Moonlight Lover

by Ferrarella, Marie

  Riley watched her walk from the room and shook his head. Women. If he lived forever, he would never be able to understand the breed.

  Chapter Ten

  "It's been a while since we've seen you at our table, Sin-Jin."

  Morgan McKinley, the man whose name the town bore, looked down his roman nose at his former son-in-law. Whenever he saw the tall, blond man, Morgan was reminded of the fact that he now had two children instead of three. Though he had begotten them late in life and considered them nuisances for most of the years they had been growing up beneath his roof, now, as the winter of his life approached, he began to realize that the measure of a man was at least in part what his children were. They and not the name of a town was the real indelible mark he left upon the world long after he returned to the dust from which he had risen.

  He studied Sin-Jin over the glass of wine he held in his hand. When he had initially learned of Sin-Jin's existence, his first inclination had been to order him imprisoned. The revolution had just begun to burst upon them, and Morgan, a patriot to the core, had no love of anything English, much less a soldier he had been informed was being hidden by one of his household.

  But Morgan was and always had been a fair man, for all his ill-temper. Sin-Jin had been spared and subsequently escaped. When he returned, Sin-Jin was a different man. A man who had turned his back on his country and the bloodshed he wanted no part of.

  So when Sin-Jin had asked for his daughter's hand, Morgan debated but a short while. When he had given his permission, he gave them a parcel of land to start them off with as well. Jason and Aaron, Morgan's sons, had loaned their brother-in-law enough money to purchase the adjacent abandoned farm, and suddenly Saint John Lawrence, former lieutenant in his majesty's army, spurned second son of a philandering father, the late Earl of Shalott, was a plantation owner.

  He's done a fine job of it, too, Morgan thought as he swirled the last drops of the wine he had paid so dearly for before downing it.

  Morgan knew he couldn't have asked for a finer third son, though they would probably have to threaten him with cutting out his tongue before he'd admit to it aloud. For Morgan compliments were to be hoarded like the last of the tea, to be doled out sparingly and only as a final resort.

  Sin-Jin took a sip of his own wine before answering. He felt good at this table, at home the way he never quite had when he was growing up in England.

  "I've been busy," he admitted. "This is only my fifth year running the plantation and it seems as if I'm always learning. The lessons learned from previous years are never quite sufficient for addressing the problems of the next. Besides, as you well know, the sale of the crop was not an easy matter this year." Though the English blockade was no longer in effect, getting merchant ships from foreign countries to come to their ports to buy tobacco was particularly difficult with the war on.

  Though Aaron had come to like Sin-Jin, he had not come to understand some of his philosophy. "You should have never freed your slaves," he murmured. "The first year's problems, or lessons as you've called them, should have made that clear. But you have never corrected your mistake. A lesson poorly learned." He looked up at Sin-Jin from across the table. "You could have saved yourself a considerable sum in wages." Aaron shook his head in sympathy. How Sin-Jin could have performed such an elementary blunder was beyond him.

  "Perhaps," Sin-Jin agreed. "At the cost of my conscience," he added mildly.

  He had no desire to be embroiled in a debate on the subject tonight. He just wanted an evening with old friends, with family. He wanted, needed, something to rub away the dull ache that had been troubling him of late. The emptiness that seemed to be haunting him. Kissing Rachel had only made it that much worse, reminding him of what he no longer had. It had caused suppressed feelings to surface and haunt him.

  "Still, you started something that has been noted and can't be taken lightly." Aaron used the tip of his knife as he spoke to emphasize his point. A staunch loyalist in the beginning, Aaron had been made to see that survival lay in being a rebel. He accepted that and all that went with it. But new ideas only went so far and a man's beliefs could only be bent so much.

  "One man's sin is another man's virtue, Aaron."

  Aaron turned to look at his sister-in-law. Krystyna smiled serenely as she placed her hand over his, as if the very action could still the conversation.

