Before the Dawn

by Denise A. Agnew

  Oh, Mary Jane, you have indeed gone way too far once again.

  He drew back, eyes betraying his amazement that she had taken such initiative on the kiss.

  She managed to ask the next question. “What happened after you immigrated here?”

  He shifted and drew himself around so both feet planted on the floor. He leaned back on the palms of his hands. “It was hard going. We heard about an Irish organization in Philadelphia, so we traveled there. Luckily for us they helped Ma find a job in a sweatshop.” He shrugged. “Working in a sweatshop is hard, dirty, unpleasant work, but Ma wouldn’t let us starve. We did what we had to. We lived in a tenement in Kensington in the Irish Third Ward and shared rooms with another Irish family. It was crowded. One parlor, one kitchen, two bedrooms. My Ma and us boys slept in one room, but we each had a bed. The other couple and their two small boys slept in the other.”

  Mary Jane winced. “To think I have never shared a room with my sisters. We…our house would qualify as a small mansion of sorts. Twenty rooms in all.”

  “Small?” He snickered. “That’s all right, darlin’. You shouldn’t have to apologize for your wealth.” He looked into the distance for a few moments, as if he envied her cushioned life but would never complain about it. “During that time we roughed it, but we were happier than we were in Ireland.”

  “What happened after your mother worked in the sweatshop? Did you and your brothers work?”

  “Zeke was a blacksmith, Amos a gunsmith. They took to the trades easily. I hawked papers on street corners to start, then learned blacksmithing from Zeke.”

  “When did you meet Maureen?”

  He turned only his head towards her at first. “That’s two questions and two kisses. I’ll let you give them to me one after the other.”

  Finding that she had no desire to complain, she met him in another kiss. Warmth flowed over her body and removed all sense of cold or damp. She eagerly joined her lips to his. Time seemed to slow and stop until all she noted was a flowing sensuality that grew and grew. Elijah kept his hands to himself and left each movement to her discretion.

  Instead of pulling back for a second kiss, she kept the first one alive. Her fingers tangled in the hair at the back of his neck and enjoyed the silky, cool texture. He moaned and it snapped her into reality. She pushed away, breath uneven and heart ticking an unsteady beat. Staring into those verdant eyes, she saw his need build. His lips parted as he licked them. His chest rose and fell with quicker breaths.

  “That was one kiss.” He moved in, turning full towards her and obviously intent on another.

  She put her hand to his chest, and he stopped. “Elijah, I…”

  His eyes narrowed. “What is it? You promised a kiss for each question.”

  “I know. I just…”

  His fingers came up and traced a delicate line over her chin and down to the pulse in her throat. “Your pulse is fast, and the way you kissed me…” He paused. “I know you like it. If you didn’t you would give me a short peck and dance away.” When she looked down at her lap, he titled her chin up. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Yes.”

  His brow furrowed. “By all the saints, darlin’. You know I’d never harm you. I’m here to protect you.”

  She shifted, and he allowed his hand to drop. “I do know that, but…”

  Her uncertainty, she knew, warred with her curiosity. Curiosity about him as a man. Curiosity about these powerful physical sensations, the yearning pulsing raw and almost unrestrained within her body. Her time with Thaddeus paled in comparison. She reached behind his head to take another kiss, but it turned into a half-hearted peck.

  He crossed his arms. “Go on, then. I know you have more questions.”

  Eagerness pushed her to ask again, “When did you meet Maureen?”

  His hands dropped to his thighs. “At the sweatshop where Ma worked. I went there one day to walk Ma home because there were threats against Irish women by this madman lingering in the area around the sweatshop. Ma introduced me to Maureen, and we all left the shop together. I escorted Maureen home first and then went home with Ma. Our relationship grew from there.” He took a long shuddering breath. “During the nativist riots in Kensington in 1844, I was caught in the commotion trying to get home from work. Maureen had left the shop early to gather some food for her family. I saw a man trying to accost her and saved her from his attentions.”

