Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 4 - Julia Justiss, Georgina Devon - Страница 15

Jerusa was dreaming.

She had to be, for she was ten years old again, and it was winter, and she was waiting on the back step to their house in Newport, hopping up and down to keep warm in the snow while Josh tried to hold the fuse straight on the little red Chinese firecrackers. It was past midnight, long past their bedtime, but because the new year was only minutes old and their parents and the other grown-ups were too busy drinking toasts and firing off empty muskets to notice, she and Josh had crept outside to set off the last of the firecrackers their older brother Jon had brought from London for Christmas.

“You must hold it steady, Josh, or I’ll never be able to light it,” she complained. In the streets others were setting off firecrackers, too, some loud enough to drown out the pealing of the First Day bells.

“You just hush, Rusa,” ordered Josh, “and mind the striker, or we’ll never be able to light it because you never made a blessed spark!”

But even as he spoke, the spark found the fuse, a bright flash along the tallowed cord, and Jerusa shrieked with excitement as Josh tossed the firecracker onto the paving stones. For an endless moment it lay rolling gently back and forth, and then with a mighty, deafening crash and a great burst of light, it exploded. “Wake up, Jerusa!” called Michel.

“Wake up now!”

She pulled the blanket higher over her shoulders and rolled away from him, her eyes still tightly shut. She wanted to stay with Josh and the snow and the firecrackers. There was another flash, and another firecracker exploded even more loudly than the first, and Jerusa smiled sleepily. Josh had sworn he’d only that one left from Christmas, the greedy little—

“Morbleu, woman, can you sleep through anything?” Michel grabbed the blanket from her shoulder and ripped it away. “You claim you’re so blessed good with horses. I could sure as hell use your help now!”

“And I thought you could blessed well do everything yourself,” grumbled Jerusa to herself as she sat upright, for he was already gone. They had decided to sleep in the empty barn, and she brushed at the bits of straw that clung to her skirt. “It can’t possibly be time to leave yet, and I—”

But she broke off abruptly at the brilliant flash of lightning at the open end of the shed, followed by the immediate crack of thunder. Joshua’s firecrackers, she thought, and then she heard the squeal of the frightened horses and the loud thumps and cracks as they panicked in their stalls. Dear Almighty, the horses!

Swiftly she pulled on her shoes and ran to the back of the barn to join Michel. He stood in the stall beside his horse, Buck, to hold him by the halter, stroking the gelding’s shoulder and murmuring in French to calm him. But in the next stall Abigail was skittishly dancing from side to side, tossing her head and trembling with anxiety.

Hurriedly plaiting her own long hair so it wouldn’t startle the horses, Jerusa glanced outside the barn’s open doorway. Though there was no rain yet, the sky was nearly dark as night, the racing clouds a flat gray-green and the wind blowing hard enough to whip the trees like grass. No wonder the horses were terrified.

“Be careful, ma chérie,” warned Michel softly without turning toward her. “That mare’s so on tenterhooks now that she’d strike at her own shadow.”

“Then that will make a pair of us,” she murmured, grateful for his concern. She’d need it. At Crescent Hill the grooms were the ones who stayed with the horses during storms, not her, but she’d overheard enough stories of the damage a frightened horse could do to be wary herself.

Slowly she inched into the stall toward Abigail. “Pretty girl,” she crooned softly. “I know you’re scared, but there’s not a thing out there that can hurt you. It’s just wind and thunder, a whole lot of noise and show that doesn’t amount to anything worth your notice.”

The mare’s ears pricked forward at Jerusa’s familiar voice.

“That’s it, girl,” she coaxed. “You know me, I’m only Rusa, and you know I wouldn’t tell you a word that’s false, would I? Pretty, pretty girl.”

With infinite care she reached for the halter, stroking the horse’s forehead as she hooked her fingers beneath the leather straps. She was surprised to see that Michel had already saddled the horse. Though the storm made it difficult to gauge the time, she wouldn’t have guessed they’d be set to leave so soon.

