Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (15 page)

She looked at him over her shoulder. “The English surprise me.”

“How so?” He leaned back against the pile of pillows
and patted the place next to him. After a moment, Beth
crossed to him. She took the chair again instead, just as he knew she would. He smiled as she seated herself. If the challenge was easily met, then it was not a challenge.

Beth looked at him, her words earnest. “The war we
fought between us is not that far in the past. Why would you want to help me?”

He ached to slip his fingers along her face, to acquaint himself with the feel of her lips, and weave his touch so that his hands could memorize her body.

“I fought no war with you, Beth.” A cynical look crossed his brow as he thought of those years. “Wars are for old men to plan for gain.”

That wasn’t why they had fought the Revolution. She was proud to have been born in a country that had forged a singular place in history. “There were principles involved in our war.”

Our war. She was a rare woman, indeed. Like none
other he was acquainted with. “And I see that they were
important to you. But you are too young to remember what it was like.”

He couldn’t be that much older, she judged, yet he spoke as if he had wisdom and she possessed but childish notions. “Freedom is something one is never too young to savor.”

Her answer pleased him to a degree that surprised him. “Ah, we think alike. I’ve no great love for the men who wish to keep others beneath their yoke.” He could see by her dubious expression that she needed convinc
ing of that. “I am English by the very whimsical hap
penstance of birth, not affiliation. Or choice. My loyalty is to my men and to those I serve.” His eye narrowed as he thought of his past. “Whom I choose to serve. I have no love of aristocrats.” He spat the last word.

His sentiments confused her. “An odd thing to say, for a man who owns all this.” She waved her hand about the room, then looked at him, suspicion entering her gaze. “Or did you steal it?” That would seem more than likely, given the man’s beliefs.

“Neither.” Her confusion heightened and he all but laughed to see it. “I am but overseeing the manor and its lands for a gentleman presently residing in the Colonies. The States,” he amended, “I believe they are called now, out of earshot of the King. Saint John Lawrence is the present Earl of Shalott, not I.”

“Sin-Jin?” she asked, her eyes wide. Could they be speaking of the same man?

“Yes.” He leaned forward, intrigued. “You say his name as if you know him.”

“I do,” she affirmed quickly, stunned at the coincidence. Fate, she was beginning to perceive, was a very odd thing. “He is a neighbor.”

Duncan’s smile was wide in his pleasure. “Then that makes us neighbors as well.” He reached for her hand. “By association.”

She moved her hand before he could fold his fingers about it again and send her heart racing. “By very limited association.”

His laugh was lusty, then tolerant by turns. “As you wish.”

Her curiosity returned as she looked upon him. Eyes the color of the sea he professed to love, hair like a
golden flag unfurled about his broad shoulders. And still he wore no shirt, a fact that was playing very badly with
her reserve and her nerves.

“What I wish is for you to tell me who you are.”

Her quietly voiced question rippled along his skin. “Why?”

She sought refuge in but part of the truth. “You are
my host. My well-being has temporarily been placed in
your hands.” She drew herself up. “I would like to
know to what manner of man I have entrusted that wel
fare.”

Here was a woman who could probably outtalk the
devil. Had she been Eve, the serpent would have been induced to take a bite of the apple himself. “You turn an
argument well.”

“As do you.” He was attempting to flatter her away from her purpose. She stood by it. “I am waiting.”

Duncan shook his head in admiration. “Would that my mother had your fire and tenacity.” His mother had
been a sweet-faced woman, kind of soul, with no more
backbone than a flea. “I would have, perhaps, had another father than the one who begat me.” He spoke the last of it to himself rather than to Beth.

“Dorchester,” she guessed, and saw his eyes darken again. She guessed correctly.

Duncan nodded grimly. “Yes, the late Earl of Dorchester.”

There was something in the way he said it that aroused her unease. “He died?”

“Aye, by my hand.” He could see it all even now, if he but closed his eyes.

