Moonfire

by Linda Lael Miller

  Completely mortified, Maggie pulled her arm free and stood, still and stubborn, glaring down into Tansy’s upturned face. “Anything you thought you heard must have come from your own lewd imagination!” she accused her friend hotly. “Either that, or you were lurking behind the wrong wagon!”

  Tansy held up both hands in a gesture of peace, but her eyes twinkled and her lips twitched just a little as she struggled to keep from giggling. “All right, love, if you want to pretend it didn’t ’appen, I guess that’s fine by me, but you shouldn’t be so free with the feelings of a friend like meself, ’cause in nine months or so, you might be needin’ one.”

  All the color drained from Maggie’s livid face. Not once had she thought that she might be carrying Reeve McKenna’s child; now the prospect was horrifying.

  Tansy took both Maggie’s hands in her own. “Don’t be frettin’ now, love. The time for that is when your curse should come and doesn’t.”

  Maggie’s knees felt weak as she tried to calculate when her next flow was due. She had two weeks to wait! Two long, hellish weeks before she would know the fate that might be bearing down on her even now. “I feel sick,” she said.

  Tansy again took hold of Maggie’s elbow, this time squiring her back toward the crackling bonfire. “Fiddlesticks, you’re only scared,” she argued, “and a mite ’ungry, too, probably. Come and ’ave some breakfast with me and we’ll watch the ’orse races.”

  Maggie didn’t want to watch the horse races; it seemed to her that Reeve had mentioned coming to the camp meeting for the express purpose of doing just that, and she wasn’t ready to face him again, under any circumstances. “I couldn’t eat.”

  Tansy didn’t listen; it occurred to Maggie that her friend never listened. She left Maggie to join a queue at the food table and came back minutes later with two plates.

  Maggie followed helplessly after her as she led the way to an improvised racetrack, carved right out of the farmer’s pasture, and found a place to sit on one of the long, wet logs that had been provided for spectators. In the center of the track were any number of horses, some Maggie recognized as Thoroughbreds, some, Tansy explained, were brombies, wild Australian horses that had been captured and tamed.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, Maggie ate her breakfast as she watched the preparations for the first race. Reeve was there, holding the bridle of an enormous coal-black stallion while a slight figure scrambled up into the English saddle.

  Tansy had apparently followed Maggie’s gaze. “Bloke I was cuddlin’ with last night says ’e ’as a place ’ereabouts, your Reeve McKenna.”

  Maggie whirled, nearly upsetting her plate and what remained of its contents. “A place?”

  “Sure.” Tansy shrugged. “A man with ’is money probably ’as more ’ouses than you and I got ’airpins. A body does wonder why Mr. McKenna’d bed you in a wagon, though, when ’e could ’ave taken you to a nice, warm ’ouse!”

  It was all Maggie could do not to clout her friend over the head with her breakfast plate. She wouldn’t have admitted for anything in the world that she was wondering the same thing Tansy was. “Will you keep your voice down?” she hissed, all too aware that some of the people around them were watching her with amusement, curiosity, or reproof.

  Maggie’s head was aching and her food was beginning to roil in her stomach. “What time does the ’bus go back to Sydney?” she asked miserably.

  “There’ll be one at two and another at four,” Tansy answered distractedly, her attention on the riders and the horses that were getting ready to race.

  Maggie’s mind was made up in that moment. Taking Tansy’s plate and stacking it on top of her own, she stepped awkwardly over the log. “I’ll take these back,” she said coolly.

  Tansy had turned, shielding her eyes from the bright sun with one hand. “But you’ll miss the start of the race!” she cried.

  Maggie only shrugged and walked purposefully away. She intended to miss far more than the race.

  After disposing of the plates, Maggie went back to the wagon where Reeve McKenna had so pleasured her, and she snatched up her reticule. It was an easy matter to repack yesterday’s dress and the nightgown and her hairbrush, and soon she was walking along the muddy, rutted road to Parramatta, leaving the camp meeting and all its questionable splendors behind her.

