Regency High Society Vol 4: The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife

She came toward the companionway, but he blocked her way. “I didn’t mean just now, ma’am, but in all ways. To my mind, things don’t seem to set well between you and Mr. Geary, and if there’s anything amiss that I can help, well, ma’am, here I am.”

She looked at him strangely, remembering Michel’s warning. “Are you often in the habit of interfering between husbands and wives, Mr. Hay?”

“I’ll do it if I believe the lady needs a friend, aye.” He fumbled in the pocket of his coat until he found a crumpled paper. He smoothed it over his thigh before he handed it to her. “You’ll forgive me if I ask you to read this, ma’am, and then tell me again that I’ve been meddlesome.”

A handbill of some sort, she thought as she took it, for the printing was coarse and smeared, and there were holes in each corner where it had been nailed to a tree or signboard. What could it possibly have to do with her? Perhaps it was some sort of warning about coming salvation, and Hay the kind of pious busybody who worried too much for his neighbors’ souls. Reluctantly she tipped it into the light of the binnacle lantern to make out the smudged type.

But what she read had nothing to do with religion. Instead it was a poster announcing the “Unfortunate disappearance of a Certain Miss Jerusa Sparhawk, a Young Lady of Newport, Aquidneck Island, lost to her grieving Friends on the Evening of 12 June.” Everything was there and all of it true, from the circumstances of her wedding to a description of her person, down to the color of the garters she’d been wearing for her wedding. And finally, at the bottom, beneath her father’s name and address, was the bold-faced promise of “Reward to be Given at Miss Sparhawk’s Safe Return.”

“Since you came aboard this morning, ma’am, I’ve thought of nothing else,” said the mate doggedly. “I couldn’t help but remark the likeness. But you tell me, ma’am, and I’ll abide by your wish. Is there anything amiss between you and Mr. Geary?”

Numbly Jerusa stared at the paper, pretending to read though the letters swam before her eyes. Dear Lord, had her prayers really come to this? All she needed to do was tell this earnest, greedy young man before her who she was, and all her troubles would be done. They would take her home. She would be returned to her family, her father would reward Mr. Hay every bit as handsomely as he expected, and her life would begin again where it had left off.

And Michel would be bound in chains by the crew of the Swan until they put into port and he could be given over to a constable, and the nightmare she’d envisioned of his hanging would come true.

All with a word, only a word, from her.

Carefully she refolded the paper into neat quarters. “How did you come by this, Mr. Hay?”

“It was in the mailbag, south from Boston. I’ve a cousin there who often sends me curiosities for amusement.” He was watching her closely, ducking a bit as he tried to see her face more clearly. “Mrs. Geary, ma’am? Miss Sparhawk?”

Though her breath caught in her chest, she only smiled evenly as she returned the paper to him. Did he really believe he’d trap her with so obvious a trick? He’d have to try a good deal harder than that, for she’d been traveling and studying with a master.

“I can see why your cousin sent it to you, Mr. Hay.” Did he mean to share the reward with his cousin, she wondered, or keep it all to himself? “The young lady’s tale is passing sad, and I shall pray that she is returned, unharmed, to those who love her.”

Still the mate blocked her path, clearly unconvinced. “I only wish to see that right is done, ma’am.”

“An admirable virtue, Mr. Hay.” Though she smiled at him, her voice turned sharp. “But I’ll advise you to keep your fancies to yourself, and from my husband in particular. You would not, I think, wish to find yourself in a discussion with him.”

She swept by him, her head high, and down the narrow steps, into Michel’s chest.

“Are you all right, chère?” he asked softly, taking her arm, and from the way he’d slipped back into the French, she realized how worried he’d been. “I left Barker as soon as I decently could. Where’s Hay?”

She didn’t answer, instead laying one finger across her lips and cocking her head toward the deck, and Hay. Understanding at once, Michel nodded and led her back toward their cabin.

Until she felt Michel’s hand on her arm, she hadn’t realized how much the mate had upset her. Her heart was still racing, her palms damp, and as Michel lit the lantern in the tiny cabin, she sank down on the edge of the bunk before her legs buckled beneath her.

She’d done more than refuse Hay’s help. She’d chosen her loyalties, and God help her, she prayed she’d chosen well.

