Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 4: The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife - Miranda Jarrett - Страница 20

Josh sat alone in the front room of the tavern, swirling the rum and lime juice in the tankard before him and considering how tired he was for having accomplished so little.

He had left his father in Bridgetown on Barbados while he had come here to Martinique. Eager to begin his search for Jerusa, he’d left the Tiger at dawn on Monday, only to discover that St-Pierre’s citizens prided themselves on being as late to rise as Parisians, and it had been close to noon before he’d been able to meet with any of the port officials. But no matter how many coins he left on those official desks, to be discreetly slipped into official pockets, there still had been no English ships seen in the Martinique port within the last month, and certainly no tall, fair English ladies. The officials were quite sure of that.

He’d made even less headway with the letters of introduction his father had written for him. Here the Sparhawk name meant nothing. The royal governor his father had known had been recalled to France, and the man who had replaced him had been too busy to receive an English sea captain. Perhaps, suggested his officious secretary, there might be an appointment open in September, or surely in October, if Captain Sparhawk chose to remain in St-Pierre that long. As the secretary had shrugged and sighed and shaken his fashionably powdered head, Josh in frustration had silently wished the secretary and all his kind to the devil.

His father had warned him it would be difficult, but Josh hadn’t wanted to believe him. English ships and English sailors—even those from New England—were unusual in Martinique’s waters, nor particularly welcome when they did appear. Though Josh had sailed in the Caribbean for years, he’d been here only once before, with his family while he was still a boy, and his single, hazy memory of the place was his oldest brother scuffling in the street with two Pierrotin boys who’d mocked his English clothes.

Not that things seemed to have changed much in the years since. As Josh had walked through the cobblestone streets, even the port’s Creole prostitutes had scornfully flicked their skirts away from him. The sooner he found Jerusa and they could head back for home together, the better.

But where exactly was Jerusa? Wearily Josh sighed again. Now that he’d exhausted the official channels, he’d have to explore other, more risky possibilities. After supper he’d begin with the rum shops near the water, and pray he’d be more successful than his brother had been at keeping clear of fights with Pierrotins.

Through the tall, open windows of the tavern the sun hung low over the bay, and from the street came the sounds of the city rousing itself from the sleepy heat of late afternoon for the enticing promise of the evening to come: men laughing now that their day’s work was done, a slave woman singing for her own pleasure, a pair of street fiddlers sawing through the latest jig. The last time Josh had heard fiddlers had been the ones hired for Jerusa’s wedding….

“Monsieur? Pardon?” said the serving girl. “S’il vous plaît, monsieur?”

“Forgive me, lass, my thoughts were elsewhere.” But the girl only stared blankly, and Josh groped for the foreign words to say the same thing. These last days his limited sailor’s French had been sorely tried, and having the girl waiting before him with a tray tucked beneath her arm wasn’t helping him concentrate. “Ah, plaît-il, mademoiselle?”

“Oui, monsieur, avec plaisir.” Like most of the women on the island, she was small and dark, her skin dusted gold and her cheeks full and blushed like peaches. But unlike all the other women, she didn’t scorn him but smiled instead, and enchanted, Josh grinned in return.

“What’s your na—oh, hang it, lass, I’ve forgotten myself again,” he said, but the girl only giggled behind her fingers, her black eyes sparkling with merriment. Though her striped bodice and skirts beneath her apron were cut modestly enough, there was still something charmingly, innocently flirtatious about her that no English serving girl could ever hope to copy.

“You’re anglais, aren’t you, monsieur?” she asked, cocking her head to one side like a small, bright-eyed bird.

“And you speak English,” said Josh with both delight and relief.

She raised one arched brow impishly. “It’s good for business. Papa has taught me English, Spanish and Dutch so I can sell his rum to any sailor who stumbles through his door.”

“So that’s how I seem to you?” asked Josh with a great show of forlorn self-pity. “One more stumbling, blind-drunk sailor?”

“Peut-être.” The girl tossed her black curls as she smacked his arm with her tray. “But how much rum would you buy from me if I told you that, eh?”

“Not a blessed drop,” he agreed. “But I might buy a whole cask if you told me your name.”

“Cecilie Marie-Rose Noire. You may call me Ceci. Most everyone else does, so I will not charge you for the cask of rum.”

“Generous and beautiful!” She couldn’t guess how much her teasing, good-natured banter meant to him after the disappointment of these last days. “My name is Joshua Sparhawk, captain of the sloop Tiger of Newport, Rhode Island, and you, Miss Ceci, may call me whatever you choose. Josh would suit me just fine.”

“A captain!” Her eyes widened. “But you are so young!”

Flattered, he considered briefly pretending he’d earned his place on the Tiger entirely on his own merit. Lord knows he’d let other pretty girls believe it before this. But somehow, with Ceci, he didn’t want to.

