Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 4 - Julia Justiss, Georgina Devon - Страница 19

Instinct drew Michel to the alley behind the tavern. Instinct, and what he’d overheard from the indignant whore out front about a girl in a green gown dipping into her trade with the sailors.

As it was, he was nearly too late. Back in the shadows, her face was hidden behind the seaman’s back, but at once Michel recognized her legs, forced apart on either side against the wall beneath her upturned skirts, legs that were pale and long and kicking as she fought for her virtue and her life. He would have recognized her legs anywhere; he had, after all, seen them that first night in her parents’ garden long before he’d seen her face.

His Jerusa, his bien-aimée. And sacristi, he’d bought her those green ribbons not four hours past.

But he’d wasted time enough. Once again she’d left him no choice.

Michel drew his knife from the sheath at the back of his waist as he crept silently behind the sailor. Briefly he wondered who the man was, and why Jerusa had chosen him to trust. Whatever his name, he would be the one who suffered for trusting her. Another fate, another death to lay to the name of Sparhawk.

The man jerked only once as Michel’s knife found its mark, his own knife falling harmlessly from Jerusa’s throat to the ground with a thump. While Michel stepped away, back into the shelter of the shadows, the man swore, his voice thick and his eyes already glazing with death. As he staggered backward, he pulled the girl with him, and they fell together in a tangle of arms and legs.

Gasping for breath, she struggled frantically to free herself, still not aware that the grasp she fought belonged to a dead man. Unsteadily she tried to push herself up onto her hands and knees, and at last Michel reached down to pull her roughly to her feet.

“You see what you have done, ma chérie?” he demanded. “No, don’t try to look away. If you had not run from me again, that man would live still.”

Her eyes wild with terror, she shuddered and tried to break free. But Michel held her tight, turning her face so she was forced to see Lovell’s body and the spreading dark pool of blood around it. She had to understand what she’d done. She had to know the smell and feel of death, or she’d never understand him.

“He—he was going to kill me, Michel,” she rasped, her voice ragged from fear and the pressure of the man’s knife against her throat. “He was going to rob me, and—and use me, and kill me.”

“Then it was you or him, Jerusa,” said Michel relentlessly. “Because of what you did, one of you would have died here tonight. Was leaving me worth your life? Think of it, ma mie. That could be your blood.”

“It would not have been like that, Michel, I swear!”

“It couldn’t have been anything else.” He grabbed her hand and thrust it downward, into the warm, sticky puddle of Lovell’s blood. “Did you wish to be gone from me that badly?”

She gasped and jerked her hand free, but not before her palm and fingers had been stained red. She stared at her hand in horror, her fingers spread and trembling.

“What have you done, Michel?” she whispered as the horror of what had happened finally grew real. “God help me, Michel, what have you done?”

He smiled grimly, his pulse only now beginning to slow. “Only what you drove me to do, Jerusa,” he said softly. “And God help you indeed if you ever leave me again.”

“You’re fine, ma chère,” said Michel again as he carefully sat Jerusa on the edge of the trough beside the public well. He’d gotten her away from the alley by the rum shop as quickly as he could. He’d taken care, too, that no one had seen them come here, and at this time of night, the market square was empty except for a handful of yowling, skittering cats, but still he kept to the shadows. “I swear it, Rusa. You’re fine.”

He smiled at her again, his face tight with forced cheerfulness. She didn’t look fine now, no matter what he told her or how much he wanted to believe it. Her eyes were wide and staring, her face pale even by the moonlight, and her hands and forearms were scraped raw from where she’d been shoved against the brick wall. Though she’d stopped gasping, her breathing remained quick and shallow, and Michel still wasn’t convinced she wouldn’t faint. Quickly he dipped his handkerchief into the cool water and stroked it across her forehead and cheeks.

She closed her eyes and shivered, but the cool water seemed to calm her, and gently he touched the cloth to her cheeks again.

“Right as rain, ma mie, I swear,” he said softly. “Isn’t that what you English say? Though how an Englishman reared in your infernal Yankee weather could ever make rain and right equal one another is beyond reason.”

Gently he took her hand and lowered it into the water, rubbing away the stains left by the dead sailor’s blood until her fingers were once again white and unblemished. He had wanted to make her understand, that was all, to understand what he suffered every day of his life. But what demon had made him do it so shockingly? Not for the first time he wondered with despair if he, too, were touched by his mother’s madness.

