Moonlight Rebel (20 page)

Would that the crooked British were that easy to get rid of, Morgan thought, waving the smoke aside. "She is, eh?" Even though he knew as much, hearing it again pleased him. He looked in his son's direction. "This rebellion of mine, as you call it, should be yours, too," he informed him, seizing on the term Jason had used. "When will you see that, boy?"

As usual, Jason's patience evaporated when he was confronted with this unresolved conflict. His father could only see his own side and didn't understand anyone else's point of view. Especially not in this matter.

"In my own good time, Father. When the time comes to make a decision, I will. But it's not here, yet."

The friendly talk threatened to turn into another argument, so Jason left. Morgan watched him go, shaking his shaggy head.

Perhaps the newest member of this household can make him change his mind, Morgan thought. She had the kind of sense Jason needed to infuse into his own life. And Morgan suspected that Jason was far more taken with the dark-haired wench than he was allowing himself to believe. There was hope. He watched the flames in the fireplace as they leaped up. There was always hope.

Chapter Fifteen

As the days passed and Krystyna fell into a routine of sorts, gaining with it an understanding of how the household worked, it made it easier for her to avoid Jason. She could elude him successfully by having someone near at all times. She let her guard down and was alone only when she knew that Jason was nowhere about. But as the Christmas season approached, she found it increasingly difficult to be alone.

The season brought with it a pang of nostalgia. It had always been her favorite time of year at home.

Jeremiah was twice as busy, overseeing the decorating, cooking, and baking for all the people who were to come and go in the week between Christmas and New Year's. Krystyna was surprised to discover that Jeremiah was actually in charge of the preparations and that Lucinda only timidly offered suggestions, while Savannah took almost no interest in any of it whatsoever. Her only acknowledgment of the approaching holidays was to tell her father what she anticipated being given on Christmas Day.

Krystyna couldn't understand why the others would willingly cut themselves off from the joy that went with the season.

Jeremiah was taken aback when Krystyna asked to help with the decorating. The people in the big house didn't work beside the slaves, and he had thought she'd follow suit, even though he had overheard her differences of opinion with the McKinleys.

"It will remind me of home," Krystyna explained. He nodded, seeming to understand this link she needed to maintain, and he saw to it that everything and everyone was at her disposal.

Leola and a heavyset, older woman struggled as they helped Krystyna carry a huge box of decorations down from the attic into the ballroom where company always gathered. Setting the box down on the floor with an immense thud, Krystyna waited for the two women to catch their breath before they undertook decorating the windows and doorways with bright garlands.

Standing on tiptoe, Krystyna balanced herself on a chair and began to string a garland around the archway. As she worked, she hummed a song she'd often heard in childhood. The words had long since escaped her, but the melody was forever embedded in her mind. Stretching her fingers to reach the highest point on the wall above the archway, she didn't see Jason approaching. Nor he her. Preoccupied with a book he was paging through, Jason walked right into her chair and knocked it over.

With a strangled cry, Krystyna fell on top of him, sending him sprawling. "What the —!"

She heard Leola gasp in the background and the scurry of feet as the two women hurried to help them untangle their bodies. "Why were you not looking where you were going?" Krystyna demanded, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

"I wasn't expecting angels to be falling out of the sky onto me." He waved back the other women carelessly and made no move to get up. He liked the feel of her body on his. "If I had known, I would have been here a lot sooner."

Leola and the older woman exchanged secret smiles and returned to their work. Master Jase's preference for the lively lady was well known by now.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No." Krystyna tried to rise, but his leg was over hers, pinning her down.

"Don't get up yet," he murmured. Lightly, he smoothed down her collar at the nape of her neck. Krystyna tried not to react, but she only partially succeeded. The memory of his touch was burned into her soul. "This is the best present I could have hoped for. You haven't even let me touch your hand in weeks."