  “A nativist attacked her?”

  “No. An Irish Catholic.”

  “And you…once more the savior. Do you make a habit of saving women from evil men?”

  He turned his gaze on her. “The only women I’ve needed to save were my Ma, Maureen and you. Women I care about. And when it came down to it, I couldn’t save Maureen.”

  Women I care about.

  One sentence and her longing for him increased. A primal desire to touch, to show him surcease from the trials he’d faced in life. “You care about me?”

  “That’s another question.”

  She kissed him, and he twisted his mouth over hers for an intimate fit. Not just one kiss, but another and another in a fiery, passionate response. Both hands speared into her hair and drew her closer. He groaned against her mouth. Her nipples tightened and rubbed against her chemise and corset with an irritating prickle that needed attention. Restlessness grew inside her that she wanted desperately to assuage and yet did not know how.

  He drew back, his breaths rasping in his throat. “No more. We need to stop. We must stop.”

  Her breath came as harsh as his, and she understood the wisdom of his words. “You are right, of course. But I have more questions.”

  “How many are there?”

  “At least ten. Do you think you can survive that many?”

  “I could count that question among them and lower the count to nine.”

  “That is hardly fair, sir.”

  “Who said I am fair?

  “Perhaps I should start charging you for each of your questions.”

  A wicked gleam entered his eyes. “And how would you charge me?”

  Her mind scrambled for a reasonable idea. “Perhaps more kisses?”

  “Let us stick with what you owe me and on another night we will talk about what I owe you.”

  “But we may not have another night, Elijah.”

  He tapped the tip of her nose gently with his index finger. “Ask your next question, minx.”

  This new endearment started a far larger blaze inside her. Excitement crackled like the lightning that had speared the heavens. While she acknowledged the danger inherent in continuing this folly, she also wanted it with a sinful ache.

  She swallowed hard and asked her next question. “When were you betrothed to Maureen?”

  “We found our passion…fervent. We wanted to marry before we sinned.” His mouth twitched at one corner. “Though we sinned some anyway.”

  Her cheeks heated. “Oh my.”

  “We’d known each other a month, if that, before Ma gave me the ring you’re wearing now, and I planned to give it to Maureen. One day I fell at the blacksmith’s shop and cracked a rib. Zeke encouraged me to go home. I planned to meet Maureen at the sweatshop. When I got there, Ma said Amos was walking her home. When I reached her home, though, her Ma and Da said they hadn’t seen her. She came walking up a few minutes later with Amos. Amos had this strange smile on his face.” Elijah’s eyes darkened. He lay back on the bed, his legs hanging off the side. His hands clasped over his stomach.

  She waited, her breath almost suspended as she waited for him to resume. Tension drew her muscles into knots.

  “Maureen seemed in a strange melancholy and wouldn’t talk to me. I asked Amos what was wrong.” He gave a humorless laugh. “The bastard told me Maureen was considering switching her affections from me to him.”

  Mary Jane couldn’t miss the hurt in his eyes or his voice.

  “It turned worse from there. She avoided me for days. I didn’t know what I’d done wron
g. I was furious at Amos, and we almost came to blows a couple of times. Ma and Zeke separated us.” He jackknifed into sitting position, then stood and started pacing, hands in his pockets.

  As his agitation increased, so did hers. She dreaded and longed for the end of his tale. She must know what happened.

  He stopped and stared into nothingness. “One Sunday while her parents left for church, she begged off and said she was ill. I left church and went to check on her. I was worried and I thought maybe if I got her alone, she’d talk with me. She answered the door.”

  “Then you talked with her.”

  “Yes.” He closed his eyes and his mouth twisted. A shuddering breath left his lungs. “We talked. She confessed she was afraid I would break our betrothal. Terrified, in fact. She said she loved me, but that she’d disgraced herself. When Amos had walked her home, he pulled her into an abandoned house and forced himself on her.”

  A dull, painful ache thudded inside Mary Jane’s chest. “Oh my heavens.”