This was too heinous a fact to comprehend. Surely there was some mistake, or barring that, an explanation that would absolve him in some way, though how, she did not see.

“You killed your father?”

He would not lie to win her, not about this. “Yes, but not by design, though in my heart a thousand times I had done the deed in as many ways. But that evening, when I went to him, it was only to talk, to ask for a share of what was mine by rights for what he had done to my mother.”

Duncan looked at her and saw no reason to sugarcoat the words. If she would know, then he would tell her. “He raped her.” He saw the horror enter Beth’s eyes, just as it must have his mother’s. “She was the stablemaster’s daughter and he took her there, in the stables, with no gentleness, no love, not even a kind word.

“He took her by the right of ownership.” The words left a foul taste on his tongue. “It broke her spirit.”

Duncan had never known her any other way, except with a sadness in her eyes. She had loved him as best she could, but there was only a part of her left to give the young boy, only a small part to show him the way.

“I was twelve when she died. Dorchester would have
none of me after that. An hour after the funeral, he had me cast from the estate, to find my way on the streets of London.” Bitterness twisted his mouth as he recalled the event. “He had a wife and two foppish sons. He did not need to look upon a bastard.”

Beth’s heart ached for the motherless child he had been. Her own life, though filled with impatient trials, had always known love. There was not a day she was without its comforting arms.

“Samuel found me.” A smile rose at the memory. “He cut a finer figure then. He took me in and taught me a trade. Not a noble one.” A smile curved his generous mouth. “But one that helped me survive long enough to return to my roots.”

Beth held her breath, though he had already told her the outcome. “And what happened?”

“I was eighteen when I finally confronted my father
with my claim. I was young and angry, and still a little
idealistic, perhaps. That had been my mother’s doing.
She always waited for things to become better. She died
waiting. I was not about to.

“But Dorchester was no more of a mind to accept me
then than he had been six years before. Less. He threat
ened me. That failing, he tried to stab me with his dagger. It was not the best of homecomings.” His breath caught as he recited the events dispassionately. “I meant only to deflect the blow, but he fell. And the dagger found a different target.”

He took a breath as he looked out the window. In a way, it seemed as if all this had happened to someone else in another lifetime. “I went to sea that night, a price
upon my head. I took the others with me and we learned
another sort of trade.”

Duncan turned to look at her. Beth had taken his con
fession in silence, but there was no condemnation written across her brow.

“So there you have it, my life spread out before your feet. Do you wish to trample it with those delicately fashioned shoes?”

Is that what he was expecting from her? Had some other woman voiced her contempt for him because he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket?

“No,” Beth answered quietly. She raised an encourag
ing smile to her lips. “How did a privateer come to be living in a manor like this?”

It amazed him how easily she passed over his story, as if it was no more than that. As if there was no oppressive weight to it.

“I saved Sin-Jin’s wife’s life, though she was not that at the time.” He spread his hands wide. “It was another matter of debts being paid and repaid. I am a great believer in repayment of debts.” He owed Samuel more
than he could ever repay, but he could try in some small
measure. Duncan took a deep breath, pushing the memory all away into the past once more. “Sin-Jin and Rachel wanted to live in America, but there was the manor to see to. He left that for me to do. So now me and mine live here, reformed men all.”

He reached over and snared a curl that had come loose from its pins. He toyed with it, winding it about his finger, his eyes on hers. “Have I satisfied your curiosity, Beth?”

“Yes,” she lied, her breath gathering once again in her throat.

He had satisfied her curiosity about his origins, but had not even begun to explain why it was that he stirred her so; why he managed, with but a look, a promise of a touch, to arouse emotions so violently within her.

That was something, she knew, that would have to go
unexplained. Curiosity had killed the cat, and Beth had no desire to join its legions.

Though the way he looked upon her now did give her
pause.

Suddenly alerted, Beth gathered her skirts together and rose abruptly.

“I must see to Sylvia,” she announced. “I have not seen her since last night.”

