Moonlight Lover

by Ferrarella, Marie

  Sin-Jin felt heartsick and ashamed of the bad blood that had passed between them.

  "Alfred?" This time he said the name louder.

  The sparse lashes fluttered like a butterfly reaching the end of its season and then closed again as if they were far too heavy to lift.

  Sin-Jin took Alfred's hand in his. It felt damp and limp, as if Alfred had already more than half completed his journey across the River Styx. "Alfred, it's me, Sin-Jin. Open your eyes."

  Rachel moved to the other side of the bed. She knew what Sin-Jin was feeling, knew the helplessness of watching someone approaching death. It made her heart ache just to see him go through this agony.

  This time the eyes opened, watery and unseeing at first. "Sin-Jin?" It was barely a whisper.

  Sin-Jin sat down beside the shriveled form that had once been such a hale and hearty man and lowered his head so that he might be able to hear.

  "Alfred, what's happened to you?" As children, Alfred had always been the healthy one, never ill more than a day at a time. And those occasions were few and far between. To see him like this was devastating.

  Alfred hardly had enough strength to raise his hand to urge Sin-Jin closer still. It fell, like a virgin swooning, to his side. He sighed with the effort. After a moment, his lips moved, but no words came. Alfred drew a long breath and tried again.

  "Sick. 'Nessa has them bleed me. Every day. Maybe more."

  Sin-Jin exchanged looks with Rachel. She pressed her lips together and slowly shook her head. "He can't be fighting it if he has no strength," she insisted. "He needs nourishment, not leeches."

  After seeing his brother like this, Sin-Jin was in complete agreement. He nodded vigorously and began to rise. "I'll go tell the cook to make him some broth."

  But Rachel laid her hand on Sin-Jin's shoulder. "Sit. I'll do the going. You'll be doing better to stay here with your brother and talk to him. I'd wager that the man hasn't heard a kind voice in a long while. It'll be doing him as much good as the food to be hearing that someone cares about him."

  She smiled and pulled back the curtains. The room needed light and so did Alfred. It streamed in, bringing a measure of hope with it. "There's such a thing as nurturing the soul, you know."

  Sin-Jin knew she was right. He wavered. "You don't know where the kitchen is," he pointed out.

  She waved a hand at him carelessly, as if his protest was far too feeble to even acknowledge. "I'll just follow my nose. I've been in enough kitchens in my time to know what one looks like, Master Lawrence."

  She curtsied grandly before him, her head bowed. She raised only her eyes. They were soft and full of empathy.

  Despite the situation, Sin-Jin had to smile. He thought it a blessing to be able to rely on someone other than himself. "You're a treasure, Rachel."

  Rachel crossed the threshold into the hall. "I know." She looked at him over her shoulder and smiled. "Took you long enough to find out."

  The silence that followed after Rachel left seemed to fill the very walls and floor. Sin-Jin looked at Alfred and wondered if the man would recover, or if what he was seeing was the beginning of the end. He took his brother's hand in his once more.

  Tears gathered in his eyes. "I don't know what to say to you, Alfred, except that it shouldn't have taken me ten years to say it."

  He felt the bony fingers tighten ever so slightly about his hand. It heartened him and Sin-Jin plunged on, taking heed of Rachel's counsel. He talked about everything, beginning with his army career and working his way through to his return passage to England. He wasn't certain just how much Alfred really heard, but he felt that Rachel was right. The sound of his voice was somehow comforting to his brother.

  And so he talked, wishing he had Rachel's gift for incessant chatter. Nonetheless, Sin-Jin did the best he could.

  It wasn't as easy to find her way about as she had hoped. Once she was down on the ground floor, Rachel discovered that one huge, cheerless room fed into another like a complicated, indoor maze.

  No wonder the English were half mad, she thought. They lived in cold, friendless homes and spent their time wandering about, looking for their dinner. It was enough to make anyone surly.

  She took a turn down a hallway, hoping to encounter Burns or a maid. Thus far, she'd only come across suits of armor guarding empty rooms.

  Rachel thought she heard the sound of voices coming from the end of the long corridor and moved quickly in that direction. She should have ripped bits and pieces of her petticoats, she mused, to mark her return path.