Jerusa sighed, a deep shudder that shook her body, and slowly opened her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “I should never have left the inn.”

“No apologies, Rusa,” he murmured. “No apologies.”

She shook her head. “I’m not a child. I should have known better.”

“You haven’t made things any easier for me, true enough.” Morbleu, was that an understatement. By some quirk of the winds he and Jerusa had arrived in Seabrook before Gilles Rochet’s sloop. Michel would have been willing to wait for him here a day or two—his confidence in Gilles was worth that—but now they would have to leave Seabrook immediately, this night if possible. With any luck the dead sailor’s body wouldn’t be discovered before dawn, and by then he intended to be long gone.

He took the hem of Jerusa’s skirt and swept it back and forth through the water, trying to rinse away the bloodstains.

“You don’t have to do that now, Michel,” she said. “I’d rather go back to the inn, and Mrs. Cartwright can tend to those—those spots there.”

“Not if I can help it, she won’t. Right now you’re the one who’s in the greater danger of meeting Jack Ketch.”

She looked at him uncertainly, remembering what he’d told her in the alley. “Don’t be foolish, Michel. What have I done?”

“Not a thing, ma petite, but the constable will trust his eyes and ears more than your word,” said Michel bleakly. “I had no choice but to kill the man, Jerusa. I couldn’t put you at that risk, not with his knife at your throat. It had to be quick.”

Briefly she closed her eyes again as her throat tightened at the memory. Michel accused her father of being a murderer, but was what he’d done himself any different? She didn’t want to consider how deftly, how deliberately Michel must have thrust his knife into the other man. Yet if he hadn’t, she would be the one who’d died instead. Dear God, why was it all so complicated?

“I had no choice,” said Michel again, desperate that she understand. He had killed the man to save her. If he had to, he would do it again. In his world, the difference between life and death could often be measured by a second’s hesitation, and tonight he had nearly been too late. “You must believe me, Jerusa.”

Troubled and confused though she was, she still nodded. “Mr. Lovell—he’s dead, then?”

Michel sighed. “Sacristi, did he know your name, too?”

“I had to tell him,” she said softly, her shoulders drooping. “I didn’t see the harm in it. I wanted his captain to take me back to Newport, you see.”

“At least he’s past telling anyone else.” Michel sat back on his heels and whistled low under his breath. “All we must contend with now is that half the town knows your face.”

“And because I’m a stranger in this town, and because I was the last one to be seen walking with Mr. Lovell and I’ve his blood on my gown, then everyone will think I killed him.” She pressed her hand over her mouth, fighting to keep back her tears. “Oh, Michel!”

“They may think what they please, chérie,” he said softly. He took her into his arms to comfort her, even as he told himself he shouldn’t. “But before they touch you, they’ll have to answer to me.”

Wearily she slipped her arms around his waist, holding him tight as she rested her head against his chest. This once she would forget what their fathers had done, and pray that Michel could to the same. She would forget about the bridegroom she’d left behind and about the dark-haired woman in the miniature in the saddlebag. None of it mattered, not really. But twice now Michel had saved her life, and he was promising to do it a third. She wouldn’t doubt him again. If he said he would watch over her, he would.

His embrace tightened around her protectively. No one had trusted him like this before, but then, he’d never let anyone come this close, either. But with her, it somehow seemed right.

Right as rain.

Jerusa sat upright in the center of the bed and with both hands aimed the pistol at the door and whoever had knocked on the other side.

“Who is it?” she called, trying to make her voice sound properly sleepy.

“Who else could it be, Rusa?” answered Michel softly, so as not to wake Mrs. Cartwright’s other guests.

Jerusa flung back the coverlet and bounded to open the door, the pistol still in her hand. “You’ve been gone so long,” she said breathlessly as Michel slipped into the room. “I was afraid something had happened.”

“Less than an hour. And what more could happen, eh?” He frowned as he noted that she was completely dressed, down to her shoes. “You were supposed to rest.”

“Oh, Michel, how could I possibly sleep?” She fought back the impulse to throw her arms around his neck and hug him. Things had been different by the well. Then he’d offered his embrace as comfort, and welcomed hers in return. Now she wasn’t as sure.

“I suppose sleep was too much to expect, chère.” But she did look better, he decided, her eyes bright with excitement, and some of his worry for her slipped away. “No visitors?”

“Not a soul,” she declared as she handed him the pistol, keeping to herself how she’d imagined every creak on the stairs to be the constable coming for her.