  “He raped her.” His voice was thick, raspy. His eyes turned tormented as he stalked the floor like a jungle animal. “He forced himself upon her and then said I’d disown her…that her whole family would disown her if she told them.”

  “Surely, they would not have.”

  How could she say this when her own family had almost disowned her?

  Raw pain filled his gaze as he stopped pacing and stared at her. “Her father was a bastard who taught her to think she wasn’t worth a half-penny. Her mother was a tiny, timid thing that couldn’t defend her daughter or herself.” Elijah shivered as if he suffered a fever and then righted his expression. Cold, hard fury replaced the pain. “Amos had told her she was a whore and a bitch and deserved what she got. That if she didn’t break her betrothal with me, he’d tell everyone that she’d led him into the abandoned house and begged him to dishonor her.”

  Mary Jane swallowed hard, her mouth so dry but her eyes prickling with tears. “That poor girl. She must have been in such terrible agony not knowing what you thought. You believed her?”

  He leaned back against the washstand, his dark head bowed as he crossed his arms. “I believed her because she was a wonderful woman and Amos is a bastard beyond measure.”

  She did not yet ask another question. Not because she feared another kiss. Because sorrow washing over his strong form slumped his shoulders and lowered that proud head. She hated seeing him saddened and could not imagine him any more broken than at this moment. Maybe if she allowed herself to think on it, it would break her, too.

  He finally lifted his head, and his eyes held remnants of pain. “I told her it didn’t matter what Amos said. My anger was all for him. My hate was all for him. I’d never wanted to kill anyone before. She begged me not to go after him, as it would only hurt me in the end.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Maureen told me she was pregnant with his child.” He tipped his head back and gazed at the ceiling. “She begged me not to abandon her, and I vowed I never would. The child was innocent and Maureen was innocent. We planned to run away together the next day.”

  She swallowed hard. “But you didn’t?”

  Elijah’s gaze, direct and sad, gave her the answer. “The next day I felt like damnation, but I packed my meager belongings, left my mother a note and headed to the meeting place we’d agreed on—the church not far from where she lived. When I got there she was nowhere to be found. I somehow knew something was wrong. I searched the neighborhood and eventually found her in a back alley nearby. She was stabbed through the heart. A knife was left nearby.”

  Mary Jane’s throat ached with unshed tears. “How awful. I can only imagine what you must have felt.”

  He nodded and tore his gaze from hers. “I loved her more than anyone. Before I could run for the authorities, a man and woman saw me with Maureen’s body. I’d picked her up in my arms, and her blood was all over me. She couldn’t have been dead too long. When the police came, I was still there. I wasn’t going to run—I wanted to find the killer as much as they did.”

  She wiped her eyes as tears fell. “Oh, no, Elijah. It must have gone all wrong.”

  He made a half-strangled laugh. “Very wrong. The police blamed me of course. I told them when Maureen told me about Amos, but when they found Amos he was at a home a block away where his friends claimed he’d been all night sleeping off a drunk.” Gazing down at the floor or his boots, he sighed. “Zeke and Ma vouched for me, of course. They all testified that I’d been at home that morning when Maureen was killed. They believed me. At least Zeke did.”

  “Your mother didn’t?”

  “She had doubts, I could tell. Eventually she blurted out that maybe I’d done it after I left the house. The police decided all the evidence pointed towards me. My note to Ma saying I was running away with Maureen, for example. They interrogated me and said that I must have gone into a rage when she refused to leave with me.”

  “Why was she out of the house so early?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “We planned to meet at the church yard, but maybe she wanted to leave early to make sure her Ma and Da didn’t try to stop her.”

  Tears continued to rain down her face. Elijah’s own eyes shimmered.

  “Then they convicted you?” she asked.

  “There was no proof against Amos, and I was the one they’d found in the alley with her.”

