Pale Moon Rider

by Marsha Canham

  “Are you referring to the fine symphony we played last night? To that I can only say … inspiration. Lovely ivory skin to stimulate the passion of the composition, stirring crescendos to inspire my baton … ouch!”

  She released the pinch of flesh she had between her teeth and angled her face to look up at him. “If you would rather not tell me—?”

  “There are some things that are awkward for a rogue and scoundrel to admit to. Like an excellent education and a life of relative privilege few who possessed my inferior bloodlines would have thrown away so cavalierly.”

  “There is nothing inferior about you,” she assured him, snuggling back into the curve of his body. “And I pity those who would underestimate you because of your blood.”

  “The truth is difficult to underestimate. I was born the son of a game warden and, had fate not intervened at an early age, I would likely be doing the same now with a wife and seven mewling children about my ankles looking to me to improve their predetermined lot in life.”

  “I rather doubt that,” she said, smiling. “I think you were born a rogue and shall die a rogue and”—her breath caught a moment in her throat—“and whoever is lucky enough to share a part of your life along the way will be forever changed.”

  While he thought about that, his hand continued to stroke her hair and when he responded, finally, he was frowning. “It was never my intention to change anyone, nor did I anticipate anyone changing me. I have always been content to take each day as it came. I have made no plans, plotted no courses in life. All in all, a poor prospect for domestication.”

  “And yet you have all of this,” she said, indicating the richness of their surroundings.

  “I do not deny I like my creature comforts. But if I had to walk away from it all, I could. And I would, in an instant. It is hardly the kind of life,” he added in a murmur, “that I could ask—or expect—anyone to share.”

  Renée propped her chin on her hand and looked up at him, at the smoky gray of his eyes, the seductively inviting fullness of his lips.

  You could ask me, she mouthed silently in French. You could ask me and I would walk … no, I would run to the ends of the earth with you.

  But he did not ask. His eyebrows quirked a little with curiosity as he watched her lips move, but in the end, he only kissed her briefly on the top of her head and gently untangled himself in order to sit up.

  “I have been giving it some thought,” he said, stretching out his arms, testing the pull on the bandages, the mobility in the wounded ribs. “The first order of business should be to find out exactly where Roth is keeping Finn. If he is in the town gaol, the cell has a lock that could be picked with a dull knife. If he is in the converted wine cellar at the Black Bull, we will have to rely more heavily on Roth’s greed.”

  Renée reached out and gently ran her fingers over the old lacerations that crisscrossed the slabs of muscle on his back. “Why did you not tell me he did this to you?”

  His head turned slightly. “It happened a long time ago. And it was personal, between Roth and myself.”

  She slipped up onto her knees behind him, “Do you still think of me as business?”

  Tyrone looked down at where her hands circled his waist. His flesh stirred, betraying the very unbusinesslike pleasure he felt at such a simple gesture, and he sighed, “That was not what I meant. I just didn’t think you should feel obliged to worry about something that has nothing to do with your present predicament. Or with getting Finn back, for that matter.”

  “I do not mind worrying about you,” she said softly.

  “Yes, well,” he pushed himself off the side of the bed, “I mind.”

  After casting a cursory glance around the room and not locating his robe, he walked naked into the dressing room, but he had barely opened the door to the commode when Renée appeared in the entryway behind him, her shoulders swathed in the bedsheet.

  “You will let me help you, will you not?”

  He looked at her, looked at the commode, then shut the cupboard door again. “I gather you mean with Finn?”

  “Roth will not hurt him, will he?”

  “No.” The word alone did not seem to be enough to appease her, so he walked back to where she was standing and took her face in his hands. “This is not France,” he said gently. “And Roth is not Robespierre, regardless of how much power he thinks he has over everyone’s destiny. In this country, an accused man has to stand trial, regardless of the charge or the evidence against him—a process that could take weeks, or months, depending on the crime. Even I would have my day in court, to be judged innocent or guilty by a jury of my peers, before they led me up the steps of the gallows.”

  “How can you joke about such a thing?” she asked in a whisper.

  “I do not joke about it, mam’selle. I simply choose not to dwell on the reality of it twenty-four hours a day. If I did, I would not be able to breathe. Just like now,” he said, tenderly kissing her bruised mouth. “I am having great difficulty breathing because I cannot stop thinking of what I was about to do when you interrupted me.”

  She blushed and withdrew with an impatient sigh. “I want to help,” she insisted. “Finn is my responsibility. He is only in gaol because of me, because of trying to help me. Nor do I want you to put yourself at any more risk because of us.”

  “A kind thought, but unfortunately we haven’t time to fit you for a tricorn and greatcoat.”

  As soon as she heard the door to the commode shut, she was back at the doorway. “You are going to meet with Roth as Captain Starlight?”

  “Would he negotiate with anyone else seriously?”

  He poured fresh water into the washbasin and reached for his shaving gear although the reflection in the mirror suggested there would not be much improvement in his overall appearance. There were dark circles under his eyes and an underlying pallor to his skin. His ribs ached like hell and he longed for another forty hours in bed without having to think or move or find a way to save the world.