“I’m the captain, aye, and the Tiger’s been mine since I was nineteen.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve had the good fortune, y’see, to have my father as her owner.”

“Then you should be doubly proud, monsieur!” declared Ceci warmly. “Who expects more than a father? If you proved yourself worthy to him, then you must be a grand, fine sailor!”

“I do well enough.” He shifted his shoulders self-consciously, torn between relishing her praise and being shamed by it. He was proud of his skills as a sailor, but in his family such accomplishments were taken for granted, even expected. He knew that no matter what he did, he’d never come close to equaling his father or older brothers. But for little Ceci, he was the only Sparhawk that mattered. No, better than that: he was the only Sparhawk.

Swiftly he glanced around the room. It was still early for supper, and earlier still for the serious drinkers who would later fill every chair and bench and the spaces in between. For now, at least, he was the only patron.

“Could you join me, Ceci?” he asked. He rose to his feet to bow toward her, and saw how her eyes widened at his size. Well, so be it; beside these Frenchmen, the Sparhawks might be the lost race of giants. “I’d be honored by your company, and you’re the first soul I’ve met on this island I’d say that to.”

“Oh, monsieur, what you ask!” she demurred. “I’m a good girl, monsieur, a respectable girl. Papa would never allow such a thing.”

Yet from the way she blushed again and fidgeted with her apron as she peeked up at him from beneath her lashes, Josh was sure the invitation pleased her.

“What harm could come from it?” he asked, warming her with a smile made to break hearts. “There’s not another person in the place. Please, Ceci. Please.”

She shook her head, her black curls bobbing above the tiny silver rings in her ears.

“I swear I’m a good boy, too, Ceci. Respectable enough for any papa.”

Though she tried not to laugh, her dimples betrayed her, twitching in her cheeks as her mouth curled. “Handsome, green-eyed boys are never respectable,” she scolded, “especially les Anglais. But if you dine from our kitchen, I will come back. Tonight there is a fine fricassé of chicken and red crayfish with onions, and our blancmanger—you would call it a pudding, no?—is fresh coconut with nutmeg, and—”

“You choose, Ceci,” he said softly. “Whatever brings you back here the quickest.”

She made a dismissive sound deep in her throat and tossed her head one last time as she headed to the kitchen, but it seemed to Josh that she was back again before he’d scarce begun to miss her.

“Papa has seen your sloop in the harbor,” she said as she carefully set a steaming bowl of pumpkin soup before him on the worn, bare table. “He says it is a very fine ship, and he wishes to know if you will be regularly trading in St-Pierre.”

Josh smiled wryly. Whether in Newport or St-Pierre, fathers with marriageable daughters all asked the same questions.

“I’m not in St-Pierre to trade, lass,” he said softly. “I’m here to find my sister.”

Briefly he told her how Jerusa had disappeared, and that he hoped to find her here on Martinique. While he spoke, Ceci slipped into the chair beside him, her little hands clasped on the table before her and her lips parted as she listened.

“That is so terrible!” she cried when he was done. “For your family, your sister, for you, monsieur! Whoever would steal a lady on her wedding night is a monster!”

“You’ll find no quarrel from me there.” He dipped his spoon into the soup, hot and spicy with flavors he couldn’t quite identify. Until he’d begun to eat, he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. “My father believes it is the work of Frenchmen connected to a long-dead pirate from this island named Christian Deveaux.”

From his pocket he pulled out a copy of the black fleur de lis found with Jerusa’s jewelry and smoothed the sheet on the table. “Though it’s been nearly thirty years since Deveaux sailed from Martinique, Father believes that some of his men must still be alive and acting in his name against our family.”

“I understand, monsieur.” Ceci nodded solemnly. “I do not know how it is among the men of your country, but here in mine, thirty years would be as nothing when a gentleman’s honor must be avenged.”

“For God’s sake, Ceci, we’re talking about pirates, not gentlemen!”

“Even the worst rogues have honor, monsieur.” She frowned, touching the paper on the table between them. “I thought that I knew every name on our island, but this Deveaux—why, I wonder, have I not heard of him?”

Josh sighed and pushed the empty soup bowl away from him, resting his chin in his hand as he leaned his elbow on the table. “It was long before either of us were born, lass.”

“But not before my father’s time.” She stood and leaned forward to take the empty bowl, and Josh caught the scent of her skin, spicy with the same fragrance as the soup. “He could remember pirates back to Captain Morgan! I’ll go ask him, and return with your fricassé.”

Josh watched her hurry across the room, her small, slim figure weaving gracefully between the tables. There were other patrons in the tavern now, calling her by name as they ordered their wine or rum, and with regret Josh realized he’d no longer have her company to himself. But maybe later, when she was done working for the night and he’d made the first round of the rum shops, he could return.

