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

But even as he still held her safe in his arms, the warmth was fading and his eyes were bleak, and though he’d give half his life for it to be otherwise, he knew that, for them, love alone would not be enough.

Chapter Eighteen

When the tide was low late that afternoon, Michel and Jerusa found they could wade to the rocks where the Swan had been wrecked. Despite Michel’s predictions, no one else had discovered the abandoned ship yet, and after they climbed up her slanted, broken side they found everything on board exactly as it had been left. While he retrieved the chest with his belongings from their cabin, she went one last time to the galley for a few things—a cooking pot, forks and spoons, sugar and tea—that would be useful to them on the island. But she didn’t linger, eager to return to Michel’s side and the cheerfulness of the sunny afternoon.

“It’s almost as if it’s haunted,” she said in a whisper when her hand was once again firmly in Michel’s. Even in the bright sun, to her the strange stillness of the wreck was more disturbing now than during the height of the storm.

“Perhaps it is, chérie.” Michel ran his hand lightly along the shattered remains of the mainmast. “If Captain Barker had lived, I doubt he would have let things come to this sorry pass.”

Jerusa shivered, remembering that the bodies of Barker and the other men who’d died early during the storm were most likely still on board. As for Hay and the others who’d abandoned the brig, there was no guessing if they’d survived the storm’s fury in the open boats. Strange to think of all the people who’d been aboard the Swan two days ago, congratulating themselves on such an easy passage with their destination so near, and now she and Michel were all that remained. Impulsively she slipped her arm around Michel’s waist and stretched up to kiss his cheek.

He glanced down at her and smiled fondly, brushing his fingers across her cheek. “Now what was the reason for that, eh?”

“Because I love you,” she said, strangely close to tears. “Because I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you in my life.”

“I’m the lucky one, Rusa,” he said softly, and as he kissed her, he, too, thought of how fragile life—and love—could be.

They decided they needed to wash the salt from their skin again, and with that excuse they returned to the pond and the soft bank of ferns and moss beside it. Afterward, for supper, they ate ham and biscuits with beach plum jam that had come from the Swan, and carambolas, a sweet, star-shaped fruit like apples that Michel found growing not far from the waterfall. They lay on the sand and counted the stars overhead until the fire they’d built burned low and Jerusa drowsed contentedly in Michel’s arms.

“I wish we could stay here forever,” she said sleepily, her eyes closed with contentment.

“So do I, ma mie,” he said, his voice filled with inexpressible sadness. “But as much as we wish it, we won’t have this beach to ourselves much longer. Look.”

Reluctantly she opened her eyes to look where he pointed. On the far edge of the horizon rode the pale triangle of a sail in the moonlight, and in silence they watched as it glided past them, finally to disappear.

With a sigh Jerusa moved closer to Michel. “There, they won’t bother us now.”

“They’ll be back,” said Michel. “Or others like them.” Gently he kissed her forehead, then eased himself free of her. He’d needed a reminder like that sail. Because he’d found such peace with her, he’d let himself be uncharacteristically lax about their safety. There were no guarantees that whoever finally rescued them would do so from kindness alone; in this part of the world, in fact, that would be the exception, not the rule.

And there was more than that, too, for soon they’d be in St-Pierre….

While she watched, he brought his sea chest into the fading circle of light from the fire. He pulled out the bag that held his money, a motley treasury of gold and silver coins stamped with the heads of English, Spanish, French and Dutch monarchs, counted out half and tied it into a bundle in a handkerchief.

“Take this, chérie,” he said brusquely as he handed it to her. “You may need it.”

Bewildered, she shook her head. “Whyever would I need that?”

“You may, that is all.” When she still didn’t take it, he set it beside her in the sand. “I’ll give you one of the pistols, too.”

“I don’t understand, Michel,” she said, searching his face for an answer. Was she imagining it, or did he seem suddenly colder, more distant? “The money, the pistol. Why would I need them when you’re with me?”