  Along the way Maggie saw a grand house that she hadn’t noticed on arriving the day before and wondered if it was Reeve’s. She decided it was and felt her cheeks burn a bright pink. She walked faster now, paying no heed to the puddles that glistened on the road. A cot in a covered wagon was the place he’d considered fitting for the deflowering of Miss Maggie Chamberlin; no sense mussing a real bed with the likes of one gullible little “Yank.”

  By the time she reached the country inn where the omnibus would stop, Maggie had worked herself into a miff of puddle-stomping proportions. Her shoes and the hem of her new dress were muddy and wet and her mood was intractable. Even though the innkeeper warranted that it would be a good two hours before the ’bus came and went, Maggie insisted on purchasing her ticket. That done, she sat down in the inn’s cozy lobby to wait. And to silently berate herself for being such a wanton fool.

  Muddy to his knees and exultant over Samaritan’s easy win at the races, Reeve strode toward the wagon where he’d spent the most pleasurable night of his life, certain that Maggie would be there.

  She wasn’t, nor was that pathetic little case she carried around, virtually all her worldly goods stored inside. Some of Reeve’s exultation faded away.

  “Mr. McKenna?” inquired a female voice from the back of the wagon.

  Reeve turned to see the young woman who had been Maggie’s companion on board the Victoria. He couldn’t remember her name, if he’d ever known it. “Yes?” he snapped, worried and annoyed.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I was ’opin’ you’d seen Maggie in your travels—Maggie Chamberlin?”

  Reeve was interested now; he left the wagon to stand facing the girl in the bright sunshine and the mud. “I’m afraid I haven’t,” he said.

  The moppet stomped one foot, splashing muddy water everywhere. “Drat that chit—sometimes I wonder why I ’ave ’er for me friend! She’s gone off to the inn at Parramatta, she ’as, lookin’ to catch the early ’bus! And me ’ere, not knowin’ whether she’s been nabbed by bushrangers or what!”

  Reeve bit back a smile and glanced toward the sun, gauging its position. It would be a long time before the first omnibus left for Sydney. “Don’t worry, miss—I’ll see that Maggie gets safely home,” he said, and then he took off at a sprint for the pasture where the races had been held.

  Maggie spotted the rider at quite a distance. Of course she knew it was Reeve McKenna on the back of that splendid stallion, but the land stretched away from the inn unfettered, which made trying to flee imprudent.

  Reaching the inn, Reeve dismounted and tethered the magnificent animal to the hitching rail just to the right of the porch steps. His blue-green eyes were mischievous as they assessed Maggie’s disgruntled person, and his teeth flashed white in a grin. “Going home, Miss Chamberlin? And without so much as a good-bye for your first lover ever?”

  Maggie’s temper flared, as did the color in her cheeks. Determined not to let this man guess what an effect he had on her, she hugged herself and turned away, stomping to the far end of the porch.

  He simply followed her, and when she tried to escape, he leaned close and pinned her to the porch railing in a most scandalous fashion. “Give me your ticket, Maggie,” he said in a voice as intimate as a caress, “and I’ll get your money back.”

  Maggie moved to squeeze past him, but instead felt greater pressure both from Reeve McKenna in front and the porch railing in back. Her pulse leapt and her breath quickened, as the whole situation was most embarrassing. “I need my ticket,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “I’m going back to Sydney on the omnibus.”

  “You’re going back to Sydney with me,” Reev
e said flatly.

  Maggie couldn’t free herself, so she squeezed her eyes shut in an effort to blot Reeve McKenna from existence. He simply remained where he was, pressing close to her in that indecent way, and when Maggie was finally forced to open her eyes, he was watching her with amusement.

  “You gave back my papers, remember?” she pointed out when she could trust herself to speak. “I’m a free woman and if I want to go back to Sydney by myself, I most certainly will!”

  “Papers?” Reeve echoed stupidly. And then he reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a packet of documents, documents he had to have taken from Maggie’s reticule while she slept. “These papers?”

  “Damn you.” Maggie gasped, pushing at Reeve’s chest with her hands. “You’re not only a seducer, you’re a thief!”

  Reeve threw back his head and laughed at that. “A seducer? Maggie, Maggie—what quaint words you use.” He arched one dark eyebrow and then went on. “May I remind you that I made every effort to keep my distance after I got into bed with you last night? You were the one who insisted on touching me.”