Krystyna's eyes darted toward Leola. The young black woman appeared not to hear as she busied herself with laying out more garland to be draped, but Krystyna knew better. "Lower your voice," Krystyna hissed.

"I'll lower it as far as you want, only don't move."

She felt his eyes undressing her, and the color rose to her cheeks even as her heart began to beat faster. "Help me up, please." It wasn't a request. It was an order. She swept away the garland that was clinging to her skirt.

"Very well." He rose, pulling her up next to him. Their bodies touched. The sparks that traveled between them were felt by both. Krystyna broke away, turning her back to him.

Jason looked around the room. She was bringing her touch, her warmth everywhere. "Where have you hung the mistletoe?"

"Mistletoe?" She turned and looked at him quizzically. "What is that?"

"Here's some, Mist'r Jase." Leola brought a sprig to him. It had been cut just that morning.

Krystyna took it first. She examined it, turning it around in her fingers. It didn't look particularly attractive, and would be lost if they put it on the tree, its color fading into the bright greenness of the spruce. "Why would you want to hang this?"

"So we can do this." He took it from her and held it over her head. As she looked up toward it, she didn't see the look that entered his eyes. And she didn't see his lips lowering to hers until it was too late.

The protest that sprang up left even more quickly as her needs smothered her reason. For one brief second, she forgot the women who looked on with broad grins, forgot her promises to herself. Forgot everything but the sweet, tangy flavor of his mouth and the paradise it created for her.

Forgot, but only for a moment. With the breath drained from her, she somehow still found the strength to push him away, her eyes demanding to know how he could have been so presumptuous in front of others.

"It's a tradition." He twirled the sprig in his fingers, trying to mask the fact that the slightest contact with this woman affected him far more than was comfortable. Yet he couldn't resist wanting more. "We hang it up and if you walk under it, you get kissed."

Anger gave way to curiosity. "You kiss everyone under it?"

"Only members of the opposite gender," he clarified.

She needed to put distance between them, more than just physically. "Like Charity."

That name again. He struggled to harness his impatience. Placing both hands on her shoulders, he forced her to look at him. His eyes were no longer teasing. "I'd never kiss Charity that way —I'd never want to." He searched her face. "Do you understand?"

"No," she whispered. She didn't really. How could he be engaged to one woman and kiss another that way? Krystyna felt very, very confused.

"Good," he muttered, releasing her. "Neither do I." He set the sprig down on a table and looked around. "Do you need any help?" He turned to face her. "I used to have fun doing this sort of thing as a child." That had been when his mother was alive. Things were very different then. There had been love in the house. "It kind of took Christmas away when I got too old to hang those things." He gestured at the box of decorations.

"You are never too old for that. Or too young," she added, seeing Christopher peer into the room. "Come," she called to the boy, holding out her hand. "There is a lot to do."

She put the boy to work sorting out the decorations for the tree, while Jason took her place, hanging the garland over the archways. Krystyna turned her attention to decorating the windows.

"Do you celebrate much where you come from?" Jason asked, driving in a nail. He draped the garland over it, then turned and waited for her answer. There was so much he didn't know about her. So much he wanted to know.

The memories came flooding back again. "For almost the whole month." Krystyna's eyes grew bright as she remembered. "My father would stock the house with food, and we would sing songs and have one long party. It would last until the twelfth of January. The peasants were all given geese and—" Her hands dropped suddenly. "Who will take care of the peasants this year?"

She thought of Maruska and her children, of Marek and his ever-pregnant wife. So many children who lived on her estate. Who would care for them now that her father was gone and she was here?

Jason looked over his shoulder. "God," he said simply.

She looked up at him in surprise. "I did not think you actually believed."

He finished hanging the garland and stepped down, repositioning the chair. "There's someone or something up there. There's a pattern in someone's book," he said with a shrug. "I don't talk about it, that's all. We get a start, and we make the best of it. In the end, we account for it."

Jason drove another nail in, then hung the garland over it. "There, how's that?" He cocked his head, surveying the little work he had done.