  It never ceased to amaze Aaron, even after knowing his outspoken sister-in-law for so many years, that a woman would venture into a political discussion. It seemed as incongruous to him as a man bearing a child. Still, he saw the wisdom in her words and in keeping his piece. Tonight was not a night for arguments, however friendly they might be.

  Outside the window, the thunder rumbled, threatening even more rain on an already saturated landscape. The thunder seemed to underscore her words.

  Sin-Jin smiled at Krystyna. Foreigners in a foreign land, they understood one another perhaps a little better than the others did. "Riding to my rescue again, Krystyna?"

  It had been Krystyna who had found him lying in a field Christmas morning, wounded and half dead. She was the one who had him secretly brought to her cabin and then nursed him back to health despite the danger she ran in incurring Morgan's wrath.

  "It is a very short ride, my friend." She worried about him, alone in his big house. A man his age, with his generous heart, should not be alone. "So, what is it you have been doing with yourself besides running the plantation?"

  Jason heard more in his wife's words than the others did. He knew the capacity of her heart. She worried about the slaves when they took ill, about his father's failing health, and about friends who were alone.

  "Nothing very much." Sin-Jin shrugged. "Evenings I've been teaching Bronson, my overseer," he clarified for his other sister-in-law, Lucinda's benefit, "how to read."

  "Now that should be diverting," Christopher laughed. "Why not have Krystyna help?" He smiled at his aunt. "I've always found her to be an excellent teacher. Though a little demanding at times." He winked at her.

  He was getting to be such a handsome young man, Krystyna thought. It would be time to find him a wife, soon. She'd grown very fond of him over the last six years. When she had found herself initially stranded here, she fell back on her extensive education for help. She had struck a bargain with Morgan to teach his twelve-year-old grandson in exchange for shelter and wage. Morgan had agreed, despite Aaron, Christopher's father's initial objection, or perhaps because of it. She went on teaching Christopher even after she married Jason.

  "Anyone can be excellent with good material to work with," she told the young man fondly. Krystyna turned to Sin-Jin. "But if you would like, I could perhaps—"

  Sin-Jin shook his head. "Don't trouble yourself. He's reading now as well as he ever will. He's not very keen on it. Teaching him was just a way to fill my evenings." Sin-Jin sighed, pushing back his plate. His appetite had abandoned him days ago.

  "To be truthful, I feel as if I've been isolating myself from the whole of the world." Sin-Jin looked at his host and smiled, dismissing his momentary lapse into melancholy. He hoped no one would really take note of it. He didn't want their pity, only their friendship. "I thought I'd catch up on what was happening in it by accepting your kind invitation."

  His glance swept along the length of the table, taking them all in. Aaron, Lucinda, and Christopher lived at the main house with Morgan, while Jason and Krystyna and their two small children lived in a house built closer to Sin-Jin's property. Whenever they gathered together, it was always at the main house.

  Attempting to sound as if the matter didn't interest him as much as it did, Sin-Jin said, "Did you know we have a newspaper now?"

  "Yes." Hungry for news of the world, for the printed word, Krystyna had been the first to devour it. "Jason brought a copy home last week," she told Sin-Jin, smiling affectionately at Jason.

  Sin-Jin toyed with his glass. "What do you know about the editor?" He tossed the question out on the table for a
nyone to answer.

  Morgan had shared an ale with the man. He shrugged, recalling. "Not much. He's a friendly enough fellow. And his politics are in the right place," Morgan added with feeling.

  Jason had made a point of meeting the new editor once he had learned of the newspaper's existence. Riley had struck him as an amiable sort, with fierce loyalties. Not unlike Krystyna. "Likes to talk a lot."

  "Small wonder," Sin-Jin murmured to the bottom of his glass, "when he gets away from that sister of his. From what I saw, she doesn't let him say very much."

  Krystyna exchanged a look with Lucinda. "He has a sister?" She turned accusing eyes on Jason. "You did not tell me there was another woman in the town."

  Jason shrugged. In reality, it had slipped his mind. "You didn't ask."

