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

“‘When they arrive.’ That, ma belle, is the real question, isn’t it?” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat to pull out his watch and held it up for her to see. “It’s half past six. Nearly a full night and day have passed since we departed Newport together, and still no sign of any of your gallant knights. So how does it matter if I am French or English or dropped to earth from the moon itself?”

She clutched the blanket more tightly, trying to fight her rising panic. She’d no idea so much time had passed, and she thought of how worried her parents must be. And Tom. Lord, how he must be suffering, to have her vanish on the night of their wedding!

“Have you at least had the decency to send some sort of note to tell them that I am unhurt?” There were so many perils that could befall a woman in a harbor town like Newport, and she hated to think of her poor mother imagining every one. Without thinking, she touched her bare wrist where Mama’s bracelet had been before she remembered bitterly that this man had stolen it. The pearl cuff had been special, a gift to Mama on her own wedding day, which she had given, in turn, to Jerusa. “You can’t possibly know the pain you’ve caused my family!”

“Ah, but I do.” His expression was oddly, chillingly triumphant. “But you can be sure I left behind a message that your father will understand.”

“Then they will come,” she said, as much to convince herself as him. “They won’t abandon me. They’ll find us, wherever you’ve taken me.”

“I’m sure they will,” he said easily, stretching his arms before him. Though he wasn’t much taller than Jerusa herself, there was no mistaking the strength in his lean, muscled body. “In fact I’d be disappointed if they didn’t. But not here, and not so soon.”

“Where, then?” she asked, her desperation growing by the minute. “When?”

“Where I please, and when I say.” Those cold blue eyes never left her face as he tucked the watch back into its pocket, and he spoke slowly, carefully, as if she were a child he wished to impress. “Remember, sweet Jerusa, that it’s my word that matters now, not yours. I know that will be a difficult lesson for a Sparhawk, but you seem a clever enough girl, and in time you’ll learn. You’ll learn.”

But she didn’t want to learn, especially not from him. Jerusa shivered. How much longer could he intend to keep her his prisoner? It was bad enough that she had passed a night alone with him when she’d been drugged into unconsciousness, but what would he expect tonight, when she was all too aware of him both as her captor and as a man?

“If it’s money you want,” she said softly, “you know my father will pay it. You already have my jewelry to keep for surety. Let me go free now, and I’ll see you’re sent whatever else you wish.”

“Let you go free?” He looked at her with genuine amusement. “Not a quarter of an hour ago you were ready to lead me to the gallows yourself, and now you ask me to trust you?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant—”

“It doesn’t matter what you mean, because I don’t want your money. I didn’t want your baubles, either, which is why I left them behind.” His voice slipped suggestively lower. “It’s you I want, Miss Jerusa Sparhawk. You, and nothing else.”

She didn’t ask why. She didn’t want to know. All she wanted now was to go home to her family and to Tom and forget that she’d ever set eyes on this horrible Frenchman. How had the most glorious day of her life disintegrated into this?

She should have known he wouldn’t bargain with her, just as she shouldn’t have trusted him in the garden in the first place. She wasn’t sure if she believed him about the jewelry, either, though it would be her luck to have stumbled into a man too honorable for theft but not for kidnapping.

Luck. She remembered Mama’s half-serious warning as she’d helped Jerusa dress: bad luck to the bride who let the world see her in her wedding finery before she was made a wife. Jerusa had scoffed at the time, but look what had happened. Was there ever a more unfortunate bride?

Unfortunate, homesick and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

She stared out the little square window, struggling to keep back the tears. A man like this one would only mock her if she wept, and no matter how bleak her situation was, she’d no wish to give him that pleasure. She’d given away too much already.

Far better to remember that no matter what else happened she was still a Sparhawk, and Sparhawks were never cowards. Hadn’t Mama herself fought off a score of French pirates to save Father long ago, before they were married? Mama wouldn’t have stood about wringing her hands until she was rescued. Mama would have found a way to help free herself, and so, decided Jerusa with shaky resolution, must she.

