Moonfire Read online

  Maggie sighed and tucked the tattered newspaper advertisement back among her other papers, turning her attention to a tiny photograph of her parents, taken only months before their deaths. Mama, the daring, fair-haired aerialist, fearless and beautiful. Papa, the handsome lion tamer, in truth as gentle as a lamb. How fiercely they had loved each other and their daughter.

  Struck by a loneliness that usually overtook her only by night, Maggie held the treasured photograph close to her heart for a moment, her eyes burning suspiciously. Then, firmly, she took herself in hand. Philip would be waiting for her in Sydney, and he would keep his promises too. She had only to keep her chin up and believe.

  With a sniffle Maggie took out her tattered copy of The Taming of the Shrew and began to study her lines. It was a largely unnecessary task, considering that she’d long since mastered not only Bianca’s speeches but most of Kate’s and some of Petruchio’s as well, in an effort to fill the long days at sea, but one could not be too thorough when it came to such things.

  When Tansy returned from the mess hall, fully an hour later, she brought Maggie’s pint ration of tea, along with the heel of a ham and a buttered slice of brown bread, neatly wrapped in a linen napkin that had doubtless been purloined from the first-class dining room.

  “It ain’t as though I’ve changed me mind,” she said with a toss of her head as Maggie began to eat enthusiastically. “I still think Philip Briggs ain’t a patch on a good man like sweet Rory at Government ’ouse, but from ’ere on, I’ll keep me opinions to meself.”

  Maggie’s eyes sparkled as she looked up at her friend; she’d believe that when cows sprouted wings, but she also knew an olive branch when she ate one. She finished the bread and ham quickly but took her time with the tea.

  “Thank you,” she remembered to say when her friend began to look annoyed.

  Tansy was instantly mollified. “Some of the passengers is goin’ ashore,” she confided, “flood or no flood. They’re sendin’ ’em in dinghies.”

  Maggie had a sudden picture of Philip standing amid the stranded rabbits and the wreckage of Brisbane, trying to catch sight of her in one of the small boats being lowered from the ship and rowed to shore. As quick as that she was off her berth and scrambling back into her gray woolen dress.

  “And where are you off to in such a rush?” Tansy demanded, hands on her hips.

  “Why, to Brisbane, of course!” Maggie answered, wrenching her carpetbag from beneath the berth. Her hair was falling about her shoulders in great untidy loops, but there was no time to fuss with it. Carrying all her earthly belongings in that one battered bag, she bounded out of the women’s compartment and onto the deck.

  Sure enough, there were four dinghies making their way toward shore. The last dazzling light of a tropical sunset blazed on the water, making it very difficult to see.

  Suddenly a head wearing a straw bushman’s hat appeared over the ship’s railing, startling Maggie so badly that she leapt backward a step and gasped, one hand pressed to her bosom.

  Aquamarine eyes assessed her boldly from a tanned, ruggedly hewn face, and the man who had climbed the rope ladder dangling down the ship’s side swung deftly over the railing to stand facing Maggie.

  An insolent smile revealed straight white teeth, and the hat was swept off with a flourish, to show a profusion of tousled black hair. The man was enormous, and even when he bowed a pirate’s dashing bow, he still seemed to tower over Maggie.

  Having recovered much of her composure by then, Maggie dismissed the bushman with a withering glare and started around him, bent on making her way down that rope ladder, into a dinghy, and across that placid-looking water to Brisbane.

  “I’m afraid you’re too late, lassie,” said John Higgins as he climbed up the ladder and vaulted over the railing. “The last boat’s gone.”

  Maggie’s frustration had reached its peak. She stomped one foot and gestured toward the bushman with her free hand. “If this—gentleman—came aboard, there must have been a boat to bring him across! And if there was a boat to bring him across—” She paused here to look over the railing. The dinghy that had carried this unconventional passenger over the water was paddling away toward shore. “Come back!” Maggie screamed.

  “A Yank,” observed the bushman in a tone that bespoke sympathy and tolerance.

  “Aye,” agreed John Higgins with a long-suffering sigh.

