Moonlight Lover

by Ferrarella, Marie

  "Not tonight, Sin-Jin," she said miserably. "My head aches so."

  She heard someone approach and stop just at the foot of the bed. The footfalls sounded to heavy to be Sin-Jin, but that could have just been the fault of her headache. It magnified everything.

  "Don't worry," a deep voice rasped, the sound like fingernails scratching along a washboard. "You won't have need of your head before long."

  "What?" Surprise and the sickly taste of panic slashed through her at the same time.

  Her eyes flew open, but she couldn't see who it was. Something foul-smelling and coarse was being thrown over her. A blanket of some sort, or a sack. Alert, frightened, Rachel struggled to free herself. Something or someone hit her on the head.

  Instantly the leprechauns were transformed into giants and the pounding in her head swallowed her up, casting her into black nothingness.

  Sin-Jin started, his head jerking up. The small room was bright with sunlight. It was morning.

  He rubbed his eyes and realized that he had fallen asleep, sitting up in the chair by the fireplace. He hadn't been able to force himself to lie down in bed. The letter he had picked up from the floor was still clutched in his hand. The candle had burned itself out.

  Shifting, he discovered that every bone in his body was stiff. There was an ache in them that rivaled the one he felt in his heart. He stretched and several joints cracked.

  The first thought that burst upon his mind, like water filling a bottle, was that Alfred was dead. The second came more slowly. He had to tell Rachel.

  There were decisions to be made. The death of his brother was not just a personal matter. There were now vast repercussions to deal with. It was all well and good to talk of never returning home when there were no responsibilities involved. But now that the title had been passed on to him, the matter had taken on a completely different hue. There were many things to be considered.

  But whatever decisions he had to make, they could no longer be made alone. Rachel was very much a part of his life and he part of hers. He could not just think of himself when he thought of the future, any future. She had a voice in it as well. An equal voice.

  Sin-Jin needed her now. Needed her comfort, needed to hear her rambling voice with its simple comforting homilies and aggravating arguments.

  He needed her.

  Shrugging his shoulders to undo the knots that had laced muscles together in a tangled whole, Sin-Jin rose and strode toward the water pitcher. The maid had forgotten to refill it, but there was enough left to suit his purpose.

  Pouring what there was into the basin, he cupped his hands and briskly scooped it up. He anointed his face and used the back of his sleeve to dry it. It was sufficient to loosen the sleep from his soul.

  The memory of the words in the letter did the rest.

  Dragging a hand through his hair, Sin-Jin quickly made his way to Rachel's room.

  Sin-Jin rapt once on the door, remembering that she had retired early last night with a headache. He hoped it was gone. He needed to talk.

  "Rachel." He called her name softly through the door.

  When there was no response from within, Sin-Jin knocked again, then tried the door. It moved easily. He opened it and saw that the room was empty. Her bed looked as if she had spent a restless night.

  Apparently she was feeling better and had gone to breakfast, he thought. He shook his head as he left the room. Just like the woman not to come for him. Too independent, that was her problem.

  And her charm, he thought, taking the stairs quickly. The letter was in his coat pocket. He wanted her to read it before any discussion ensued.

  There were two people taking their morning meal at the small table beside the hearth. Neither of them were Rachel. Surely she wouldn't have left for the embassy without him. They had gone together to listen to the negotiations every morning. Sometimes they had accompanied Franklin, sometimes they left after he did. But they always went there together.

  He could not put his finger on the source of it, but he began to feel uneasy.

  Sin-Jin found the innkeeper in the kitchen. By now, his patience was dangerously thin. "Where's Mistress O'Roarke?" he demanded of the man.

  The innkeeper looked like a mushroom with tiny eyes and a crooked mouth set in a roundish face. It quirked now as he tried to smile and failed.

  "Gone, sir." The tiny black eyes looked at Sin-Jin nervously as he tried to hurry past him into the next room.

  Sin-Jin followed him and grabbed one fleshy arm, stopping him before he could take another step. He thought he felt the innkeeper quiver.

  "Gone?" Sin-Jin repeated, confused. "Do you mean she's gone to the embassy?"

