Before the Dawn

by Denise A. Agnew

  “Such as? Not wearing a crinoline?”

  She flushed a bright pink, and he liked how it livened her skin and gave her a flustered innocence that stirred his body and mind. All that fire wrapped up in false purity drove him mad. Was she still a virgin? Was she trying to tell him in her offhand way that she wouldn’t mind a roll in the sack with him? His cock hardened even more.

  “Sir, you should not…” She glanced around. “It is certainly not done to speak of unmentionables.”

  “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t. Eager to understand her mind, he poured more tea in her cup and refilled his. “So tell me, what makes you so improper?”

  She licked her bottom lip, and his body reacted traitorously to that innocent movement. He wanted to groan.

  She took a sip of tea, then placed the cup in the saucer with such a delicate touch it barely made a sound. “I was more proper when I was younger.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Younger? You can’t be that old now.”

  Mary Jane’s gaze flicked up at him, edged with annoyance. “Old enough to know how the world works, sir. I am cured of my ignorance about my situation in life.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “It seems there is no place but hearth and home for a woman.”

  He could tell by the hard line of her mouth he wouldn’t get much more of an explanation than this. Elijah saw something more flickering deep in her pretty eyes, a core of stubbornness and pride a man would have a damned difficult time breaking. Yet she acted as if she’d already been rode hard and put up wet. As if life had dealt her a blow that smothered her desires as sure as water over fire.

  He wasn’t sure he liked that. “Tell me more about your family.”

  Pain thinned that delicious mouth, and she looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “My father had interest in other women and mother looked the other way. He could be so unapproachable.”

  “Why?”

  Her eyes, a little exotic and mysterious, met his. “I do not know for certain. He was in Philadelphia when the riots happened. He wrote mother a letter and complained that the…” She lowered her voice. “He started spouting nativist rhetoric and said he was helping their party pass out fliers. So you see, I have read all about the Catholics and the Irish.”

  Disappointment welled inside him. “Do you believe what they say about us?” He heard the crisp, cutting tone and didn’t temper it. “Tell me what you think.”

  As if tired of dealing with her gloves, she slipped them off her fingers and placed them in her lap. A rebellious move for a virtuous, but he appreciated it. Her long, beautiful fingers caressed her teacup. He swallowed hard as his groin tightened. He imagined too damned well what it would feel like if her fingers caressed his body.

  The waiter delivered the meat pies and stalled the conversation.

  Soon after the man left, she said, “I did not want my father to be wrong, you understand. So I believed his ramblings and the pamphlets for quite a long time. My mother and sisters always believed it. Eventually I realized he was being alarmist.”

  Surprise made Elijah silent for several seconds. Maybe some highbrow women did have guts. “You are a strong woman.”

  An equal astonishment flared in her eyes. “Most men would say it is a weakness for a woman to speak her own mind. I often envy my mother and sisters.”

  “Why?”

  She swallowed hard. She dallied with her teacup, turning it around on the saucer and lifting it with her left hand. “Because I do not think an outward show of unladylike turmoil should replace decorum. To go against what convention says only harms a woman. I have learned my lesson.”

  Amusement managed to crack through the shell around his heart, but he didn’t smile. “You’re traveling without a chaperone, darlin’. Isn’t that a little form of rebellion?”

  She nodded. “Perhaps. In another way my sisters and mother are horribly weak. They claim to think for themselves, but they are just as prideful and certain about other people. Judge not least ye be judged is something they spout, yet they judge at every opportunity.” She shook her head. “My father’s ramblings about a woman’s place felt pernicious to say the least, but what sort of outlet does a woman have when society will bruise her severely for showing any outward sign of strength? I realized that I did not believe a word of what I read in those hateful pamphlets about Catholics and Irish.”

  Elijah felt an awakening straight down to his gut. Maybe he’d judged this woman as more shallow, less interesting than he should have. “Few people I’ve known in my twenty-six years have admitted to any weakness big or small. It’s right admirable that you have.”

