Moonlight Surrender (Moonlight Book 3) (6 page)

There was no response. Neither choice was good. Sylvia looked from one unsatisfactory place to the other as she wrung her hands.

Though she had vowed to be patient with the woman,
Beth felt that Sylvia had well exceeded her allowance for the situation.

“Sylvia, we haven’t all day, and the rain is beginning to fall heavily again.”

Still the heavyset woman remained where she stood, her face a mask of indecision. “I—“

Beth had had enough of this foolishness. “Get in the coach.”

Distress at the notion of being in a confined area with a dead man seized her. Religious to a fault, Sylvia still believed in the existence of ghosts.

“But—“

Beth gripped the reins. “Now! Or I swear I shall leave you here.”

Horror stamped its imprint on the round face. “You wouldn’t.”

No, she wouldn’t, even though she was sorely tempted.
But Beth was secure in the knowledge that Sylvia was
too fearful to risk the chance. Beth raised the whip in her
hand as if to snap it over the horses’ heads. She looked down at Sylvia one last time.

“All right, all right, all right,” Sylvia cried. As if a pack of wild animals were snapping at her heels, she scrambled into the coach. Fear thickened her throat as her eyes bounced from the dead man on the floor to Duncan and back again. “But your mother shall hear of this. This I swear to you upon my immortal soul.”

Beth was counting on it. “Fine. Then perhaps the
next time I need to make a long journey, my mother will
refrain from sending you with me.” She glanced down to make certain that Sylvia had closed the door.

Sylvia dug her wide fingers into the coach door, holding on for dear life. “Nothing could please me more.”

Beth snapped the whip and the horses were off. “And
neither me.”

With a quick forward lunge they were off, heading due east.

Duncan had been drifting in and out of a dark, formless world. He was aware of a body being deposited into the coach and of a faint buzzing about his head that turned into a caterwauling. He opened his eyes just as Sylvia was struggling into the coach.

“She’s a virago, isn’t she?” His eyes drifted toward the ceiling.

Smarting at being ordered about by a mere chit of a girl, angry at the indignities she had been forced to suffer, Sylvia sniffed.

“A hellcat from the day she was born, they tell me.” It suddenly occurred to Sylvia who she was addressing. She shrank into her seat, not an easy matter, given her girth. “Keep your distance, sir.”

He couldn’t have risen up if the coach had been on fire. Her order struck him as humorous. “Your wish is but my humble command, madam.”

“Mistress,” she corrected primly.

“I rather thought that,” Duncan muttered softly, a mo
ment before he slipped away again.

Samuel ran his hand through his hair, causing a ripple in the thick, silver mane. There was no getting away from it, he thought, as he paced about the small tower room. Old age was besetting him. Together with unnec
essary, unwanted aches along his lanky, thin-boned body
had come a change in temperament.

He had transformed into a worrier.

Fifteen years ago, this would not have transpired.
He’d been too full of life to worry about its possible
ramifications. Where once nothing had concerned him except the next meal, the next full wind, and the next wench, and not always in that order, now concern would gnaw at him with the annoying persistence of a galley rat.

It was Duncan’s fault, all of it. Nothing but Duncan’s fault. Duncan had been the one who’d taken him away from his element, taken all of them away. For Duncan had been the leader since before the time he had reached full manhood.

Samuel sighed. The rain increased the ache in his bones, fouling his mood further.

It had been too long since they’d been at sea, living by their wits, their fates in the hands of Neptune, he
mourned. He ran his hand lovingly along the smooth,
cylindrical spyglass as if it were the long, supple limb of a willing woman.

Much too long.

The land did things to a man. It civilized him, for one. The very word left a bad taste in Samuel’s mouth. The land made a man think of things such as harvests
and tax collection. On the sea, the only harvest was one
they’d reap from another ship and the only tax collector
was fate, not some flesh-and-blood man with too much
kidney pie and spirits in his belly.

Samuel spat on the dusty wooden floor. Then, as an afterthought, he rubbed it in with his foot.