“Samuel tells me that she has been well taken care of,” Duncan called after her.

“That is what I’m worried about,” Beth tossed over her shoulder as she hurried out.

Chapter Fifteen

Beth hurried from Duncan’s room, her skirts whooshing along the floor, announcing her passage. Suddenly, she had need to turn to a familiar face.

Where had Sylvia gone to?

She had not looked upon the other woman since last
night, when they had brought Duncan in. What had be
come of her since then? The woman was such a mouse, it seemed odd that Sylvia had not sought her out before now. Beth hoped that nothing bad had befallen her.

Determined to find an answer to this puzzlement,
Beth went in search of Sylvia. The first to cross her path
was Jacob.

He brightened immediately when he saw her approaching, ready to be of service once again.

“Is there anything you require, mistress?” He wanted nothing more than to prove himself to her, to win but a small corner of her regard and esteem.

“Yes.” The emphatically voiced response echoed down the long, darkened halls that were somber even in the brightest of days. With the weather so dreary, the
halls were cast into mournful shadows. “Have you seen
Mistress Sylvia?”

Jacob looked at her blankly. The name meant nothing to him.

“The older woman who came in with me last night,” Beth pressed.

Enlightenment washed over his face. “Oh, the one who’s taken such a fancy to Samuel, you mean?”

Beth blinked, astonished. “Has she?”

She couldn’t envision Sylvia raising her eyes from the floor long enough to take a fancy to any man. The woman always kept to herself, guarding her person and most especially her maidenhead as if it were the Holy Grail. She feared having anything to do with any man.
She had even been shy with Philippe Beaulieu, and ev
eryone knew, Beth thought, that a warmer, kinder man God had never created.

Beth was convinced that Jacob had made some mistake. Yet Jacob appeared to know who she was asking for by this description.

“Oh, yes, mistress. Like two peas, they’ve become, sharing the same pod.” Suddenly realizing that he had said too much, Jacob closed his mouth abruptly. His two large lips flapped against one another like freshly laundered sheets spread out on a line to dry in the April wind.

Beth stared at him, completely stunned. “What do you mean, the same pod?”

“Mean?” Jacob cleared his throat, his eyes lowering to the floor as if he were searching for some response there. He looked as guilty as a cutpurse caught with his hand around a pouch. “I mean nothing.” A weak smile spread his lips. “Always talking too much, Samuel says I am.”

He began to shuffle away from Beth, hoping to get away before she questioned him further. It was not his place to tell her anything.

“He’s right, you know, but that’s only because I never know when to stop.” And he should have ceased now, Jacob thought, by the look of the shocked expression on Beth’s face.

She could sooner believe that women had been granted a say in their government than she’d believe that Sylvia had taken up with a man. Her expression softened and she placed a supplicating hand on Jacob’s arm. She felt the muscle there tighten.

“You can tell me, Jacob,” she prodded softly. “Did they share the same room?”

The young man looked torn between telling the
woman he clearly worshipped what she wanted to know and keeping a confidence he knew he should. Loyalty to
Samuel won out of his eagerness to please her.

“You’d best be asking the lady that yourself, mistress.”

Frustration mounted within her. Beth maintained a rein on it. “And that I shall. But where is she?”

A hint of the patience she was losing was in her
voice. Were there no straight replies in this Godforsaken
place? Was everything here a huge riddle, spun for their enjoyment and at her expense?

Jacob’s shoulders eased as if he felt the inquisition had passed. “With Samuel, I’d wager. The last I saw of them, they were going into the weapons room.”

“I see.”

Sylvia, who averted her head and shivered whenever
someone swatted a fly, who fainted at the sound of dis
charging pistols, was in the weapons room. The world had indeed turned upside down.

“And that would be where?” Beth prodded, when Jacob said nothing further.

He could easily tell her, but that would be sending her away. He meant to keep her company a moment longer, if he could.

“Come, I’ll show you.”