Moonlight Rebel Page 10

  The black man looked over her head toward his master. Morgan gave a short nod. "This way, miz." He led the way out.

  "Jason, my darling, how have you been?" Charity's voice came out in a rush as she took his arm and filled the space that had been occupied by Krystyna only a moment before.

  "I've been better," he replied, watching Krystyna disappear out the door.

  Chapter Nine

  Krystyna bid Jeremiah to wait for her as she made her way upstairs to Lucinda's bedroom. That was where she had left her sampler, safely folded on the bureau. Picking it up, she held it against her breast and closed her eyes for a moment. So much had happened so quickly. Her meager possessions had been stolen by those animals who had killed her father, and her outer garments had been damaged beyond repair. She had left them bundled for Lucinda to throw out. The sampler was all that she now had left of the past.

  As she began to leave the room, she hesitated, and then, because the night was cool, she took Jason's jacket from the bed where she had cast it and threw it over her shoulders. Feeling it against her skin gave her an odd sort of comfort, as if she were protected. She dismissed it as silly.

  Descending the stairs, Krystyna found the black man just where she had left him, waiting at the front door. "I am ready now," she told him.

  Jeremiah opened the massive portal. He waited for her to pass, then walked out behind her. It was a cloudy night. No moon, no stars. That added to the feeling of desolation. The light from the lantern Jeremiah held aloft illuminated their way.

  It wasn't very far, but far enough for the cool air to seep into her bones.

  The door to the cabin wobbled slightly as Jeremiah pushed it opened. Taking a deep breath, Krystyna walked in, unsure of what to expect. Jeremiah placed the lantern on the small, rough-hewn table that had once been a crate but now stood in the center of the room. Taking his time, Jeremiah stacked logs in the fireplace.

  It was worse than she had thought. Krystyna surveyed her surroundings slowly. There was a dirt floor and nothing beyond the table, a chair, and a narrow bed with dusty bedding. The single room looked sad and forlorn. Just as she was. She ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to chase away cold that went beyond the chill in the air.

  "Is she his fiancee?" Krystyna finally asked after several minutes had passed. Unlike the servants she was used to back home, Jeremiah didn't seem inclined to begin a conversation or to gossip. She was suddenly terribly hungry for the sound of friendly words. She thought it safe to share a few with this man. He looked trustworthy enough, at least for the thoughts she had in her head.

  "She thinks she is," Jeremiah replied, tucking kindling around the logs.

  Krystyna couldn't tell from his tone what he thought of the other woman. "Does Jason think so?"

  "His daddy wants him married and settled. Miz Charity was there," Jeremiah answered matter-of-factly. He let out a long breath as he coaxed the kindling to ignite. Finally, the flame appeared and rose higher, branding the logs.

  Jeremiah rose and turned to look at this strange, white woman his master had brought into the house. He found her looking about the small, barren room. She seems sad, he thought. His own lips curved. He knew about sadness. Sadness came when you couldn't do the things you wanted to, the things that gave you pride in being alive. She was white. What did she have to be sad about? She was free to come and go as she pleased, while he had to put up with Miz Savannah's railings and things that were a lot worse from Master Aaron.

  Finally, because she was an outsider, because she didn't talk to him the way the others did, he asked, "Why you want to stay here when you could stay in the big house?" He watched her face, wondering if he had overstepped his bounds.

  For her, the answer was plain. "My uncle lived in this room." She shivered as she looked around again. It was small, cramped, and smelled stale. It was nothing like the house Jan had lived in back home. "I do not know how, but he did. I want to be close to my family. This is the only way I can." She did not want to add that she wanted freedom from the others. Some things were better left unsaid.

  Maruska had better quarters, she thought. Searching for inner strength to see her through, Krystyna placed her sampler on the table and smoothed it out with loving hands. This was her anchor, her piece of home. This was all she had. And herself. That would be enough, for now.

  Jeremiah watched her silently. "You don't come from around here" he decided.

  She shook her head. Krystyna wondered if this strange man understood what was going on inside of her. Something in his eyes told her he did. "My home is far away, beyond the ocean."

  He nodded solemnly. "Mine was too."

  "You were not born here?" she asked in surprise.

  "No, they ketched me when I was mebbe five or six. I dunno just how old I was." He shrugged. "Old enough to know the difference 'tween here and there." They looked at one another for a moment. Each understood the other without the benefit of any words passing between them.

  "Then we have something in common, you and I," she said with a soft smile. "The loneliness, does it get easier?" She was so homesick, she thought she would die.

  “Ise too busy, mostly, to be longing for anythin' but my bed," he answered.

  Krystyna understood. She would keep busy until it was time to return home.

  Jeremiah stood looking at her for a bit, and then asked, "You been looking at me funny since you come here. Ain't they got people like me where you come from?"

  She was momentarily taken aback by his question. She hadn't thought she had been that obvious. "No. We are all the same shade in my country."

  Jeremiah rolled her words over in his head, astounded. "Who all does the work for you?"

  She shrugged. "Other people."

  "White folks?" he asked in mild surprise. "They work?"