“Mr. Hay knows,” she said hoarsely, hugging her arms around her body. “He knows who I am, and he’s guessing at the rest.”

Michel looked at her sharply and swore. “You told him?”

The accusation stung. “He had a handbill. My father has offered a reward. And I didn’t tell him, Michel. Truly.”

“You must have told him something in all that time.”

“Only that I was Mrs. Geary, and that if he didn’t leave me alone he’d have to answer to you.”

He stood very still as he realized what she’d done. “You lied because of me?”

“I had to, Michel.” She tried to smile, but after an endless day of trying she finally failed. Why, why didn’t he understand? “I didn’t want to go with him.”

“Then take care you’re not alone with George Hay again, chérie,” he said. “I’ve brought you this far, and I’m not about to give you up to some two-penny bounty hunter.”

“Damn you, Michel, is that all?” She stared at him, her heart pounding. “After everything we’ve shared and done, that’s all you’ll let yourself say? That all I am to you is something to be kept from another man?”

Briefly he glanced down at his hands, unable to meet her eyes. She was right. She deserved more from him than he’d ever be able to give. She deserved a man who was free to love her.

Wearily he looked back at her. “I’m sorry, Rusa,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry for everything.”

For what seemed to him an eternity, she didn’t answer, sitting on the edge of the bunk with her hands clutching tight to the mattress and her eyes enormous. She’d every right to be angry and hurt, but could she guess that he was frightened, more frightened than he’d ever been in his life?

Mordieu, she wasn’t his and never would be. But what would become of him if he lost her now?

Then, with a sigh that rose from the depths of her heart, Jerusa came to him, slipping her hands around his waist as he folded his arms over her shoulders. Whatever her own sorrows might be, they were nothing compared to what he suffered. With her cheek against his chest, she closed her eyes and listened to the steady rhythm of his heart, and prayed that sorry would be enough.

Chapter Fourteen

Josh sat alone in the front room of the tavern, swirling the rum and lime juice in the tankard before him and considering how tired he was for having accomplished so little.

He had left his father in Bridgetown on Barbados while he had come here to Martinique. Eager to begin his search for Jerusa, he’d left the Tiger at dawn on Monday, only to discover that St-Pierre’s citizens prided themselves on being as late to rise as Parisians, and it had been close to noon before he’d been able to meet with any of the port officials. But no matter how many coins he left on those official desks, to be discreetly slipped into official pockets, there still had been no English ships seen in the Martinique port within the last month, and certainly no tall, fair English ladies. The officials were quite sure of that.

He’d made even less headway with the letters of introduction his father had written for him. Here the Sparhawk name meant nothing. The royal governor his father had known had been recalled to France, and the man who had replaced him had been too busy to receive an English sea captain. Perhaps, suggested his officious secretary, there might be an appointment open in September, or surely in October, if Captain Sparhawk chose to remain in St-Pierre that long. As the secretary had shrugged and sighed and shaken his fashionably powdered head, Josh in frustration had silently wished the secretary and all his kind to the devil.

His father had warned him it would be difficult, but Josh hadn’t wanted to believe him. English ships and English sailors—even those from New England—were unusual in Martinique’s waters, nor particularly welcome when they did appear. Though Josh had sailed in the Caribbean for years, he’d been here only once before, with his family while he was still a boy, and his single, hazy memory of the place was his oldest brother scuffling in the street with two Pierrotin boys who’d mocked his English clothes.

Not that things seemed to have changed much in the years since. As Josh had walked through the cobblestone streets, even the port’s Creole prostitutes had scornfully flicked their skirts away from him. The sooner he found Jerusa and they could head back for home together, the better.

But where exactly was Jerusa? Wearily Josh sighed again. Now that he’d exhausted the official channels, he’d have to explore other, more risky possibilities. After supper he’d begin with the rum shops near the water, and pray he’d be more successful than his brother had been at keeping clear of fights with Pierrotins.

Through the tall, open windows of the tavern the sun hung low over the bay, and from the street came the sounds of the city rousing itself from the sleepy heat of late afternoon for the enticing promise of the evening to come: men laughing now that their day’s work was done, a slave woman singing for her own pleasure, a pair of street fiddlers sawing through the latest jig. The last time Josh had heard fiddlers had been the ones hired for Jerusa’s wedding….