  “But…” She shook her head. “You must have had witnesses to your good character. To the kind of man you are.”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t matter. I looked guiltier than anyone else. Even her Ma and Da went from loving me to thinking I was the scourge of the earth. When they declared me guilty and sentenced me to twenty-one years of solitary confinement, I decided there and then I’d pray each day to say sane. To make certain I’d survive twenty-one years so I could kill Amos.”

  She shivered at the coldness in his declaration. “Yet they released you in five.”

  The bleakness in his eyes did not retreat. “Because Zeke refused to let it go. After I was thrown into Eastern State, Zeke knew Amos had done it but he couldn’t prove it at first. Ma and Zeke disowned Amos, though I heard from Zeke before I came on this trip that Ma relented and let Amos back into her life. Zeke kept working for my release. It took him some time, but he convinced two men who’d been friends with Amos to tell the whole truth. Amos had killed her and come back to the house to tell them all about it.”

  “Five years. I cannot imagine what you must have endured.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t know. You must not.”

  She stood and as he walked towards her, wanting so much to ease his pain. “I am not a woman of delicate sensibilities.”

  “No?” He reached up to brush away the last of her tears. “You are strong, but you’re crying for me.”

  She drew in a deep breath and acknowledged the truth. “Any woman with an ounce of feeling would cry.”

  “Not every woman would believe a word I’ve said.”

  “I doubted you in the beginning.”

  The darkness in his gaze lifted somewhat. “Maybe you still should.”

  She frowned, disturbed. “Why?”

  He traced a path down her back, feathering over the long length of her hair. Her heartbeat picked up, her pulse seeming to race with a new and furious pace. He slipped under her hair and cupped the back of her neck. “I’m not a nice man, darlin’. When I find Amos, I plan to kill him.”

  She gasped but didn’t pull back. “You are planning to murder him? For revenge?”

  “Yes. That’s why you shouldn’t think too highly of me.” He leaned in until his lips hovered within a breath of her ear. “And when I’m near you I want things I shouldn’t. I need things I shouldn’t. My body craves yours.”

  He was right. She was frightened. That he would murder anyone in truth seemed impossible, but his harsh words tangled with a feral attraction she felt helpless to avoid.

  She was driven. Driven to the edge by sensat
ions so delicious and forbidden they must translate to sin. To a path she had trod before and would take again at her peril.

  Elijah’s mouth angled, then tasted hers, but this time without the slow buildup. His tongue surged into her mouth. She moaned as his hands plunged into her hair and held steady. Repeatedly his tongue seduced, thrusting with a primitive rhythm that aroused. Rushes of sensation assaulted virgin territory. Desires meshed and blended as her breasts ached and filled with heat. She clutched his shoulders as they eased down onto the bed. Her heart pounded as his gentle caresses moved over her face, hair, and down to her shoulders. Hunger ignited as she groaned and shifted against Elijah’s insistent searching touch. He released her only long enough to shift until he lay half over her. Once more he kissed her, and his tongue rubbing over hers urged her into a firestorm of response.

  Fascinated with his strength and drawn to the power she knew resided inside him, she ached to experience more. Her heart pounded with a furious beat. Breathless and astonished at her own response, she did not wish to stop this headlong flight.

  He drew back and stared into her eyes. Turbulent emotions played over his features. When he sat up, he turned away from her and buried his face in his hands. Torn between mortification and blind desire, she sat up.

  Trembling, she could not speak at first. Elijah had said more than once that she shouldn’t fear him, and now he seemed determined to scare her into not caring for him. She found her voice a few moments later. “Elijah, I am sorry I did not trust you before when I first heard you were convicted of murder.”

  The green in his eyes shimmered, a sea that flowed from sand to ocean depths. She could become lost in them and drown in delicious sensations.

  “Any woman would believe as you did. And now that I’ve told you I plan to kill Amos, you should be wary of me.”

  “No. You are not a murderer. You wouldn’t have come to my aid.”

  “I would if I wanted to manipulate you.”

  “Yes, but you have not.”

  His smile was weak, but she thought she saw relief in his eyes. “Many women would slap my face for what just happened.”