Moonlight Lover (35 page)

"And why shouldn't I be?" Rachel glanced behind them toward the stairs, remembering. "It was shameless, the way she was throwing herself at you."

"Really?" He set both candles down on the narrow oak
table that rested against the wall. His hands free, he spanned her waist. "I hadn't noticed."

She knew he was doing this just to tease her. "Ha," she
sniffed, "a blind man would have noticed."

He trailed his lips along her hair. How had he been so
fortunate to find her? The rest of his life seemed so empty
now that he looked back. "Not blind, perhaps, but
completely bedazzled by the beauty of the woman who sat
across from me."

Rachel laughed affectionately as she regarded him. "I think it's getting confused you are. The British are not permitted to kiss the Blarney Stone."

"No, but they can kiss a colleen and fall victim to her spell." He loved this woman more than life itself and blessed the merciful God who had brought her to him. "Kiss me, Rachel. Kiss me quickly and cut the bad taste of Vanessa from my mouth."

Good, he was immune to that witch's charms. Rachel
cocked her head, a smile playing on her lips. "She called
me a servant earlier today when I went looking for the kitchen. Would kissing you be part of my duties?"

He urged her closer, fitting her hips against his own. Desire began to bloom instantly. "Only if there's no other way to have you do it."

She felt his reaction and for a moment, she was sorely tempted. But there were rules to follow. Rachel rose on her toes and kissed him soundly. Though it was reluctantly done, she moved away before she completely succumbed to the magic of his mouth.

With a sigh, she reached for her candle. "And now we'd better go to bed. 'Tis a long journey that's ahead of us in the morning."

He kept his hands about her waist as his lips grazed her
temple. "Can I persuade you to share my bed?"

Rachel looked around, as if the very walls had eyes. "Not here. It's born in this house you were."

He chuckled as he kissed the tip of her ear. "No need for all the memories I have of it to be somber."

Aye, she was tempted. But several of the staff had been
with the manor a long time. They'd known Sin-Jin as a young man. She wanted nothing tarnishing his reputation.

"Tomorrow night, when we're aboard the ship and bound for France, I'll lay with you until dawn. Tonight, you're the good Master Sin-Jin, returning home."

With a teasing laugh, she kissed him quickly and disappeared into her room.

"I'll be down the hall in the room around the corner if you find some pity in that hard Irish heart of yours," Sin-Jin called after Rachel.

He waited a beat for the door to open again. When it didn't, he resigned himself to a lonely night. Sin-Jin took his candle from the table and went down the hall to his old room.

He felt it the moment he opened the door. It no longer suited him, he thought, looking around. There was no sense of homecoming, only alienation. It was as if the room had belonged to someone else, not him. Sin-Jin
realized, as he set the candle down on the nightstand, that he didn't want to be here at all. This was a world that was
behind him now and would remain so.

Well, it was only for one night, he reasoned. And the
bed was good.

Quickly, he shed his shirt and slipped beneath the soft downy covers. After the long day, it felt good to finally rest. As he began to drift off to sleep, he was vaguely aware of a sweet scent wafting around him.

Roses, he thought. The room smelled of roses. Odd. There were no roses growing around the manor, at least none that he'd seen. He was dreaming.

In truth, Sin-Jin was more than three-quarters asleep when a distant noise seeped into his consciousness. A door was opening. His door. He turned in time to see a sliver of amber light crease the floor like an arrow streaking across the sky. And then it was gone as the bedroom door creaked closed again. There was nothing but the dim, dying light from the fireplace to faintly illuminate the room.

He was aware that someone had eased quietly into the room. He could hear breathing. Within a moment, he felt someone slipping into bed with him. Rachel, he thought, pleasure flooding his veins.

Sin-Jin smiled to himself as he shifted over in the bed, creating a space for her beside him. "So, you've changed your mind."

Only a murmur of assent answered him.

The rain had abated and a full moon was struggling to
emerge from behind a cloud. Silvery beams threaded into
the room through the uncovered window, crisscrossing on the floor.