“Monsieur? Pardon?” said the serving girl. “S’il vous plaît, monsieur?”

“Forgive me, lass, my thoughts were elsewhere.” But the girl only stared blankly, and Josh groped for the foreign words to say the same thing. These last days his limited sailor’s French had been sorely tried, and having the girl waiting before him with a tray tucked beneath her arm wasn’t helping him concentrate. “Ah, plaît-il, mademoiselle?”

“Oui, monsieur, avec plaisir.” Like most of the women on the island, she was small and dark, her skin dusted gold and her cheeks full and blushed like peaches. But unlike all the other women, she didn’t scorn him but smiled instead, and enchanted, Josh grinned in return.

“What’s your na—oh, hang it, lass, I’ve forgotten myself again,” he said, but the girl only giggled behind her fingers, her black eyes sparkling with merriment. Though her striped bodice and skirts beneath her apron were cut modestly enough, there was still something charmingly, innocently flirtatious about her that no English serving girl could ever hope to copy.

“You’re anglais, aren’t you, monsieur?” she asked, cocking her head to one side like a small, bright-eyed bird.

“And you speak English,” said Josh with both delight and relief.

She raised one arched brow impishly. “It’s good for business. Papa has taught me English, Spanish and Dutch so I can sell his rum to any sailor who stumbles through his door.”

“So that’s how I seem to you?” asked Josh with a great show of forlorn self-pity. “One more stumbling, blind-drunk sailor?”

“Peut-être.” The girl tossed her black curls as she smacked his arm with her tray. “But how much rum would you buy from me if I told you that, eh?”

“Not a blessed drop,” he agreed. “But I might buy a whole cask if you told me your name.”

“Cecilie Marie-Rose Noire. You may call me Ceci. Most everyone else does, so I will not charge you for the cask of rum.”

“Generous and beautiful!” She couldn’t guess how much her teasing, good-natured banter meant to him after the disappointment of these last days. “My name is Joshua Sparhawk, captain of the sloop Tiger of Newport, Rhode Island, and you, Miss Ceci, may call me whatever you choose. Josh would suit me just fine.”

“A captain!” Her eyes widened. “But you are so young!”

Flattered, he considered briefly pretending he’d earned his place on the Tiger entirely on his own merit. Lord knows he’d let other pretty girls believe it before this. But somehow, with Ceci, he didn’t want to.

“I’m the captain, aye, and the Tiger’s been mine since I was nineteen.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve had the good fortune, y’see, to have my father as her owner.”

“Then you should be doubly proud, monsieur!” declared Ceci warmly. “Who expects more than a father? If you proved yourself worthy to him, then you must be a grand, fine sailor!”

“I do well enough.” He shifted his shoulders self-consciously, torn between relishing her praise and being shamed by it. He was proud of his skills as a sailor, but in his family such accomplishments were taken for granted, even expected. He knew that no matter what he did, he’d never come close to equaling his father or older brothers. But for little Ceci, he was the only Sparhawk that mattered. No, better than that: he was the only Sparhawk.

Swiftly he glanced around the room. It was still early for supper, and earlier still for the serious drinkers who would later fill every chair and bench and the spaces in between. For now, at least, he was the only patron.

“Could you join me, Ceci?” he asked. He rose to his feet to bow toward her, and saw how her eyes widened at his size. Well, so be it; beside these Frenchmen, the Sparhawks might be the lost race of giants. “I’d be honored by your company, and you’re the first soul I’ve met on this island I’d say that to.”

“Oh, monsieur, what you ask!” she demurred. “I’m a good girl, monsieur, a respectable girl. Papa would never allow such a thing.”

Yet from the way she blushed again and fidgeted with her apron as she peeked up at him from beneath her lashes, Josh was sure the invitation pleased her.

“What harm could come from it?” he asked, warming her with a smile made to break hearts. “There’s not another person in the place. Please, Ceci. Please.”

She shook her head, her black curls bobbing above the tiny silver rings in her ears.

“I swear I’m a good boy, too, Ceci. Respectable enough for any papa.”