"Fine." She couldn't help the smile that rose to her lips. "Now, what about the rest of the room?"

"You really do like to give orders, don't you?" He shook his head as he picked up the chair.

The people gathered at Smoke Tree felt a need to celebrate harder, more furiously this year, as if to block out the events pressing in on them. Christmas of 1775 left precious little to be happy about. The country's people were in turmoil, at odds with one another as well as with Britain. It was no different in the McKinley household than it was anywhere else in the thirteen colonies.

The Colonists didn't know whether they were part of England or whether they would soon be a separate nation. War had been declared with the battles at Lexington and Concord, but many of the people still didn't know which side to take or where their sympathies lay.

By and large, most of the Colonists didn't want to be part of a new nation. They resented being led by a numbered few who were drunk on the elixir of freedom.

But the writings of Burke and Paine had inflamed the leaders, who attracted more to their cause. What the rebels lacked in numbers they made up in zeal. Every home was the verbal battlefield of Tory and Rebel, even at Christmastime.

Traditionally, Morgan laid aside his political differences in honor of the holiday and threw open his doors to everyone. Winthrop's uncle, the Reverend Blake, slipped in through the crack.

Blake's opinions remained unchanged, whatever the season. Vain, he hadn't forgotten or forgiven Krystyna and Jason for walking out on his sermon.

Upon entering the ballroom, he attached himself to the largest group of people, gathered about the punch bowl, determined to launch into a dissertation on the current situation.

Liberally filling his glass, Blake turned to the man closest to him. In his booming voice, he proclaimed, "It cannot be allowed to happen."

"What can't?"

Blake turned to see that Jason was on the perimeter of the group, filling a glass of punch himself. The withering look he gave Jason was missed by no one. "We cannot allow ourselves to be led by a blood-thirsty few and to break with Britain. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, and a nation conceived in fire shall doubtlessly go up in flames.

"What you gentlemen seem to be proposing," Blake continued as he turned his back on Jason, "is against all the laws of God. We should all pray that the good King forgives us and that peace will be restored once more. We are acting like wretched, ungrateful children. After all, this is the King's land to give us, not ours to seize."

Out of respect, Jason allowed others to voice their opinions. But Blake's pompous arrogance made him forget himself. "And who gave it to the King?" he challenged.

Blake smiled coldly. It was obvious he thought Jason an ignorant fool. "Our explorers laid claim to it."

"And took it from the Indians," Jason concluded.

Blake looked at him haughtily. "Godless savages do not count, Mr. McKinley. If you would attend church more regularly, instead of following the example of the heathenish idolater you have taken into your home, you would know that."

Jason's expression hardly changed, but the muscles of his face tightened. "Reverend, I will remind you that irreligious people such as myself are given to fits of temper and think nothing of removing, forcibly, the cause of their irritation," he looked at the thin man pointedly. "Christmas season or no." To his satisfaction, he saw Blake grow pale. "You'll be good enough to keep that in mind and watch your comments from here on." He inclined his head respectfully to the man and left.

Blake glared at Jason's back.

"Drink up!" Morgan urged Krystyna and the young man next to her in another part of the room. "It might be the last of that kind of liquid refreshment that'll be available to us for a long, long while. The damned British are letting less and less come through our ports." He looked at the young man. "Boston isn't the only area under siege."

Jeremiah stood at his master's elbow, pouring sherry into his glass. The young guest Morgan was addressing smiled.

He raised his glass. "This is fine, Uncle. You have far more luxuries here than we do in New York. I'm used to much less."

"Well, Nathan, you could come here and settle." Morgan gestured about expansively. In his own way, when he felt a man deserved it, he was generous. "There's plenty of room for you, and we've got more than our share of children in the area for you to instruct."

Nathan Hale smiled at his uncle. He didn't allow his eyes to say more than his lips. "I am needed where I am, Uncle, but I thank you for the generous invitation. Perhaps another time."