  A hand grasped her arm and she stifled a shriek as she was whirled around. Vanessa stood before her, her face condescending and cold.

  "And just where do you think you're going?" she demanded haughtily.

  Rachel nodded toward the sound she had heard and hoped that she had guessed correctly. "To the kitchen."

  The blue eyes narrowed into slits that gleamed with hatred. If possible, she would have drowned the chit right here and now. Sin-Jin would soon recover from his madness in selecting her. "You'll eat when the rest of the servants eat."

  Rachel's back stiffened. Though it was ten years, the haughty tone rankled her. Then it had belonged to Lancaster, as he demanded that she wait in order to be raped. Her outrage was no less now.

  "I'll be eating when I damn well please. It's for sure I'm not your servant nor anyone else's, either." She had to curb the desire to physically cast the taller woman aside. Vanessa might be taller, but Rachel knew how to defend herself. Vanessa, Rachel was certain, would crumple if anyone so much as touched her. "It's fetching your husband some soup I am."

  Aghast that she was being ignored, Vanessa placed herself in front of Rachel again, blocking her access to the kitchen. "I'll see to my husband's care."

  Rachel had made her assessment of Vanessa within a moment of meeting the woman. Nothing was being said now to change her mind. She knew exactly what the woman was about. Bleeding Alfred, hiding him away in a room that was more like a tomb than a bedchamber. She meant to see him die.

  "You'll be seeing to his death, you mean."

  The hand flew out like lightning as Vanessa struck Rachel across her face. "How dare you?"

  She raised her hand to strike again and Rachel caught the woman's wrist. She squeezed it hard until Vanessa winced.

  "How dare I?" Rachel echoed. The woman had the soul of a venomous snake. "How dare you? You're killing him slowly, starving him and bleeding him until there's nothing left of the man. They'd be calling that murder where I come from."

  Vanessa wrenched her wrist free and rubbed it, glaring at Rachel. "Where you come from they've barely learned how to walk upright and dress themselves."

  Sparks flew from Rachel's eyes and she clenched her fists at her side to restrain the urge to pummel the vile woman to the ground. The words she uttered were low, but there was no mistaking the threat there. "Don't be thinking that just because you're mistress of the manor, you can go about talking that way to me."

  Vanessa's breath grew shallow as her fury increased. "Oh, and what will you do?"

  A secret smile crossed Rachel's lips as she circumvented Vanessa. "That, Countess is for me to be knowing and for you to be finding out. And I can promise you, you will be finding out—when you least expect it."

  Whistling, Rachel made her way into the kitchen.

  She heard the crash behind her and guessed that perhaps a hapless suit of armor had borne the brunt of Vanessa's displeasure. Better that than one of the servants she seemed so bent on mistreating, Rachel mused as she pushed the door open. Warm scents and warmer chatter told her she had reached journey's end.

  "And who be you?" A heavyset woman in a huge white apron demanded. She punctuated her question with a wave of the wooden spoon in her hand.

  Conversation had abruptly ended as the kitchen help quizzically looked over the intruder.

  "Rachel O'Roarke," Rachel informed one and all easily. "Newly arrived from France with your Master Sin-Jin." She saw that the
name brought a smile to the lips of several of the older servants. "He asked me to be bringing some soup for Master Alfred."

  "Food? The Countess is finally allowing him to have some decent food?" the cook asked incredulously.

  So, she'd been right. Vanessa was all but starving Alfred. He had the look of a man who was wasting away. "Master Sin-Jin is sending for it. The countess," Rachel all but contemptuously spat out the title, "is having no say in the matter."

  The five women in the room silently looked at one another, and Rachel wondered if she was going to be turned out.

  But the next moment, the cook was happily ladling broth into a deep bowl. "Regan, a tray!" she instructed a shy looking woman. The cook turned to Rachel, a conspiratorial look on her wide face. "Master needs to eat, that's what I say."

  Finished, she presented the tray to Rachel. "About time someone took his side in the matter." She looked around, as if what she was about to say hadn't been voiced to one and all at different times. "If you ask me, Mistress wants him dead, she does."

