked up a storm, drunk or sober. "Not as often as I suspect he'd like."

Sam shook his head. A woman could be a terrible cross to bear. His own had been meek until the day she died, God rest her soul, but he knew of others he would have been sorely tempted to give the back of his hand to. Or abandon at any rate. "A man needs space to move, especially when he's spending as much time thinking as O'Roarke does."

Sin-Jin laughed. For some reason, he felt oddly alert, as if his body was waking up all over again. "What would you know about thinking, Sam?"

"Very little," the man agreed. That didn't change the point. He waved the end of his towel at Sin-Jin to emphasize his words. "But a printer has to be doing a lot of it. And when he's done with it, when he's done putting down his thoughts, the words don't always make friends for him, either."

All this talk of the newly born gazette had roused Sin-Jin's interest. He knew that Sam liked to keep up on events. That meant that he probably was the first to purchase the periodical. "Do you have any copies of the Gazette lying about?"

Sam thought a moment, then nodded. "Might still have them in the back." He jerked a thumb at the storage room that contained everything from barrels of whiskey to hidden kegs of gunpowder. "Newspaper's good for lining your shoes and shelves and other things in between. Wait." He placed a hand to Sin-Jin's chest when the latter began to cross to the store room. "I'll get it for you."

He emerged within a few minutes, muttering and shaking his head. "Still think that spending the night with a stack of papers with printer's ink on them is a mighty poor substitute to holding a flesh and blood woman in your arms, Lawrence."

Sin-Jin took the three copies of the Gazette Sam offered him and tucked them under his arm. "After your whiskey, Sam, to quote a famous countryman of mine, the spirit might be willing, but the flesh is pitifully weak."

Sam laughed. His barrel chest shook as he thumped it. "Wouldn't know. My flesh's never been that weak."

Sin-Jin merely nodded as he made his way to the stairs.

"First door to your right," Sam called after him. "If it's occupied, it shouldn't be. Just toss whoever you find out."

Drowsiness returned, beginning to wrap him in cotton. Sin-Jin hoped that the room would be empty, he didn't feel up to evicting anyone. He pushed the door open slowly and found to his relief that there was no one in the room. He lit the single candle that stood on an empty, upturned keg that served as a table and then closed the door behind him with his elbow.

Sighing, he sank down on the small cot. It creaked beneath his weight, complaining of age and ill use. Sin-Jin hardly noticed. Using the toe of one boot, he pried the other off, then sent the second after its mate. Feeling exhausted, he fell back on the cover. It had a stale, musty odor about it. He wondered how many had taken their pleasure here since the bedding had been laundered. Probably too many. But he had slept in worse when he was soldiering. He glanced around. At least there were no lice, he comforted himself, or small furry creatures with teeth to share it with him.

The candle held the dark at bay and flickered, shimmying in the draft that seeped in through the cracks in the casement like a frightened child on a cold night. As he laid there, Sin-Jin found that though his body was worn, his mind seemed to be awake. Sleep might still be a while in coming.

With another sigh, he pulled the four-page periodical that Riley had produced to him. Propping himself up on his elbow, Sin-Jin perused first one issue, then another. As he read, he found himself entertained.

Most of the Gazette was filled with short, newsy items about the citizens in the county. He even found mention in the last issue of the birth of a second son to Jason McKinley and his wife, Krystyna.

Sin-Jin's mouth curved as he read the simple text, remembering the way Krystyna had looked just a short while ago. Even rounded with child, she had been beautiful. He wondered what he had ever done to the gods that would make them deny him the same joys, the same gratifications as Jason McKinley.

A breath of air hissed through his teeth as he let the paper slide from his fingers to the patched coverlet beneath him. There was no use in pondering it or seeking an answer. There was none.

Fate, or God, or whatever it was that governed the lives of mortals, was accountable to no man. Certainly not him. It or He did what it willed and mortals were not to question, merely live.