“There you are, Abigail. Easy as you please, pretty girl. Rusa didn’t tell tales, did she?”

From the gelding’s stall she heard Michel chuckle. “Ah, Buck, my fine fellow, perhaps you know. When will Rusa stop telling tales to me?”

“When will I stop telling tales?” she said, keeping to the same crooning tone she’d been using for the mare’s sake. There was another brief flash of lightning, another fainter rumble of thunder, and though the horse trembled and whinnied uneasily, Jerusa still held firm. Perhaps the storm would miss them, after all. “Easy, pretty girl, easy. I never started telling tales, unlike certain Frenchmen, who can’t begin to tell the truth.”

Her baby name, Rusa, had sounded exotic and foreign the way he said it, so soft and slurred and indolent that she wished she’d never let him hear it; one more thing he’d stolen from her. He laughed softly again, and though Jerusa couldn’t see his face, she could imagine his mocking smile well enough to make her cheeks grow warm.

“Ah, ma chère, I’ve never yet lied to you,” he said with amused regret, which she was certain was quite false, “yet you will never believe me.”

“Then tell me the truth. Tell me why you kissed me.”

“So easy a test, sweet Rusa, so easy!” He kept her in breathless agony while he murmured to the gelding in French. “I kissed you because we both wished it.”

“That’s not true!”

“You see how it is? I could not be more truthful, and yet you won’t believe me.”

A fresh gust of wind rushed through the doorway with a swirl of leaves, ripped from their branches, and as the mare’s nostrils flared, Jerusa caught the same scent of coming rain and salty air blown east from the sea. Abigail arched back, and Jerusa forgot answering Michel as she struggled again with the mare.

Then, from the yard outside, came a loud, sizzling crackle followed by a hiss like a hot poker in cold water, then the brittle explosion of splintering wood.

Her heart pounding, Jerusa whipped around toward the noise in time to see the last standing wall of the abandoned house burst into flames around the white ball of lightning. In an instant the dry timbers became a solid sheet of fire, the flames urged faster by the wind. As she watched, the first sparks spun through the curling smoke to the roofless henhouse, and that, too, soon grew bright with fire.

And directly to the west, next in the fire’s path, was the barn.

Michel was shouting to her, but as she turned toward his voice, Abigail plunged back and ripped herself free of Jerusa’s grasp. Frantically Jerusa lunged for the halter again, and as she did, the mare tossed her head and caught Jerusa’s side beneath her raised arm.

Almost as if it came from someone else, she heard the odd, hollow sound she made as the wind was knocked from her. In disorienting slow motion she felt herself lifted from her feet and into the air, until, with a leaden thump, she fell to the hard earthen floor of the barn. There she lay, gasping for breath, every inch of her body hurting. But as she struggled to make her lungs work again, the only air she could find was acrid with smoke, burning her eyes and nose.

“Jerusa?” shouted Michel, fighting to control Buck. “Jerusa!”

Where was the girl, anyway? Why the hell didn’t she answer? The barn was filling with smoke from the burning house, and it would be only a matter of minutes before the wind would drive the flames this way. He tore his arms free of his coat and tied it across the gelding’s white-ringed eyes.

“Come along, Buck, we’ve tarried here long enough,” he said as he led the horse from the stall. They’d have to pass directly past the fire, and he prayed the horse wouldn’t balk. “You’re a brave fellow, and I know you can do it.”

Coughing from the smoke, Michel guided the horse toward the door. Another flash of lightning, another deafening crack of thunder and he nearly lost his grip on the horse. He heard Abigail’s terrified whinny, and in the split second of lightning, he caught a glimpse of the mare alone in her stall. But where the devil was Jerusa?

“Just a few paces more, Buck, a few more,” he coaxed, and then they were out of the barn and in the yard. As swiftly as he could, he ran with the horse to a tree well beyond the fire’s reach, to the east, and tied him there. At last the first fat drops of rain were beginning to plummet from the clouds to hiss into the flames, and as Michel raced back across the yard, he prayed the rain would end the fires.

