Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (2 page)

"Me too." Gabriel coughed for a moment, then sniffed. "Do you reckon Mama knows we're here?"

"Of course she does," Sera answered brightly. "Angels always watch over children."

"Yeah?" Gabriel didn't look convinced. He reached down to fondle the ears of his spotted hound. "Say, do dogs go to heaven?"

"Sure." Sera parroted Mama. "'God loves all creatures great and small.' Right, Rafe?"

Sure.
Rafe's chest heaved.
Every creature except me
.

He tore his eyes from his sister's guiltless face. He had no illusions about the disgrace he'd caused his mama, much less the shame he'd caused his family.

So why don't you get it over with, God? Why don't you strike me down so I can't destroy anyone else who loves me?

Before God could oblige, saving innocents like Sera and Gabriel from the malignance in Rafe's soul, an angry young man called out from the church. "Sera! Where are you?"

Sera caught her breath, and Rafe stiffened, recognizing his older brother's voice.

"Gabriel?" the young man called this time. "Answer me!"

Both Sera and Gabriel shrank closer to Rafe.

"Uh-oh. Michael sounds mad," Gabriel whispered behind his palm. "Should we hide?"

Sera nodded, her eyes as round as moons. Together, they glanced around the cemetery, more worried about a spanking than pneumonia. Rafe watched, uncertain what to advise, until they spied the icy steps of a tomb. When their faces lit up like twin candles, Rafe envisioned broken bones.

"Hold on," he warned, grabbing their coat collars before they could run. Unfortunately, the oldest Jones sibling rounded the corner in time to see Rafe restraining the children.

"When they didn't answer, I should have known you were to blame," Michael Jones called across the churchyard. "Never mind that it's Christmas. Or that Mama was laid to rest today. You just can't let a single minute go by without sinning, can you?"

The old guilt ate at Rate's gut. He neutralized its acid with anger. Let Michael and every other hypocrite in his father's congregation say he was spawned by Satan. Now that Mama was gone, the gossip couldn't hurt her.

Michael threw open the cemetery gate and stomped inside, making the children squirm. He was a tall, broad-shouldered boy for his sixteen years, weighing a good twenty pounds more than Rafe. To see them together—Rafe with his tawny locks, Michael with his blue-black mane—most folks had a hard time believing they were brothers.

Maybe that's because they weren't, Rafe thought resentfully. Not full brothers, anyway.

Jedidiah had suffered the proof of Mama's adultery like the Christian martyr he was. He'd deigned to raise her bastard as his own son. In his heart, though, Rafe knew that Jedidiah had fed and clothed him only because he'd wanted the pleasure of watching Mama repent every day of her life. Jedidiah Jones hated Rafe.

And Michael was his father's son.

Hastily wiping away the proof of his grief, Rafe straightened his spine. He wasn't going to let Michael catch him in a weak moment. No one, not even Jedidiah, had a tongue that lashed like Michael's. Most folks figured Michael would follow in his father's footsteps and become a shepherd of the Lord.

Rafe just knew his brother would grow up to become a hanging judge.

Halting two paces from the children, Michael planted his fists on his hips and glared at Rafe. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I don't answer to you."

"That's your trouble, Raphael. You don't answer to anyone."

"Yeah? Well, I reckon I'll just go to hell then."

"Not if Papa has anything to say about it. You're woodshed-bound, boy."

Turning his shoulder in dismissal, Michael next faced his youngest brother. Gabriel hastily put his hound between them. In spite of the child's defiance, Michael's blue eyes softened. "You were coughing all night again, Gabriel. I don't want you getting any sicker. Let's go." He held out his hand.

"I'm not sick like he is," Sera said, tossing her dark ringlets. "I'm staying here with Mama."

"You can't, Sera. Mama's dead. She's underground," Michael added, as if to soften the reminder.

"No, she's not. She's over there." Sera waved at the tree. When she blew it a kiss, Michael pressed his lips together, much like his father always did.