  Maggie was at a loss for words and, further, she was worried that someone would see her in this compromising position. She tried to look around Reeve’s shoulder, certain that she’d die on the spot if anyone had overheard their conversation.

  Unexpectedly, Reeve relented a little and stepped back so that Maggie could breathe a bit more freely. “Come home with me, Maggie,” he said, his voice gruff and yet oddly persuasive. “We can go to Sydney in the morning.”

  “That,” Maggie blustered, trembling all over because she was so angry and because a part of her wanted to go home with Reeve McKenna and let him do what he would to her, “is an indecent proposal!”

  “You weren’t worried about indecent proposals this morning,” he pointed out.

  The reminder of their shameless behavior in the wagon stung its way through Maggie’s veins like poison. She drew back her reticule to strike him, but he only took it from her and set it down on the rough board floor of the porch.

  Her eyes were riveted on Reeve’s shirt pocket, where he’d put the precious papers that meant the difference between freedom and slavery. “I would like my documents back, please,” she said evenly.

  “Certainly,” Reeve replied with a slight bow of his head, but he made no move to hand over the papers.

  Acting on sheer bravado, Maggie held out her hand. Reeve took it, snatching up her reticule with his free hand in the same motion, and dragged her toward the impatient stallion tethered to the hitching post. He untied the animal with one deft pull on the reins.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Maggie croaked as she was swung unceremoniously onto the beast’s back, with Reeve behind her only a moment later.

  “Miss Chamberlin,” he said, his voice grating past her ear in a low rush, “I’m going to do the right thing in spite of you.”

  The stallion danced and tossed its enormous head as Reeve reined it in the direction of the road, and Maggie, clutching the horse’s raven-black mane in both hands, was suddenly glad for the strong arm that at once encircled her waist and held her reticule.

  “C-carrying me off against my will is not the right thing!” she pointed out, her voice unnaturally high because she’d never ridden any animal more spirited than an elderly circus horse, and she was afraid.

  “Seeing you safely home is the least I can do,” Reeve argued, pausing to give her a brief nip on the earlobe that sent waves of delicious shivers flowing through her, “after having my way with you last night.”

  Maggie held on tighter and squeezed her eyes shut again as the great horse bounded into a gallop.

  “And then, of course,” Reeve went on as though they were sitting together in a rocking chair instead of on the back of that terrifyingly powerful stallion, “there was this morning.”

  Both to Maggie’s relief and her alarm, Reeve’s house proved to be close by, though it wasn’t the one she had seen earlier. It was a sprawling building of red brick, with a glassed-in sunporch at one end and a fanlight over the door. There were flowers and well-tended shrubs growing in the yard and, if it hadn’t been for her circumstances, Maggie would have been charmed.

  Reeve dismounted and lifted Maggie down after him, and just as she was shaking out her skirts in a disgruntled effort at gaining some dignity, two little black-skinned girls appeared, gazing adoringly at Reeve and smiling broad, toothy smiles.

  “Goodness and Mercy,” Reeve confided in a whisper.

  “Who?” Maggie asked.

  Reeve did not bother to repeat the girls’ unforgettable names. “Their parents were afflicted by the teachings of certain English missionaries,” he added. “Every time I come to Parramatta, they glue themselves to my heels. Wherever I go, they go.”

  Maggie was enchanted, as she always was by children. Forgetting her own perilous situation, she smiled at the beautiful little girls.

  Reeve took her arm and ushered her up the stairs leading to his front door. He glanced backward, as did Maggie, and saw that his tiny admirers were in hot pursuit.

  He sighed heavily as he opened the door. “Surely,” he teased, “Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

  Chapter 9

  REEVE HAD NO MORE THAN OPENED THE FRONT DOOR TO his house when another little girl, the same child Maggie had seen playing on his lawn in Sydney, literally hurled herself into his arms with a joyous shriek. “Papa!”

  The affection between Reeve and the child was obvious. He held her close. Over his broad shoulder she gave Maggie a thorough, implacable inspection with her blue-green eyes.