Awake, aroused, Sin-Jin reached for her, pulling Rachel's body to his. Her long fingers groped along his chest, then dipped lower, eagerly tugging away at his breeches. And all the while, her mouth was hot on his skin. It stirred a memory from the past.

Within a heartbeat, Sin-Jin tensed.

The room was almost dark, but he needed no bright light to see what his heart already told him. It wasn't Rachel. There was neither the scent of her skin nor the feel of her body.

This was someone else he had once known.

Sin-Jin abruptly pushed the woman from him and searched for the candle on the nightstand.

"No." The voice was low, husky, melodious. "Don't light it."
 

“Vanessa.”

It was an accusation spoken in astonishment and disgust. Sin-Jin bolted upright in the bed, as if he had been stung by a wasp.

Despite her entreaty, he rose and lit the candle using the tip of the poker from the fireplace. Returning to the bed, he held the candle close to her. She lay against the pillow, her dark hair wantonly spilling over it. She had slipped out of her shift and was completely naked beneath the sheet. He remembered how it had once been between them, how he had burned for the times they were together.

And how he had ached, how he had hurt when he'd discovered that she had chosen his brother over him. There were many nights when he had laid awake in his bunk, desiring her until he thought he'd go mad.

He looked at her, remembering all this.

Sin-Jin had never wanted anyone or anything less in his life.

The candlelight was kind to her, making her skin a golden hue. Vanessa raised her hands to him in supplication.

"Come here," she coaxed, her voice as low as smoke along the moors.

She didn't like the look in his eyes, didn't like the loathing she thought she detected. Oh God, he couldn't turn her away, not after she had spent all these long months wanting him, all these long months planning this.

He had never wanted to strike a woman before this moment. He struggled to restrain himself now. For Alfred's sake, he curbed his impulse.

"Put your clothes on, Vanessa." When she remained where he was, he felt his patience snapping. What sort of a black-hearted creature was she? "For God's sake, woman, you're my brother's wife."

"I'm almost your brother's widow."

And then Vanessa did rise, not to leave, but to entice. The sheet drifted away from her as she rose to her knees.
Her body was still firm, still supple, and it ached for him,
ached in a way she could have never imagined. Alfred had been a disappointing lover in Sin-Jin's enthusiastic wake.

Sin-Jin's eyes were hard, condemning, as he looked at the woman he had once loved. Swallowing an oath, he bent down to retrieve her nightshirt. Without a word, he threw it to her.

Stunned, afraid, Vanessa held the nightshirt to her. She climbed quickly from the bed and crossed to him. She knew she could make him change his mind if she could only get him to listen.

"Sin-Jin, there hasn't been a night that's gone by that I haven't regretted what I so foolishly did ten years ago. It's true you know, what they say, act in haste, repent in leisure." She wove her arms around him. "It was you I always
 
loved,
 
not
 
Alfred."
 
Desperation
 
beat in her
breast, but she kept it from her voice. "We can have what
we once had."

He threw off her arms angrily. He saw through her now. By a stroke of luck, he had been spared before. He wasn't about to act the fool now.

"We didn't have anything, Vanessa." Disgust dripped from his voice. "I only thought we did. You didn't love me. You didn't love him." He no longer saw her beauty, only the ugliness of her soul. "You loved being the mistress of the manor." Sin-Jin's eyes narrowed, his mouth hardened. "And if Alfred dies, since there are no children, the title falls to me."

She'd been too vain about her appearance to ever allow herself to conceive a child. Now she regretted the error in
judgment. She wasn't about to make a second mistake. Sin-Jin had to be seduced.

"To us," she said softly. Her breath caressed his mouth as she brought hers close to it.

Sin-Jin's lips curved mockingly. "Not if I don't marry you.

"But you will." Her eyes flashed like bright blue points
as her desperation mounted, cracking her voice. "You still love me. That little Irish whore you brought along with you can't—"

He'd withstood enough. She could try to cuckold Alfred with his own brother, but he wouldn't endure slander against Rachel. With a swift movement, he grasped her hair and twisted it around his hand.