“Because I may not always be there,” he said, looking down at the pistol in his hand to avoid the fear in her eyes. “There’s always the chance that whoever finds us will want to take you with them, not me. Look at what happened on board the Swan, Rusa. You chose to stay with me, but what would have become of you if I’d died, or if the ship had sunk outright? No, ma chère. I want to know you’ll be safe, and this will help.”

“Michel, that makes no sense, no sense at all!” She sat up abruptly and shoved the handkerchief with the coins back toward him. “For weeks you’ve scarcely let me from your sight. You’ve always been there to protect me, whether I wanted you to or not. You gave me a new name, new clothes, a whole new life where who I’d been didn’t matter so much as who I am. But now that you’ve made love to me, you believe you can send me on my way with a handful of coins?”

He sat back on his heels, his palms on his thighs, and frowned at her, stunned that she would misunderstand so completely. “Jerusa, no. It’s because I love you that I care what becomes of you. These waters are still a haven for pirates, guardacostas, runaway slaves and navy deserters, rogues of every sort, and—”

“That has never bothered you before in the least!” she snapped. His callousness wounded her so deeply that she couldn’t accept it, and fought back instead, striving to hurt him with words the same way he was doing to her. “Or is it because you’re one of those selfsame rogues that you can know so well what they’ll do?”

He hadn’t expected that from her. He’d never tried to hide his history, but then, he’d never expected her to toss it back into his face like that, especially not after they’d spent most of the day making love.

“Things are different in these islands, Rusa,” he said carefully, trying to explain. “Your waters to the north are less dangerous.”

“Then why didn’t you simply leave me there in the first place?” She wrapped her arms around her body, an empty imitation of the embrace she suddenly feared she’d never feel again. “Why didn’t you leave just me where I was?”

“I couldn’t, ma chère,” he said softly. “I had to steal you. In Martinique—”

“Damn your Martinique!” she cried, anger and anguish melding to tear at his heart. “I know what you’re going to tell me. That my father will be there, and that you still intend to try to kill him, and you’d rather not have me there to be in your way. But what if he kills you, Michel? Have you considered that possibility? Have you considered what that would do to me, to lose you just as your mother lost your father?”

He closed his eyes, his head bowed. “I won’t fail, Rusa,” he said hoarsely. “Mordieu, I cannot.”

And for the first time she knew with chilling certainty that he was right.

“You’re going to kill my father,” she whispered, her hands tightening around her arms. “You’ll kill him because he came for me.”

“I have no choice, ma mie. No choice at all.” When he lifted his face, his eyes were haunted and empty. “But I love you, Jerusa.”

She was trembling and she could not stop. He could talk all he wished of choices: had she chosen to love him as much as she did? “How can you say you love me when you’ve sworn to do such a thing to my family?”

He shook his head, his blond hair glinting in the firelight. He was trying so hard to smile for her sake, but all that showed on his face was the misery in his soul.

“I love you, Jerusa,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Je t’aime tant! Did you know I’ve never said that to anyone else? I’ve never loved anyone but you, Jerusa. Never. Perhaps that’s why I can’t explain this now. I don’t know the words. Sacristi, how can I say it so you’ll understand?”

He plunged his hand deep inside the sea chest and pulled out the a small, flat package wrapped in chamois, and as he unwrapped it, Jerusa’s heart plummeted. The black-haired beauty with the laughing eyes.

Was this, then, why he’d insisted on returning to the Swan this afternoon, to save this woman’s portrait from the looters? Was she Jerusa’s rival, one more reason why he would not want her in Martinique?

“Here, ma chère, look.” Michel thrust the little portrait out for her to see, his hand shaking. “Look at her, my blessing and my curse!”

“She—she is very beautiful,” said Jerusa haltingly. What else could she say?

He studied the portrait himself, cradling the brass frame in the palm of his hand. “She was beautiful once. I can remember her that way if I try very hard, and look at this. Perhaps that is why she would never sell this, no matter that there was no food on the table and my belly was empty. For Maman, pride was enough.”

“She’s your mother?” asked Jerusa, struggling to make sense of all he said.

He nodded, absently tracing his finger around and around the oval brass frame. “Antoinette Géricault. She was only seventeen when my father loved her, ma mie, only seventeen when he died and when I was born.”