  “This hero business can be quite taxing,” he muttered as he scrutinized his reflection.

  “Will you let me shave you?” she asked, brightening, anxious to help in even so small a way.

  “Have you ever done it before?”

  “No. But I watched Finn shave my father a thousand times. It does not look the least bit difficult.”

  “Ahh. Well, we will give you a lesson another time.”

  “May I at least watch?”

  “If you promise not to make me laugh when I have the blade over my throat.”

  She came into the dressing room and sat on a straight-back chair. Tyrone took up a fine-bristled brush and a bar of soap and worked up a lather, spreading it thickly on the shadow of dark stubble that had sprouted overnight on his chin and neck.

  “Does M’sieur Dudley usually do this for you?”

  “Robbie is not my servant. Maggie sometimes obliges when I am too hung-over to see clearly, but otherwise, I have it done by a barber or”—he tilted his jaw to foam the underside of his chin—“I do it myself.”

  “None of your other lady friends obliged?”

  The pale eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Is there anything else you and Maggie discussed that I should know about?”

  “She only mentioned that you do not bring your mistresses here, therefore, it must be assumed that you visit them elsewhere.”

  “Them? I have more than one?”

  “I cannot see you with just one, m’sieur. I should think you would get bored very easily.”

  He glanced warily at her out of the corner of his eye for she had stretched her neck at the same time and the same angle as he stretched his. “You think that, do you?”

  “Oui. Absolutement. As maman would say, you would make someone a magnificent lover, but a poor husband.”

  He reached for his razor and stropped it several times on a length of hard leather. “It sounds like your mother was a wise lady.”

  “She was. And she wou
ld have liked you, I think, and been happy for me even though we did not have a chance to dance.”

  Tyrone looked at her again and frowned. “Did I miss something? Were we supposed to dance?”

  Her laugh was soft and a little sad. “No, m’sieur. As it turned out, it was not necessary.”

  Still frowning, he turned back to the mirror. He did not like cryptic little smiles, especially when they came at his expense. On the other hand, it was the first time he had heard her laugh, not that there had been many opportunities over their brief acquaintance to inspire jocularity. Nevertheless, like the various degrees and shades of blushes he had discovered she was capable of producing, the sound of her shy, husky laugh intrigued him—enough so that he thought he ought to change the subject.

  “How long has Finn been with you?”

  “He left England with my mother, thirty years ago. He loved her very much.”

  “Loved … as in loved?”

  “I think he loved her all his life, but he would never dare tell her so or even admit it out loud to himself. When he saw her beaten to death outside the prison gates,” her voice and eyes lowered with the memory, “I thought he, too, would die of a broken heart. Do you know his hair was brown the night before it happened and white the night after?”

  Tyrone scraped the edge of the razor down his cheek, clearing the first stripe of lather and stubble. “I have heard of it happening, but never seen it.”

  “There was nothing he could do to help my mother, but he saved Antoine and me. He had made a promise to maman, you see—she made him swear it every morning, for she did not know how long any of us would be safe from Robespierre’s tribunals. He promised to guard us and protect us and he swore this to her on his life.” Her expression was solemn and haunted again as she looked up at Tyrone. “I do not think we can wait a day or two. If Finn believes Antoine and I are safe, and if he believes that by sacrificing himself he will protect us … then he will do it.”

  Half of his chin was clean and Tyrone allowed a wry chuckle before he started on his neck. “What makes you think he would believe you are safe in my clutches? I should think I would be the last person he would want to see taking care of you.”

  “In truth, he told me to trust you. He said he believed you were a good man and I should do everything you say to do.”

  The razor took a nick out of his skin, leaving a curse and a small bead of blood behind.

  “Does that not sound like goodbye to you?” she persisted. “Do you not think he might do something foolish to avoid being used as a—a trumpet?”

  The second bite of the razor was deeper, the curse louder, but when he glared at Renée, all she did was blush and point out the obvious. “You have cut yourself, m’sieur.”

  “I am well aware of what I have done to myself. Could you possibly”—he clenched his jaw and forced a smile— “go and put some clothes on. Maggie left them on the chair while you were sleeping. In your present condition, you are enough of a distraction to have me slicing ribbons all over my face.”

  She stood, hauling the profusion of sheets with her. “I am sorry if my appearance disturbs you,” she said primly, “but I have not exactly been looking at a blank wall.”

  She exited in a swirl of linen and Tyrone glanced down. He was, he realized, still naked save for the strip of bandaging, and, as was becoming a noticeable tendency when Renée was wearing little but roses in her cheeks, he was half aroused.

  He finished shaving without any further bloodletting and when he emerged from the dressing room—safely confined in buff breeches and a white shirt—Renée was standing by the window. Her hair was catching enough of the morning light to make it glow silver, and he decided she was as beautiful in the sunlight as she was in the moonlight. Not even the cut on her cheeks, the scabbing on her lip, or the bruises that marred the whiteness of her skin could detract from the gentle radiance that seemed to glow from within. At the same time there was nothing fragile or fainthearted about her. She had survived the Terror in France, endured Roth’s manipulations, withstood Vincent’s assault, even bared her neck to a murderous highwayman and defied him to throttle her if he thought she was lying. Now here she was, refusing to even consider Finn’s willingness to sacrifice himself for her safety, something not one in a thousand aristocrats of so-called noble blood would think twice of accepting— even expecting—from a mere servant.