“Just as well,” he said dryly as he disarmed the flintlock. There’d been a time, and not so long ago, when she would have cheerfully emptied the same gun into his back, and now she handed it to him without a thought. Progress, he supposed, though of what sort he wasn’t sure. “Gather your things and we’ll leave.”

She didn’t have much. At Michel’s suggestion she had changed back into the clothes that the Cartwrights had washed and returned earlier, and she’d already packed the green gown into a neat bundle she could carry with one hand.

“Can we get the horses from the stable at this hour?” she asked. “Though I suppose there must be a boy who’ll let us take them.”

“The horses are gone, Rusa. I sold them this afternoon.”

“Sold them?” she cried with dismay. “Even Abigail?”

He tucked the pistol into his belt and slung the saddlebag over his shoulder. “Abigail and Buck both. As charming as they were, ma chérie, we didn’t need them any longer.”

“But we can’t stay in Seabrook, Michel,” she said anxiously. “You said that yourself.”

“And I also said we were leaving. Just not on horseback.” Carefully he laid two guineas on the edge of the table where Mrs. Cartwright would be sure to find them, a more than generous settling of their account. Generous enough, he hoped, that she’d also forget Master and Mistress Geary had been her guests if the constable did come asking questions.

“By sea, then,” she said uneasily, clutching her bundle to her chest in both arms. “By ship?”

“By ship.” He took the single candlestick from the table and turned to face her. “But you needn’t worry that I’ll take you back to the Hannah Barlow.”

In the draft from the window the candle’s flame flared and flickered, dancing shadows across the angular planes of his face, masking his expression from her.

“Or to Newport?” Reminding herself of all they’d shared together, she dared to ask, and dared more to pray he’d say yes.

For a long moment he stood before her in silence with his fingers cupped around the little flame to shield it. Mordieu, why had she asked this one thing of him? Her eyes were so luminous, filled with candlelight and hope he’d no choice but to destroy. If he did what Jerusa asked, he’d turn his back on his mother and his father’s memory. But by granting Maman her wish, he was destroying the first real chance for happiness he’d ever found for himself and a future that had nothing to do with the past.

“Michel?” she asked tentatively, her voice scarce more than a whisper. Was it one more trick of the flickering candlelight, or were the pain and bitterness in his eyes really that keen?

But before she could decide, he looked away, above her head to the door and the journey beyond. “Come. I had to bribe the captain to sail early before the tide was turned, and we shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

She swallowed. “And where are we bound, Michel?”

“South, ma chère,” he said, taking care not to meet her eyes. “South, and away from Newport.”

In these last shadowy hours before dawn, Seabrook was quiet and still. The slender crescent of the new moon gave little light, but still Michel walked as confidently through the unpaved streets as if he’d done it a thousand times before. For all Jerusa knew, he had, and as she hurried beside him, she realized again how little she truly did know of him.

To her relief, they headed to the opposite end of the waterfront from the Hannah Barlow and to another wharf where a small brig was tied. Even by the meager light of the one lantern hung at the entry port and the second by the binnacle, Jerusa could tell that this brig was better managed than the Hannah Barlow would ever be. The crewmen bustled about with lastminute preparations before sailing, tugging a line a bit more taut or hurrying off to obey an order. Though the ship was smaller and more provincial than anything the Sparhawks owned, she felt at least they’d be sailing with a competent captain.

“Is that you, Mr. Geary, sir?” called a man from the larboard rail as Michel and Jerusa walked up the plank. “The cap’n’s below, but he asked me to welcome you aboard in his stead.”

He held his hand out to Michel. “George Hay, sir, mate. We’re glad to have you aboard the Swan, Mr. Geary, indeed we are. We don’t usually carry much in the way of passengers or idlers, but as Cap’n Barker says, your company will be a change from our own dull chatter. And you, ma’am, must be Mrs. Geary.”

Lifting his hat, Hay smiled and bowed neatly to Jerusa. She liked his face, broad and friendly, and because his manners and speech were so much better than most sailors’, she wondered if he might be a son or nephew of the Swan’s owner, sent to sea to learn the trade before he took his place in the countinghouse. As she smiled in return, she wondered wistfully what might have happened if earlier she’d come aboard the Swan seeking help instead of the Hannah Barlow.

She felt Michel’s arm slip around her waist. She knew it was entirely proper for him to do while they were pretending to be husband and wife, yet somehow to her the possessiveness of the gesture seemed based more on jealousy than affection.