Though she tried not to laugh, her dimples betrayed her, twitching in her cheeks as her mouth curled. “Handsome, green-eyed boys are never respectable,” she scolded, “especially les Anglais. But if you dine from our kitchen, I will come back. Tonight there is a fine fricassé of chicken and red crayfish with onions, and our blancmanger—you would call it a pudding, no?—is fresh coconut with nutmeg, and—”

“You choose, Ceci,” he said softly. “Whatever brings you back here the quickest.”

She made a dismissive sound deep in her throat and tossed her head one last time as she headed to the kitchen, but it seemed to Josh that she was back again before he’d scarce begun to miss her.

“Papa has seen your sloop in the harbor,” she said as she carefully set a steaming bowl of pumpkin soup before him on the worn, bare table. “He says it is a very fine ship, and he wishes to know if you will be regularly trading in St-Pierre.”

Josh smiled wryly. Whether in Newport or St-Pierre, fathers with marriageable daughters all asked the same questions.

“I’m not in St-Pierre to trade, lass,” he said softly. “I’m here to find my sister.”

Briefly he told her how Jerusa had disappeared, and that he hoped to find her here on Martinique. While he spoke, Ceci slipped into the chair beside him, her little hands clasped on the table before her and her lips parted as she listened.

“That is so terrible!” she cried when he was done. “For your family, your sister, for you, monsieur! Whoever would steal a lady on her wedding night is a monster!”

“You’ll find no quarrel from me there.” He dipped his spoon into the soup, hot and spicy with flavors he couldn’t quite identify. Until he’d begun to eat, he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. “My father believes it is the work of Frenchmen connected to a long-dead pirate from this island named Christian Deveaux.”

From his pocket he pulled out a copy of the black fleur de lis found with Jerusa’s jewelry and smoothed the sheet on the table. “Though it’s been nearly thirty years since Deveaux sailed from Martinique, Father believes that some of his men must still be alive and acting in his name against our family.”

“I understand, monsieur.” Ceci nodded solemnly. “I do not know how it is among the men of your country, but here in mine, thirty years would be as nothing when a gentleman’s honor must be avenged.”

“For God’s sake, Ceci, we’re talking about pirates, not gentlemen!”

“Even the worst rogues have honor, monsieur.” She frowned, touching the paper on the table between them. “I thought that I knew every name on our island, but this Deveaux—why, I wonder, have I not heard of him?”

Josh sighed and pushed the empty soup bowl away from him, resting his chin in his hand as he leaned his elbow on the table. “It was long before either of us were born, lass.”

“But not before my father’s time.” She stood and leaned forward to take the empty bowl, and Josh caught the scent of her skin, spicy with the same fragrance as the soup. “He could remember pirates back to Captain Morgan! I’ll go ask him, and return with your fricassé.”

Josh watched her hurry across the room, her small, slim figure weaving gracefully between the tables. There were other patrons in the tavern now, calling her by name as they ordered their wine or rum, and with regret Josh realized he’d no longer have her company to himself. But maybe later, when she was done working for the night and he’d made the first round of the rum shops, he could return.

Smiling to himself, he looked back out the window to where the sun had dropped below the horizon and the first stars were beginning to glimmer in the evening sky. Jerusa would like Ceci; they were two of a kind, both beautiful and outspoken, and Josh suspected that somehow Ceci, for all her claims to being a good girl, was every bit as accustomed as his sister was to getting her own way.

“You, monsieur?” demanded the heavyset Frenchman with a barkeep’s canvas apron. “You are the English sea captain, non?”

“Aye,” said Josh warily. Ceci’s father: the man could be no one else. But why should the Frenchman be so all-fired angry with him? All he’d done was talk to the girl. “Is there a problem, Mr.—uh, Monsieur Noire?”

“Oui, oui, there is a problem, Sparhawk, and mordieu, it is you!” Noire grabbed the tankard from Josh’s fingers, slammed it on the table and pointed dramatically at the door. “This is a decent house, and I won’t have your kind here! You go, now, and do not come back ever again!”