  Rachel gratefully took the tray and made her way out the door. "You're not alone in thinking that thought," she assured the woman as she left.

  Finding her way back to Alfred's room was not nearly as difficult as she had surmised. Within ten minutes, Rachel was sitting on the wide, canopied bed, feeding Alfred as Sin-Jin continued talking to his brother.

  Although Alfred barely answered, and it was all he could do to swallow the thin broth, Rachel could have sworn that the man's spirits rose immeasurably. She'd been right, she thought. Knowing that someone cared was the best medicine of all.

  Vanessa swept into the room just as Rachel removed the tray from Alfred's bed. She gave Rachel a pinched smile, then positioned herself beside Sin-Jin on the bed. Her thigh brushed against his as she bent over her husband. Rachel would have taken an oath that it was by design.

  "Oh darling, you're looking ever so much better," she cried. Vanessa pressed a kiss to the paper thin cheek. "You had me so worried."

  Straightening, Vanessa patted Alfred's bony shoulder. It reminded her of the way a mistress would pat her favorite dog after he had done a good trick to please her, Rachel thought. Rachel wondered if the woman's pretense fooled Sin-Jin. She would have been sorely disappointed in him if it did.

  Vanessa turned toward Sin-Jin. A smile lit her features. "Having you here has been such wonderful medicine for Alfred."

  Sin-Jin looked at her grimly. "Better medicine would be if you ceased to have the doctor bleed him."

  Vanessa looked at him, wide-eyed. "Then how is he to get well?" she asked.

  Rachel felt her stomach turn. If Sin-Jin was taken in by the wretchedly poor performance they were privy to, she wanted no part of him.

  "By keeping his own blood," Sin-Jin said firmly. "No more leeches, Vanessa. Is that clear?"

  If she was annoyed at his intrusion, she hid it well enough. "Yes, Sin-Jin." She placed a hand delicately on Sin-Jin's chest, her eyes sensuous pools of blue. "You'll stay for a visit, of course."

  Sin-Jin glanced to see how Rachel was reacting to Vanessa's behavior. He couldn't read her bemused expression, but he made a calculated guess. "We've only come for the day."

  Disappointment twisted the generous mouth that had once filled Sin-Jin's dreams. "Only the day?"

  He nodded, rising. Perhaps they should be going, even now. He'd done what he had come to do. The breech was repaired and he had charged her with Alfred's proper care. He glanced at Vanessa. There was trouble in her eyes. To remain any longer might be unwise.

  "We need to return across the channel to France for the peace treaty negotiations." He had set up their timetable, despite Franklin's assurance that a few days could be taken. "A day is all we can safely spare."

  Vanessa didn't understand his reasoning. "Are you negotiating that wretched document?"

  He didn't like her tone, but could expect nothing else from Vanessa. "No, but Rachel is writing down everything that happens."

  Vanessa looked at Rachel as if the woman had sprouted another head right before her eyes. "Writing it down? Whatever for?"

  "History," Rachel answered.

  Rachel curved her fingers into the palms of her hands to keep from springing at the woman and wiping away her superior smirk. She counseled herself to consider the source of the remarks and not the remarks themselves. The woman was a cold, heartless, self-centered bitch. Vanessa's opinion meant nothing to her. Less than nothing.

  Vanessa shrugged carelessly and tugged at her lacy cuffs, her disinterest obvious to both. "Whatever." She raised her face to Sin-Jin, her smile beguiling as she threaded her arms through his. Rachel was left behind them. "But surely you'll stay for dinner."

  Sin-Jin looked over his shoulder at Rachel, who inclined her head. They'd come so far, it seemed a pity to spend only a matter of two hours at his birthplace, even though she wanted nothing more than to leave.

  Sin-Jin agreed. "Dinner."

  The dining hall was only slightly better lit than some of the other rooms. It seemed to Rachel as if a cloud surrounded the manor. She sat on one side of the long, dark table, silently regarding her meal. The food adhered to the roof of her mouth with each bite she took. It had nothing to do with the cook's abilities and everything to do with the company she was forced to endure.