  Krystyna shook her head, looking at Sin-Jin. "Such a man. Next time I will remember to ask if any new women have arrived." Her laughter softened and faded as she caught a spark of something in Sin-Jin's eyes. It gave her cause for speculation.

  Krystyna leaned on her elbow, her face in her upturned palm. "What is she like?"

  She looked from her husband to her brother-in-law, waiting. When Sin-Jin was the one to answer her, it told her everything she wanted to know.

  There was only one way to describe the woman. "She's nothing short of a spitfire." When Krystyna's brows drew together as she tried to digest the word and unearth its meaning, he added, "Come to think of it, Rachel's a lot like you."

  "Ah. Spitfire. You mean even-tempered and friendly," Krystyna guessed. She successfully hid her smile from her face, but not her eyes.

  "Hot-tempered and opinionated," Jason put in, grinning. That had been one of his first impressions of her.

  Krystyna playfully swatted away her husband's hand as he tugged on a loose curl at her temple. "Is she pretty?" she asked Sin-Jin.

  Krystyna was beginning to see a solution for her friend's loneliness. Though he didn't talk of it, she could read it in his eyes and she ached for him. But until now, there had been no one she thought of as suitable for the man. Perhaps this new woman would change that.

  "Pretty or not, she'll probably get snapped up right away," Lucinda ventured knowingly. "There's hardly enough women to go around." She'd been considered plain herself when she married Aaron. If not for Krystyna's patient ways, she would still be hiding behind clothing meant for a women years older than herself, wearing her hair in a severe fashion that made her features appear harsh rather than comely.

  Sin-Jin thought of his first meeting with Rachel. And his second. "The men in this county would have to be utterly desperate before they'd turn to her."

  "Then she's plain?" Christopher guessed, disappointed. He had visions of accompanying his uncle into town on the next trip he took.

  Sin-Jin's expression softened as he thought of the way Rachel had looked that first night, with the firelight playing along her skin. "She's like a ruby when the sun first hits it, all sparkle and lights." Thoughts of the woman could not be separated from her temper. "And all sharp edges as well."

  He was taken with this sharp-edged ruby, she would swear to it. "I think," Krystyna began slowly, watching Sin-Jin's expression, "that I would like to meet her."

  Sin-Jin shrugged. "As long as you bring your own musket."

  "Musket?" This was beginning to sound better and better, she thought.

  Sin-Jin saw the startled look on Lucinda's face as she gasped. The others stared at him. "She tried to shoot me for bringing her brother home from the tavern." He turned to Jason for sympathy, afraid of what he might see in Krystyna's if he looked there. There were times Krystyna was far too intuitive for her own good. Or his. "The man almost poured himself at my feet. What was I to do with him?"

  "Could have tried leaving him on the tavern floor," Morgan suggested with a lusty laugh. That's what he would have done.

  "Exactly what you did, I am sure," Krystyna agreed. "Lucinda," she turned nonchalantly toward her sister-in-law, "are you up to a visit to the town tomorrow?"

  "I—" Lucinda hesitated, looking to Aaron for permission.

  Krystyna had no time for such foolish delays. "Fine," she pronounced, "it is done." Contented, she looked down at the plate that Sin-Jin had pushed away. "You have not had a bit of your roast hare yet, John," she pointed out sweetly. "You would not want to hurt Marwilda's feelings by sending it back untouched, now would you?" Delicately, she moved the plate before him again.

  Sin-Jin exchanged a look with Jason and the latter only shook his head. "I'd eat it if I were you, Sin-Jin, before she takes it into her head to feed you herself."

  "Now that," Sin-Jin mused, "might not be something to avoid."

  But he began to eat, knowing he could only flirt with Krystyna so far. He valued his friendship with her, and Jason as well.

  What he needed, he thought, was a woman of his own. A woman with hair the color of flame. He added an amendment to that. One whose tongue was not as hot as her hair.

  Chapter Eleven

  The candlelight flickered in the bedroom, casting shadows that warmed the blood.