  Her glorious smile returned, if a bit tarnished around the edges. “Thank you.”

  “Not all Catholics are like me.” He tried a smile, but it died before it could start. “Some of the ones I know are just as bad as the nativists.”

  Perhaps he imagined the understanding within her expression. He couldn’t say for certain.

  “You are not telling me everything that happened in Kensington in ’44. I have a keen mind for telling when a man is holding something back. That is another trait my father did not admire.”

  Though her voice was pure femininity and formality, there was a sensual huskiness within it that brushed over his skin like a physical touch. He bit into his meat pie for distraction. He chewed and swallowed. “A curious woman is always in trouble…like you said.”

  She smiled. “Not I, sir. Like my mother said.”

  “I think I should meet this mother of yours. She sounds similar to my mother. Proper and guarded.” He placed his meat pie on the plate when he saw she used a fork. “Sometimes like you.”

  Her mouth twitched. “Always like me.”

  “You’re a contradiction, wife. It’s enough to make a man wild.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, and the small feather in her hat quivered. “I am not. I mean…improper.”

  “Then why were you talking with me about religion? Especially a man you just met yesterday. A man you slept in the same room with, too.”

  This time a delicate pink flush covered her cheekbones. Glory be to St. Patrick, but he’d like to feel that soft skin under his lips and experience her hidden heat.

  “Ah, I’ve embarrassed you,” he said. “Or is that anger I see?”

  “Anger, sir. Pure anger.”

  “Elijah, remember?”

  She took a healthy bite of meat pie. “Well, you slip a Mrs. McKinnon in there from time to time. Besides, my mother called my father sir in public. It is natural.”

  Her feisty response pushed him and fueled a heated response in his cock as well. He shifted on the hard chair. “Nothing natural about it.” He lowered his voice. “There are other things I’d call my wife if I had a real one.”

  She kept her gaze on her plate. “Religion and marriage are serious subjects for anyone. We should restrict our conversation to more prosaic discussion.”

  “Sure, and there’s always a lot of swill in politeness.”

  Disapproval tightened her features. “True. But polite swill is better than rudeness any day.”

  He laughed, and he didn’t care how loud or obnoxious it sounded. Her bright eyes widened as she glanced around, obviously concerned. He didn’t give two figs. The laugh caught him by surprise, too. It felt good. Freeing.

  He squelched the chuckle and reached for her left hand across the table. “Thank you.”

  Her hand curled naturally into his, her voice a bit breathless in response. “For what?”

  “That’s the first good laugh I’ve had in five years.”

  She withdrew her hand from under his. “Well, that is a compliment. I did not think what I said was that funny.”

  He kept smiling. “It is to a man who—”

  No.

  He shut down his amusement like water tossed on a flame. He shook his head. “Never you mind.”

  She stared at him with disconcerting attention until she finally asked, “Your nightmares are quite intense, sir
. I thought for certain the steward would make good his threat and have you hogtied in the back of the boat. Why are you plagued by such dreams?”

  Elijah took a deep breath, an ache starting in his throat. “I never talk about my dreams. Never.”

  “But—”

  A white hot flash outside the window and an instant explosion jolted the inn. Elijah startled, his heart banging a hundred miles a minute. Mary Jane yelped and threw her hand over her mouth.

  It was her turn to smile as the heavens opened. “My goodness, that lightning was right outside.”

  She observed the light and noise show with an almost childlike fascination. He leaned back in his chair and watched people scramble from one side of the street to the other as they tried to escape the storm.

  Her eyebrows pinched together. “I do not want to be stuck here for the night.”

  “Stuck in a room tonight with me, you mean. There’s no avoiding that. Even if we made it all the way to Duncan’s Island, you’ll still have to stay overnight again.”

  “I know that.” Impatience colored her tone. She sighed. “I hope we do not meet anyone we know during this trip.”

  He tilted his head to the side. “Since you’ll be seen in the company of an Irishman?”

  She huffed in annoyance. “Truly, you do put words in my mouth. Despite your gallantry in protecting me, if word gets to my mother and sisters that I slept with a man…” She gulped.