He stopped at the door of the smoke-filled barn, tying his handkerchief over his nose and mouth. The mare would be easy to find, pinned by terror in her stall. But where was the girl?

He shouted her name again, and again came no answer. Maybe she’d already fled the barn, determined like every Sparhawk to save herself first, but even as Michel considered the possibility he dismissed it. Jerusa wouldn’t do that. She’d come to care too much for that foolish mare to abandon her now. She had to be in here somewhere, hidden by the stinging, murky clouds of smoke.

Sacristi, why had he been burdened with a silly chit who’d risk her life for the sake of a secondhand horse?

He felt his way to Abigail’s stall, stroking the trembling mare’s foam-flecked neck as he covered her eyes with his coat the same way he had with the gelding.

“Where is she, Abigail?” he asked softly as he led her forward. “Where’s our Jerusa, eh?”

The mare balked and shied, and then Michel heard the coughing. She was on her hands and knees on the floor, swaying as she struggled to breathe. He grabbed her around the waist, and she sagged against him, and together they staggered the last few feet to the open air.

Outside the barn, Michel pointed Abigail toward Buck, pulled the coat from her eyes and left her to join the gelding on her own. He slipped his arm beneath Jerusa’s knees and carried her, still coughing, to the little stand of maples where the horses waited.

Gently he settled her on the grass, slipping his coat protectively across her shoulders as she still coughed and gasped for breath. Her eyes were red rimmed from the smoke, making the irises seem even more green by contrast, and the rain had flattened her hair and blotched the soot that covered her face. But because she was alive, to him she’d never looked more lovely.

“You’ll be fine, ma chère,” he said, trying to smile. She had frightened him badly, more than the fire itself and more than he wanted to admit. He’d come so close to losing her, and though he tried to tell himself it was only for his mother’s sake, deep down he knew the truth, and that, too, frightened him. “It hurts now, I know, but you’ll be fine.”

Jerusa nodded, all the answer she felt able to give. She sat curled over her bent knees, holding her side where Abigail’s nose had struck her. Her lungs still stung from the smoke, but each breath seemed to come a little easier. She was sure her side would be purple and sore for at least a week, and she touched herself gingerly, praying she hadn’t cracked any ribs. She wasn’t about to complain to Michel and have him go cutting her clothes off again to tend to her.

She looked back at the fire, more smoke now than flames, thanks to the rain. The last wall of the house, the one that had been struck by lightning, was completely gone now, and only the stone chimney remained like a lopsided pillar against the sky. The rain had spared the barn, but, even with the wind, the air was still thick with the smell of burning wood, and she shivered as she thought of how near she’d come to dying through her own carelessness with Abigail.

Michel handed her a cup of water and she drank it gratefully, the well water deliciously cool as it slid down her raw throat. He, too, was smudged with soot, and one sleeve of his shirt was torn nearly the length of his arm. He’d lost the ribbon to his queue, which allowed his hair to fall loose around his face, and small black scorched spots left from cinders peppered his waistcoat. Whatever his reasons, he’d clearly risked his life for her, and no one else had ever done that. Certainly not Tom Carberry.

“There now, I told you you’d feel better,” said Michel softly. With one finger he brushed a lock of her hair from her forehead. She was a brave little woman, he thought with fond admiration. He couldn’t think of another who would have stayed with the horses, as she had. “No real damage, eh, ma mie?”

Though he smiled, weariness had deepened the lines around his eyes and made his accent more pronounced. She doubted he’d rested at all while she’d been asleep.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You didn’t have to come back for me.”

“Don’t thank me, ma chérie.” He winked wickedly. “I came back for Abigail.”

She tried to laugh, but all that came out was a croaking bark. “Then I thank you for Abigail’s sake. She’s unharmed?”

“She and Buck both. You can see for yourself how happily they’re grazing now, without an anxious thought in their heads. Horses can be charming, useful creatures, but they’re not particularly fearless in a fire.”