The rain had stopped, and a milky-pale sun was sliding slowly through the clouds toward the horizon. One night, one day. How far from Newport could they be? The land through the window was a fallow, anonymous pasture that could have been anywhere on the island. The key would be to find the water, Narragansett Bay or the Sakonnet River, for either would take her back to Newport. Even though she wasn’t a sailor like her brothers, she’d grown up on Aquidneck Island, and she was sure she’d be able to recognize nearly every beach on it. Certainly she’d have better bearings than some cocksure bully of a Frenchman.

Now all she had to do was get away from him.

“I don’t feel quite well,” she announced, praying she sounded convincing. “Whatever smelling stuffs you used to force me to sleep—I fear they’ve made me ill.”

He sighed with exasperation. “If you’re going to be sick, then use that bucket by the stall. Don’t foul the straw if you can help it.”

“It’s not that,” she said quickly. She felt herself blushing furiously from excitement, fear and embarrassment. “It’s that I must use the privy.”

He muttered to himself in French, and though she didn’t understand the words, Jerusa knew well enough that he was swearing.

She bent over from the waist, rubbing her stomach. “Truly. If you please, I must go.”

“You’re not going alone.” With another sigh he leaned forward to pull on his boots.

Jerusa saw her chance and seized it. She raced to the barn door, shoved it open just enough to slip through and raced outside. Swiftly she pushed the door shut and threw the long swinging bolt into the latches, barricading the Frenchman inside. With a little laugh of giddy exhilaration she turned and ran, away from the barn, the privy and the burned-out ruin of a house. She didn’t recognize the farm, or what was left of it, but that didn’t matter. Before her, to the east, lay the pewter gray of the water, and her salvation.

Without buckles, her shoes flapped awkwardly around her heels, and she kicked them away, and when the wind dragged the heavy blanket from her grasp and off her shoulders, she left that, too, behind, running as fast as she could down the narrow, overgrown path to the shore. One last windblown rise lay before her, then the sharp drop to the beach. She slipped and skidded on the wet grass and tall reeds lashed at her legs, but still she ran, her tattered skirts fluttering around her in the wind. The path turned to sand beneath the ruined stockings on her feet, and before her, at last, were the beach and the wide river that emptied into the bay.

Or was it? Confused, she paced back and forth along the water’s edge, trying to make sense of what she saw. The sinking sun to the west was behind her, so this should be the eastern shore of Aquidneck, with Portsmouth across the river in the distance.

But this short, sandy beach was all wrong, the distance to Portsmouth too far across the water. Jerusa shaded her eyes with the back of her hand and squinted at the horizon. Instead of the narrow tip of Sakonnet Point, which she expected, she saw what looked like two islands: Conanicut Island then, with Dutch beyond to the north, and a barren lump of stone that must be Whale Rock.

And there, to the east, washed in the pale light of the setting sun, was Aquidneck Island, and Newport.

“Newport,” she whispered hoarsely, the full impact of what she saw striking her like a blow. She wasn’t on her island any longer. She was on the mainland, an endless, friendless world that before she’d only seen from a distance, the same way that she was now gazing at her home. Her home, her family, her own darling Tom, all so hopelessly far beyond her reach. “God help me, if that’s Newport, then where am I?”

“Aye, ask your God to help you,” said the Frenchman roughly, “for you’ll have precious little from me.”

She turned slowly, rubbing away the tears that wet her cheeks before he could see them. His face was taut with fury, his blond hair untied and blowing wild around his face, and the pistol in his hand was primed and cocked and aimed at her breast.

“Don’t try to run again, ma chère,” he said so quietly she almost didn’t hear him over the sounds of the wind and the waves. “I’d far sooner keep you alive, but I won’t balk at killing you if you leave me no choice. I told you before, it’s you I want, Jerusa Sparhawk. Alive or dead, it’s you, and nothing else.”

Chapter Three

Joshua Sparhawk watched as his father, Gabriel, ran his fingers over the crumpled paper with the black fleur de lis. How many times, wondered Josh, how many times had his father touched that scrap of paper since Jerusa had disappeared last night?

“I just spoke with the leader of the last patrol, Father,” he said wearily, tossing his hat onto the bench beneath the window. “They’ve searched clear to Newport Neck and back again and found not a trace of her.”