  Once more he leaned close over the table and kept his tone for her ears only. “Sure, and I can tell you that you didn’t sleep with me. I would have remembered that and so would you.”

  “Oh, why you…” She huffed again, eyes stormy as she stood and started to walk away.

  He didn’t follow. She wouldn’t go far.

  Chapter Five

  Lemon House

  Summit of the Allegheny Portage Railroad

  Amos McKinnon walked towards Tobias Varney and knew this man could help him with his goal. One of his goals, anyway. Amos took in his surroundings at the same time he observed the man sitting at the small table in the dining room. Varney’s long legs sprawled open and swallowed all the space under the table. His worn gray and bottle-green waistcoat had seen better days, patched at the elbows and threadbare. His battered stovepipe hat was set on the table next to a pewter tankard. Varney wore a nasty expression the way he wore scuffed Hessians…with a broken-in and at ease look.

  Amos didn’t give much credence to knowing like so many seers claimed back on the old sod. Yet Amos knew Varney stirred strange sensations inside most people, something that would grab an ordinary man by the gut and gave him the shits. Reluctant admiration struck Amos. Yeah, it didn’t take much to see Varney would prove the right man for deeds that needed accomplishing in a quick, efficient and violent manner. The first time Amos had met him, back several months ago when it looked like Zeke might prove Elijah innocent, Amos knew Varney wouldn’t hesitate to kill under the right incentive. He liked that.

  “Don’t just stand there.” Varney’s gravelly voice echoed across the room. He ran a hand through the remainder of his sparse, greasy blond hair. He gestured to the seat across from him. “Sit.”

  Amos spied a broad-hipped barmaid in the corner cleaning two tables. He waved her over. “You. Bring me a whiskey. Best you have.”

  The plump, round-faced woman threw a glance at Varney, her eyes wary. She nodded and scurried out of the room as if hellhounds nipped at her heels.

  Amos ignored an uncomfortable sensation in his gut that made him feel like he hung by a frayed rope over a huge gorge. “This isn’t a good place to meet.”

  Varney snickered. “Well, is anyone lookin’ for you in here? I don’t think so. This is a long way from Philadelphia. Don’t think anyone here would know your face.”

  Amos glanced around. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Ain’t nobody in here.” Varney’s ridiculous grin split his already disadvantaged face. Pock-marked and thin, he resembled a cadaver that had already started to decompose. His thin, high-bridged nose gave the man a regal and yet shrewish look that belonged on the statue of a despot king.

  Amos sank slowly into the chair and reconnoitered the room. It smelled of cigar smoke and the outdoors. Someone had left a window cracked at the far side of the room, and rain slashing at the building threatened to enter. He couldn’t take it. Damned untidy situation. He stood and walked across the room, slammed the window closed and returned to his table.

  Varney chewed on a fag, then he lit it. Acrid smoke drifted upward. “What the Sam Hill was that all about?”

  “Now that I have money, I don’t like untidy places.”

  Varney sneered and took a drag off his smelly cigarette. “You never tell a man like me that you got money. Bad idea.”

  Amos sat up straighter, aware he outweighed the thin man by quite a bit and his strength more than equaled him. Varney tried to test a man’s weaknesses like a stubborn horse trying a fence to locate a flaw. “You know I have money already or I couldn’t pay your price, now could I?”

  Varney stubbed out the fag on the table. “That be true. You’re a damned strange man, McKinnon. What does your mother think about what you’re doing?”

  Amos set his hat on the table. “My Ma?” He laughed. “Ma is mad. She married some Englishman and said she’d converted to a protestant.”

  Varney’s thick eyebrows rose and his forehead wrinkled. “Oh, yeah? Thought that’s what you planned to do. Turn protestant.”

  The barmaid rushed into the room, whiskey glass in hand. She placed it on the table in front of Amos, then glanced back and forth between he and Varney. Her blue eyes held a wide, startled, stupid look Amos found irksome. She better not stand too close again.