When he was a child, the two portraits had always hung near his mother’s bed, low on the wall so Maman could see them as soon as she woke in the morning. The beautiful lady with the charming smile, the handsome gentleman turned in profile as if to admire her. It wasn’t until he was older that he’d learned the beautiful lady and the handsome gentleman were his parents, and heard the story of how Maman had saved the portraits, one in each pocket, as she’d run down the stairs the night of the fire that had destroyed everything else.

The fire that had been set by Gabriel Sparhawk and his men….

“Then she was the most beautiful girl in St-Pierre, and men would beg for her smiles. Christian Deveaux fell in love with her the moment he saw her, as she walked one morning from the market with a basket of white lilies.” Michel smiled, remembering how his mother would bend her arm as she told the story, showing him how the basket had rested against her hip, just so. “But that was long ago, before the sorrows claimed her beauty and her smile.”

The sorrows, and the Sparhawks.

That was how it had begun for him: every misfortune, every injustice was blamed on the Englishman Gabriel Sparhawk. He had murdered Christian Deveaux. He had destroyed poor Christian’s name and honor. He had robbed them of the fortune and position that should by rights be theirs. And worst of all for Michel, he had drained every bit of love from his poor Maman ‘s heart, and left it filled with the poison of hate.

No wonder he had no memory of Maman ‘s smile beyond the one that was painted on the ivory oval.

Quietly Jerusa came to stand behind him, drawn by the need to comfort him however she could. She rested her hands on his shoulders, her cheek against his, watching as he circled the frame and his mother’s face with his fingers.

“I should like to meet your mother when we’re in St-Pierre,” she said softly. “If she’s your mother, Michel, I know I shall like her.”

She felt how he tensed beneath her fingers. “She isn’t well,” he said, so carefully that she knew there was more that he wouldn’t tell her. “She seldom sees anyone, ma chère. She is unsettled in her thoughts, and company distresses her.”

Like the matching portraits on the wall, her madness had always been there. When he was young, he was terrified that some demon had come to claim his mother and make her wild as an animal in the forest, and that it was somehow his fault if she hurt him. She wouldn’t do it unless he deserved it, not his Maman. But he was so often disobedient, and when she was forced to beat him he wept, not from pain but because of the sorrow his wickedness brought to her.

If his father had lived, it would not have been like this. Maman would have laughed like other mothers, and there would have been food and clothes and a fine place to live, all if Gabriel Sparhawk had not murdered his father!

“I still should like to see her, Michel,” she said softly, “if only for a few minutes. It couldn’t hurt her to talk, would it? Most likely she’d enjoy it.”

“Don’t make the mistake of believing she’s like other mothers,” he said sharply. “She’s not some happy, round-cheeked lady like your own Mariah who will offer you tea and jam cakes and coo over your gown.”

“Michel, I didn’t mean—”

“Sacristi, Jerusa, she’s all I have!” He pulled free of her arms, his eyes tortured as he faced her. “When I was a child, she did everything she could for me. Can you understand that, Jerusa, you with your brothers and sisters and father and mother? She did everything for me. How could I not do the same for her?”

“But that’s the way of every mother and her child,” said Jerusa, reaching out her hand to calm him. “What son or daughter doesn’t strive to please?”

He shook his head and stepped back beyond her reach, the portrait still clutched in his hand. “Like every mother? Grâce à Dieu, non!”

He laughed, a harsh, bitter sound as he tossed the little portrait into the open chest. “Does every mother wish her son to be so much like his father that she will sell him to a drunken shipmaster when he’s but nine years old, set to learn the honorable trade of privateering? Does every mother rejoice when her son learns to kill, delighting in every lethal refinement or new skill he acquires in the name of death and justice, revenge and honor?”

“But in her way she loves you, Michel,” said Jerusa urgently. “She must! That is why I must speak with her. If she loves you, she’ll be as unwilling as I am to see you risk your life for the sake of an empty feud nearly thirty years old.”

“Oh, ma bien-aimée, my poor, innocent Jerusa,” he said softly, too softly for the pain that etched his face. “You still haven’t guessed, have you? It was my mother who made me swear to kill your father. And it was my mother’s idea, ma chère, to kidnap you.”

