Moonlight Lover (9 page)

To humor him, Sin-Jin spanned his next to Bronson's. The difference was considerable. But Sin-Jin pressed on. "I promise it won't hurt your hands if your mind is educated." He dropped his hand to his side. "Tonight. After supper." His tone was firm.

Bronson sighed. It was all foolishness to him. But Mr. Lawrence did pay his wage. "Yes, sir, Mr. Lawrence."

Sin-Jin could read the older man's thoughts in his eyes. It seemed inconceivable to Sin-Jin how someone could be content to have an entire sphere of knowledge shut away from them. He tried to approach it in terms Bronson could understand. "That way, no one'll cheat you when I send you into town for supplies."

If that was all he was worried about, Mr. Lawrence could save himself the trouble. "No one's ever cheated me before."

Sin-Jin crossed his arms before him. "How would you
know?"

"Because—"

Bronson opened his mouth and a foolish grin overtook it. The wide shoulders rose and fell once again beneath the loose, stained white shirt. He spread his hands wide. He weighed two hundred pounds if he weighed one and he was as broad as a tree stump. It never occurred to him that anyone would risk cheating him.

"The owner of the emporium is a little man," he pointed out. "If you were him, would you take a chance and cheat someone like me?"

Sin-Jin laughed. Everyone who knew Bronson knew that he was mild-mannered and affable. Still, he did look foreboding, at least in size. "You have a point."

"Glad to hear it." And that, he thought, was that. Bronson began to take his leave.

"And so do I. Tonight," Sin-Jin called after him. "Dusk."

Bronson only sighed and nodded as he left.

Chapter Nine

The October sky was enshrouded in a bleak gray cloak.
The countryside was dressed for mourning as rain, endless, relentless, monotonous rain fell on Morgan's
Creek. It had been raining for the last three days and gave
no indication that it would cease today.

The sorrow it seemed to generate within a world bedding down for winter was reflected in Rachel's soul. Hands clasped behind her as she watched the rain descend, she sighed. Rachel hated the encroachment of winter, the shortened days, cold nights and even colder
mornings. Life was difficult enough. Winter always made
it more so. It was a time when all hope hid its face from the world behind white hands.

Riley looked up from his desk and saw her staring at the rain. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he wondered at Rachel's pensive mood. She'd been quiet all morning. It wasn't like her. She hadn't been herself, Riley realized, since the night Sin-Jin had brought him home from the tavern.

He set aside the piece he was working on and studied his sister, the quill still held poised in his hand. "You've
been standing by that window all morning, Rachel. What
is it that you see?"

"Rain."

She focused on the street. Completely soaked, the dusty path had transformed into a thick, oozing mess.
Damn this clay soil. Like a stone in summer, and with the
rains it turns into a bog.

"And mud. Awful, boot-sucking mud." She glanced down at the wooden floor. It was uneven, to be sure, but she had scrubbed it and done the best she could with it.
"Though I like the thought of company, I hope nobody'll
be coming in today. There's nothing I hate so much as washing mud from the floors." She turned to look at her brother. "Unless, of course, it's the British."

He laid the quill down on top of his article and pushed his chair back to give Rachel his full attention. "Still thinking about Sin-Jin?"

Despite her efforts to the contrary, she had done nothing else but think of the man and it annoyed her more than words could express. She crossed her arms before her and sniffed, knowing that Riley saw through her ruse easily enough. But she was bound to go through the charade for her pride's sake.

"I am not thinking about Sin-Jin."

Riley only smiled at her. It was a gentle smile that told
her she was simply wasting her words. No one knew her as well as he. There were times their father had sworn that they were of one mind, separated only by the intervention of five years.

Rachel drew her shoulders back defensively. Whether it was in response to Riley, or to the specter of Sin-Jin's warm smile, she wasn't sure. "In case it has somehow escaped your knowledge, there're a lot more of that ilk around than Mr. Married-And-A-Lecher Saint John Lawrence. The war's not over yet, you know, though we seem to be winning it handily enough."