  "No. I mean gone." The man cleared his throat and produced a letter from the thick folds of his wide apron. "I was to give you this. She left very late last night, just after you returned, actually." The tinny voice was picking up speed. "She told me to make sure you read this." He thrust the folded paper into Sin-Jin's hand.

  Exhaling loudly, the man scurried away, muttering something about there not being enough time to get everything done properly.

  The note was damp with sweat. Sin-Jin sank down on the roughly cut wooden bench and read.

  Deerest Seen Gin:

  I haf decided that I muss go home. I kan't stay in this place of bloodie brits no longer. I haf gone to Amerika again. Yors, Rachel.

  Sin-Jin swallowed an oath as he crumpled the letter into a ball. There was fury in his eyes when he looked up again. Fury that masked the fear which had begun to build.

  There were more patrons at the table now, all demanding their breakfast. The innkeeper hurried by Sin-Jin, a large tray of eggs and a side of bacon in his hands.

  "Trouble, sir?" he asked conversationally. There were beads of perspiration on his upper lip.

  Sin-Jin's hand darted out. The tray went flying. The plates crashed and broke, a yellow mass covering the heap. The bacon rolled under a table.

  The innkeeper squeaked in terror, his eyes bulging out of his pudding face as Sin-Jin suddenly grasped him by the throat and raised him until the man had to stand on tip toe to touch the floor.

  The innkeeper made gurgling noises as he choked and turned a bright shade of purple. A hush fell over the inn as everyone else within sight of the scene fell silent.

  "Where is she?" Sin-Jin hissed.

  The small eyes almost rolled out of the man's head, like blackberries tumbling from a basket. The fleshy lips moved, but no words came out.

  Sin-Jin lowered him slightly, but he kept his hand at the innkeeper's throat. "I don't know. Doesn't the letter say?" Whimpering, he coughed and almost choked. "Please, sir, please, I don't know any more."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sin-Jin saw one of the men at the table begin to rise. As smooth as a dove's feather, Sin-Jin drew out his sword and pointed it in the man's direction. He never released his hold on the innkeeper.

  "Hold, sir. This is none of your affair," Sin-Jin warned, his voice quiet, his threat palatable.

  The other man sank down at the table once more, never uttering a single word.

  Sin-Jin looked at the innkeeper. The latter stared at him in frozen horror, obviously fearing for his life. As well he should, Sin-Jin thought. He was not in a generous frame of mind.

  "She didn't write the letter," Sin-Jin said evenly.

  "How—how do you know that?" The innkeeper was almost swooning in his fear.

  Sin-Jin struggled to keep his black fury reined tightly in. Where was she? What had they done with her? And why? Who had done this?

  There was none to take the brunt of his anger and fear save the innkeeper.

  He lowered his face to the innkeeper's and saw the latter's terror grow until it was almost a visible thing. "Because she's literate. She publishes a gazette with her brother."

  Sin-Jin shook him once, as if to shake the confession free. "Now tell me who wrote the note and what happened to Rachel or I'll slice you thinner than that beef you serve." He tighten
ed his grasp as he raised the sword.

  The innkeeper's knees buckled, but Sin-Jin jerked him up. "I can't breathe," the man gasped.

  Sin-Jin released him, but pressed the point of his sword to the innkeeper's generous belly. "You won't have to in a moment unless you tell me where she is."

  The man fell to his knees, his hands laced together and raised in supplication. He shook uncontrollably. "He took her."

  "He?" Sin-Jin pressed the sword a little further. The innkeeper bleated like a lamb being led to slaughter. "Who?" Sin-Jin demanded.

  Tears were sliding down the beefy cheeks, losing themselves in the folds of fat around his neck. "The man who delivered the letter I gave you last night."

  His patience was almost gone. "What man?" Sin-Jin shouted.

  Desperation made the tiny eyes almost crazed with fear. "I don't know, just a man. Big, ugly. There was a scar, yes, a scar, running from his eye to his ear." The innkeeper traced in along his own face with shaky fingers. "Like he'd been in a sword fight."

