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

But matter it did, far more than it should. A fool’s empty hope, he told himself fiercely, the gestures of a besotted simpleton who—

“Thank you, Michel,” she said, her sudden smile outshining the sun and melting away all his doubts. “How ever did you guess that I favor such a particular tint of green?”

She bent gracefully to gather up the gown, and as she did, the wet sheet slipped even lower across her breasts. Hastily he looked away, but not before the heady image seared itself forever into his memory. He jerked the curtains to the bed across one side, the horn rings scraping against the metal rod.

“You can dress there,” he said, not trusting himself to look back at her, “and I’ll wash on the other side of the curtain. Agreed?”

“Agreed to what? You sound as if you’re not sure you can trust me!”

“Oh, ma chérie,” he confessed softly, “I’m not sure of anything where you’re concerned.”

She stared at him, her indignation gone. “Neither am I,” she whispered uncertainly. “But I thought you only did that to me, not the other way around.”

He swallowed hard, feeling the shock of the current that passed between them as keenly as any lightning. No wonder she’d looked so frightened. He’d never in his life been this scared. How could a pretty girl’s smile and a handful of words make his whole world lurch out of balance like this?

Desperately he racked his memory for an explanation. It must be because he’d spent so much time alone in her company, more than he’d ever passed with any other woman, or maybe it was simply lust, fueled by the stolen glimpse of her in the tub. It couldn’t be her courage, or her wit, or her daring in the face of all he’d done to her, or the merry sound of her laughter.

Morbleu, it couldn’t be her.

He shook his head, wondering how he could make her understand when he didn’t understand himself. “It’s not that simple, Rusa.”

“Because of my family?” she asked wistfully. “Because of Tom?”

“Among others.”

“You mean whoever hired you.” Her pale fingers tightened around the green calimanco. “The one who’s paying you to kidnap me.”

Reluctantly he nodded. “Would you believe me if I told you how much I regret that?”

“No.” Her smile was swift and heartbreakingly brittle. “Because if it were true, you’d let me go free, wouldn’t you?”

He reached out to brush his fingertips across her cheek, and felt how she trembled beneath his touch. “It’s because it is true that I cannot,” he said sorrowfully. “I told you this isn’t simple, ma mie. If we had only met in another time, then—”

“Then I might be the queen of England and you the king of France, and we’d be not one whit better off.” She drew her face away from the light caress of his fingers, her eyes too bright with unshed tears. “You’d best wash yourself before the water’s too chill.”

For a long moment he held her gaze, hating himself for the coward he was, then turned away as she’d ordered, the drawn bed curtain like a wall of stone between them. No wonder his poor Maman had gone mad, if this was the price of caring too much!

Her heart pounding, Jerusa steadied herself against the bedpost. This must be more of the same glib foolishness calculated to break her spirit, she told herself fiercely, as meaningless as the endless stream of pretty, petty endearments that he sprinkled through his conversation. Hadn’t he always known the exact teasing, taunting words to say to make her alternately wish to throttle and then to kiss him?

Yet in her heart she knew this was different. She’d seen the yearning in his eyes as clearly as if he’d shouted it from the rooftops, and heard the confusion and sorrow in his voice that mirrored her own. He couldn’t have pretended that, could he? For once, had he really been telling her the truth?

And what of it, Jerusa? Why should it matter if he’s told you the truth now, far too late to do any good? He’s lied to you from the first word he spoke, and he hasn’t a single reason to change his ways now. Remember that, Jerusa! Don’t forget what he has done to you!

Don’t forget simply because he’s handsome as sin and his lazy smile makes your blood warm in ways it never did with Tom.

Don’t forget just because he saved your life, and then you risked yours in turn for him.

Don’t forget, only because in one halting moment of honesty he let himself be more naked and vulnerable than you yourself felt beneath his gaze.

Just because he cares for you, and God help you, Jerusa Sparhawk, you care for him…

The sound of the water splashing around him in the tub jerked her back to the present, and with a small flustered exclamation, she rushed to dress. He’d let her go untouched and granted her the privacy to dress when she hadn’t expected it, but she’d be a fool to depend on his word—or such a promise from any man, for that matter—by dawdling about in a wet sheet.

