Megan Chance (25 page)

"I can't throw him out," she said. "
Onkle
, he's sick. He's my brother."

"That is an old loyalty." Charles's voice was so quiet, she had to strain to hear it. "Things have changed."

"Perhaps. But I... when our parents weren't there ... he took care of me. I owe him,
Onkle
."

"You risked your life once before to save his," Charles said. "Is the debt so big, you feel you must do it again?"

"It's not like that."

"What is it like, then?" Charles asked. "Sari, I am begging you. Do not be foolish." When Sari said nothing, he sighed. "If you would do this, Sarilyn," he said, his words slow and deliberate, "then you must tell Roarke that Michael is here. At least we will have some protection then."

"That protection comes at too big a cost," she said angrily. "I told you—he's after Michael."

"If you tell him about Michael, if you tell him not to harm your brother, he would do as you ask."

She started. "You believe that?"

"He loves you,
Liebling
."

"He's never said such a thing to me."

"Perhaps not, but he does. He does not want to hurt you."

Sari met her uncle's eyes. "I wish I could be so sure."

"Sarilyn—"

She held up her hand, stopping his words. "No more,
Onkle
," she said wearily. "Please. No more. I'm tired and I... I want to think."

Her uncle's lips tightened, but he nodded—a terse, hard nod—and put down his cup of coffee. "Good night then,
Liebling
," he said, going to the door. "Remember what I have said."

"I will."

She watched as he went outside. The screech of the wind seemed to swallow him up, and then the door closed and he was gone and she was alone.

Sari looked up at the loft, at the lonely darkness, and shuddered. Her uncle's words rang in her mind.
"He's a killer,"
and the words seemed to take form, to fill the shadows. She harbored no illusions about Michael's role with the sleepers. Evan and the others had tried to keep it from her, but she'd known anyway. Michael's charming words, his easy smile—they hid the heart of a fanatic, and one who believed violence and murder were his God-given rights.

Michael
was
a killer; she had always known that. But in her heart he was still her brother, still family, and a man didn't kill his own family.

Or did he?

She hated the question; she hated the way it made her feel. She wanted to be able to trust Michael, but there was a niggling doubt inside her, a heaviness that burdened her heart. If she was right about trusting him, then everything would be fine. He would get well and then he would leave. But if she was wrong...

If she was wrong, she was putting them all in danger.

Sari shivered and pulled her shawl more tightly about her. She was not wrong, she told herself. Michael was ill, and he'd come to her for help. He wouldn't betray her. She would make him promise not to harm Conor. Then, once he was better, he would go away again, and this lie would be safe between them, something Conor never had to know. She wouldn't have to worry about Conor killing her brother.

The lie helped everyone: It saved Michael's life, it kept Conor from dirtying his hands with murder, and it left her with her brother and her lover—two men she loved—still alive.

It helped everyone.

She told herself that, and she forced herself to believe it. Still she heard her uncle's voice in the back of her mind, his condemnation of her brother.
"You cannot forever be saving him."
No, maybe not. But she had a weakness when it came to Michael, and her brother knew it. They had spent their childhood taking care of each other, and she guessed old habits were hard to break. But it was more than that, more than even Charles knew. Michael was her brother, and the truth was that she still loved him, even if she didn't like him very much. Even if she despised the life he lived. She had saved his life once before—she would not be part of his death now.

But she knew she was lying to herself when she insisted that her love for her brother was the only reason she didn't tell Conor he was here. There was another reason too—one she hated admitting even to herself. Because she knew, in spite of what her uncle said, what Conor would do if she told him Michael was in the back soddy. Conor couldn't turn his back on his father, or his honor, or his pride. He would kill Michael, even if she begged him not to.

Vengeance meant more to him than she did. It was a truth she knew deep down in her bones, as certain as the beating of her heart.

And as long as she didn't put it to the test, she could believe maybe it was different.