  He'd seen such a man, Sin-Jin suddenly realized. At Shallot. He had looked out the window of his brother's room and seen the man directly below. He remembered staring at the scar and wondering where he had gotten it.

  Sin-Jin yanked the innkeeper to his feet. "I want you to take a letter to Ben Franklin. Can you do that?"

  The head bobbed up and down as if it was not attached to his neck.

  "Yes, yes," he babbled. "Anything."

  Sin-Jin shoved him away, disgusted. "Bring me a quill, paper and ink," he ordered. "I have to leave for England immediately."

  The innkeeper scurried away, glad to still be alive.

  He was going to have to return to England, Sin-Jin thought, if he hoped to find Rachel.

  Alive, he prayed.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Fury and fear alternated as Sin-Jin's traveling companion during his return journey to England and to Shallot.

  Restlessness hounded him as he wished for the wind to blow harder, the ship to travel faster, his horse to gallop quicker. Time was dribbling by when he needed it to have wings and fly him to his destination.

  Vanessa was behind this. He saw her mark on the abduction, though he would have never thought her capable of something like this. To what lengths would she go? He had no answer to that.

  Or perhaps he had. That was why fear was nibbling at his soul like a mouse gnawing its way through a piece of cheese.

  His only hope was to confront Vanessa and make her surrender Rachel. If she didn't, he knew he was capable of breaking every bone in her evil body. The discovery had surprised him, but there was very little he wouldn't do to save Rachel.

  In fact, he realized, there was nothing he wouldn't do.

  As Sin-Jin impatiently urged on the horse he had rented at the stable in Cornish, he could scarcely believe that he was back in England again so soon. The overwhelming sorrow he felt over his brother's untimely death had been completely blotted out by the panic that Rachel's kidnapping had created.

  He fervently prayed that she hadn't been harmed. He knew she was spirited and would put up a fight, but the messenger the innkeeper had identified was a hulking, brute of a man. Her abduction was testimony enough that he had easily overpowered Rachel.

  Was she frightened? Sin-Jin wondered. Calling for him?

  Despite the gravity of the situation, a small smile curved his lips. If he knew Rachel, she was probably damning his soul to hell because he hadn't come to her rescue yet.

  The single thought was all that Sin-Jin had to hang onto.

  Vanessa stood preening before the long mirror she had had Alfred travel to France to purchase for her a year ago. She smirked, thinking of him now. A week ago, they had put the man into his grave and covered the casket with dirt, burying him out of her sight forever.

  Finally.

  What a poor excuse for a man he had been.

  She had grown weary beyond words of his fumbling inept lovemaking. All the couplings she had had to endure in the last ten years with that foolish idiot could not hold a candle to even a single time she had spent with Sin-Jin.

  Remembering those times now made her skin burn and her very loins grow hot and ache.

  She smiled into the mirror. Sin-Jin would come to her now.

  He would come to grieve at his brother's grave and to pick up his rightful title.

  And his rightful wife.

  He should have been the earl all along. If he had, she would have had everything that she wanted right from the beginning. The power and the man.

  But she had been young and foolish ten years ago. Otherwise, she would have found a way to make Sin-Jin the earl. Just as she had found it now.

  The satisfied smile grew as she posed and tried to decide which was her best side. Everything had to be perfect when Sin-Jin arrived. He would be winded and frantic, searching for that whore. But one look at her and he would forget all about Rachel. And now there was no Alfred and no misguided sense of honor to get in Sin-Jin's way.

  Vanessa paused, considering. Perhaps the blue dress would be better after all. It brought out the vividness of her eyes more.

  Alfred's eye's had been like the eyes of a dead man long before he died, she thought, amused. How simple it had all been for her. And what a pity she hadn't thought of it sooner. Poisoning someone was so easy when one knew how to do it. Alfred's poisoning had been slow, steady. Just a little at a time so no one suspected. There were times she thought she'd go mad, waiting. But it had all come about in the end.

  He had never suspected anything.