By the time he’d finished washing and dressing and had tugged the curtain back, she, too, was dressed and sitting on the stool by the window, struggling to comb her fingers through a week’s worth of knots in her damp hair. Her heart quickened when she heard him come stand behind her, but his voice when he spoke was as even as if nothing had changed between them.

“This might help, chère. Another trifle forgotten in our haste to leave Newport.”

She lifted the heavy weight of her hair with her arm and peeked out from beneath it. In Michel’s hand was a thick-toothed comb of polished horn. She smiled with relief, reaching to take it from him.

“No, ma belle,” he said firmly as he held the comb away out of her reach. “Let me do it.”

“Don’t be foolish, Michel, I can—”

“I said let me do it for you, chère,” he repeated, his voice low as he began to work the comb through her tangled hair. “You’ll be toiling all night if you try to do it yourself.”

Grudgingly she knew he was right, and, with a sigh, she sat straight for him with her hands in her lap. Over and over he drew the comb through her hair, each pass moving higher as he worked through the tangles.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she asked, wishing it weren’t so easy to imagine the tresses of scores of lovely, languid Frenchwomen sliding through his fingers. “Most men wouldn’t begin to know how.”

He chuckled softly. “I’ve been accused of many things, Rusa, but never of being a coiffeur. But you’re right. I’ve often played that role for my mother.”

“Your mother?” Jerusa smiled, intrigued by the notion. “How fortunate for her! As much as my brothers love my mother, I can’t imagine them ever doing such a thing.”

“Ah, well, perhaps if I’d brothers or sisters I wouldn’t have done it, either. But because there was only the two of us, I never thought it strange.”

She closed her eyes, relaxing beneath the rhythm of the comb through her hair. “There’d be your father, too, of course.”

“Not that I can remember, no. He died before I was born.”

“Oh, Michel, I’m sorry,” she said softly. Her own large family had always been such a loud, boisterous presence in her life that it was hard to imagine otherwise. “How sad for your mother to be left widowed like that!”

The comb paused, the rhythm broken. “She wasn’t widowed because she wasn’t my father’s wife.”

“Oh, Michel,” she murmured, her sympathy for him swelling. Though she’d heard the French were less strict than the English in such matters, any woman who let herself fall into such unfortunate circumstances was sure to be shunned by all but her closest friends. She’d heard the dire warnings often enough from her own mother. How much Michel and his mother must have suffered, how hard their life together must have been!

“But my father did intend to wed her,” Michel continued, his voice growing distant. “Maman was sure of that, for she loved him—loves him—with all her heart. But he was killed before she could tell him she was carrying his child, and then, of course, it was too late.”

“Was your father a soldier or a sailor?” she asked softly. Longing to see his face, she tried to twist about on the stool, but instead he gently held her head steady, beginning again to comb her hair. “You must have been born during King George’s war.”

“My father was a sailor, oui, a privateersman, a captain, the most successful of his time in the Caribbean.” Michel’s pride was unmistakable. “His name was Christian Saint-Juste Deveaux, and his home was more elegant and far more grand than many of the châteaux of France. Or it was, at least, before he was slaughtered by an Englishman and his house burned to the ground.”

Slaughtered by an Englishman: no wonder he’d been so unhappy over what she’d told Dr. Hamilton. But how could she have guessed? The coincidence was eerie. Both their fathers privateers, both captains prospering, though they’d fought on opposite sides of the same war.

But maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all. “My father was a privateer captain, too,” she said slowly, her uneasiness growing. “Though I expect you know that already, don’t you?”

Michel didn’t seem to hear her, or perhaps he simply chose not to answer. “Your oldest brother, Jonathan, or Jon, as you call him. He’s twenty-six years old, isn’t he?”

She hesitated, wondering why he should speak of her brother now. “Jon was twenty-six in April.”