She thought Sin-Jin was married. Riley sighed, relieved to finally be getting to the bottom of the thing. He would have gladly enlightened her sooner, but he hadn't realized that the matter was as serious as this. And
for her to act this way because she believed the man to be
wed, it had to be serious.

"Is that it?"

Why couldn't he just leave the matter be? Turning from the window, she crossed to the printing press and began carefully cleaning the platen.

"Is what it?" Her voice echoed of disinterest.

She wasn't fooling him for a moment, Riley thought, amused. She was interested in Sin-Jin. "You think Sin-Jin's married?"

"There's no 'think' about it." She replaced a letter in the wrong slot and then carefully picked it out again. "He said as much." She paused as a sliver of hope entered. She chided herself for her weakness. Sin-Jin was despicable, married or not and that was the end of it. She looked up at Riley. "Well, isn't he?" she demanded.

Riley rose from his desk, the article he had struggled with in his hand. They had expanded the Gazette to six pages.

"I've done some asking around at the tavern." Rachel raised a brow at the mention of the establishment. "Well, it is my job to gather news, Rachel."

She shook her head. The way men conducted themselves was a mystery to her.
 
"Why can't men exchange news without a tankard of ale clutched in their hands?"

A crooked grin sprouted on Riley's face. "Sometimes it's a glass of whiskey instead."

She laughed. Five years younger and she would always have to take care of him. It wasn't a task she minded. He was her brother and she loved him dearly. "You are absolutely hopeless."

She took the article out of his hand and began to peruse it. She frowned at a paragraph. Crossing to the desk, Rachel picked up the quill with the intention of rewording several sentences.

Riley removed the quill from her hand. "I am not hopeless. What I am is trying to get at the bottom of your surliness and put an end to it."

Rachel reached for the quill, but Riley held it aloft, keeping it out of her grasp. "I am not surly," she insisted angrily.

"Ha! And a bear has table manners."

She caught his sleeve and yanked hard. Caught by surprise, Riley allowed his arm to be lowered. With a triumphant cry, Rachel reclaimed the quill. She stuck her tongue out at Riley as a final gesture of victory. "Better than you at times."

With a sigh, he watched her change the words he had agonized over for more than an hour. Words always came faster to Rachel. It was because she was always talking, he reasoned. "Rachel, you're avoiding the subject."

She found something else to change in the article and looked up absently when she finished. "I didn't know there was a subject."

Looking over her shoulder, Riley read what she wrote and decided that it would stay. "Aye, there is and it's Sin-Jin and your temper."

She didn't care for being mentioned in the same breath as that insufferable man.

"The only thing my temper has in common with that blackguard is that I'd like to give him a taste of it once." She dropped the quill and returned to the printing press. These days it seemed as if she was always moving in several directions at once, which was just as well today. Even talking about the man made her feel restless.

Riley chuckled as he watched her. "By my count, that's already happened twice."

She'd seen Sin-Jin only twice. She frowned, remembering, and raked her fingers through her wayward hair. "Not to my satisfaction."

As Riley approached, Rachel moved toward the window again. The rain had begun to fall more heavily, tapping angry fingers along the roof and against the windowpanes. If she moved around any more, Riley thought, he was going to feel as if he was stalking a fox. "Stop doing the damn jig for a minute Rachel and stand still so I can talk to you."

She looked over his shoulder. "You're doing just fine now."

In case she meant to sidestep him again, Riley caught her arms firmly between his hands, bracketing her in place. Rachel raised questioning, impatient eyes to his face, waiting for an explanation.

"Listen to me, Miss-Know-It-All." He enunciated each word slowly. "Sin-Jin is not married."

Rachel's eyes narrowed. Just what sort of a trick did her prankish brother intend to play on her?

"Correct me if I'm wrong, dear brother, but a man cannot have a father-in-law unless somewhere in the bargain, he gets himself a wife as well." And why that one piece of information should bring her so much distress annoyed her beyond words. One man was as good as another—and that usually wasn't very good at all.