Smiling to himself, he looked back out the window to where the sun had dropped below the horizon and the first stars were beginning to glimmer in the evening sky. Jerusa would like Ceci; they were two of a kind, both beautiful and outspoken, and Josh suspected that somehow Ceci, for all her claims to being a good girl, was every bit as accustomed as his sister was to getting her own way.

“You, monsieur?” demanded the heavyset Frenchman with a barkeep’s canvas apron. “You are the English sea captain, non?”

“Aye,” said Josh warily. Ceci’s father: the man could be no one else. But why should the Frenchman be so all-fired angry with him? All he’d done was talk to the girl. “Is there a problem, Mr.—uh, Monsieur Noire?”

“Oui, oui, there is a problem, Sparhawk, and mordieu, it is you!” Noire grabbed the tankard from Josh’s fingers, slammed it on the table and pointed dramatically at the door. “This is a decent house, and I won’t have your kind here! You go, now, and do not come back ever again!”

Conscious of every face in the room turned toward him, Josh rose slowly to his feet. He knew he didn’t have much choice but to leave as the tavern keeper requested, but he hated the feeling of slinking away for something he hadn’t done. It had a low, cowardly feel to it, and Sparhawks were never cowards.

“Of course, monsieur, I’d ask your forgiveness if I’d offended your daughter,” he said, intensely aware of being the one Englishman among so many French. “But by my lights, I’ve done nothing to shame or dishonor her. You can ask her yourself.”

“Nothing, eh?” The Frenchman smacked his palm down hard on the table. “I’ll give you your nothing! For twenty-seven years no one has dared defile this house by speaking the name of Christian Deveaux, and now you come in here and speak of him to my daughter, my sweet little Cecilie, and then claim you’ve done nothing!”

“You know of the man, then?” asked Josh excitedly. “You remember him and—”

“I can never forget the black-hearted bastard of the devil, and for that reason alone you will never be welcome again in this house.” Noire spat contemptuously on the floor beside Josh. “Now get out, before my friends here toss you into the gutter where you belong.”

Instinctively Josh’s hands tightened to fists at his sides as his gaze shifted from Noire to the men who had come to stand behind him, fishermen and other mariners, some already with long-bladed knives in their hands and all of them spoiling for a fight.

Young though he was, Josh knew well enough that the line between being a hero and a fool could often be as fine as a hair. To walk away now went against every fiber of his being, but what good could he do for Jerusa if he let himself be carved to bits by a pack of ravening Frenchmen for the sake of his pride?

But if he had to leave, he could at least do it on his terms, not theirs. Measuring his motions so as not to startle them, Josh reached for the tankard and emptied it. Slowly, he reached into his pocket for a handful of sous to pay for what little he’d had the chance to drink and eat, and dropped the coins rattling onto the table. With all the bravado he could muster, he then walked directly through the little crowd of Frenchmen to the door. His head high, he did not deign to watch his own back, nor did he threaten or scowl at the men who were driving him away, and when he finally stepped out into the street unharmed, he managed to keep his sigh of relief to himself.

But when on an impulse Josh couldn’t explain he turned at the corner of the street to look back at the tavern, it was Ceci he saw in the second-floor window, her face small and sorrowful as she peeked from behind the louvered blue shutter.

And despite her father’s threats, he knew he would return.

“Shove off, Dayton,” roared the Tiger’s bosun. “Shove off now! That is if ye still bloody well can without topplin’ on yer pickled arse!”

Sitting in the boat’s stern sheets, Josh bit back his own reprimand and tried instead to look grimly above such tomfoolery, the way a captain should. No matter how many insults were bellowed at Dayton, the man was still so blissfully drunk on cheap Martinique rum that it was a wonder he could stand at all, let alone push the boat free of the shallows and into the deeper water.

And Dayton had supposedly been with the boat the whole evening; God only knew in what condition Josh would find the men he’d granted shore leave. He’d chosen his crew for this voyage carefully, looking for men with a reputation for sobriety, but St-Pierre was the kind of overripe, indolent place that could tempt a Quaker, let alone an idle seaman. Josh shook his head and felt in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. One more reason to find his sister as soon as he could, before every last man became a hopeless sot.

The boat lurched free at last, somehow Dayton managed to climb aboard, and Josh settled back glumly with his pipe for the short row back to the Tiger. If only he’d had more success in his inquiries tonight, then perhaps he’d be in a better humor. For a man who’d been as notorious as his father claimed, Christian Deveaux seemed now to inspire nothing but uneasy silence.

If only the evening had continued as pleasantly as it had begun, when he’d met little Ceci Noire. If only…

“Capitaine Sparhawk! Capitaine, wait, I beg you!”

He turned and saw the flicker of white petticoats and a handkerchief waving from the beach. She wore a dark shawl draped over her head that shadowed her face, but even across the water there was no mistaking Ceci’s voice.