“My own age exactly. Did you know that, ma chérie? I, too, was born in April in 1745. But while your brother was blessed with both parents, I, alas, was not. Yours were wed on board your father’s sloop, weren’t they? Or rather your mother’s, since by rights the Revenge still belonged to her, didn’t it? That would be in September of 1744, in the waters off Bequia, with your grandfather there, too, to give his blessing.”

“That is true,” she said faintly, her uneasiness growing as he told her details of her family that no outsider should know. “But of what interest can any of this be to you?”

It was the reproach in her voice that finally stopped Michel. He hadn’t meant to tell her any of this, not here, not yet, but once he’d begun he had found it impossible to end the torrent of names and dates and circumstances he’d heard repeated to him since his birth.

But maybe it was better this way. If Jerusa knew the truth as his mother had told him, then maybe she’d stop believing he was a better man than he was. She would scorn him as he deserved, and leave him free to honor his mother’s wishes and his father’s memory.

He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the other alternative, that once she heard the truth, she might understand, and forgive. Morbleu, he’d never deserve that, not from her.

“Why, Michel?” she asked again, her voice unsteady. “What purpose do you have in telling me these things I already know?”

“Simply to prove the whims of fate, ma chère,” he said deliberately. “You’ve only to count the months to see that your brother, too, was conceived long before your parents wed.”

“But that cannot be.” Jerusa’s hands twisted in her lap as she remembered again all her mother’s careful warnings. Her mother could never have let herself be—well, be ruined like that, even by a man like Gabriel Sparhawk. But as Michel said, Jerusa had only to count the months and learn the awful truth that neither of her parents had bothered to hide.

“Two boys, Rusa, two fates,” continued Michel softly as he combed the last snarl from her hair. “Consider it well. One of us destined to be the eldest son of a wealthy, respected gentleman, while the other was left a beggar and a bastard. Two boys, ma mie, two fates.”

Because she would never know, he dared to raise one lock of her hair briefly to his lips. “And two fathers, ma chérie,” he said in a hoarse whisper that betrayed the emotion twisting through him. “Our fathers.”

He knew the exact moment when she guessed the truth, for he felt her shudder as the burden of it settled onto her soul. With a little gasp she bowed her head, and gently he spread her dark hair over her shoulders like a cape before he went to the bed for his hat and coat.

He took his leave in silence, closing the door with as little sound as he’d opened it two hours before.

Silence that was alive with the mocking laughter of the ghosts of the past.

Chapter Eleven

Her father had killed Michel’s father.

No, slaughtered was the word he’d used. Her father had slaughtered his. Her father.

She stared unseeing from the window, struggling to imagine Father this way. Of course she’d known he’d once been a privateer, the luckiest captain to sail out of Newport, and from childhood she’d heard the jests among her father’s friends about how ruthless he’d been in a trade that was little better than legalized, profitable piracy. She remembered how, as boys, her brothers would brag to their friends about how many French and Spanish rogues Father had sent to watery graves, and how he’d laugh when he caught them playing with wooden swords and pretend pistols as they burned another imaginary French frigate.

But before now, none of that had mattered. To her, Father was gentleness itself, the endlessly tall, endlessly patient man with the bright green eyes who would always make room for her to climb onto his lap after supper and listen solemnly as she played out little games with her dolls on the table after the cloth was drawn. With her, Father never scolded if an impulsive hug left strawberry jam on the front of his white linen shirt, or refused if she begged to go down to the shipyard with him. With her, he always smiled and laughed or offered his handkerchief and his open arms when she wept, and not once had she ever doubted that he loved her as much as any father could a daughter.

And yet it didn’t occur to her that Michel might have invented it all, or somehow mistaken her father for another man. In her heart she knew he’d spoken the truth. It wasn’t just that Michel had been so unquestionably right about everything else to do with her family; it was the raw emotion she’d heard in his voice when he’d told her, or rather, when he hadn’t told her. Another man would have delighted in horrifying her with the details of how Gabriel Sparhawk had killed Christian Deveaux, but not Michel. The pain he must feel had sealed all that tightly within him, and that, to her, was infinitely more terrifying than any mere bloodthirsty storytelling could ever be.