  Reeve turned slightly, there in that spacious, well-lighted entryway, and said, “Maggie, this is Elisabeth.”

  Automatically, Maggie offered her hand. Elisabeth merely looked at Maggie’s face for a moment, not deigning to loosen her arms from around Reeve’s neck. Although this would have been a snub in the adult world, there was no unfriendliness in the child’s manner.

  “Hello, Elisabeth,” Maggie said politely, and her smile was genuine.

  “She rarely talks,” Reeve pointed out when they had reached an enormous parlor and the silence had stretched out too far for his liking. He set Elisabeth on her feet and she scampered away. “The only thing she says with any regularity is ’Papa.’”

  Maggie was so concerned that she hardly took in the understated elegance of her surroundings. “But she must be four, at least—”

  Reeve gestured offhandedly for Maggie to take a seat, and then strode off across the long, uncluttered room as she sank into a barrel-back chair facing the massive fieldstone fireplace.

  When he returned, he held a glass of some amber-colored liquid in his hand. Maggie resisted a telling glance at the clock on the mantelpiece, but she did arch one eyebrow. It was surely too early in the day for liquor.

  Reeve chuckled at her reaction as he sat down in a chair facing hers. “I’m assuming that you would prefer tea to this particular sort of refreshment,” he said, and before Maggie could stiffly confirm that she would indeed prefer tea, a black woman appeared in the parlor, carrying a tray.

  The woman set the tray on a table beside Maggie’s chair and left the room again without a word or a look at either Reeve or his houseguest.

  “The mother of Goodness and Mercy, I presume?” Maggie asked just to make conversation and wondering to herself just how one should behave in such an unorthodox situation.

  Reeve smiled. “I believe Kala is related to them in some way, though she isn’t their mother. The Aborigines define relationships in their own fashion.”

  Maggie’s eyes went wide. “Aborigines? But I thought they were wild people, roaming the Outback—”

  “Many of them are,” Reeve broke in quietly. “They’re a wandering people and they do have a tendency to just drop everything and leave, should the spirit move them.”

  Before Maggie could make a response to that, a short, balding man with an air of autho
rity came striding into the room. He carried a round-brimmed hat in one hand and his small, colorless eyes took in Maggie’s countenance with an expression that bordered on disapproval.

  Reeve set his drink aside, seeming just the least bit self-conscious, and Maggie understood when she took a second look at the stranger. He was wearing a clerical collar. Standing, Reeve said with a cordial nod, “Reverend Collins.”

  The reverend nodded back. “Time I was moving on,” he said in a thick Australian accent. “Of course, I couldn’t go without telling you that I passed the stormy night in great comfort, thanks to your kindly offer of a roof over my head.”

  Maggie slanted a look at Reeve, knowing now why he hadn’t brought her to this house the night before, and took a sip of her tea.

  Reeve shook hands with Reverend Collins. “I’m glad you were at ease,” he said. He was just about to present Maggie properly, when the minister turned and left the room.

  It was a rebuff; Maggie might as well have been invisible. Nettled, she looked Reeve McKenna squarely in the eye when he sat back down in his chair. “You don’t strike me as a religious man,” she said.

  He smiled. “I’m not. I was planning on staying at the campsite anyway, since Samaritan was going to race today. Reverend Collins came from some distance, and he didn’t have a wagon.”

  Maggie stole a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was making a whirring sound as it geared up to strike the hour. One ponderous bong followed another. “I’ve missed the omnibus,” she muttered, annoyed.

  “You’ll be back in Sydney before Duncan is, so don’t worry,” Reeve responded, his tones clipped.

  “You don’t like Mr. Kirk, do you?” Maggie wanted to know, watching Reeve very closely.

  She saw his features tighten, noticed the involuntary leap of a muscle along his jawline. “That is an understatement,” he replied. “Duncan may seem charming and genteel, but he’s no fit companion for an innocent young woman.”

  Maggie’s throat constricted and she looked down at her hands, the teacup she held rattling ever so slightly in its saucer. When she lifted her eyes, they were fiery with the knowledge of all she’d lost. “And you are?” she asked pointedly.