"Papa told you not to talk about ghosts. Now come on. You're coming with me and Gabriel." With his free hand, he tugged the prayer book out of her grasp.

"Hey!"

"You know Mama's prayer book's not a toy."

"Give it back!" Her soprano voice shrilled in panic. "I can't see Mama any more. I can't see the angels!" She threw herself after the treasure, but when Michael held it out of her reach, she started to sob, jumping up and down and grasping at thin air. "Mama, where are you? Mama, come back!"

Rafe took a stiff step closer. "Give her the prayer book, Michael."

Wrestling with both children now, Michael glared daggers at him. "This is more of your influence, I'll wager."

"Saints don't wager," Rafe flung back. "Or maybe you've been led astray by those dime novels you've been hiding in your own prayer book."

Michael's cheeks mottled. Mama's book dropped, and the children dove after it. But Michael didn't notice. He was too busy clenching his fists.

"Profligate."

"You don't even know what that means," Rafe retorted, rallying the sass everyone had come to expect from him. "You just heard
him
say it once, and you figured it was bad."

"Yeah? Well, I don't need Papa to tell me what bastard means. You're not fooling anyone, Raphael.
She
wasn't fooling anyone."

"You leave Mama out of this," he warned, taking a step closer and clenching his own fists.

"Out of what? The truth?" Michael's lip curled. "You came into the world, and you ruined her."

"I did not!"

"Mama could have gone to heaven if it wasn't for you. I don't know how you can stand to live with yourself."

Rafe reeled at this nearly mortal blow. Was it true? Was his beloved mother burning in hell because of him?

"You're lying!" He grabbed his taller brother's coat lapels. "Take that back! Mama is too in heaven!"

"Take your hands off me, whoreson!"

Michael shoved, and Rafe swung. In the next instant, they toppled onto the grave. Kicking and punching, cursing and howling, they fought like Cain and Abel. Rafe could see little more than the hail of dirt and snow as his fists rained down on his brother's mouth. His only thought was to silence that lashing tongue forever.

Michael fought back, though, more devil than saint. Tearing at Rafe's hair, jabbing at Rafe's nose, he landed blow after ear-ringing blow as they rolled, locked in mortal combat. Fourteen years of bitter rivalry for their mother's affection were unleashed in that explosion of rage. Rafe thought he might have killed his brother if he'd had the size and strength to stay on top. The thought scared him—scared him enough to miss a punch. Michael's gloves promptly closed over his windpipe.

"Raphael!" Jedidiah's horrified cry pierced the pounding in Rafe's ears. "Raphael Jacob, unhand your brother at once!"

Rafe's shirt collar twisted, jerking him back with such force that he nearly strangled in the noose of his tie. For a moment he wheezed, flailing backward through steam clouds of breath; in the next instant, he slammed shoulder-first into a fence post.

"Michael!" Jedidiah reached for his favorite, but Michael was already climbing to his feet, dabbing his split lip with his scarf. Rafe, swiping the snow from his eyes, was more glad to see the tears on Michael's cheeks than the blood.

"Michael Elijah, what has he done to you?" Jedidiah cried, reaching out again.

"Nothing," Michael muttered and shrugged his father off.

Jedidiah's chest heaved. In his stark black frock coat, which hid the levity of his white collar, Jedidiah looked more intimidating than usual. He'd always been physically powerful, his size better suited for smithing. Rafe had heard the whispers that Jedidiah was the antithesis of his real father, a reportedly slender, jovial man who'd humbugged entire towns as part of a traveling salvation show. Supposedly, Rafe looked and acted just like him. Maybe that's why it was so hard to understand why his papa had abandoned him. Rafe had always secretly wondered: was he that despicable?

"A brawl. A brawl in my churchyard!" Jedidiah rounded on Rafe, and the children slinked out of his way. "How dare you raise a fist in anger here. Have you forgotten what day this is?"

Mama's burial day
.
Rafe flinched as shame lashed through him.
Mama, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! Please don't hate me for fighting on your—

"Christmas," Jedidiah sputtered, while Rafe remained too upset to speak. "It's Christmas Day!"