He leaned out the narrow window, the wind covering his face with rain.

Damn it, where was that boy?

The storm was growing too intense for him to see very far, even with his spyglass. He wrapped bony fingers around the instrument again in frustration. Duncan had promised to be home before the noon hour, and now it was more than twice past that.

As if to verify his assumption, Samuel glanced at the pocket watch that Duncan had given him last Christmastide. As he had looked down at the gift all those many months ago, Samuel had scoffed at it as a symbol of a landlocked man. But truth be known, he had admired
the gold case around it and the fine craftsmanship on the
face.

Samuel had always loved fine work and pretty objects.

He closed his hand about the watch as he pocketed it in the pouch at his baggy trousers. Touching the watch only reminded him of things, made him long for the life he’d once known. A life of privateering on the high sea; a life of danger and excitement, where a man felt alive.

Before then, he and the crew had lived on the streets of London, seeking their fortunes in other men’s lapses.
But Samuel preferred the sea, even though it was on the
streets that he had first found Duncan. He’d been a
young, angry whelp of a lad then, in danger of being de
voured by the bands of miscreants who roamed the dark alleys, plundering and taking from those weaker than they.

Duncan was his. He had given him life, though his loins had not produced the boy. Samuel had rescued Duncan from meeting his maker that fateful day, jumping in beside him when there were four to his one. Then there were two, and the odds had turned drastically.

Samuel smiled fondly, remembering. He had been a fine one with a sword in those days. None better. He could slice the hairs from a peach without bruising the
skin. He sighed longingly. That was when his eyes were
clear. Now he squinted when cutting Duncan’s hair, secretly fearful of cutting his neck instead.

Old age was a bastard thief that mercilessly stole the most meager possessions of its victims.

He sighed more deeply, then raised the glass to his eye again, vainly sweeping the road that led to the doors of Shalott.

Silly name, that, he thought, fruitlessly attempting to
make out the figure of a horse and rider when there was none to see. Shalott
...
it sounded as if a fop lived here,
instead of Duncan, the former terror of the English sea. Not that this estate was Duncan’s, of course. It was only his to oversee for that former British transplant, Sin-Jin Lawrence. But it felt like his, and they had the run of it. The arrangements Lawrence had made were generous.
Food and shelter for Duncan and the crew and money to
line their pockets with amply.

So they had remained and continued to do so. And
grew soft in the bargain, he thought with a trace of bit
terness. He thought of Duncan. Soft enough to fall prey to things that they wouldn’t have before.

Something appeared on the road, materializing out of the shadows. A large, dark shape. It was moving, and moving quickly.

Samuel started and leaned forward. Rain thudded against the end of his glass as he strained to make out what was approaching.

A ghostly apparition.

His heart stopped.

He forced himself to look again. It was a coach from
hell, the horses’ hooves pounding the earth as they came
straight for the manor. The very earth trembled as they grew larger.

“Sweet Jesu.” He crossed himself the way his mother had each time she’d uttered the oath.

His breath caught in his throat as he made out the form of a woman, her rain-lashed hair flying about in the wind as she urged the horses on.

It couldn’t be real.

Samuel took an instinctive step back away from the window. The spyglass nearly slipped from his icy fingers. He could see the coach now without benefit of the glass.

A moment later, he came to life and fled the room.

Chapter Six

He was turning into an old woman, Samuel upbraided himself, as he hurried down the narrow stairwell that
eventually led to the second floor. That wasn’t a ghost coach approaching, no vehicle from hell searching for a passenger to take over the River Styx to the netherworld. That was a woman driving the coach. A ripe, wet, flesh-and-blood woman. It was the weather that had disoriented him so.

That, and his damnable concern.

Well, Duncan be damned. He was probably holed up
with some tart, acquainting himself even now with what
she had hidden beneath her skirts.

He thought of the woman driving the coach. Maybe he’d do some acquainting himself, tonight. It was high time, too. All the women in the manor were either spoken for, babes in nappies, or toothless old hags. The manor needed young blood, and so did he.

