Pale Moon Rider

by Marsha Canham

  “I see you came alone. Very good.”

  His words were crisp and businesslike. When a black gloved hand reached inside the coach she recoiled as if it were a snake, for in the other gloved hand he brandished one of the snaphaunces.

  “What are you doing? Why are you here?”

  “We arranged to meet tonight, did we not?”

  “Well … yes, but—”

  “Then meet we shall.” A mildly impatient wagging of the gloved fingers invited her to disembark. “If you have no objections, mam’selle, I still prefer to keep my view of the surroundings unimpeded.”

  “But I do object. This is not necessary.”

  He sighed, releasing a surly breath of alcoholic vapors past her face. His fingers closed around her wrist and he all but dragged her out of the seat and down the step to stand beside him.

  “I have had a very long and tiring day, mam’selle. Kindly oblige me by sharing a few final moments of your company. Oh, and Mr. Finn”—as he led her away from the coach, he aimed the gun warningly at the silent figure perched in the driver’s box—“I would advise you to keep your eyes straight ahead and your ears tuned to the sound of the wind in the grasses.”

  Renée heard a grumbled retort from the driver’s box and saw Finn’s shoulders stiffen at the threat. They had been as stiff as his upper lip all day, for he had not taken the news of Roth’s visit well. Her valise was still packed, however, and Antoine had been told to be ready and waiting when they arrived home. If it was true her uncle was arriving within the next day or two, they could not afford to delay their departure any longer.

  Thus, it was with a small pang of guilt that she felt the sharp facets of the cravat pin dig into her flesh as she walked. She had not dared leave it behind where a snooping Mrs. Pigeon might find it, and although she had exchanged the blue velvet for a softer evening gown of pale pink muslin, the pin was snuggled beneath her breast and she could feel it pressing with each step.

  “I did not think you would come, m’sieur,” she said, panting slightly at the haste with which he distanced them from the coach. “I thought we had decided there was no further reason to meet.”

  “It would have been rather ungallant of me to leave you sitting out here in the dark on your own, would it not?”

  “You took a terrible risk, m’sieur. Will you not be missed? Will no one wonder where you have gone in such a hurry?”

  “Who the devil would wonder? The mustachioed Miss Wooleridge? Had you been paying attention, you might have noticed that I deftly deferred her into the hands of young Winston St Clair, the earl of Kenilworth’s nephew—addled as a newt, but by far a better catch.”

  “And Lady Roswell? Did you defer her as well?”

  He stopped abruptly and swung around to face her. “So you were paying attention?”

  “Do not flatter yourself, m’sieur. It was simply difficult not to notice the two of you laughing and playing together all evening.”

  “Playing?”

  “Charades. Whist. Commerce.” Her voice trailed away, taking the unexpected flare of resentment with it. “She is a very beautiful woman. I am sure everyone noticed you together.”

  “She was only hoping her lover would.”

  Renée tipped her face up.

  “They had a spat,” he explained. “She wanted to annoy him.”

  “By making love with you?”

  “I would hardly consider a game of charades to be making love”

  She waved a hand to disparage the differentiation. “M’sieur, please. Who you walk with, who you talk with, who you take to your bed is none of my affair. I am only questioning why you would come all this way to meet me when it was not the least bit necessary. Nor,” she added tautly, “is the gun.”

  “Force of habit,” he muttered, tucking the weapon beneath his coat. “And as it happens, I thought the meeting was necessary. In fact,” he paused and cast a glance along the empty ribbon of road, “I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Roth would know within the hour if the coach was not intercepted.”

  “You could have arranged to have someone else meet it.”

  “I could have,” he agreed.

  Renée looked away. “If Colonel Roth does have someone watching us, he will now be able to report all has gone as planned, yes? There is no further reason to stand out here in the cold.”

  Tyrone released another huff of breath. Her cloak was glowing pale against the darkness, outlining the slender shape of her shoulders. Wisps of gold escaped the confines of the hood and it took all his willpower not to reach out and push back the offending garment, to remove the pins and combs that held the curls so tightly in place, and to run his fingers through the silky mass until it was free and tumbling over her shoulders like liquid moonlight.

  It was indeed dangerous to remain a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. But he had been in a decidedly dangerous mood all evening long watching how Roth and Vincent had hovered over her like hawks. Vincent in particular had put his big possessive paws on her every opportunity that availed itself, and while Tyrone normally paid little heed to mismatched couples other than to decide if the wife was amenable to a night or two of diversion, it put a knot in his gut to think of Renée pinned beneath Vincent’s sweating hulk. He had tried to ease the knot by drinking too much and making too much noise and yes, by giving serious consideration to losing himself in Victoria Roswell’s soft and opulent body. But every time Renée d’Anton had moved so much as a hand he had noted it. And every time Edgar Vincent had leered into her bodice, he had wanted to take up a board studded with nails and smash it across his face.

  After another long moment of inner debate, he reached beneath his greatcoat again and withdrew a small, cloth-wrapped packet. He cradled it in his palm and traced his thumb back and forth over the bumpy surface, then, with a soft soundless oath, he held it out to her.