Bile burned its way to Rafe's throat. Why should it stun him that Jedidiah Jones hadn't thought first of his dead wife?

"Wherever I find the devil's work, Raphael, I seem to find you," the preacher railed. "In my charity, I took you in. I gave you my name. I sought to save you from your sins, and what gratitude do you show me? You strike my firstborn! You spill his blood on his mother's grave! Wicked, spiteful child, what have you to say for yourself?"

Rafe climbed slowly to his feet. His shoulder throbbed. His left eye was swollen half shut, and his nose trickled blood. But with Mama gone, there was no one to notice, much less care. Certainly the preacher who'd pretended to be his father all these years didn't.

Rafe glanced longingly at Michael, standing so rigidly and glaring at him. For a moment, he remembered a lonely, desperate time when he'd wanted his brother to like him, to play with him, to give him just ten minutes of the attention Jedidiah had denied him. Gabriel had eventually come along to fill that need, and then Sera, but by that time, Rafe had grown leery of loving anyone. The children were still too young to understand why he was "unwashed and unholy," as Jedidiah had once described him. They would grow older, though, and when they did, Michael would teach them.

As Jedidiah had taught Michael.

Raising his head, Rafe met the preacher's gaze with a hard-won dignity and a smoldering stare. "I say nothing. God is my witness. Let Him be my judge."

Jedidiah purpled, as Rafe knew he would.

"Salvation is far from your grasp, young man, as your impudence attests!" He pointed what Rafe secretly called The Forefinger of Doom. "Heed me well, Raphael. The wages of sin are death and eternal damnation! As long as you fall short of the glory of God, it is up to me to see you repent.

"Therefore, you will take yonder shovel and repair the damage to your mother's grave. You will walk home to cool your temper. And when you arrive, you will receive twenty lashes for the injuries you inflicted upon your brother."

Rafe's jaw dropped. "What about
my
injuries?"

"Aunt Claudia can see to them once you've been disciplined."

Rafe clamped his mouth closed on the futility of argument. Once again, Michael was presumed innocent, while he suffered the responsibility and the punishment. It was unjust. It was unkind.

More than that, it was unbearable.

"Seraphina," Jedidiah barked, "Gabriel, go to the wagon."

The children tensed like fiddle strings as they became the focus of their father's attention. Taking a nervous step toward the gate, Sera hesitated, then raised worried eyes to her father.

"Papa," she asked timidly, "what's a whoreson?"

"To the wagon," he ordered ominously.
"Now."

She gasped, scampering for the gate. Rafe's scarf slid off her shoulders. Gabriel, too intimidated to pick it up, ran with his dog after his sister. His coughs echoed in the brittle air.

Jedidiah retrieved the shovel. Thrusting it into the snow, he left the handle quivering by Mama's marker before he turned his back on Rafe and strode away.

Michael was the last to go. For a moment, he stood, broad and foreboding, a hulking shadow that all but obliterated the setting sun. With his breaths curling before him, he reminded Rafe of an angry bull.

Suddenly, Michael stooped. Pulling the scarf from the snow, he shook it off and tossed it at Rafe.

"Here," he said grudgingly. "You'll need this."

Then he was gone.

Rafe's fists tightened over the scarf. He stood that way for many minutes, his heart pounding into his ribs, his throat nearly too tight to breathe. A dusting of flurries tumbled from the sky.

At last he spied the buckboard. It bounced over the frozen ruts and headed down the hill. Seated in the back, the children turned toward him, their little bodies jolting beneath their brazier-warmed blankets. Sera raised her mitten to wave good-bye. After a moment, Gabriel did too.

A tear spilled down Rafe's cheek. Angrily, he dashed it away. Tossing the scarf around his neck, he grabbed the shovel and plunged it into the snow. Dirt was hopelessly scattered throughout the drifts; still, he did his best to dig it up, to pack it down and make amends.

"I know you're in heaven, Mama," he muttered. "Good people go there."