It irritated her, that arm, and she inched away from him as far as she dared. Only once had Tom Carberry presumed to act this high-handedly with her, and she’d smacked him so hard with her fan that Newport spoke of nothing else for a week. She wasn’t about to make a scene like that now, not with the threat of the constable hanging over her head as long as they remained in port, but still Michel had no right to act as though he owned her.

Michel felt how she stiffened and pulled away from him. What the devil was she doing now?

“This is my wife’s first voyage, so you must excuse her if she seems somewhat anxious,” he explained for Hay’s benefit. Benefit, mordieu. What he wanted to do was toss the mate over the side for grinning like a shovel-faced English ape at Jerusa. “She’ll be less skittish once we’re under way.”

Skittish, indeed, thought Jerusa irritably as she refused to let Michel catch her eye. She’d show him skittish!

“Your first voyage, Mrs. Geary?” said Hay with far too much interest to please Michel. “Well, now, you couldn’t have chosen a pleasanter passage to make, or a sweeter vessel to sail in! Once we pick up the southerly currents, the Swan will be as gentle as a skiff on a pond.”

“You’re vastly reassuring, Mr. Hay,” said Jerusa sweetly, tipping her head to one side as she smiled at him. “My husband, you see, assures me that the best way to control my fears is to keep myself as free as possible of the detail of sailing. I know you’ll find it hard to countenance, Mr. Hay, being a gentleman of the sea like yourself, but I do not even know our destination, beyond that it is to the south!”

Hay scratched the back of his head beneath his hat and frowned. “What is there to fear in a place like Bridgetown?” he asked. “To be sure, some of the other islands might seem a bit untamed to a lady, but being under King George’s rule, Barbados is little different from Connecticut itself.”

Bridgetown! In amazement she turned to look at Michel. Her grandparents had lived on Barbados, on a hillside only a few miles from Bridgetown itself, and their sugar plantation was still run in the Sparhawk name. And her own mother and father had fallen in love there; even Michel knew that.

But could he really be doing this for her? If he truly couldn’t take her home to Newport as she had asked, was he instead taking her to the next best place?

“Yes, my dear, Bridgetown,” he said evenly. But his gaze never left Hay’s, and to her dismay, Jerusa could feel the tension already simmering between these two, tension she’d purposefully—and foolishly—fed. “I remembered how much you’ve always wished to visit your cousins there.”

Hay turned again toward Jerusa. “So you’ve family on Barbados, Mrs. Geary? I can assure you that—”

“You must have other duties to attend to, Hay,” said Michel curtly. “We’ll trouble you no longer. Has our dunnage been carried to our cabin?”

“Aye, aye, Mr. Geary, it has.” Automatically Hay responded to the authority in Michel’s voice, straightening to attention for him as he would for his captain. “You’ll find your cabin aft near—”

“I shall find it, thank you.” Michel’s grasp around Jerusa’s waist tightened again, and this time she knew better than to resist as he guided her toward the companionway and down the narrow steps.

The space between decks was low and cramped, and reflexively Jerusa ducked beneath the low beams overhead. Though they were aft, not far from the captain’s cabin, the close space was filled with the smell of the cargo in the hold, the sharp, raw scent of hundreds of hewn white oak staves that would be fitted into barrels for the rum trade. Smoky oil lanterns hung from hooks in the beams, and Michel unfastened one and lowered it as he stopped to unlatch the paneled door to their cabin. With a loud creak the door swung open, and though Michel stepped inside to hang the lantern on another hook on the bulkhead, Jerusa stayed in the doorway, too appalled to move.

It was, she thought, less a cabin than a closet, and a tiny one at that. A single bunk like a wooden shelf, a lumpy mattress stuffed with wool, a row of blunt pegs along one bulkhead and an earthenware chamber pot were all the furnishings. Not that the cabin had space for more; by comparison, their room at the inn belonged in a palace. But how could the two of them possibly spend an entire voyage in such close quarters?

Michel dropped the saddlebag onto the bunk and pulled a small sea chest from beneath it. As he did, the brig suddenly lurched as her sails filled with wind, and Jerusa staggered and barely caught herself against the bulkhead. Awkwardly she braced herself against the motion of the ship, feeling stiff and clumsy without the sea legs that every male in her family claimed to have been born with.

And so, of course, had Michel, or so it seemed to her from the effortless way he’d adjusted to the brig’s uneven roll. It was always that way with him, she thought grudgingly, just as he would have a sea chest waiting for him on board with only an hour’s notice, just as he could magically produce horses and calimanco gowns and baths in country inns. Nothing like that surprised her anymore.