  Maggie stomped her foot again and then kicked at the ship’s side. “Damn, damn, double damn!” she yelled.

  “It can’t be as bad as all that,” said the bushman, presuming to stand beside Maggie at the railing. His grin was beguiling in an obnoxious sort of way, and there was a faint Irish lilt to his voice.

  “It ain’t,” Tansy put in suddenly with a sigh. She had linked her arm through John Higgins’s. “That ’orse’s—”Tansy paused, clearly remembering her earlier promise to keep her opinion of Maggie’s betrothed to herself. “That Mr. Philip Briggs of’ers will be waitin’ in Sydney, I’ll wager.”

  The bushman arched raven-black eyebrows and returned his hat to his head with a deft and innately masculine motion of one sun-bronzed hand. “You’ve come all this way to meet up with Philip Briggs, have you?”

  Maggie’s eyes widened as she met the stranger’s quietly contemptuous gaze. “Why, yes. Do you know Mr. Briggs?”

  A muscle in the Australian’s jaw bunched into a knot and then went slack again. “Aye. I know him. He works for me.”

  Maggie searched her memory and came up with a name Philip had mentioned in passing. “You would be Mr. McKenna, then.”

  The answer was a nod, so brisk as to be terse and quite ill-mannered. Mr. McKenna’s straw hat shadowed his eyes. “I would,” he answered. A brassy-gold charm gleamed among the dark swirls of hair visible in the deep V of his shirt.

  Maggie realized that she’d been staring, and blinked. She felt oddly alarmed at the coldness the mention of Philip Briggs had engendered in his employer and called upon all her stage experience to smile with confidence. “Then you must know that Philip and I plan to be married.”

  “Do you now?” asked Mr. McKenna with polite interest. “I’m sure that will be news to most of Sydney.”

  Maggie had been at sea for five long weeks and now, at last, she’d reached Brisbane, only to be denied the meeting with Philip she’d looked forward to with such bright hopes. And here was her future husband’s employer, offering not a word of encouragement or welcome. Was it possible that Philip hadn’t mentioned his plans to marry?

  A lump formed in Maggie’s throat and she gazed toward Brisbane in near despair as the S.S. Victoria chugged onward toward Sydney. Tansy and her beau wandered off down the deck, but Mr. McKenna remained, his gaze following Maggie’s, his huge frame braced against the railing.

  A flock of gray-white birds with lovely pink breasts soared past, a wondrous sight against the twilight sky. Maggie smiled despite all her uncertainties.

  “They’re called galahs,” Mr. McKenna said.

  Maggie could not and would not look at her unwanted companion. If she did, she might see pity in his blue-green eyes and that would be unbearable. “They’re quite lovely,” she said, still watching the beautiful birds as they soared off toward the land. “Are you fleeing the flood, Mr. McKenna?”

  “Not really,” came the gruff yet gentle reply. “I have business in Sydney.”

  Maggie drew a deep breath and made herself look into those incredible eyes. “I will find Philip Briggs waiting for me in Sydney, won’t I, Mr. McKenna?” she asked.

  “You’ll find him,” the Australian sighed, pulling his hat down farther over his brow.

  Hardly more enlightened than before, Maggie squared her shoulders and walked with dignity across the deck and back into the sleeping compartment.

  Chapter 2

  DESPITE HIS ROUGH CLOTHING, REEVE MCKENNA TOOK, A cabin in the first-class section of the ship. His station in life entitled him to the best and, besides, he felt an odd need to separa
te himself from that willful Yankee snippet with tangled moonfire hair and eyes the color of a brooding Queensland sky.

  Tired and none too clean after a day spent burning off the sugar fields at Seven Sisters, his plantation upriver, Reeve sank down on the edge of the spacious bed bolted to the floor of his cabin and flung his hat away. He kicked off his boots and then stretched out on the fussy satin quilt that covered his berth, smiling to himself.

  Loretta. He would think of Loretta. Thoughts of his mistress would surely keep one untidy little Yankee out of his mind.

  One by one he assembled Loretta’s features in his imagination: dark, glossy hair, wide and impudent brown eyes, ivory complexion, lips as tartly sweet as the fruit of a pomegranate, breasts that could be described only as succulent….