  Fool. But that had been his flaw. His problem, not hers. And now Sin-Jin would have the title and she would have Sin-Jin. All so remarkably easy for a woman as clever as she was.

  Vanessa turned and studied her back. Yes, the blue velvet would be better, she decided. The days were uncomfortably warm, but it was important that Sin-Jin's first sight of her be arousing. It had to make him forget all about that whore who had won his heart.

  "What? No widow's weeds, Vanessa? No respect for the dead?"

  Vanessa banked down the surprised cry that rose to her lips as she whirled around.

  Sin-Jin was standing in the doorway of her room, his shoulder leaning against the jamb. His hands were tucked under his crossed arms.

  It was either that, or give in to his impulse and strangle her. He would save that for later, he promised himself. After he rescued Rachel.

  His eyes coldly appraised the woman in front of him. It was incredible how much she resembled Krystyna. The coloring, the bearing, even the green gown she had on reminded him of a dress that Krystyna had once worn. But there was softness in Krystyna's eyes. It reflected the kindness of her soul.

  Nothing shone in Vanessa's eyes but blatant malice and avarice. Her soul wasn't mirrored there because Vanessa had no soul.

  He was here earlier than she had planned, but so much the better. Vanessa smiled slowly, confident that the sensual movement of her lips would seep under his skin and arouse him. Once he had been mad for her. So much so that she had thought he was going to confront Alfred and demand her, spoiling everything. She knew now that it would have been better if he had. Demanded her and fought a duel to the death in her name. Alfred would have surely been the loser and she the winner.

  But there was no longer a need for demands. She had seen to that.

  Vanessa lifted her shoulders and then let them drop again carelessly, wantonly, like a cat that was stalking a prey and biding her time.

  "I see no need to bury myself in somber colors." She circled Sin-Jin slowly, as if searching for the best avenue of attack. "Alfred is past knowing or caring what I wear. It would do no earthly good to him if I went about like some old, mourning matron."

  Facing him once more, Vanessa brushed her lips against his. She pressed her breasts against his arm seductively. She felt him stiffen.

  Still the stubborn fool. She curbed her impatience. He would come around soon enough. It was only some antiquated
code of honor that was preventing him from showing his true feelings for her.

  How could anyone so beautiful be so ugly? "Old." Sin-Jin said the word as if it was a curse he was bestowing on her. "That's the thought that frightens you the most, isn't it? Growing old."

  Sin-Jin turned her roughly around and made her face the mirror. She twisted away but he cupped his hand against the back of her head and forced her to look at herself.

  "But you will, Vanessa. You will grow old," he promised. "And your skin will whither and hang like an old hag's."

  The thought terrified her more than death. She jerked her head away. "No!"

  He saw the fear, the vanity. How worthless she was, he thought, pitying her the way one might pity a murderer their moment of pain when brought to justice at the gallows. "Oh yes, my love. Old age comes for us all and there's nothing you can do to stop it. And if one wears one's sins upon one's face, yours will be scarred and marked for more years than it was smooth."

  Disgusted, he released her.

  Vanessa turned around, her hand at her throat. Did he suspect that she had poisoned his brother? For a moment, she feared for her very life.

  But no, he couldn't possibly know what she had done. No one did. Sin-Jin was probably referring to her trying to seduce him the night he had remained in the manor.

  If he suspected the other, she knew she would already be dead.

  Vanessa draped herself around Sin-Jin's neck, pleading. If she played on his sympathy, he would forgive her. Sin-Jin had always been a softhearted fool. "I couldn't help myself when I saw you. I had to have you, had to feel your body against mine. All these long years, you're all I thought about."

  He took her hands away and held her at arm's length. "You should have spent them thinking of your husband."

  What was the matter with him? How could she make him understand? How could she make him want her again?

  "There is no need to talk about him any longer. I never loved him," she insisted.

  Sin-Jin believed her. Vanessa was incapable of loving anyone but herself.

  She slowly snaked her arms around him again. "There was no love lost between the two of you, either. Now Alfred's gone and we can finally be together." Her mouth turned up to his, tempting him with lips that were full and eager. "I make a wonderful mistress of the manor."