Unlocking the chest with a key from his pocket, he glanced back over his shoulder at Jerusa.

“It’s a little late to turn overnice now, ma chérie,” he said as he began to transfer the contents of the bag into the chest. “This or the Seabrook gaol—those were your choices.”

Slowly she entered, closing the door behind her. “It’s only that I didn’t expect anything quite this small.”

“Believe me, Miss Sparhawk, there’s plenty worse,” he said without turning. “Or do all the berths on your papa’s ships come with feather beds and looking glasses?”

She looked at his back, feeling the sting of that “Miss Sparhawk” far more than his offhanded scorn. He hadn’t called her that since before the fire. Why, she wondered miserably, had he begun again?

“I’m glad we’re going to Barbados,” she began, hoping to set things to rights between them. “Though I’m sorry that I tricked Mr. Hay into telling me.”

“The Swan is going to Barbados,” he said curtly. “You and I are not. We’ll stay in Bridgetown only until I can find us passage to St-Pierre.”

“But that’s Martinique,” she said with dismay. “That’s French.”

“And so, Miss Sparhawk, am I.”

She didn’t need reminding, any more than she needed to be told she was English. Martinique was his home, not hers. She would have no friends there, no one to turn to except for Michel himself. Was this the reason he was being so cold to her? Because he no longer had to pretend otherwise?

Morbleu, why didn’t she speak? Michel hated it when she fell silent like this, keeping herself away from him. But then, maybe he’d already heard enough in the way she’d said “French” or the fact that she hadn’t bothered to hide her disappointment that they were headed for Martinique instead of Barbados. And worst of all was how she’d simpered before Hay, fluttering her lashes at the Englishman as bold as any light skirt in a tavern.

He’d let himself believe that things had changed between them, that she’d turned to him from affection, not just need. But in her blood she was still a Sparhawk, and in her eyes he would never be more than a baseborn Frenchman. It was his own fault to dream otherwise. Fool that he was, he’d come to care too much.

And sacristi, it hurt, more than he’d ever dreamed it would, to learn she didn’t feel the same. It hurt.

He thumped the lid on the chest shut and turned to face her, leaning with his back against the edge of the bunk and his arms folded across his chest, studied nonchalance that was totally feigned. “Tell me, Miss Sparhawk. When you searched through my belongings at the inn, was it only from idle curiosity, or did you simply find nothing worth your time to steal?”

She gasped, shamed by what she’d done and that he’d noticed. “I didn’t take a thing!”

“Then your purpose was idle amusement, not theft. How charming, ma chère.” He didn’t give a damn that she’d searched through his saddlebag. He’d certainly done worse himself. But the pain of seeing her smile for another man was making him look for ways to lash out at her, and though he hated himself for sinking so low, he couldn’t help it.

“As long as we must share these quarters, Miss Sparhawk, I’ll thank you to find other ways to entertain yourself. Just as I advise you not to look to our fair English mate for amusement, either.”

“Is that what this is about, then? Your own inexplicable, unfounded, ridiculous jealousy?” She stared at him with furious disbelief. Because of the cabin’s size, they stood no more than an arm’s length apart, close enough that she could feel the force of their emotions roiling like a physical presence between them.

“I’d call it caution, not jealousy. I’ve no wish to have to kill any more men on your behalf.” As if to make his point, he pulled the pistol from his belt and tossed it onto the bunk.

Jerusa gasped again, this time from outrage, not shame. “There is absolutely no reason why I should not speak with Mr. Hay if I wish to.”

“Hay smiles too much, ma mie,” said Michel softly. “He smiles too much at you.”

By the shifting light of the lantern his eyes had narrowed to slits of glittering blue, and if she hadn’t been so angry herself she would have seen the warning of what would come next.

“Dear Almighty, is that all?” she cried. “Because he smiles? At least he is a gentleman who knows how to address a lady with respect!”

“Is that what you wanted from me, Rusa? Respect and decency?”

“It’s what a lady expects from any gentleman.” Her heart was pounding, her whole body tensed, yet still she held her head high. She knew his quiet was deceptive. The danger was there. “Not that you would understand.”

“Oh, I understand, Rusa. I know what you want better than you do yourself.” He pulled her into his arms, instantly dissolving the distance between them. “And what you want, chérie, ah, there’s nothing decent about it.”