  “Here. Take this.”

  He heard a soft whisper of silk as she faced him again. “What is it?”

  “Just take it. Use it to buy yourself a fresh start somewhere.”

  Her eyes searched through the gloom for his. She did not make any move to accept the packet and after several more thunderous heartbeats, he swore again and unfolded the layers of overlapped velvet. Nestled at the heart was the brooch containing the Pearl of Brittany.

  Even in the poor light, the luster of the pearl shone against the velvet. Daylight would reveal it to be a uniquely pale and iridescent dun color, larger than a hen’s egg, mounted in a nest of gold. Coiled around it was a serpent made of rubies, with jeweled claws and two carat-sized diamonds for eyes.

  Renée had been but a child of four or five when she had first seen the brooch. The serpent had quivered and glittered in the candlelight and seemed poised to breathe flames, and she had stared so long and hard at it, waiting for it to do just that, the aging Duchesse de Blois had wondered aloud if her eyes were going to pop out.

  “Take it,” Tyrone said again, his voice gruff at the edges. “Get yourself the hell away from here and sell it for what you can.”

  Her eyes rose to his again and he sighed, folding the corners of velvet over the brooch, smothering the glittering gems a quadrant at a time. When it was secure, he pressed it into her hand and curled her slender fingers around the bundle of velvet.

  “Do not take less than five thousand; anyone who claims it is not worth at least that much is a thief.”

  Such advice, considering the source, would have made her smile if she were not so overwhelmed. She looked down at the bundle in her hand, then back up at Tyrone. “I do not know what to say, m’sieur. Or how to thank you.”

  “Just get safely away from here, and from Roth. That will be thanks enough.”

  Tyrone’s keen eyesight picked out the brightness welling along her lashes. With a flush of genuine discomfort, he started to turn back toward the coach, careful to keep his own gaze deliberately averted, but Renée’s hand stopped him. She reached out and caught his sleeve, fre
ezing him to a block of stone. “You did not have to do this.”

  “It … was just a trinket to me. When you asked me about it the other night, it sounded like it meant something to you.”

  “I knew the Duc and Duchesse de Blois very well,” she whispered. “It was their son, Jean-Louis, who— who …”

  He turned his head slightly.

  “I would have married,” she finished lamely.

  He did not want to look at her. Every shred of common sense remaining, every instinct of self-preservation was screaming at him not to look at her, not to acknowledge the two enormous drowning pools that shimmered in her eyes.

  But Renée foiled his good intentions again by sliding her hand up from his sleeve to his cheek and easing aside the staunch wool of his collar enough to press her lips to the muscles that had turned so rigid in his jaw. It was surely one of the most modest and proprietary kisses Tyrone had experienced in many a long year, yet he closed his eyes and felt the effect of it ripple to the soles of his feet. The contact was fleeting, meant only as a gesture of gratitude, but if there had been room in his boots, he was certain his toes would have curled in boyish ecstasy.

  It was too much. And it was not nearly enough when what he really wanted to do was hold her and crawl inside her skin and hear her cry out his name like she had last night. She had not called him m’sieur or capitaine. She had cried out his name, Tyrone, over and over, her voice so soft and shy and full of wonder it had only encouraged him to do things to make her cry it more.

  With a groan he turned, deliberately replacing his cheek with his mouth. He captured her lips with his, smothering her small, startled gasp. His arm went around her waist, drawing her close and hard against his body. His tongue trailed fire along her lips, then between them, plunging deeply and possessively into the sweet recesses, until she was moaning and trembling and her arms were creeping up and around his neck and she was pulling herself shamelessly into his heat.

  This was not supposed to have happened. Renée had been so proud of herself for remaining so calm and cool in his presence. She had dismissed their one night together as just that: one night, with no possibility or probability of ever feeling herself enveloped so passionately in his arms again. Yet here she was being kissed half senseless and seeking to burrow her way, somehow, beneath the bulky folds of his greatcoat so that their bodies might once again thrill to the heat and pleasure discovered there.

  Tyrone made it easier for her by opening the wide woolen wings and enfolding her inside, and when he felt her softness press urgently against him, he shuddered like an unseasoned youthling. His blood began to rage and his heart was pounding in his ears. His arms were shaking and his body had grown so hard and tense he came perilously close to pushing her down on the grass beneath him. It took more strength than he thought he possessed to grasp hold of his failing wits and ease her to arms’ length, to hold her away in an effort just to think.

  In the next instant, it was not his conscience screaming at him but the insistent jangle of an alarm going off at the back of his mind. Too late he saw the telltale flash of powder igniting in a firing pan, and far too late he heard the muted pooft, followed a fraction of a second later by the loud explosion of a gunshot. He shoved Renée to one side and flung himself in the opposite direction, rolling catlike onto his feet again with both pistols drawn and cocked. The shot had come from the front of the coach, and Tyrone barely had time to bring his guns to bear on the crouched target before there was a second flash of sparks and another thunderous explosion of powder and shot.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Finn! No! Mon dieu … no!” Renée struggled to her knees, then her feet, cursing the tangle of skirts around her ankles. Tyrone had pushed her clear and she had sprawled painfully onto the wet grass, but the shock and hurt was nothing compared to the fear she felt as she saw the second shot fired from the coach and heard the two returning blasts from the darkness beside her. With both shots, Tyrone’s dark shape was briefly illuminated in the flare of the firing pans and she could plainly see the rage on his face. His lips were drawn back in a roared curse and his eyebrows were crushed together in a single dark line; he had lost his tricorn when he’d somersaulted and his hair was flown wildly about his face, obscuring everything but the snarl and the disbelieving fury in his eyes.