He laced his hands together and tucked them beneath his head. The noise from the bar below dwindled to a faint murmur, like the lapping of waves against the shore on a peaceful beach. He felt his eyelids grow heavy. The last fragments of conscious thought began to break up like bits of a cloud on a windy day.

As sleep began to seep all through him, wrapping smoky fingers around his soul, he thought he heard a different sort of noise coming from the room next to his. Turning his head, he listened.

It was the sound of a man and a woman enjoying one another.

The sound mingled with half-formed images conjured up by his tired brain until he half-believed himself to be the man. And the woman . . . the woman he was pleasuring was not his late wife, or even the woman who had first stolen his heart, Vanessa. No, this woman was graced with an upturned nose, an Irish chin. She had flame for hair, emeralds for eyes, and a wicked, lusty laugh that pierced every fiber of his being. It preceded a kiss that swallowed up his soul for all eternity.

The last image in Sin-Jin's mind before sleep took him away was that of Rachel, her arms outstretched, her head thrown back, exposing a long, white column of alabaster for his lips to feast on.

He felt his body burn.

Chapter Five

The breakfast Sin-Jin had consumed at Sam's Tavern lay heavily in his belly as he untied his horse's reins and made ready to leave for the long journey home. The tavern was good for finding easy company and free-flowing conversation over a tankard of ale. And for finding a safe place to bed down after taking too much ale.

But as far as the meals went, Sin-Jin preferred the efforts of his cook, or even his own meager abilities for that matter—and he was far from a master when it came to preparing a meal. Ever since Sam's daughter had run off with her soldier, the quality of the meals had fallen woefully off. It seemed that the other girls Sam employed at the tavern had talents that never extended to the skillet or the hearth. They might feed a man's soul, as Sam contended, but they certainly didn't pamper his stomach.

Sin-Jin placed his hand over his belly. Beneath his splayed fingers he could swear he could almost feel the bacon he had eaten sitting in a harden lump, still whole, still waiting to be properly cooked.

He sighed, then turned his horse away from the tavern. Dawn had just raised its pink and purple skirts across the sky in a flirtatiously, sensual movement and was now receding demurely. The town was waking to another full day's work. There was one waiting for him as well at the plantation, Sin-Jin thought. Just because the harvest was in and the crop accounted for didn't mean that he could sit back and watch flies chase each other.

Or let his thoughts take wing.

Absently, he patted the sleek, black stallion on the neck as he swung into the saddle.

"We're way overdue, Lucifer. Bronson'll be wondering what's happened to us."

His overseer, Bronson Calloway, was a capable man, but he was given to worrying too much, Sin-Jin thought. There were never enough crops, never enough men to work them. Never enough of anything. Bronson worried that when the sun shone, it would never rain again and when it rained, he worried until it stopped. Since he was overdue returning home, Sin-Jin had no doubts that the man was probably organizing a search party even at this moment. He had to get home.

But without letting himself think the matter through, he gave the reins a slight tug to the left. As the horse followed his head, Sin-Jin shook his head in an act of self-denial.

"You're heading in the wrong direction, Lucifer. We've no time for that, you know." He laughed softly under his breath.

Sin-Jin felt his blood, now in the utter tranquility of sobriety, begin to literally tingle with anticipation just at the thought of seeing the fiery Mistress O'Roarke. Hopefully this time without her musket. The feeling had much in common with what he'd experienced prior to each battle. Not as intense and minus the fear, of course. But the excitement, the expectation of the unknown, was the same.

Perhaps, he laughed to himself, even the inherent danger was the same.

"Oh, so you want to steal another look, do you?" he murmured to Lucifer as the wide, squat form of the emporium emerged. Standing next to it, like a younger, more agile sibling, was the newly built newspaper office. It looked brighter in the light of day, newer, as if it was the center of wonderful things.

He was letting his imagination get the better of him, he thought.

Would she be there? Or would she be at home instead?