“Not that I expected they would.” Gabriel sighed heavily as he sank back against the tall caned back of his chair. Though his black hair had only just begun to gray at the temples and his broad shoulders remained unbent, he would be sixty next spring, and, for the first time that Josh could remember, his formidable father actually looked his age. “Whoever took her is long gone by now.”

Once again he glanced down at the paper that was centered squarely on the top of the desk before him. To one side lay Jerusa’s jewelry, her necklace, ring and earbobs tucked within the stiff circle of the pearl cuff. On the other side was the pink rose in a tumbler of water, the fragile flower’s petals already drooping and edged with brown, an unhappy symbol for the Sparhawk family’s fading hopes.

“But we had to be sure, Father.” Josh frowned, unwilling to share Gabriel’s pessimism. If the black fleur de lis held some special significance, then he wished his father would share it with the rest of them. He still couldn’t quite believe that Rusa was gone, that she wouldn’t yet pop up from behind a chair to laugh at them for being such hopeless worrywarts. “There was still a chance we’d find her somewhere on the island. They had at most an hour’s start on us. How far could they go?”

“Halfway to hell, if they had a good wind.” Gabriel glared up at Josh from beneath the bristling thicket of his brows, the famous green eyes that he’d passed on to his children as bright and formidable as ever. “I told you before that the bastards came by water, and left by it, too.”

Unconsciously Josh clasped his hands behind his back, his legs spread wide in the defensive posture he’d used since boyhood to confront his father. He was doing his best to find his sister; they all were. But Father being Father and Jerusa being the one missing, even Josh’s best would never be enough.

“You know as well as I that we’ve checked with the harbormaster and the pilots, Father. We’ve stopped and boarded every vessel that cleared Newport since last night, and we’ve still come up empty-handed.”

“Oh, aye, as if these bloody kidnappers will haul aback because we’ve asked them nicely, then invite us all aboard for tea!” In frustration Gabriel slammed his fist on the desk. “They knew what they were about, the sneaking, thieving rogues. They slipped into town just long enough to steal my sweet Jerusa, then slipped back out without so much as a by-your-leave. That jackass of a harbormaster was likely so deep in his cups he wouldn’t see a thirty-gun frigate sail under his nose!”

“For God’s sake, Father, they had less than an hour, and if—”

Abruptly Josh broke off at the sound of the voices in the front hall. Perhaps there was fresh news of his sister.

But instead of a messenger, only Thomas Carberry appeared at the door to Gabriel’s office, pausing as he waited vainly for Gabriel to invite him in. When Gabriel didn’t, Tom entered anyway, irritably yanking off his yellow gloves as he dropped unbidden into a chair.

Unlike the two Sparhawk men, unshaven and bleary-eyed after the long, sleepless night and day of searching, Tom was as neatly turned out as he’d been for the wedding itself, his hair clubbed in a flawless silk bow, and his linen immaculate. For his sister’s sake, Josh had tried very hard to like Tom, or at least be civil to him, but to him the man was an idle, empty-headed popinjay, too concerned with dancing and the latest London novel. Of course the ladies fancied him to distraction, his sister most of all.

“Well, now, Captain,” Tom began as he crossed his legs elegantly at the knee. “What word do you have of my bride?”

Joshua watched how his father lowered his chin and drummed his fingers on the desk, his expression as black as thunderclouds. If Tom Carberry had any sense at all, he’d be running for cover by now.

“Your bride, Carberry?” rumbled Gabriel. “Damn your impertinence, Jerusa’s still my daughter first, and I’ll thank you to remember it!”

Undeterred, Tom sniffed loudly, an unpleasant habit he’d developed from overindulging in snuff. “You make it rather hard to forget, don’t you, Captain? But you’ve still not answered my query. Where’s Jerusa?”

The drumming fingers curled into a fist. “Where in blazes are the wits your maker gave you, boy? Do you think we’d all be scouring this blessed island and the water around it if we knew where Jerusa was? Not that we’ve had much help from you, have we?”

“I’ll beg you to recall, sir, that I ordered and paid for the handbills posting the reward for Jerusa’s return. Nothing mean about that!”