Riley raised his voice to be heard above anything she might want to interject while he was speaking. "He can if she dies."

In an instant, the fire within her was completely extinguished, to be replaced by pity. Death. This she understood. This she was more than vaguely acquainted with. Death had been an unwelcomed visitor in her world more than once.

"She died?" Rachel said softly.

"Aye." Seeing that she was still, Riley released her. "Sam said it was the influenza." He knew his sister well enough to know that the next part would arouse more than just pity within her. There was an echo of the past in it. "She was to have a child as well."

Rachel sank down on the stool, sympathy pooling through her soul. She pressed her hands to her mouth as her fingers held back a moan. Their mother had died with child as well. Four months along she had been when the fire claimed her.

She thought how stricken her father had been when their mother died. And how she herself had felt, consumed with grief. "Oh, the poor man."

For a moment, she thought of Sin-Jin in that fashion, defined his reactions in her own terms. But then she took herself to task for crediting feelings to a man who might not have any to speak of. How was she to know how he felt or thought?

What was wrong with her? She was wasting her pity on a Tory, for heavens sake. On a man whose neighbor, or even a kinsman perhaps, had helped to burn down her home and kill her mother. She was wasting tears on a man whose countrymen had forced her and what was left of her family to escape to America in order to flee certain death, undertaking a voyage that was ultimately to rob her of her father and little sister.

She was wasting her pity on a man who had forced himself on her. She squared her shoulders as Riley began to recreate his article in typeset.

Rachel set her mouth hard, as if that would blot out the event she couldn't evict from her mind. "Still, that didn't give him the right to kiss me."

Type clattered noisily to the platen as Riley swung around. He stared at Rachel. Perhaps he hadn't heard her correctly. "He kissed you?"

Rachel looked down at her hands, annoyed with herself. She hadn't meant to say that. But now that she had, she expected to see Riley's indignation flower on her behalf. "Yes."

It didn't seem possible. He'd been present the one time Rachel and Sin-Jin had words. "When?"

Rachel rose from the stool. It looked as if he didn't believe her. Did he think she was making it up to satisfy some sordid fantasy she was harboring? "When he poured you into your bed that night."

He couldn't believe it. "How?"

Was he asking for details now? How heartless could he be? She glared at him. "The usual way, Riley. He used his lips."

He still could not envision it. Trying to absorb the words, Riley placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward him.

"Rachel, I've never known a man who could come within a foot of your person without noble intentions who wouldn't live to sorely regret it. You have the right cross of the best dirty fighter in Philadelphia." Riley sobered as a thought materialized. "Did he knock you down?"

She wanted to say yes, but lying wasn't a practice she approved of, even if it meant that Sin-Jin would get what was coming to him from Riley. "No, but he knocked the musket from my hand."

Riley stare at her, confused. "The musket?" He
repeated the words dumbly, as if they were in a tongue he
had no knowledge of.

"Aye. The one I was pointing at him." Since Riley continued to stare at her silently, she added, "The one I use for hunting."

Riley's reaction came as a complete surprise. And disappointment. Instead of displaying ire at her honor
being sullied, Riley began to laugh. As his body swayed,
he released her shoulders. He laughed so hard, he had to hold his sides as they trembled. Helpless, he sank down on the stool, tears coming to his eyes.

She gave serious thought to kicking the stool out from under him. Instead, she clenched her fists and dug them into her waist. "And what is it you're laughing at?"

He tried to answer, but couldn't. It was more than a moment before Riley could find the breath with which to make a reply. Even then, it came out in gasps.

"He's more of a man than I thought. And far braver
than anyone I've ever known." To go up against a musket
and her sharp tongue, Sin-Jin must have really wanted to
kiss Rachel. If so, this was a situation worth encouraging.

Rachel threw up her hands, her visions of Riley
becoming incensed enough to avenge her honor vanishing
like smoke from a chimney into the misty haze. "Ah, you're no help."

Riley took several deep breaths and let them out, trying to steady himself. Attempting to appear serious, he turned to face her. He gripped the side of his desk to help him stand straight.