Chapter Nineteen

Gabriel thumped the empty tumbler down on the table and rose to his feet. Angry as he was, he seemed to fill the small captain’s cabin of the Tiger, the way, thought Josh glumly, his father did every space he’d ever entered.

“Do you mean to tell me that after a week in this place, all you have done is dawdled with some barmaid?” demanded Gabriel furiously. “Your sister’s life is in danger, and you’re chasing after some Creole baggage?”

“It’s not like that, Father,” said Josh, wishing his father wouldn’t immediately thrust whatever he did or said into the worst possible light. And it wasn’t as if Gabriel had had such great success himself on Barbados. He’d found no trace of Jerusa, and though he’d dined with the rear admiral from the fleet stationed there, no promises had been made and nothing accomplished. “I told you before. I might as well have been shouting at the moon for all the good the governor and his lot have done for me.”

“But damnation, Josh, didn’t you give them the letters of introduction?”

“I did, and they could scarce be bothered to break the seals.” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back so his father couldn’t see how he clenched and unclenched his fingers through the conversation. “None of the men you knew, or who knew you, are still here. The old governor was recalled to Paris five years ago, and the new one doesn’t know a Sparhawk from a sea gull.”

“More’s the pity for him,” grumbled Gabriel, but at least he’d sat back down into his chair.

Josh stepped forward to refill his father’s tumbler. All the stern windows across the cabin’s length were open to whatever breeze might rise from the water, but at midday the cabin was still stifling, and both men had shed their coats and waistcoats.

“When the officials turned their backs on me, I went to the rum shops and taverns. If any of Deveaux’s men were still alive, I figured they’d be there, not on their knees telling their beads in the churches.”

“True enough.” Gabriel took the tumbler, holding it critically up to the sunlight to see the pale gold color of the rum. At least he couldn’t question that; Josh had been careful to ship rum from the family’s firm in Newport, even though Martinique must have a score of distilleries of her own. “Though if there’s any justice in this life, the rogues that sailed with Deveaux have all gone to the devil with their master by now.”

“That’s what Ceci believed, too, until—”

“Ceci?” Gabriel frowned. “Who’s Ceci?”

“Mademoiselle Cecilie Marie-Rose Noire. Ceci. Her father owns the tavern where we met.”

“Ah, the barkeep’s daughter.” With a cynical sigh, Gabriel tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. “So, is she all the things a woman should be, Josh? Fair, charming, willing?”

Josh bit back his retort, but warmth still crept into his words. “She is both fair and charming, Father, but though she is the barkeep’s daughter, she’s not the slattern you seem determined to believe she is.”

“Then my sympathies to you, lad,” said Gabriel dryly. “If you’ve wasted your days with this girl instead of finding Jerusa, then at least you should have had her warming your bed during the night.”

And at last Josh’s temper spilled over. “Damn and blast, Father!” he exploded. “Is that all you can say about a woman? Will she warm my bed?”

But to Josh’s surprise, his father merely leaned back in his chair, rocking the tumbler gently in his hand.

“I haven’t thought that way about a woman since I met your mother,” he said slowly. “But you, lad. I’ve never heard otherwise from you. Not that at your age there’s anything wrong with seeing what the ladies have to offer, but this French girl—Ceci, was it?—must be a rare little bird to have clipped your wings so soon.”

Josh’s face went expressionless. Were his feelings that obvious, then, that even his father could read them? “She hasn’t ‘clipped’ my wings, Father,” he said stiffly. “I’ve known her but a week.”

Gabriel looked up at him from beneath his brows. “I didn’t say I was posting the banns yet, Josh.”

“A good thing, too.” Self-consciously Josh toyed with the cork from the bottle of rum. “That is, I like Ceci. I like her just fine. She’s clever and amusing and pretty and all that, but she was also the only person on this blessed island worth talking to.”

“Then I’d say in a week she’s made more headway than poor Polly Redmond has been able to make with you in Newport in the last two years.”