  Restlessly, Reeve sighed and cupped strong, callused hands behind his head. Loretta’s image faded from his mind like smoke, instantly replaced by the vision of that saucy little chit from America.

  What was her name? What was she doing here in Australia, some seventeen thousand miles from her home? Had she given herself to that bastard Briggs, or had some benign fate spared her?

  Once again Reeve sighed. What could she have seen in that sniveling waster anyway?

  Interested by a rap at the cabin door, Reeve sat bolt upright, as embarrassed as if his thoughts had been shouted in the passageways for all to hear. What the devil did he care whether or not Philip Briggs had had his way with the girl? It was none of his business, and besides, he had Loretta.

  The knock sounded again and a tentative masculine voice called, “It’s about your bath, Mr. McKenna—”

  “The door’s open,” Reeve responded irritably, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up.

  A steward entered, lugging a glistening copper bathtub and followed by two minions carrying enormous steaming buckets of water. Reeve knew he could find soap and towels in the cabinets affixed to the cabin wall. He gave the men a few coins for their trouble and muttered a dismissal, already peeling off his clothes as the door closed behind them. His smoke-scented shirt and trousers landed in a heap at the foot of his bed.

  He fetched a large bar of lard soap from the cabinet as well as a washcloth and several towels, then stepped into the tub. The water was so hot that it made him draw in a sharp breath, but he sank into it without further hesitation, grateful for the ease it gave his aching muscles. If only the dratted thing had been large enough for a man to stretch out in.

  Reeve closed his eyes and let his head rest against the high, ornately cast back of the tub. He wished that he’d asked for brandy as well as a bath. Then, except for Loretta, of course, he’d have had all the comforts of home.

  There was a second knock at the door, this time a timid one, and Reeve smiled. The steward was back; he would send for a bottle of the ship’s best and a good cigar as well.

  “Come in,” he said, settling deeper into the hot water.

  The door opened and instead of the steward’s voice he heard a distinctly female “Oh, dear!”

  Reeve’s eyes flew open and he sat up very straight, his hands instinctively covering his private parts.

  It was the Yankee, standing there in the doorway, her mouth agape, her hair freshly brushed and entwined about her head in a complicated coronet involving braids and curls and all manner of feminine fuss. Instead of fleeing, like any normal woman would have done, she simply turned her back, pushed the door closed, and whispered, “I am sorry.”

  Reeve swore under his breath, more stunned than anything. If she was so damned sorry, he wondered to himself, why didn’t she leave him to take his bath in peace? “What do you want?” he demanded, after a struggle with his vocal cords.

  With her back still turned to Reeve, she shielded her face with one hand. Suddenly, Reeve McKenna would have given all his considerable holdings to know whether or not she was having the good grace to blush. She gave a little shuddering sigh and babbled out, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your—your bath, Mr. McKenna. Truly I didn’t. It’s—it’s what you said about my Philip—or perhaps what you didn’t say—”

  “Good God,” Reeve muttered, relaxing a little. Wait till he told Loretta about this episode. He studied the sweet curves of the lady’s bottom, her slender waist, the hint of rounded fullness visible beneath the upraised arm.

  On second thought, he probably wouldn’t mention this to Loretta after all.

  The little back straightened in a touching bid for dignity and the head lifted proudly, although the woman didn’t turn around to face the man she’d so brazenly intruded upon. “I did apologize,” she reminded him tartly.

  The gall of the baggage! But then, Yanks were known for their nerve, weren’t they?

  “What is your name?” Reeve demanded, both because he couldn’t think of anything else to say and because he had an intractable need to know what this snippet called herself.

  “M-Maggie,” she said. “Maggie Chamberlin. About—about my betrothed, Mr. McKenna—”

  The humor of the situation was coming home to Reeve by then; he felt his mouth curving into a smile and settled back with a whoosh of water. He even lifted one leg out of the cramped little tub, letting the heel rest against the edge.

  “Your betrothed,” he said in a leisurely tone. God, his kingdom for a good cigar and a snifter of brandy. “Oh, yes. Philip Briggs.”