  The thunder rattled the windows. It only served to make the large room that much cozier. A haven for the two of them. Down the hall, their two sons slept peacefully, watched over by a loving nurse, Leola, Jeremiah and Marwilda's daughter.

  Jason pulled his white shirt free of his breeches. As it hung about his slim hips, he turned toward the vanity that he had carved for Krystyna with his own hands. She sat before it, brushing her hair. Swirling rivers of black fell well past her shoulders, tempting his fingers.

  Unable to resist, Jason came up behind his wife and laid his hands on her shoulders. Her soft sigh aroused him. Easily, he slipped his hands beneath the nightgown's neckline, his fingers reaching for the reassuring feel of her soft, cool skin. When he touched her, contentment and excitement warred for possession of him.

  It never ceased to amaze Jason how, after two children and six years, he still couldn't seem to get his fill of her.

  His father had sought his pleasures outside his marital bonds time and again. Aaron and Jason had been raised to believe that physical fulfillment and marriage were mutually exclusive. It was the singular reason why Jason had resisted binding himself to a woman for so long. Why marry just to have someone presentable at your side? He could well exist without a companion. He had no vain need to turn a false face to the world and pretend to be happy with a mate when he wasn't.

  Marriage to Jason was not a matter undertaken because of lineage or heritage or to expand the family fortunes, the way it had been for Aaron. There was only one reason to marry. Love. And if that was absent from the marital state, then so would he be.

  It was his belief that he would remain single until he died. Until Krystyna had entered his life, unwittingly filling every empty corner. And suddenly the man who wanted no part of marriage, no part of commitment, could think of nothing else but that.

  Of nothing else but her.

  Jason withdrew his hands from Krystyna's shoulders and plunged them into her hair, luxuriating in the silky sensation. The fragrance she used to wash it wafted seductively ta him. She still effortlessly filled his thoughts and his heart, arousing him with her very scent the way no other woman had ever come close to doing, though many had tried.

  He looked at her reflection in the mirror before them. "So, Countess, are you sorry?"

  Krystyna placed the hairbrush down. Her eyes met his in the mirror. He was using her title, the one she still held even through her lands in Poland had long since been lost. There was no one left in the distant country to defend them for her. It still vexed her that her precious home was now in the hands of an enemy who cared little or nothing for the people who lived and worked in the fields, people she had grown up knowing and loving.

  But it wasn't her land that had her attention right now. It was her husband. When he used her rightful title, she knew Jason was being serious. It wasn't a state he usually assumed. She tried to think what he
could be alluding to. She hadn't a clue.

  Turning, she rose and took his hand. Without a word, she led him to their bed and sat down. She tugged on his hand to join her. He followed readily. It was a huge fourposter bed with a thick goose down mattress. Somehow, they always managed to huddle together in its center, needing only one another for warmth and comfort, even on the coldest of nights.

  Krystyna trailed a finger along his cheek. "Sorry about what, my love?"

  It was a question that had been gnawing at the edges of his conscience for some time now, like an insatiably hungry mouse. She seemed happy, but was she? Was she truly happy when once her life had contained so much more than he could offer her?

  Jason took her hands in his. "That you married me. That you stayed on in this rough-hewed land when you could have taken Kosciuszko up on his offer and returned to Poland with him." He thought of the conversation at the table tonight and remembered what she had once told him. "Or allowed Sin-Jin to give you money for passage when he wanted to."

  Both had occurred years in the past, but did she sometimes look up at the ceiling, late at night, while he slept next to her, and regret not going? Though the answer might tear him in two, he had to know.

  Krystyna shook her head, her fingers wrapping around his. "After all this time, do you not know me at all?"

  He knew her. He knew her inside out. And yet, he needed the words to tell him that he was right. "Yes, but—"

  She placed a finger to his lips to silence him. "If I had wanted to go home, my love, really wanted to go home, I would have found a way to do so with or without their help. You know that."

  As she said it, Jason knew it to be true. She had an indomitable spirit. It was one of the things he loved about her.

  Krystyna smiled warmly at him, a jumble of memories crowding her mind, all equally precious.