Two fates, two fathers. Fate had cast her on the winning side, while Michel had lost everything. And now, somehow he meant to even the balance.

Without any sense of how long she’d been sitting, she rose unsteadily to her feet. The shadows of the trees were long across the street below, and the smell of frying onions from the kitchen windows below told her that preparations for supper had already begun. Michel hadn’t said when he’d return, but odds were he’d be back before sundown, maybe sooner.

Think, Jerusa, think! He’s told you all along he wanted you, and now you know why! You can leave him now, while he believes you too distraught to act, or you can sit here like a lump of suet, waiting until he decides exactly how he’ll avenge himself on your miserable self!

She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then another. In a way he’d already made her escape easier. In a seaport town such as this one, she’d have a good chance of finding someone who would know her father or brothers, and dressed as she was now, she’d have an easier time of convincing them she really was who she claimed to be.

Briskly she gathered her hair off her shoulders and tied it back with the green ribbon, trying not to remember the pleasant intimacy of having Michel comb it for her. She’d let herself be drawn into his games long enough, she told herself fiercely. It was high time she remembered she was Jerusa Sparhawk and stop playing at being this mythical Mrs. Geary.

She bent to buckle her shoes, and smiled when she noticed he’d left his saddlebag on the floor beside the bed. Though Michel might have been born poor, he certainly didn’t seem to want for money now, and whenever he’d paid for things he’d taken the coins from a leather pouch inside the saddlebag. She didn’t mean to rob him exactly, but after he’d kidnapped her, she couldn’t see the harm in borrowing a few coins now to help ease her journey home.

Swiftly she unbuckled the straps and looked inside. The contents were the usual for a man who was traveling—three changes of shirts and stockings, a compass, an envelope of tobacco, a striker and a white clay pipe, soap and a razor, one of the pistols plus the gunpowder and balls it needed.

Gingerly she lifted the gun with both hands, considering whether to take it, too. It was heavier than the pistols her father had taught her to fire, the barrel as long as her forearm, the flintlock polished and oiled with the professional care of a man who knew his life depended on it. Reluctantly she laid the gun back into the bottom of the bag. There was no way a woman could carry a weapon like that, at least not concealed, and if she wished to slip away unobtrusively, holding a pistol in both hands before her as she walked through the town would hardly be the way to do it.

She ran her fingertips along the saddlebag’s lining, searching for an opening that might hide the pouch with the money. She found a promising oval lump and eased it free. But instead of the pouch full of coins, the lump turned out to be a flat package wrapped in chamois. Curiosity made her open it, and inside lay a small portrait on ivory, framed in brass, of a black-haired young woman. Her heart-shaped face was turned winsomely toward the painter, her lips curved in a smile and her finely drawn brows arched in perennial surprise, which seemed to Jerusa very French.

Carefully she turned the portrait over, but there was no name or inscription on the back that might give her a clue of the pretty sitter’s identity. Not that she really needed one. Clearly the woman must be Michel’s sweetheart if he carried her picture with him. Whoever she was, she was welcome to him, decided Jerusa firmly as she wrapped the chamois back over the portrait. More than welcome, really, she thought with a sniff. So why did she feel this odd little pang of regret when she remembered how he’d smiled when he’d kissed her?

The rapping on the door was sharp and deliberate, startling her so much that she dropped the picture into the bag.

“Mrs. Geary, ma’am?” called the maidservant that Jerusa recognized as one of Mrs. Cartwright’s daughters. “Mrs. Geary, ma’am, are you within?”

“I’ll be there directly.” With haste born of guilt, Jerusa shoved the picture back into the lining of the bag and rebuckled the straps to make it look the way she’d found it. Swiftly she rose to her feet, smoothing her hair as she went to open the door.

The girl bobbed as much a curtsy as she dared with a tray laden with a teapot, sugar, cream and a plate full of sliced bread and butter in her outstretched arms.

“Compliments of me mother, ma’am,” she said as she squeezed past Jerusa. “Since Mr. Geary said to hold your supper for half past eight on account of him returning late, we thought in the kitchen you might get to feeling a mite peckish waiting for him.”