  She smiled at his reaction. "Yes."

  "And you ain't got no slaves?" He tried to envision a world where there were no black people to do the work. It seemed like a made-up place, a land that couldn't exist.

  "If you mean that no one owns anyone, no, that is not true. We do not call anyone a slave, but the meaning is the same." She thought of the system that existed in her country, of the way powerful lords held life and death in their hands. "People rule other people, and the strongest ones rule over them. No buying and selling goes on, but people are owned just the same." For perhaps the first time, she realized what that really meant. Her rage at being called a bond servant had intensified all this for her. For the first time she knew what it meant to be on the other side of power, on the other side of ownership. It was a terrible thing. She shivered when she thought back to how some masters treated their peasants back home. It should not be allowed to happen. People were meant to be free.

  Jeremiah seemed to sense her thoughts. She saw a slight smile cross his thin lips. "You be all right here tonight?" he asked. She was grateful for his concern.

  She nodded, and though he was doubtful, he had no choice but to leave her.

  "Wait," she called after him, "your lantern."

  But he shook his head. "You be needin' that more than me. I knows my way 'round here with my eyes shut."

  After he left, Krystyna sat in the small cabin, staring into the fire for a long time. And then she cried, shedding all the tears that had not come since she'd been told they were leaving home. She cried for her uncle, for her father, for herself. And she cried because that woman had been there to sweep Jason away from her.

  That was the last thing she thought of before she fell asleep on the bed, too spent to take off her clothing, too unhappy to care.

  Chapter Ten

  Krystyna slept badly, her rest haunted by fitful dreams. Over and over again she relived her father's murder and the sharp slash of pain witnessing it had brought. By morning, her pillow was damp with tears.

  The sounds of people calling to one another woke her. She opened her eyes and looked around, confused. For a moment, she didn't know where she was. Then it all came
back to her at once. The voyage. Her father. Jason. Abruptly, she sat up, throwing off the covers she had wrapped herself in while asleep.

  The voices grew stronger.

  She rushed over to the single window that faced the house and saw a haphazard parade of black men, women, and children moving off toward the fields. As they trudged the familiar route, they sang refrains from songs they made up as they went along. Songs to comfort themselves in the early morning hours. Harvest was over for the year. It was time to prepare the earth for the seeding that was to come next spring.

  Krystyna came away from the window and sighed, dragging a hand through her hair, trying to focus her thoughts and harness her emotions. She knew she was little better than a slave now herself, at least in the eyes of the family in the house. She thought of Savannah and of the contemptuous way the young woman had looked at her.

  Keep busy, she told herself. Keep busy.

  She began to straighten the tangled sheets on her small bed. Though her hands were busy, her mind once again insisted on drifting to Jason and what had happened between them. What had happened inside her. Alone with her thoughts, she found that her cheeks did not burn with shame as they were supposed to. Rather, something within her reached out for the wondrous sensation she had experienced when their two bodies had been pressed against one another. She relived the way he had held her, had moved against her, heard again his whispered words of endearment.

  The same words he has probably used a hundred times before, she thought ruefully, remembering the way Charity had taken his arm, so familiarly.

  Muttering an oath, Krystyna threw the goose down pillow against the bed. She was a fool even to be thinking of the man.

  Well, she told herself, you know better now. She might be alone in a foreign country, reduced to a state of poverty, but she'd be no one's pawn. Her father hadn't raised her to be some man's paramour, no matter how charming and pleasing to the eye that man might be.

  Her father . . .

  A bitter pang seized her heart, tightening about it spasmodically. Tears threatened to come again. He was gone, really gone. Forever. She couldn't believe he was dead. He had always been so vibrant, so alive, filling out the corners of her young world. Always a part of her life. And unlike most fathers in her country, he had been interested in her development, not as an extension of himself but as a whole person. He had been touched by the way she had tried to please him, rather than taking it as his due.

  "Oh, Papa, why didn't you listen to me? Why didn't we stay?" she murmured in her native tongue. Tears slid down her cheeks as a rainbow of memories came crowding into her mind.

  With the back of her hand Krystyna wiped the tears from her cheek. Papa wouldn't want to see her crying. He would expect her to conduct herself like a countess and not give in to self-pity. She took a breath to steady herself.

  She had struck a bargain with Morgan McKinley last night. It was up to her to see it through. Once she was back in Poland, she would help with the work her father would have done if he hadn't been forced to come here for her sake. They still had money back home, money that Thaddeus had hidden for them against the day they would return. She would use that for the revolution —the unborn revolution that was on the mind of every Pole told to bend the knee.

  As her tears subsided and she regained control of herself, she sighed. She was going to miss her father terribly. Life would be very empty without his booming voice.

  She turned with a start as the cabin door slowly opened behind her. Jason stood in the doorway. The smile on his lips was a fraction higher on the left than on the right. Krystyna's heart froze even as her blood warmed within her veins.

  Will that wariness, that aloofness, ever leave her eyes? Jason wondered. It was gone only for the small space of time in which he had held her and kissed her. He longed for that time again.