For some reason, Sin-Jin couldn't quite picture Rachel standing over a hearth, meekly preparing a life-sustaining meal for her brother. More than likely, she was in the back of the office, mixing saltpeter for gunpowder.

Still, he wanted to see her, if only to prove himself wrong. "Giving her another opportunity to shoot off something of importance, are we?" The horse snorted as if in response.

Logic, something that had never really governed Sin-Jin's life to the exclusion of his own enjoyment, dictated that he place as much distance between himself and the ill-tempered Mistress O'Roarke as possible. Logic helped keep a man alive. Yet logic alone led to a boring life. He had never led a boring life and was not about to start now.

"Yes, sir, Lucifer, we really should be going home."

Yet he meandered closer to the print shop, not away from it. Like a bear that had gotten one taste of honey and now made its way to the beehive despite its stung paw, Sin-Jin found himself wanting another glimpse of Rachel O'Roarke.

Another taste.

Perhaps it had been just the late hour and the firelight, setting off her limbs in a golden hue, that had placed a spell on him. Perhaps it had been the residue of Sam's whiskey, still coursing through his veins, that had been responsible for his reaction. Undoubtedly, in the plain light of day, she was probably three fourths of the way to becoming an old crone, with misshapen teeth, foul breath, lifeless hair, and skin the texture of sycamore bark.

Sin-Jin grinned to himself. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a midsummer's madness, only in late autumn.

As he stopped his horse before the small, one-story building, he heard voices coming from the printer's shop despite the early hour. Specifically, one melodious, constant voice whose momentum was occasionally stunted by the drone of a lower, almost piteous one.

That would be her, Sin-Jin thought. The firebrand.

Sin-Jin dismounted. Tying Lucifer's reins securely around the closer of the two supporting beams, he eyed the front door cautiously. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to say to her, but that didn't trouble him. The words would come when they were necessary. At this moment, he had a need to destroy a fantasy. At least, if he hoped to regain his tranquility.

His knock went unheeded. As he listened, he heard no hesitation, no break in the lecture that was unfolding within the small newspaper office. Obviously the lady was too enamored with the sound of her own voice to hear a mere knock on the door, Sin-Jin thought, or to acknowledge the existence of anything else.

Rather than knock a second time, Sin-Jin tried the door and found it unlatched. Quietly, he pushed the door open a little at a time.

The strong scent of printer's ink was everywhere, wafting pungently about the small office. The room was dominated by two very different things. The larger of the two was the tall, wooden printing press that stood majestically in the center of the room, like a pagan god demanding its customary ration of paper.

The other, no less impressive for its smaller size, was the whirlwind of activity who spun around the room. She seemed to be everywhere at once, grabbing an arm load of paper one moment, stopping to nimbly arrange a row of typeset the next.

And all the while, she never stopped talking, never stopped berating the slightly worn-looking young man who could not keep up with her.

Her honeyed voice did not pause, even when Rachel asked a question. Riley didn't seem to be quick enough this morning to squeeze in his answers before she was off and racing to the next point. After a few fruitless attempts, he had ceased to even try. It took all he had just to survive this spate of inclement weather as his sister's words rained on him.

He had Sin-Jin's complete sympathy.

Her ire swollen like the main sail of a merchant ship's that traveled with the wind at its stern, Rachel didn't even notice Sin-Jin entering the shop. It gave him a moment to study her and note regretfully that far from being less comely than the night before, and despite the speed with which her mouth was moving, she was far lovelier in daylight.

"And how you could be drinking at all when there's so much work to be done, let alone in the company of that raffish, posturing dolt of a Redcoat?" she demanded.

Riley merely shrugged. He had given up impotently opening and closing his mouth. Rachel shook her head, her red hair sweeping along the planes of her back. She frowned over a letter she had misplaced and carefully lifted it out again.

"For the very first time, I'm almost glad that Mother and Da aren't alive." She slipped the right letter in and glanced up at her brother's mournful face. "If they were, if they saw you in that man's company—"