Conscious of every face in the room turned toward him, Josh rose slowly to his feet. He knew he didn’t have much choice but to leave as the tavern keeper requested, but he hated the feeling of slinking away for something he hadn’t done. It had a low, cowardly feel to it, and Sparhawks were never cowards.

“Of course, monsieur, I’d ask your forgiveness if I’d offended your daughter,” he said, intensely aware of being the one Englishman among so many French. “But by my lights, I’ve done nothing to shame or dishonor her. You can ask her yourself.”

“Nothing, eh?” The Frenchman smacked his palm down hard on the table. “I’ll give you your nothing! For twenty-seven years no one has dared defile this house by speaking the name of Christian Deveaux, and now you come in here and speak of him to my daughter, my sweet little Cecilie, and then claim you’ve done nothing!”

“You know of the man, then?” asked Josh excitedly. “You remember him and—”

“I can never forget the black-hearted bastard of the devil, and for that reason alone you will never be welcome again in this house.” Noire spat contemptuously on the floor beside Josh. “Now get out, before my friends here toss you into the gutter where you belong.”

Instinctively Josh’s hands tightened to fists at his sides as his gaze shifted from Noire to the men who had come to stand behind him, fishermen and other mariners, some already with long-bladed knives in their hands and all of them spoiling for a fight.

Young though he was, Josh knew well enough that the line between being a hero and a fool could often be as fine as a hair. To walk away now went against every fiber of his being, but what good could he do for Jerusa if he let himself be carved to bits by a pack of ravening Frenchmen for the sake of his pride?

But if he had to leave, he could at least do it on his terms, not theirs. Measuring his motions so as not to startle them, Josh reached for the tankard and emptied it. Slowly, he reached into his pocket for a handful of sous to pay for what little he’d had the chance to drink and eat, and dropped the coins rattling onto the table. With all the bravado he could muster, he then walked directly through the little crowd of Frenchmen to the door. His head high, he did not deign to watch his own back, nor did he threaten or scowl at the men who were driving him away, and when he finally stepped out into the street unharmed, he managed to keep his sigh of relief to himself.

But when on an impulse Josh couldn’t explain he turned at the corner of the street to look back at the tavern, it was Ceci he saw in the second-floor window, her face small and sorrowful as she peeked from behind the louvered blue shutter.

And despite her father’s threats, he knew he would return.

“Shove off, Dayton,” roared the Tiger’s bosun. “Shove off now! That is if ye still bloody well can without topplin’ on yer pickled arse!”

Sitting in the boat’s stern sheets, Josh bit back his own reprimand and tried instead to look grimly above such tomfoolery, the way a captain should. No matter how many insults were bellowed at Dayton, the man was still so blissfully drunk on cheap Martinique rum that it was a wonder he could stand at all, let alone push the boat free of the shallows and into the deeper water.

And Dayton had supposedly been with the boat the whole evening; God only knew in what condition Josh would find the men he’d granted shore leave. He’d chosen his crew for this voyage carefully, looking for men with a reputation for sobriety, but St-Pierre was the kind of overripe, indolent place that could tempt a Quaker, let alone an idle seaman. Josh shook his head and felt in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. One more reason to find his sister as soon as he could, before every last man became a hopeless sot.

The boat lurched free at last, somehow Dayton managed to climb aboard, and Josh settled back glumly with his pipe for the short row back to the Tiger. If only he’d had more success in his inquiries tonight, then perhaps he’d be in a better humor. For a man who’d been as notorious as his father claimed, Christian Deveaux seemed now to inspire nothing but uneasy silence.

If only the evening had continued as pleasantly as it had begun, when he’d met little Ceci Noire. If only…

“Capitaine Sparhawk! Capitaine, wait, I beg you!”

He turned and saw the flicker of white petticoats and a handkerchief waving from the beach. She wore a dark shawl draped over her head that shadowed her face, but even across the water there was no mistaking Ceci’s voice.

“‘Vast there,” he ordered quickly. “Haul for shore. Handsomely now, lads, handsomely!”

He didn’t miss the amused, knowing glances the men exchanged among themselves as they turned the boat short round, but this time he didn’t care. They could gossip all they wanted between decks. He was simply going to talk to the girl, apologize if she expected it and listen to what she had to say. Where was the harm or the scandal in that?