“Mr. Geary’s business can occupy considerable time,” ventured Jerusa, praying she’d sound convincing, “but he didn’t tell me he’d be so late this particular day.”

“Oh, aye, he told me mother not to bother looking for him afore nightfall.” Bending from the waist, the girl thumped the tray down onto the floor while she cleared away the wash pitcher and candlestick from the washstand for a makeshift tea table. “I expect he didn’t tell you so you wouldn’t worry over him. He’s a fine, considerate gentleman, your husband is.”

“He is a most rare gentleman,” said Jerusa, barely containing her excitement. If he wasn’t expected back until evening, then she’d have plenty of time to make her escape. “Did he say anything else before he left?”

“Nay, ma’am, save that you was to have whatever you desired.” Squinting at the uneven table, the girl squared the tray on its top as best she could and then stood back, her arms stiffly at her side. She cleared her throat self-consciously. “Would you like me to pour for you, Mrs. Geary? Me mother wants me to learn gentry’s ways so I can do for the gentlefolk.”

“Why, yes, thank you,” murmured Jerusa. “That would be most kind.”

She swept into the room’s only chair, gracefully fanning her skirts about her legs in her most genteel fashion for the girl’s benefit. Though she didn’t have the heart to tell her that, in the households of the better sort, ladies preferred to pour their own tea, regardless of how many servants they kept, she did want to hear what else the girl might be coaxed into volunteering.

The girl bit the tip of her tongue as she concentrated on pouring the tea without spilling it. “Much as me mother would wish it otherways, we don’t get much custom from the gentry,” she confided once the tea was safely into Jerusa’s cup. “‘Tis mostly sea captains and supercargos of the middling sort, tradesmen with goods bound for other towns, and military gentlemen rich enough to pay their way. Rovers and wanderers, ma’am, though me mother tries her best to sort out the rogues among ‘em afore they stay.”

Jerusa took the offered teacup with a nod of thanks and added a sprinkle of sugar to the tea before she poured it from the cup into the saucer to cool. “But in my experience it’s always the travelers who tell the most amusing tales.”

The girl snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh, aye, ma’am, and some ripe ones I’ve heard, particularly when the gentlemen fall into their cups! Mermaids and serpents great as this house, oceans made of fire and land that shivers like a custard pudding beneath your feet, all of it, ma’am, the fancies of rum and whiskey.”

Jerusa lowered her gaze to the saucer of tea, tracing one finger idly around the rim. “I fear that what Mr. Geary and I have heard in our travels has been much less wondrous and far more gossip. A man whose house had been struck by lightning five times, another mad with grief over the death of his sons.”

She paused, daring herself to speak the last. “And, oh, yes, the bride carried off from her own wedding.”

“Lud, a bride, you say?” The girl’s eyes widened with fascination. “I haven’t heard that one afore! Do you judge it true, or only more barkeep’s claptrap?”

“Who’s to say?” said Jerusa, realizing too late that the offhanded shrug of her shoulders was pure Michel. “But I wonder that you’ve not heard it yourself here in Seabrook. They say the lady was from one of the best families in Newport, a great beauty and much admired, and that she vanished without a word of warning from her parents’ own garden, not a fortnight past.”

“Nay, ma’am, then it cannot be but a yarn.” The girl sighed deeply with disappointment. “If she vanished straightaway like you say, then wouldn’t her bridegroom come a-seeking her? If he loved her true, then he would not rest until he’d found her again, ma’am, no matter how far he must journey. Sure but he’d come through Seabrook, wouldn’t he? But we’ve not had a word of a sorrowful gentleman searching for his lover here, else I or me mother would’ve heard of it.”

“But perhaps he went north, toward Boston instead,” said Jerusa more wistfully than she knew. “Perhaps he didn’t come south at all.”

“Now I ask you, ma’am, what sort of villain would take a lady to Boston?” scoffed the girl. “Nay, he’d be bringing her south, toward the wickedness to be found in the lower colonies, and that bridegroom should’ve been after him hot as a hound after a hare. False-hearted he’d be otherwise, wouldn’t he?”