“Oh, hang Polly Redmond, Father!” Impatiently Josh jammed the cork back into the neck of the bottle. “Ceci’s special, aye, I won’t deny it. But what’s most important now is that she and her father are using all their connections in St-Pierre and beyond to help find any of Deveaux’s men, and Rusa with them.”

Eagerly Gabriel leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a hunt finally begun. “So you have found something, eh, Josh? Are we any closer to bringing my Rusa back home? What kind of news did your barkeep and his daughter bring you?”

“The best in the world,” said Josh. “Monsieur Noire isn’t just any barkeep, Father. He lays the blame for his sister-in-law’s ruin and death at Deveaux’s door. And because of that, tomorrow, through him, I’m meeting the one man on this island who still admits to having sailed for Christian Deveaux. If anyone can make heads or tails of your black fleur de lis, then he can.”

“And we’ll be that much closer to the bastards that took your sister.” Gabriel’s green eyes were bright with ruthless anticipation. “You’ve done well, lad. And you tell that lady of yours from me that she’s a rare bird indeed.”

“We must be almost there, Josh,” called Ceci as she leaned over the side of the boat to see beyond the sweep of their single sail. “Papa said to look for a little house with red tiles on the roof that was nearly hidden by palms on the far side of Anse Couleuvre.”

“Anse means cove, doesn’t it?” said Josh, his arm resting lightly on the tiller as he squinted into the sun. It had been a long time since he’d sailed a boat this small, and he was enjoying responding to the feel of the wind and sea in a way he seldom could on a vessel as large as the Tiger. He was glad Ceci had trusted him enough to sail the boat alone, much preferring to have her company to himself than to share it with some gloomy Creole fisherman as a chaperon.

Unlike so many women, she was fearless in the little boat, hopping back and forth from one side to the other until he finally had to tell her to sit still or risk capsizing them. Not that he’d put any damper on her eagerness; still she leaned over the side to point out landmarks to him or jumped to her feet to help him set the sail on another tack. She’d looped the sides of her skirts up through her pockets so they didn’t flap in the wind, and she didn’t particularly seem to care that the makeshift style offered him frequent views of her charmingly plump knees as she clambered about the boat.

They’d been fortunate in their weather, too, after two days of storms that had closed the port. But this was a cloudless day that made the water so translucent and smooth that the little boat flew like the wind itself. The bright, lush green of the tropical trees and plants flowed down the hills almost to the water, and today even the misty clouds that always hung about the crest of Montagne Pelée, the tall, barren mountain that dominated Martinique’s skyline, were a light pink haze.

“So if the anse in Anse Couleuvre stands for cove, what’s the couleuvre?” he asked as she came to sit beside him. He had yet to kiss her, and he wondered what she’d do if he leaned across the tiller right now. Strange to think that he’d known her less than a fortnight. It seemed more like a lifetime. “Covered? Colorful?”

“Non, non, Josh! It means snake, of course!” She laughed merrily and clapped her hands so that he didn’t mind in the slightest that she’d corrected him. “Snake Cove. For the fer de lance.”

Josh sighed pitifully. “I’m afraid I don’t know that one, either, sweetheart.”

“Oh, but you would if one bit you!” Ceci’s eyes widened dramatically beneath the yellow-striped scarf she’d used to tie back her hair. “The fer de lance is a most evil snake—as long as your arm, mon cher!—who lies in the forest and waits to pounce on poor travelers, who die within hours from its bite if the panseur does not arrive in time to cut away the poison. And only on this island, only on Martinique. These snakes are to be found nowhere else.”

She cupped her fingers like the head of a snake with her thumb as the jaw as she moved them together. “Snap, snap, snap, and goodbye to you, my poor Josh!”

“Well, pleasant sailing and goodbye to you, too, Ceci,” he said, laughing. “I do believe I’ll keep to the beach.”

“That is wisest, true,” said Ceci, letting her snake become demurely clasped hands in her lap once again. “Though I would be surprised if this Jean Meunier will be any more gracious to us than the fer de lance himself. Papa had to give three kegs of rum to Claude Boulanger simply to learn where the man keeps himself, but if any man on Martinique can help you find your sister, it is he.”