“Rider approaching!” Samuel shouted.

He hurried down the long, darkened hallway to the front stairs that led into the large sitting room. Candles flickered as he passed, striving vainly to hold onto their flames.

Grasping the banister to aid his quick descent, Samuel saw two of the crew at the game table below.

Hank, with his thatch of strawberry hair hanging in eyes the color of sand pebbles, looked up at Samuel’s cry, barely interested.

“Duncan back?”

His gaze returned to the cards he held. Another poor hand, he thought, disgusted. Jacob was going to win this round as well.

He glanced at the younger man sitting across from him. That would make four in a row. Hank frowned thoughtfully as he studied the deck. Jacob was his brother, but that didn’t absolve him from cheating.

“No,” Samuel announced, as he reached the bottom. “It’s not Duncan. There’s a woman driving a coach as if the very hounds of hell are snapping at the horse’s hooves.”

Hank dropped his cards, coming to life. He had heard only one word Samuel had said, but it was the only one he needed.

“Woman?”

“Yes,” Jacob said easily. He flipped over his brother’s hand and smiled. Beaten him again. Too bad they weren’t playing for real money, instead of pebbles. “You know, those creatures who like to wash themselves more often than you.”

Samuel laughed as he passed them. “The cat likes to wash itself more often than Hank does.”

Hank frowned, his face looking even more pinched as
his lips drew together. “Don’t hold with taking me skin off to satisfy some giggling wench.”

Samuel laughed, the sound reminding the others of a hen cackling triumphantly after laying an egg. “Yeah, only his britches.”

Jacob pushed away from the table. The day had been long and monotonous, just like the day before it.

“Let’s have a look-see on what the fates have sent to Master Sin-Jin’s door.” He hurried after Samuel.

Hank trailed behind both of them, still muttering about what foolishness it was to wash more often than each full moon.

Samuel unlocked the heavy oak doors. His fingers ached as he grasped each handle and turned it. With a
mighty shove, he threw both doors open in unison. The
courtyard before him was slick and dark as he took a step out.

A shift in the wind’s direction had the rain lashing out at the trio, sending them momentarily retreating to the shelter of the house. Angry waves of rain fell on the ground as if the sea had suddenly been upended and
hurled pell-mell into the sky. It was determined to return
back to earth.

Beth felt as if her arms were being pulled out of their sockets. She’d been struggling with the reins from the first
and now yanked hard on them, attempting to bring the
horses to a halt. It wasn’t easy, after the full gallop she’d
allowed them. She’d needed no whip to spur them on
their way. The rain and the thunder had driven them far
faster than she could have. It was controlling them that was the trouble.

That, and stopping them.

If she didn’t manage to bring them to a halt soon, they were going to run straight into the house, Beth
thought in mounting despair. A house as fine as any she
remembered seeing in Virginia.

Apparently, she thought, as the distance between the horses and the house decreased at an alarming rate, she’d misjudged the man within the coach. He didn’t live in some small hovel with his wife and twelve children.

Unless, of course, the manor wasn’t his.

Straining, struggling to hold onto the reins even as they bit into her palms, Beth saw an old man appear in the doorway as the dark doors suddenly yawned open.

Dear God, she was going to run him down, she thought in horror.

“Hold, you horses, hold!” she ordered, shouting the command at the top of her lungs.

Bracing her foot against the brake, she tugged on the reins with all her might. Her entire body was straining against the horses’ will.

“Is she real?” Hank spilled out into the doorway, crowding Samuel.

Jacob was instantly aroused. Blessed with better eyes than the others, he saw the way her breasts were straining against the wet fabric of her dress. More than two handfuls. His mouth watered and his young loins began to burn in anticipation. At nineteen, he hadn’t had what he deemed his fair share of women. This one would make up for it nicely.

“Real or not, she’s mine.”

Hank turned and looked at him sharply. “I saw her first.”