S
he stole out into the cold, tucking the covered bowl of stew beneath her arm. The steam heated the wool of her coat, the smell floated on the dry air. The snow had died away; it was nothing more than thin puffs of ice dragged up by a cold and unforgiving wind. Her breath came in clouds of steam as she hurried the few yards between the house and Charles's soddy, and she couldn't keep herself from searching for any sight of Conor, even though she knew Charles had taken him out to the fields. He would keep Conor out of the way long enough for her to see to Michael, as much as Charles disapproved of the deception.

The pressure in her chest lessened, but it didn't go away completely, and it wasn't until she opened the door to the smaller soddy and went inside that she relaxed at all.

Michael was sleeping, his breath still coming hoarse and raspy from his chest, gurgling with the liquid in his lungs. Her uncle had made up an onion poultice, and the small room stank with the sweetness of cooked onions.

Sari closed the door and set down the bowl of stew. She unwrapped the scarf from her head and laid it across a chair, and then she moved to her brother's side, touching him gently.

He woke immediately, his brown eyes clearing at the sight of her, his face cracking in a weak smile. "I thought you'd abandoned me, darlin'."

She motioned to the plate on the table. "I brought you something to eat."

"Bless you." He struggled to his elbows, coughing slightly at the movement, sweat breaking out on his forehead. The mess of onions and brown paper slid from his chest, and he pushed it aside so that it fell to the dirt floor. "Old folk remedies," he muttered. "I told the old man it wouldn't help."

"It is helping," Sari corrected him. "You already sound better."

"I don't feel better."

"You were nearly passing out last night. Surely you feel stronger today."

He smiled at her, and though it wasn't as brilliant as usual, it was still warm and charming. Sari felt herself responding, just as she always did, with a smile of her own.

"That's the way," he urged hoarsely. "That's the Sari I know."

Her smile died. Sari brought the bowl of stew over to him. He grabbed it eagerly, spooning into it with a primitive hunger. She let him eat a few bites before she spoke again.

"You can't stay much longer," she said. "It's only a matter of time before Conor discovers you."

"So let him discover me, then." Michael spoke through a mouthful of stew. "I'd like a chance to even the score with the bastard."

"Didn't you already do that when you killed his father?"

Michael turned to her, his eyes blazing, his spoon poised above the plate. "He caused the death of nineteen men, Sari," he said brutally. "Your friends. My friends. Your husband. Nineteen men. In the Bible it says, 'An eye for an eye.' That's thirty-eight eyes. I've only taken two."

The horror of his statement numbed her. "That's the Old Testament," she said hoarsely. "The New Testament says to turn the other cheek. And they broke the law, Michael. Evan too. You broke the law. If they'd found you, you would be dead."

"So I would. Would you mourn me, Sari? The same way you're mourning your poor dear husband?"

Sari felt herself pale. "That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Michael asked roughly. "You weren't exactly a faithful wife to him."

"No," she said evenly. "But I didn't betray him either."

"I didn't say you did."

"No, but you thought it. You all thought it. Admit it, Michael. You thought I gave information to Conor. You believed it along with the rest of them."

"What else were we to believe?"

"How about that I didn't know anything? Evan and I didn't have a good marriage—not even a bearable one. He didn't talk to me about the Mollies' plans, and neither did you. How would I have known anything to tell Conor?"

"You knew he was the Pinkerton agent," Michael said stubbornly.

"Not until much later," Sari argued. "Not until I told you. I saved your life by telling you."

"But you didn't tell Evan."

His statement felt like a blow. It was the truth. She couldn't deny it. She hadn't told Evan that she suspected Conor was the traitor. It had been too late by then for Evan to avoid being implicated, but not too late for him to escape.

She had let him go to his death.

She had even wanted it.

Sari looked down at the floor, at the pile of greasy onions, of oily paper, and felt that sadness, that emptiness, well up inside her. She'd had to live with Evan's death every day since she'd stood there in town and watched him march to the gallows, his white shirt gleaming in the sun, the blood-red rose pinned to his chest looking like a wound.