  Coming so close on the heels of admitting she intrigued him, of acknowledging that he became as randy as a billy-goat if she just looked at him, and of knowing he would give more than just half of what he had in his cabinets to see her smile at him the way she smiled at Antoine … well, he did not trust himself to speak or to move, nor did he do either until she sensed his presence and turned toward him.

  She might just as well have taken up a hammer and hit him in the chest, for the expression on her face was so full of despair, he was concerned enough to join her by the window and take her gently into his arms.

  “I may have my faults, Renée, but I do not count making false promises to frightened young women among them. I have said we will get Finn back, and get him back we shall.”

  “It was not Finn I was thinking about,” she said with a guilty, tremulous smile. “I was … only wondering what it would be like to have seven mewling children about my ankles.”

  He tightened his arms around her and buried his lips in her hair, but before he dared put any of his thoughts into words, they were interrupted by an urgent knock on the door.

  “Come,” Tyrone said, straightening.

  It was Antoine, and for the moment, running up to throw himself into Renée’s arms, he forgot he could speak.

  M’sieur Dudley told me to come up here and be very quiet. There is a big enormous fat lady in the kitchen and twenty people at the rear door!

  “That would be Mary, the cook,” Tyrone explained with a laugh. “Every urchin in Coventry knows when she is baking bread, for they gather like geese and wait to fill their pockets.” In response to the startled look on Renée’s face, he offered up a small shrug. “I remember many a hungry morning myself.”

  But that was not what had amazed her. “You read his lips! Yet in the tower room you professed ignorance.”

  “Did I? Perhaps because he spoke French and my skills are a little less proficient in that language. As for knowing how to communicate without making any sound, the knack has come in handy on more than one occasion.” He glanced at the boy. “But Dudley was right. It would be best if you stay up here and be very quiet. Mary only sees what she chooses to see, but urchins have been known to have prying eyes and loose tongues. I will have Maggie bring a tray.”

  He went back into the dressing room and emerged a few minutes later with his hair scraped severely back into a tail at his nape and a heavy dusting of powder to dull the rich ebony shine. It was a small adjustment, trifling really, but it aged him ten years and tamed a surprising amount of wildness from his appearance. He had donned a chocolate-colored jacket and striped silk waistcoat as well, and while he headed for the door, he was tying a cravat about his neck.

  “Tyrone?”

  He stopped and looked back.

  “You will not do anything … go anywhere … without telling me?”

  “I will be just downstairs. When Robbie and I decide what must be done, I will come and fetch you. Oh, and you might want to stand back from the window. You glow like an angel with a halo around her head; I would not want to shock any poor sinners passing by.”

  Dudley was waiting in the library. There was fresh mud on his boots and his nose was red and dripping.

  “You look like jolly hell,” Tyrone remarked.

  “Aye, well, while some of us have been lounging in a warm bed, me and my ballocks have been all over this blessed town. And I would not be surprised to discover I have caught the lung rot after last night.” He took out an enormous square of linen and honked into it with great gusto before cramming it back in his pocket.

  �
��Any news about Finn?”

  “He’s at the Black Bull with double the sentries outside, double the guards inside.”

  “Any way of getting a message to him?”

  “Not unless it’s from the cell beside him.”

  “Renée is worried he might do harm to himself in order to free her and the boy.”

  “You believe her?”

  “I am not discounting the damned old rogue’s sense of loyalty.”

  Dudley twitched an eyebrow. “Like him, do you?”

  “He grows on you.” He swore and shuffled through a sheaf of papers on his desk. “Where the devil are my sketches of the streets around the Black Bull?”

  “On the left,” Dudley said calmly, pointing. “And unless you have some secret army of your own that I don’t know about, there is no way you can get near him as long as he is being held there.”

  “Then the trick will be to get him out in the open.”

  “We’re agreed on that, but how?”

  “We get Roth to bring him to us. We propose an exchange and offer the greedy bastard something he can’t refuse.”

  Dudley patted his breast pocket and withdrew two folded sheets of parchment. “I don’t know if this measures up, but it seems the boy was right about the value of the Dragon’s Blood suite; the value increases dramatically when the rubies and the pearl brooch are put together. After I overheard Roth and Vincent talking about it in the coach, I asked Jeffrey Bartholomew to make some discreet inquiries. The jewels belonged to some old baron way back when men wore armor and kings killed their own blood kin to gain a throne. The Pearl of Brittany is unique, one of a kind, named after the princess who, it is rumored, gave birth to a son who not only could have challenged King John’s right to the throne, but could have changed the course of history by uniting France and England under one crown. The revolutionary government is understandably anxious to get the suite back, while the French court in London will pay almost anything to keep it in monarchist hands.”