  “Was I wrong in deducing that you dislike my Philip?” sputtered Miss Maggie Chamberlin. “You see, I’ve come so very far and if I can’t marry Mr. Briggs, I shall have to scour floors and empty chamber pots for a period of three years—”

  Reeve felt a chuckle rise in his throat and was gentleman enough to swallow it. “I’m not sure that wouldn’t be preferable to marrying Briggs,” he observed. “Have you been trained as a servant?”

  The slim shoulders stiffened. “I should say not! I am an actress, Mr. McKenna, and Philip promised me—”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess.” Reeve took the bar of soap in hand and began to lather his left armpit. The cooling water reminded him that the bath couldn’t last forever. Under the circumstances, he reflected, that was regrettable. “Philip promised you marriage and a role in a play.”

  Maggie almost forgot herself and turned to stare at Reeve at that moment; fortunately, she stopped just short of complete scandal. “Yes.”

  Reeve gave a long sigh and soaped his other armpit. He seldom gave a thought to the three theaters he owned; they were nothing more to him than play-things for Loretta, toys to keep her occupied while he traveled between Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, attending to interests ranging from whaling ships and sugar plantations to the breeding and training of Thoroughbred racehorses. “I see,” he said after a very long time.

  Maggie’s voice trembled slightly when she spoke. “If there is something I should know, Mr. McKenna, before I commit myself to marriage, I believe it is your duty to tell me.”

  Reeve tilted his head forward until it met with the water and industriously lathered his hair. “Have you had any acting experience, Miss Chamberlin?” he was surprised to hear himself ask.

  Through dripping water and soapsuds, he saw Maggie Chamberlin stomp one foot in frustration, much as she had done earlier when she learned that there would be no boat to carry her ashore at Brisbane.

  “Will you kindly stop skirting my questions, Mr. McKenna?”

  Reeve began to rinse his hair with a lusty splashing. “Philip Briggs is a lying, cheating, spineless lowlife with an unnatural attachment to his mother,” he said. “And believe me, Miss Chamberlin, he has no more intention of marrying you than I do. Is that direct enough for you?”

  Even over the splashing, Reeve heard her suck in a horrified breath.

  “You do dislike him!” she cried in wounded resignation.

  Reeve reached for a towel to dry his dripping hair and gave Miss Chamberlin’s back a wry look. “No,” he drawled ironically, annoyed that she cared so much for Philip Briggs that she’d travel mo
re than ten thousand miles and then have the gall to intrude on a man in the middle of a bath, “I was merely trying to convey my esteem for the gentleman.”

  “There is no need to be rude, Mr. McKenna.”

  “Don’t talk to me about rudeness, Miss Chamberlin. You’re the one trespassing here. Or do all American young ladies make a practice of walking in on naked men?”

  Unexpectedly, the bundle of determination and gray woolen whirled. High color pulsed in Maggie’s cheekbones and her pewter-gray eyes flashed. “I have traveled many thousands of miles, Mr. McKenna, on the strength of a promise from the man I love. I have no money and no references, and if you’re telling me the truth about Philip, I shall have no choice but to serve out three years—three years, Mr. McKenna—as a household slave! It would have been better to stay in London—at least there I had a role in a revue—”

  “So you have had experience as an actress,” Reeve replied quietly, settling back in the tub. Due to the soap film on the water, he needed to make no special concession to decency.

  Her suspicious gray eyes were fixed on the brass charm Reeve wore around his neck. For some indefinable reason, he covered the talisman with one hand, not wanting Maggie to know what it was.

  “I’ve spent the entire journey learning the part of Bianca, in The Taming of the Shrew,” she said, her eyes sliding miserably from Reeve’s hand to his face. “Philip promised me that I could play Bianca.”

  Reeve felt a crushing sympathy for the girl and hid it behind a gruff, “You’re more suited, I think, for the part of Kate.”

  A flicker of hope lit the wondrous gray eyes and then went out like a snuffed flame. “It is most unkind of you to insult me, Mr. McKenna, by calling me a shrew.”