“‘Vast there,” he ordered quickly. “Haul for shore. Handsomely now, lads, handsomely!”

He didn’t miss the amused, knowing glances the men exchanged among themselves as they turned the boat short round, but this time he didn’t care. They could gossip all they wanted between decks. He was simply going to talk to the girl, apologize if she expected it and listen to what she had to say. Where was the harm or the scandal in that?

She came skipping along the beach right to the water’s edge, heedless of the damp sand that clung to her shoes and hem. “Grâce à Dieu!” she cried as Josh climbed from the boat. “I feared I was too late, that I’dnever see you again to explain!”

Without thinking, Josh reached for her hand and felt her fingers tremble against his. “You shouldn’t be prowling around the waterfront alone like this, lass, not at this hour. Must be three o’clock in the morning at the least.”

“I had no choice, monsieur.” She shoved the shawl back from her face, and in the moonlight her dark eyes shone bright with excitement. “I couldn’t leave until Papa had closed the shutters and gone to sleep. But I’m safe enough. You forget my living depends on drunken rogues, and I know how to take care of myself.”

Josh could only shake his head, remembering how Jerusa had always claimed she, too, would be safe in Newport. “You could have waited until morning.”

“Mordieu, and let you go to your bed believing the worst of me?” She squeezed her fingers around his. “What you must believe instead is this—that until this night my father had never spoken that evil man’s name in my hearing! Not a word, no, not once, not even after what Deveaux did!”

“Then your father did know Deveaux?”

“Dieu merci, they never met. Deveaux was too clever, too grand for that. But Papa and ma chère Maman, may she rest in heaven by the side of the Blessed Virgin, how they suffered at his hands!”

She quivered now with the same righteous fury as her father’s, her face with its small, plump chin every bit as fierce. “Deveaux was born a gentleman, monsieur, and Papa says he was handsome enough to melt the sun from the sky, else Antoinette would never have done what she did.”

“Antoinette?” asked Josh.

“My mother’s sister, my aunt.” She was speaking so swiftly, driven by the shame to her family, that she was almost breathless with outrage. “Antoinette, too, worked in our petite auberge, and Papa says there was not a man in St-Pierre who did not worship her. But the only one she listened to was Deveaux. My mother’s tears, my father’s pleas, were nothing against his false promises and candied words. Nothing!”

Sadly Josh could guess the rest. Who couldn’t? “He seduced her?”

Ceci nodded, shaking her little fist at Deveaux’s ghost. “He seduced her, monsieur, and took her from those who loved her to his grand house, built with the blood and tears of those he had robbed and murdered. And it was there she perished by his side, in the fire that God sent in his fury to destroy that evil place and Deveaux with it!”

She wove her fingers into his to draw him closer. “You can understand it all now, monsieur, can’t you?” she said, almost pleading. “Why my father said what he did to you? It was because he loves me, monsieur, because he would not see me come to the same sorrow as poor Antoinette.”

“He believes I would do that to you?” demanded Josh incredulously. “Just because I mentioned Deveaux’s name?”

Ceci shook her head helplessly. “He said you would not seek out those left of Deveaux’s men unless you wished to join them yourself. He said—”

“He can damn well listen to what I have to say!” said Josh hotly. What right did some little hotheaded French barkeep have to insult him like this? “I’m sorry about his sister-in-law, sorry as can be. But it’s my sister that concerns me now, and if asking about Deveaux is going to bring me any closer to finding her, then I mean to ask you or him or anyone else I please until I find her.”

“But Papa said—”

“I’m not done yet, Ceci!” Struggling to keep his temper, Josh forced himself to lower his voice. “Your father’s got it all wrong, mind? I don’t know what happened to Antoinette, but Deveaux didn’t die in that fire. I know because he lived long enough to try to kill my parents. Instead my father wounded him so gravely he decided to take his own life, there with my own mother as witness.”

Now Ceci’s eyes were round as the moon above. “Your father killed Deveaux?”

“My father wouldn’t lie about a thing like that,” he said sharply. “Why else would Deveaux’s men decide to kidnap my sister now?”

“Revenge,” she whispered. “Oh, Monsieur Sparhawk, forgive me!”

“You’re not the one who needs forgiving.” Suddenly weary of the whole misunderstanding, he freed his fingers from hers and stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “You tell your old papa that we’re on the same side. My sister Jerusa, his sister-in-law Antoinette—it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? You tell him that, Ceci. And if he’s got any notion of justice and wants to help, he can find me easy enough on the Tiger.”

He turned and began to walk toward the boat, his shoes silent on the packed sand.

“Wait, please, I beg you!”

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. She was standing with her fists clenched at her sides and her chin lifted high, the black shawl trailing like a ragged pennant from her shoulders.

“He will help you, monsieur,” she said slowly. “If he has any hope of finding peace in this world or the next, he will help you.”