  Then she looked at the coach. Finn must have been watching, must have seen Tyrone pull her into his arms, and thought … oh God, she did not know what he thought! She only knew she had to stop him!

  She started to run back toward the road, hoping to reach Finn before he could reload and fire again. At the same time, she heard the snaphaunces being cocked behind her and remembered they were double-barreled. The second volley of shots tore across the blackness and thudded into the side of the coach like blows from an axe, scattering wood chips a dozen feet and blowing the door clear off its hinge.

  Finn was nowhere to be seen and she ran forward again, shouting his name. Behind her, she heard a shrill whistle and the pounding of hoofbeats, and she turned in time to see Tyrone’s huge black stallion skid to a halt beside his master and pause long enough for the caped figure to swing himself into the saddle.

  “No! Wait!”

  But he was already spurring the beast to a gallop, tearing away across the rolling field.

  “No,” she sobbed quietly. “Wait …”

  She watched him disappear in the distance and whirled around, remembering the four shots he had fired at the coach.

  “Finn! Finn, where are you?”

  “Here, dammit. Over here.”

  She followed the voice to the front of the coach and saw him emerging from under the protective breastwork that curved below the driver’s box. His head was bowed and he was cupping the side of his face, and as he took his hand away, she felt something warm and wet splash her cheek.

  “You are hurt! You have been shot!”

  “The bastard damn near took my eye out!” he screamed. He staggered into the light and when he saw the amount of blood dripping from his hand, he swore again. “Christ Jesus, but he will pay for this! If it is the last thing I do on this earth, I will make him pay for this!”

  Renée gasped and stumbled back a half step. The hunched shoulders were no longer hunched, the gray wig had been cast aside somewhere in the exchange of gunfire, and Colonel Bertrand Roth looked every bit as enraged as Tyrone had in the eerie burst of igniting gunpowder.

  “You!” she gasped. “But where is Finn?”

  “Probably at Harwood House by now,” Roth growled, pushing past her as he walked to the rear of the coach. He raised the lid of the boot and reached inside, pulling out two more pistols, powder and shot, and his sword belt. These he set briefly to one side as he tore off the livery coat and replaced it with his scarlet tunic.

  “Did you honestly think I would let an opportunity like this pass? Jesus Christ!” he swore again, pressing a linen handkerchief to his face.

  Renée was stunned. Granted, her departure from the party tonight had been hasty and she had been preoccupied worrying about the meeting ahead, yet she could have sworn it was Finn she had seen sitting high in the driver’s box. Roth had been nowhere in sight, but for that she had been grateful, not suspicious.

  “Why did you not tell me? I thought it was Finn who was shooting. I thought it was Finn who was shot!”

  Roth paused in the act of blotting the blood on his face and, with biting, cruel fingers, grasped her by the arms and swung her around so that she came up hard against the side of the coach.

  “And just what the bloody hell were you doing? I tried to get a clear shot but it was impossible to see who was who, you were standing so close together. Incredibly close together,” he added with a snarl.

  Renée fought to keep hold of her senses. How much had he seen? How much had he heard? They had been twenty paces from the coach at the very least and whispering. And it was dark. The moon was just a faint suggestion of illumination above heavy banks of cloud and the la
mp had been deliberately hooded.

  “I … w—was only following your orders,” she stammered. “You told me to do whatever was necessary to win his confidence.”

  “So you kissed him?”

  “H—he was going to leave, you must have seen that. He was angry. You must have seen that, too, when he pulled me from the coach. H—he suspected it was a trap, that I w—was doing it for the reward. He had only come to tell me he was not going to go through with the robbery, that it was too dangerous.”

  “And you thought a kiss would change his mind?”

  “I did not know what else to do. Use every means at my disposal, was that not what you told me?”

  He crowded her painfully close against the side of the coach. “And if that hadn’t worked, what else would you have done to persuade him? Would you have dropped to your knees and kissed him somewhere else?”

  Whether it was just a reaction to the recent, explosive violence, or because she was Renée Marie Emmanuelle d’Anton and he had finally pushed her too far, she swung her arm up sharp and fast, slapping him across the cheek with the flat of her hand.

  The crack of flesh on flesh was as loud as one of the gunshots and Roth jerked back, startled as much by her audacity as by the strength behind the blow. He was also, clearly, not accustomed to being struck by anyone, let alone a woman supposedly at his mercy. His reaction was instinctive and savage, and he returned with a vicious backhand, catching Renée on the side of her jaw with enough force to send her reeling sidelong into the enormous rear wheel of the coach.