“Who is?” Her smile faded as she pulled his coat higher over her shoulders. Though she didn’t really need the coat’s warmth, she wasn’t yet ready to give up the security and concern—Michel’s concern—it represented.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she said quietly. “We didn’t lose a thing because you had the horses saddled and ready, even though we weren’t supposed to leave until dusk. Somehow you knew.”

He shrugged carelessly. “A guess, that was all. The high ground, the fact that the house had suffered from fire before, something in the air that felt like a storm. But don’t look at me like I’m a sorcerer, chère. If nothing had come of it, then I would have looked the fool, not the wise man.”

Of course it had been more than that. From the beginning, the place had made him uneasy in ways he didn’t want to explain. He looked past her to the smoldering ruin of the farmhouse and imagined again the empty, charred walls of his father’s house.

No, he didn’t want to explain that to her at all.

She brushed her fingers across the grass beside her and wondered what had made him fall silent. She wished he hadn’t. The terror she’d felt when she’d been lost in the smoke was still very real, and talking had helped her forget. Talking to him.

“If you’ll only take credit for saving Abigail’s life,” she said slowly, “and not mine with it, will you let me at least thank you for that?”

He raised his brows with feigned surprise. “A Sparhawk offering thanks? What’s happened to your pride, Miss Jerusa?”

“Oh, hang my pride, Michel, and let me be grateful!” Before she lost her nerve she leaned over and kissed him quickly, her lips barely grazing his. She sat back on her heels, breathless at her own daring, and unconsciously licked her lips as if to taste the fleeting memory of his.

He looked at her blandly. “Were you telling the truth that time?”

“About what?” she asked, flustered by the way he seemed to be studying her mouth. “About being grateful?”

“Of course not, ma chère. About kissing me. That tiny souffle was so slight I’m not sure but that I imagined it entirely.”

“You don’t believe I kissed you?”

“I don’t know what to believe, ma mie, not where you’re concerned.”

“It’s not as if I’m in the habit of kissing every man I see, you know,” she said indignantly. “But I’d have thought you’d have the decency to believe it when I did!”

He smiled with lazy charm, his teeth a white slash against his dark beard and soot-smudged face. She didn’t have to defend herself so vigorously—he’d known from the start that her bumbling popinjay of a fiancé hadn’t taught her a thing—but at least she’d forgotten entirely about the fire.

And so, for that matter, had he.

“I told you before, Rusa, I’ve never lied to you,” he said. “Decency or not, I haven’t begun now.”

With an exasperated grumble she threw herself against him, seizing his shoulders to steady herself as she planted her lips soundly against his. There, she thought triumphantly, he wouldn’t forget that!

But suddenly his mouth was moving against hers in a way she hadn’t intended at all, surely, seductively, and she forgot all her triumph as his lips slanted across hers to deepen the kiss. She shuddered as his tongue invaded her mouth, teasing and tasting her in dizzying ways she’d never dreamed possible. Shyly she let herself be led, echoing and responding to his actions until she realized that he, too, felt this other fire flaring between them.

Her fingers tightened into the hard muscles of his shoulders beneath the soft lawn shirt, and when she felt his hands circling her waist and spreading across the soft curve of her hips, she let herself be drawn closer to his body, relishing the new sensation of him beneath her. She was alive, gloriously alive, and he had saved her for this. He pulled her back with him onto the grass and she kissed him hungrily, as if she were famished, as if she hadn’t feasted on strawberries or—

Dear Almighty, what was she doing? Abruptly she tore her mouth away from his, pushing herself up on her arms to stare down at him. Her heart was pounding and her body ached in strange places that had nothing to do with her fall, and, to her shame, she realized she was sprawled across his body with her legs spread on either side of his.

“Oh, Michel,” she said breathlessly, unable to think of anything else to say as the color flooded her face. “Oh, my goodness.”

He laughed softly, and she felt it vibrate through her own body before she hurried to untangle herself from him. “Ah, Rusa, now I believe you’ve kissed me.”