  After she left, Amos glared at Varney. “I already turned away from the bloody papists. Did that five years ago after Elijah went into the penitentiary. But Ma—she’s not mad because she’s thinking of turning protestant. It’s that she married an Englishman. He’s a feckin’ Englishman.” He felt the blood rising up in his face, his heart pounding faster as he thought about it. “There isn’t any excuse for that. She’s an Irishwoman.”

  Varney nodded. “Well, then, you got yourself another problem, eh? You want me and the boys to take care of her good-for-nothing Englishman? If you do, it’ll be more money.”

  Amos’s heartbeat didn’t slow as excitement gathered. He licked his lips. “I’ll do it myself. Uphold Ma’s honor since she made a mistake marrying that man.”

  Varney tipped his chair back, and the Sheraton chair creaked in protest. “Yeah? I could kill your stinkin’ brother just fine.”

  “No. I can do that myself.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t track worth a damn.”

  Amos twitched, his thoughts gathering momentum until they bounced in chaotic madness. He lifted his whiskey glass and slammed the liquid back, enjoying the hot glow. “I haven’t done that kind of work in a long time.”

  Varney let his chair thump back onto all fours, creating a bang Amos figured would bring someone running. “I know how you are, McKinnon. You got an awful thirst for killin’. And you don’t lie well.”

  Tired of the idiot’s insolence, Amos glared. “I lie better than anyone else I know.”

  “I seen guys like you before. I’m forty years old, boy. Damn near old enough to be your father. I seen things you wouldn’t dream of seein’. But wait. Maybe I’m wrong about that since you kill because you like to. I just kill to make money.”

  Amos felt a strange panic well in his throat. The man’s words said too much, revealed too much. Amos didn’t like this naked sensation, as if his Ma had walked in the room and found him pleasuring himself. Insanity lay in that direction, or so his Ma once said. He heard her voice in his head. Boy, don’t let me ever catch you doin’ that again. Sure, and the devil will come to take you if you do.

  That was damn reason enough to kill her when he got the chance.

  Varney waved a hand in front of Amos�
�s face, and Amos slammed back to attention. “Feck off, Varney.”

  “I know it when I see it.”

  “It?”

  “The blood, man. You don’t dare taste it, but you want to. Each time you kill it gets easier and easier and feels better and better, don’t it?”

  Amos’s stomach twisted and gurgled but he ignored it. He knew what Varney meant. “So?”

  Varney’s wide grin stretched his face from ear to ear in a macabre clownish look that would scare women and children. Hell, would scare most men. Everyone but Amos.

  Varney leaned on the table, his elbows an affront to polite society. His gaze traveled over Amos’s clothes with devil-may-care insolence. “You really don’t understand it, do you? You think I’m a piece of shit on the bottom of your boot, but tripe knows tripe.” Varney’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “You think gettin’ all prettied up makes you a different man. But it don’t. There’s evil men in the fanciest clothes.”

  Amos’s blood boiled, but he drew in deep breath and corralled the desire to reach across the table and strangle the rounder. “Is there a point to this, Varney?”

  “What I mean is you killed that Maureen girl…the one that was your pisswad brother’s girl. You know it, your brothers know it and now your English-marrying, mad Ma knows it. Hell’s bells, the whole world knows it now. But you dress nice ’cause you got a little money, and you think that makes you less a cold killer than me. Well, it don’t.” Once more he leaned back in the chair and it creaked again. “You think fancy pomade and shined boots and a new opera hat is guarantee people will think you’re somethin’ special. Well, you ain’t. You know why? I’ll bet Maureen weren’t your first kill. You messed around with a woman or maybe a girl when you was just a pint-sized pee waddin’. Found you liked hurtin’ her and doin’ her whether she wanted it or not. She probably didn’t even tell her folks because you said she’d be branded a whore.”

  Amos took a deep, shuddering breath and reined in the desire to prove Varney right. As clear as day, he imagined knocking the table aside, placing his hands around Varney’s neck and strangling the life out of him. Just like he had Maureen.