“Oh, aye, nothing mean about that, nor meaningful, either!” growled Gabriel as he shoved back his chair and rose to his feet. “Ink and paper won’t fetch my daughter back out of the air!”

“My point exactly, Captain. How, indeed, could a lady vanish into the very air?” Belligerently Tom sniffed again as he, too, rose to his feet. “Nor am I alone in my surmise, sir. There’s others, many others, who shall agree, sir, that my bride’s disappearance mere minutes before our union has a decidedly insulting taint to it. An insult, sir, that I’ve no intention of bearing without notice.”

Josh grabbed Tom and shoved him back against his chair. As far as he could see, the insult was to Jerusa, and he’d be damned if he’d let anyone speak of his sister like that. “What the hell are you saying, Carberry?”

“I’m saying that I believe Jerusa’s jilted me,” said Tom, his words clipped with fury. He lifted both hands to Josh’s chest and shoved hard in return. “I’m saying that her disappearance is merely a convenient manner of explanation. I’m saying that the chit’s amusing enough, but neither she nor her dowry’s worth—”

At once Josh was on him, driving his fist squarely into Tom’s dimpled chin and knocking him to the floor. Tom’s own blow went wild, but as he toppled backward he grabbed the front of Josh’s coat and pulled him down, too. Over and over they rolled across the floorboards, whichever man was on top swinging at the other as they grunted and swore and crashed into furniture.

But while in height the two were evenly matched, Josh had long ago traded a genteel drawing room for the far rougher company on the quarterdeck of his own sloop, and Tom’s anger and dishonor alone weren’t enough to equal Josh’s raw strength and experience. Finally when Josh was on top he stayed there, breathing hard, pinning the other man down between his thighs.

“My—my sister’s too good for you, you stinking son of a bitch,” he gasped, breathing hard as he raised his fist to deal one final blow to Tom’s battered, bleeding face. “Why the hell didn’t they take you instead?”

But before he could strike, Gabriel caught his arm. “Enough, Joshua.”

He struggled to break his father’s grasp, Gabriel’s voice barely penetrating the red glare of his rage. “Father, you heard what he said—”

“I said enough, or you’ll kill him, and the bastard’s not worth that.”

Reluctantly Josh nodded, and Gabriel released him. As he climbed off Tom, he flexed his fingers where he’d once struck the floor instead of Tom. His hand would be too raw to hold a pen tonight, and already his lip felt as if it had doubled in size from the swelling, but one look at Tom made it all worthwhile. No ladies would come sighing after that face for a good long while.

Slowly Tom crawled to his knees and then to his feet, swaying unsteadily but still shaking off Gabriel’s offered hand as he headed to the door. He fumbled for his handkerchief and pressed it to the gash on his forehead.

“You’re a—a low, filthy cur, Sparhawk,” he gasped from the doorway, “an’ so—an’ so I’ll tell th’ town.”

“Then go and tell them, Carberry,” said Gabriel grimly, “but don’t come back here. It was only for your father’s sake and Jerusa’s begging that I agreed to your wretched proposal anyway, and thank God I’ve broken the betrothal before it was too late.”

“You broke it?” croaked Tom. “I came here t’end it!”

“My daughter didn’t jilt you, Carberry, but I did. Now get out.”

And this time Tom didn’t wait.

Shaking his head, Gabriel went back behind his desk. From the bottom drawer he pulled out a bottle of rum, drew the stopper and handed it to Josh. “Don’t let your mother see you until you’ve cleaned yourself up. You know how she feels about fighting.”

Josh smiled as best he could and took the bottle. The rum stung his lip but tasted good, sliding and burning down his throat. This was the first time his father had ever shared the bottle from his desk with him, and Josh savored the rare approval that came along with the drink.

It was one of the quirks of his family that though he and Jerusa had been born together twenty-one years before, their positions were curiously reversed. Josh was the third, the youngest son, always trying to prove himself, while Jerusa was the first and eldest of his three sisters, the beautiful, irrepressible favorite to whom everything came so easily. Not that he’d ever been jealous of her; Jerusa was too much a part of him for that, almost like the other half of his being.

Lord, he hoped they’d find her soon.