She would never forget that day. She would never forget how he refused to look at her, or how his sister and mother had stoned her with their eyes. The small community had drawn away from her; she felt their collective blame in every sigh and every breath, in every unsaid word. She could not have remained in Tamaqua another day after the hangings. Eventually they would have come to her house in the middle of the night. Eventually she would have had to pay the price for her perceived betrayal. Sleeping with the enemy—how brutal the words sounded, how terrible they were.

"You don't know how it was," she said slowly, quietly. "You don't know."

"Evan never laid a hand on you, Sari," her brother said. "I know that for sure. If he had, I would've killed him."

"Not a hand, no," she said. She raised her eyes to his. "But there are other ways to hurt someone, Michael. It doesn't have to be a blow."

Her brother's face closed, eyes hardened, lips tensed. She wasn't sure whether he was working to control his anger at Evan or at her. His eyes shut briefly and he leaned his head back against the wall.

"Sari," he said. "You used to be such an obedient girl."

"Those days were long ago," she said bitterly.

"Before Da died."

"Yes." That was all that needed to be said. Just that yes, and she knew he was thinking back, as she was, to those days before their parents had died, back when they were a family and she and Michael had been close. Before Da died in the mines and Mama had followed him shortly after, dead of a fever that made her delirious and strange. Before Sari had been taken in by Aunt Bernice and Onkle Charles, and Michael had chosen a different path altogether.

In his own way he was like Conor, she thought. He'd been ten when their parents had died, and already angry. Their father's death in a mining accident had only exacerbated that anger. Michael had joined one of the boy's gangs in town, and though Bernice and Charles had taken him in as well, Michael rarely slept there, never ate there. He was in trouble almost from the moment their parents had died, raging against fortune, against life, and then, later, against the railroad and the company that ruled the miners' lives. The days when she and Michael had been children who depended on each other were long ago and faraway, vague memories, half- remembered dreams.

She looked at him now and remembered how well he'd been her brother once. How he'd taken care of her in the wake of their parents' neglect, kissing her scraped knees and feeding her bread and cheese when their mother was too busy sneaking shots of whiskey to make dinner.

She thought he'd forgotten those things, had forgotten what they'd been to each other, and so it surprised her when he turned to look at her, and his dark eyes were warm. "I haven't made things easy for you, have I, lass? Not these last years."

"No," she said. "You haven't."

"Do you hate me?"

Sari sighed. "I don't hate you, Michael," she said wearily.

"But you wish I would go away. You said as much once before."

"We don't lead the same lives. We don't care about the same things. I... I don't like your methods. The violence, the ... killing ..." She looked at him frankly. "Yes, I wish you would leave me out of them. I wish you would go away."

"There are no other ways now," he said bitterly, and that light of fanaticism, of hatred, glittered in his eyes. "The company's made sure of that."

She got to her feet. "Michael—"

"All right, all right." He grabbed her hand, forcing her back to her seat. "I'm sorry. Just tell me something, darlin'. Why's Roarke here?"

She jerked her hand from his. "I don't want you to hurt him. Promise me you won't."

"Sari—"

"Promise me."

He sighed heavily. "I won't hurt him—at least not while I'm here," he assured her. His lips broke in a grin, his teeth shone, eerily white, through the darkness of his close-cropped beard. "I promise you. But I don't trust him, and I want to know why he's sniffin' around my sister. Unless it's the same reason he was always sniffin'."

"Michael!"

"Sari, darlin'. Just tell me. I want you to be safe."

She laughed shortly. "That's interesting, given why Conor said he was here."

Michael's brows rose in question.

"He says there's a blackmark against me. That he's here to protect me from assassination."

Her brother sobered. He glanced at the wall, his jaw tightening, and it was those gestures more than anything that told Sari the truth of what Conor had told her.

"There is a blackmark," she said quietly.

"You have to understand," Michael said. "They think you gave him information. That you betrayed us."