Vanessa cried out, her eyes startled as fear entered them. Sin-Jin had never displayed so much as a shred of temper before.

"Careful, madam," he warned. "She is everything I once believed you to be."

She almost whimpered, preparing to beg. "I can be, again—"

"You never were." He released her, thrusting Vanessa away from him and toward the door. He felt a queasiness rise in his stomach. It worked its way to his mouth. The taste was bitter. "Now get out of here. The sight of you sickens me."

Scorned, temper flared in her eyes. Vanessa knew that there was nothing to be gained by shouting. That wasn't the way to manipulate Sin-Jin. Actions had always spoken louder than any words to him.

Vanessa grasped his hand and placed it on her naked breast. "I won't go that easily, Sin-Jin. Tell me you don't feel anything when you touch me."

Her eyes held his as she pressed her body against him. She moved her hips against his seductively, waiting for his reaction. There was none. None in his body, none in his eyes.

With a strangled cry of desperation, she grasped him by his shoulders and pressed her mouth against his. Her tongue darted, hot and moist, along his lips, teasing, seducing, demanding admittance. She was refused.

There was nothing.

Vanessa's head fell back. "Damn you," she shrieked. "Are you made of stone?"

Calmly, knowing that infuriated her more than his angry dismissal, he looked her over slowly, contemptuously, from her head down to her toes.

"No, but my heart is, at least toward you. Now. Before
I only thought of you as a woman led astray by her greed,
her pathetic need for possessions. But I never hated you then."

She heard what was unspoken and a chill seized her heart. "You don't hate me now. You love me." She attempted to thread her arms around his neck, but was thwarted.

He held both of her hands between his own. "You are my brother's wife and always will be. Remember your marriage vows."

Roughly, he half dragged her from his room. "Alfred doesn't satisfy me," she cried desperately. "No one ever did, but you."

His smile was cold, pitying. "Even if I believed you, and I don't, it's too late. I love someone else."

She twisted from his grasp and turned to face him in the doorway. "But I can make you happy."

He pushed her from him into the dark hall, throwing her nightshirt after her. "Only if you leave."

Grabbing up her nightshirt, Vanessa silently cursed his soul to hell.

Chapter Thirty-six

The night seemed cold and endless as time dragged on
within the small bedroom. Rachel sighed restlessly as she
tried to find a place for herself in the bed.

She missed his warmth.

She stared at the canopy that sagged above her. It felt
as if she had been trying to discover a comfortable spot on
this bed forever. She came to the conclusion that there
was none to be found. The bed sagged in the center just as
the canopy did, making her feel as if she was lying in a giant spoon. Vanessa had undoubtedly chosen this room for her, knowing she would be unable to get a decent night's rest.

So, Rachel thought, with a smile slipping across her
lips, she would just have to go elsewhere to find it. By her
estimation, a decent length of time must have gone by at this point. Surely everyone else in the manor was asleep at this hour.

She slipped quietly from her bed. The nightshirt Vanessa had loaned her was too long and too tight across her chest. Rachel had to leave a generous amount of buttons undone.

Less work for Sin-Jin, she mused.

Rachel lifted the shirt to keep from tripping. It wouldn't do to have someone hear her, least of all the mistress of the manor.

Thinking of the woman, Rachel made a face as she eased slowly out of her room. She had experienced an instant, intense dislike for the older woman. It had very little to do with the fact that Vanessa had once been Sin-Jin's lover, although that certainly didn't help smooth matters along.

Rachel stopped as she heard a noise. Pressing herself
against the doorway of the next room, she held her breath
and waited. But no other noise followed. Perhaps it was her imagination. She glanced around, searching the shadows before she ventured on.

No, she didn't dislike Vanessa just because of that. There was a shrewishness about the woman, a coldblooded meanness that Rachel recognized as a characteristic trait of the self-absorbed who had never had to work
for their bread. It made Rachel wonder how on earth Sin-
Jin could have ever cared for her.

Beauty, no doubt was the culprit. Men were blinded by
it, blinded to everything else when in its presence. Thank God Sin-Jin had come to his senses.