  Virtually ignoring Rachel, Vanessa preened and flirted outrageously with Sin-Jin, though he gave her no encouragement whatsoever. Rachel couldn't wait to have done with the farce.

  But before Reagan had come in with the third course, the ominous crack of thunder echoed within the halls. What little light there was dimmed even more and Vanessa immediately ordered lamps to be lit. Rain began to fall with a fury that only nature was capable of, lashing at the manor. Traveling had suddenly become next to impossible.

  Vanessa beamed as if she had conjured up the storm herself. She steepled her fingers before her as she leaned toward Sin-Jin beside her.

  "It looks as if the decision to leave has been taken from your hands, Sin-Jin. I won't hear of you traveling back into Cornish tonight. You yourself said that the ship doesn't sail from the harbor until noon. There's plenty of time to be had." She placed her hand over his. The very gesture was coaxing. "Stay the night here instead of at the inn. I can offer you far better accommodations than they can."

  I'll just wager that you can, Rachel thought, curbing a desire to snap the stem of her wine glass.

  Sin-Jin turned to consult with Rachel. "The weather is rather awful without," he agreed.

  "It's rather inclement within as well," Rachel murmured.

  "I won't take a chance on your becoming ill again," he insisted. "Once was more than enough for me."

  Rachel looked directly at Vanessa. "Too late, Lieutenant." She let out a hapless, resigned sigh. "All right, we'll stay the night."

  Vanessa smelled victory and felt benevolent enough to afford Rachel a thin smile.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Sin-Jin refused Vanessa's offer to lead them to their rooms. Tired of the game she was playing, he suggested tartly to Vanessa that she spend a little time with her husband as befit a dutiful wife.

  It was apparent to both Rachel and Sin-Jin as they left the dining room that Vanessa did not take kindly to the thinly veiled chastising.

  Why someone would want to live in a manor was beyond Rachel's understanding. The dark, creaking hallways had her very flesh creeping as they made their way up the long staircase.

  There were ghosts here, she'd wager. Ghosts and legends and probably none of them happy ones. She would be counting the hours until dawn. Then, rain or no rain, she would insist that they take their leave.

  Sin-Jin stopped before a door and opened it. "This is your room," he told her. Vanessa had informed him that Rachel was to have the bedroom closest to the stairs. "What's the matter?" He slid his finger along her cheek. "You're frowning."

  "And why shouldn't I be?" Rachel glanced behind them toward the stairs, remembering. "It was shamel
ess, the way she was throwing herself at you."

  "Really?" He set both candles down on the narrow oak table that rested against the wall. His hands free, he spanned her waist. "I hadn't noticed."

  She knew he was doing this just to tease her. "Ha," she sniffed, "a blind man would have noticed."

  He trailed his lips along her hair. How had he been so fortunate to find her? The rest of his life seemed so empty now that he looked back. "Not blind, perhaps, but completely bedazzled by the beauty of the woman who sat across from me."

  Rachel laughed affectionately as she regarded him. "I think it's getting confused you are. The British are not permitted to kiss the Blarney Stone."

  "No, but they can kiss a colleen and fall victim to her spell." He loved this woman more than life itself and blessed the merciful God who had brought her to him. "Kiss me, Rachel. Kiss me quickly and cut the bad taste of Vanessa from my mouth."

  Good, he was immune to that witch's charms. Rachel cocked her head, a smile playing on her lips. "She called me a servant earlier today when I went looking for the kitchen. Would kissing you be part of my duties?"

  He urged her closer, fitting her hips against his own. Desire began to bloom instantly. "Only if there's no other way to have you do it."

  She felt his reaction and for a moment, she was sorely tempted. But there were rules to follow. Rachel rose on her toes and kissed him soundly. Though it was reluctantly done, she moved away before she completely succumbed to the magic of his mouth.

  With a sigh, she reached for her candle. "And now we'd better go to bed. 'Tis a long journey that's ahead of us in the morning."

  He kept his hands about her waist as his lips grazed her temple. "Can I persuade you to share my bed?"

  Rachel looked around, as if the very walls had eyes. "Not here. It's born in this house you were."