His father left the bottle on the desk between them. “You’ve traded with the French islands, Josh. Ever heard of a pirate named Deveaux?”

Josh shook his head. “The name’s not one I recall. Which port does he call home?”

“Once he sailed from Fort Royale on Martinique, but not now. I watched him take a pistol and spatter his own brains aboard the old Revenge. Your mother was there to see it, too, more’s the pity.” Gabriel sighed, his thoughts turned inward to the past. “Must be nearly thirty years ago, though I remember it as if it were yesterday. And that, I think, is what someone wants me to believe.”

He picked up the paper in his right hand, and to Josh’s surprise his father’s fingers were trembling. “This was Deveaux’s mark, lad. All his men had it burned into their flesh, and anytime he wished to take credit for his actions he’d leave a paper like this behind.”

“How could he have anything to do with Jerusa?” asked Josh. “You said the man is dead.”

“As dead as any mortal can be, and his scoundrel crew with him. The ones that weren’t lost in the wreck of his ship we took to Bridgetown for hanging. But now, Lord help us, I cannot swear to it.”

Josh held his breath, waiting with a strange mixture of dread and excitement for what must follow. There were some stories of his father’s past—and his mother’s, too—that were told so often they’d become family legends. But most of Gabriel’s exploits as a privateer he had kept to himself, and certainly away from the sons who would have hung on every heroic word.

Until now, when Jerusa’s life might be swinging in the balance between the past and the present….

Gabriel reached inside the letter box on his desk. In his palm lay a second paper, faded with age but still a perfect match to the new one found with the rose. “Deveaux kidnapped your mother on the night of our wedding as she walked in the garden of my parents’ house at Westgate. And everything—damnation, everything—about how Jerusa vanished is the same, down to this cursed black lily, even though there should be no one left alive beyond your mother and me to know of it.”

Josh stared at the black lilies, his head spinning at what his father said. Whoever cared enough to come clear to Newport to duplicate his mother’s kidnapping so precisely would want to see the macabre game to its conclusion.

“But obviously this Deveaux must have let you redeem Mother,” he said, striving to make sense of the puzzle. “He didn’t hurt her.”

“God knows he tried. He would have killed us both if he could,” said Gabriel grimly, “just as he murdered so many others. Christian Deveaux was the most truly wicked man I’ve ever known, Joshua, as evil as Satan himself in his love of cruelty and pain. When I think of your sister in the hands of a man who fancies himself another Deveaux…”

He didn’t need to say more. Josh understood.

“I can have the Tiger ready to sail at dawn, Father,” he said quietly, “and I’ll be in Martinique in five days.”

Chapter Four

“If you’re well enough to run away, ma belle,” said Michel curtly, “then you’re well enough to ride. We’ll do better to travel by night anyway.”

He bent to tighten the cinch on the first saddle so he wouldn’t see the reproach in her eyes. Silly little chit. What did she expect him to do after she’d bolted like that?

But then, in turn, he hadn’t expected her to run, either. He’d thought a petted little creature like Jerusa Sparhawk would whimper and wail, not flee at the first chance she got. And locking him within the barn—though that had made him furious, it also showed more spirit than he’d given her credit for. Much more. He’d have to remember that, and not underestimate her again.

Jerusa watched the Frenchman as he murmured little nonsense words to calm the horse. Kindness for the horse, but none to spare for her. He’d made that clear enough.

She forced herself to eat the bread and cheese he’d given her, even as she remembered that he’d threatened to kill her. Rationally she didn’t believe he would, though she wasn’t sure she had the courage to test his threat and try to escape again. If he didn’t want her alive, he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to kidnap her in the first place.

But the ease with which he’d handled the pistols had chilled her. Most men in the colonies knew how to shoot with rifles or muskets to hunt game, but pistols were only used for killing other men. Because of her father’s whim to teach her along with Josh, she was adept at loading and firing both, and good enough to recognize the abilities of others. The Frenchman was a professional. He could be a soldier, more likely a thief or other rogue who lived outside the law.

He turned back toward her, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. By the light of the single lantern, his blue eyes were shuttered and purposely devoid of any emotion as he studied her with cold, disinterested thoroughness.