  "I came to wake you up." He walked into the room, like a fox slowly stalking a hare that has nowhere to run.

  Krystyna clutched at her indignation. It was her only defense against him. "Do you not knock when entering a person's room?" she demanded, her eyes blazing.

  He wondered if she knew how breathtaking she was, her hair spilling about her shoulders, her eyes still thick with sleep but flashing sparks at him. It took a great deal of effort to restrain the fires that burned insistently in his loins.

  "Usually." He touched the tip of a lock and smiled as she drew away from his reach. "But I wanted to see you sleeping," he told her. "You have such an innocent look on your face, like a small child." The memory of it made him smile even more.

  But the accusing look on her face kept him at bay for a moment. "You took my innocence from me."

  "Oh no, Princess, I didn't take your innocence." He looked down into her face, a dark, seductive promise in his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat. "Not yet."

  "If you are thinking what I believe you are thinking—"

  The smile deepened. "I am."

  "That will never happen." Without consciously being aware of it, Krystyna took a step backward. She would have been shamed and horrified if she had realized what she was doing. She had never backed away from anything or anyone in her life.

  "Won't it?" His smile teased and stirred things inside her, making her skin tingle in the cool room.

  "A gentlemen would never do that." It was meant as a slap against his honor.

  Jason didn't see it that way. He took another step toward her. "I don't know what kind of gentlemen you have where you come from, but in the Colonies we're not plaster saints."

  Krystyna raised her chin. "So I see."

  He seemed to loom over her and she took another step, but he matched it, enveloping her until he seemed to surround her completely. "Here we're flesh and blood men," he placed his hands on her shoulders to hold her still, "with needs and desires."

  She shrugged him off and hated the amused look that remained on his face. "I shall try to remember that." Her tone was meant to put him in his place. It was the one she had used on insolent stable hands. It had no effect on Jason.

  "I’ll see that you do," he promised. She was cornered, her back against the wall, and it would be easy to have his way if he so chose. But it was not his way he was after. When something happened between them, he wanted it to be mutual. He wanted her to realize that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  Her breath lodged in her throat once more, threatening never to be regular again. He was going to kiss her. By all that was right, she should push him away. Yet her hands remained pinned to her sides, as if frozen by some magic. The magic of longing. It didn't help matters any for her to realize that some wanton corner of her being wanted him to kiss her again.

  If he didn't stop looking at her lips, he wasn't going to be able to live up to his noble intentions. With effort, Jason raised his eyes. "I like your hair like that. Loose." Deftly, he ran his fingers through it. It felt luxurious, as he knew it would. "It makes you look like a Gypsy."

  He wasn't giving her enough room to draw breath. She felt his breath on her face and her pulse quickened, even as she fought to maintain her disinterested pose. "I did not know you had Gypsies in this country."

  "We don't." Not until now, he thought.

  His nearness was breaking down all her defenses. She sharpened her temper, fighting for survival. "Then how do you know what one would look like?"

  He gave up trying to restrain his basic instincts. "You look like my idea of a Gypsy." He lowered his head, his lips inches from hers.

  Another moment and she would be completely lost.

  "And your friend? What does she remind you of?" Her tone was biting. He stopped, just as she hoped. She couldn't begin to explain the feeling of deprivation that suddenly washed over her.

  "My friend?" he repeated.

  "Yes, the young woman who came to see you last night." The one you remained with when I came out here, she added silently.

  He had forgotten about Charity as soon as she was out of his sight. "Oh,
Charity."

  Unless Krystyna had her definitions confused, there was nothing charitable about the woman she had met last night. "That is a strange name for a woman."

  Jason stepped back and grinned broadly as he detected the dislike in her voice. "Oh, so that's the way it is, is it?" He could have hugged her.

  She took advantage of the space he left her and moved to the side. Her eyes narrowed. "The way what is?" she wanted to know.

  It was not the most prudent thing to say, but he couldn't resist. "You're jealous of Charity."

  He was an insufferable oaf! "I do not have anything to be jealous about—"

  "That you don't," he agreed, taking her into his arms. The move had been so subtle, she hadn't even realized what he was about to do. "She can't hold a candle to you." Ever so slowly, he ran his fingertips along the outline of her cheek.

  His warmth penetrated her skin as he touched her face. She wanted to pull away, to be angry over his assumption that she wanted him so near. She failed miserably. Her limbs betrayed her. Her legs wouldn't move, and her arms turned limp again.

  He buried his face in the overwhelming softness of her hair. Her heart began to hammer madly as he kissed her neck. Why can't I find the strength to push him away? she demanded of herself, feeling undone.

  She had always been honest, with others and with herself. She knew the answer to her question. She didn't push him away because she wanted to feel the way she did. Now that it had been awakened, her body wanted to return to that heightened state, to return and even to go beyond.

  His lips found her mouth. Surrender loomed, and her eyes began to close. The last thing she focused on was the sampler on the table.

  Home. Honor.

  She had to think of home. She couldn't risk being entangled with this man. She would go home with no sense of sorrow at leaving. She had to put a stop to this madness before she was completely lost.