Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

“I loved you from the first time I saw you, sleeping at your sister’s house,” she confessed. “I tried then to guess the kind of man you must be to be so handsome, and I wasn’t disappointed.”

He grimaced, thinking how when she’d first seen him he’d been shaking and pale from a nightmare. “An illtempered, paid-out, rascally rogue?”

“No, of course not, and I won’t hear you say it!” She punched his shoulder with her small fist, and he groaned dramatically. “I knew you’d be kind and gentle and clever and brave, and you are all those things. A kind, gentle, clever, brave, rascally rogue.”

“Impudent little baggage.” As she laughed and wriggled out of reach, he tugged away the sheet that was twisted between them, wanting to feel again her skin against his. He pushed her back against the pillow, trapping her beneath his body, and kissed her until her laughter changed to little sighs of contentment and their kisses grew warmer, more impassioned. Reluctantly he broke away, seeing the dark smears of her blood on the sheet.

“Don’t tempt me, Caro,” he warned. “I’ve no intention of hurting you again tonight.”

“You won’t.” She ignored him, running her lip across the rough beard on his jaw. “You only hurt at the beginning. You are, you know, a large man.”

“And you’re a lovely woman,” he said softly. “The lovely woman I happen to love.”

“I love you, too, Jeremiah.” She found his lips and kissed him again, her happiness boundless. “Then I did the right thing after all.”

He sighed and held her closer. “Not necessarily. I will never regret making love to you, Caro, but before this night you could have had your marriage to Frederick annulled.”

She stared at him, shocked. “I would never have done that to Frederick. To shame him in front of the world like that—no, I could never have done it.”

That stung Jeremiah’s pride. “Then how shamed will he be if you present him with my child?” he said bluntly. “Or did the shopkeeper who sold you that dressing gown advise you on ways to avoid breeding, too?”

Embarrassed to be discussing such a thing with him, she shook her head. “It wouldn’t be likely, not the first time.”

“No? As you said yourself, there’s hundreds of bastards born every year from just that kind of ill-founded trust. Exactly how forgiving is your precious Frederick?”

She rested her cheek against the curling hair of his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. In all the time she’d spent this afternoon, agonizing over her feelings, she had, perhaps because of her own illegitimacy, never once considered conceiving a child.

“He would, I think, accept my child as his own,” she said slowly. “He cares so little for convention, and though he’d never admit it, he’d take great pleasure in displacing George as his heir.”

“Not your child, Caro. Ours.”

“Of course it would be ours. You know I’ve always wanted a baby,” she admitted shyly. “Your sister must have been brought to bed by now. I wonder if she had a little girl, or another boy like Johnny that looks like you?”

Jeremiah closed his eyes, fighting back the longing her words brought. A son of his own like his nephew Johnny, a boy to raise and teach and take to sea, a child conceived with the one and only woman he’d ever loved. Except that by law and the whim of Caro’s husband, the child—his child—could become heir to an earldom, raised not as a Sparhawk but as a Moncrief, an English child, not American, and one who’d never know his real father.

“Whether boy or girl, Desire’s child will carry its father’s name,” he said firmly, leery of Caro’s dreamy expression. “I’d want the same for any child of ours.”

“If there is a child,” she said, “I will take care of the consequences myself.”

“Nay, Caro, we will. When I return from Tripoli—”

“When we return from Tripoli,” she said serenely. “I haven’t sailed clear from England to be left behind now. Of course I’m coming to Tripoli with you.”

His black brows lowered. “I can’t allow it, Caro, not with the new war.”

“Your country’s war, not mine,” she countered, serenity replaced by stubbornness. “My country has faithfully paid its tribute to the pasha for years.”

“Yours, mine, ours,” he said impatiently. “The devil can take the whole lot for all it will matter to you!”

She pushed herself upright, sitting against the bolster. “Listen to me, Jeremiah. Lady Byfield has arranged it all as her way of thanking us. There was a note waiting for me here at the inn tonight that she’s already booked us places on a Neapolitan ship leaving with tomorrow’s tide for Tripoli and Tunis, and ordered her bankers to pay the ransom for Frederick and your friend Mr. Kerr.”

She paused and laid her hand on his arm. “She had the latest lists from Tripoli, Jeremiah,” she said gently. “Mr. Kerr is the only one of your crew who survived.”

Silently he shook his head. Though he’d known it was unreasonable, he’d kept on hoping that if Davy was still alive, maybe others were, too. Andrew Parker, Peter Collins, John Cramer, Jemmy Allyn, and all the rest, gone.

“I’m sorry, love,” said Caro. “Lady Byfield said—”

“Damn Lady Byfield!” he said furiously, angry at the fate that had claimed his men. “She can damned well keep her thank-yous, and you will stay here with them.”

“But I want to be there when you free Frederick!”

“What, are you afraid I might not bring him back after all?” he said angrily. “It would be easy enough, wouldn’t it? Poor old Frederick didn’t make it, sweetheart, so now you’re all mine.”

She froze. “You would not do that, Jeremiah,” she said slowly, as much, he thought, to convince herself as him.

“Wouldn’t I?” It would be easy, the only way he could know for sure he was hers forever, and for one tempting, dishonorable moment he let himself consider it. She could say all she wanted that Frederick was more father than husband to her; he still couldn’t very well go to the man and ask for her hand. “How sure are you?”

But this time she didn’t hesitate. “I’m sure. I love you, but I also trust you.”

“Then God help you, Caro, for putting your trust in me,” he said roughly. “No matter what you or the old lady say, the situation is far too dangerous, and I won’t put your life at risk. Besides, I want to be able to do whatever I must without worrying about you.”

“‘Whatever you must’?” Suddenly his real reason dawned on her, and her eyes flashed with anger and fear for him. “You’ll save your friends and Frederick as you promised, but that’s not all, is it? You’re going to Tripoli to find the man who stole your ship. I put the foolish idea into your head, and now you’re actually going to do it.”

He met her gaze evenly. “I can let Hamil haunt my dreams for the rest of my life, or I can face him, and prove to myself that I’m not a coward. I’m a Sparhawk, Caro, and I don’t see it as a choice.”

She shook her head wildly, trying to deny he could really want this. “But how can you? If he captures you again, you know he won’t let you go. He’ll kill you. It’s as simple as that, Jeremiah! He will kill you. You haven’t a ship, or men, or cannons, while he’s a pirate!”

“I don’t mean to fight him at sea. You’re right. I wouldn’t have a chance. But the man’s house is in Tripoli, and if I can reach him there—”

“No, I don’t want to hear it.” Agitated, she pushed herself from the bed and plucked her dressing gown from the floor, whipping it around her body. “I love you, but I won’t stay to listen to you plan your own death. It’s time I returned to my own room anyway.”

He lunged for her across the bed but she kept beyond his reach. “Damn it, Caro, come back here!”

“Damn you, Jeremiah, I won’t!” She retrieved the sheer blue shift and wadded it up into a ball in her hand, too hurt and angry to wish to be reminded of everything the shift had led to. With the silk shushing around her bare legs she went striding for the door.

“Caro, please. Please.”

Against her better judgment, she paused. She hadn’t expected to hear that note in his voice, and slowly she turned back. He was sitting in the middle of the bed bathed in moonlight, his tanned body dark against the white sheets and his black hair loose around his face, and he was so achingly beautiful that she could have wept just from the sight of him.

He held one hand out to her, an offering, not a summons. “Please, love,” he said softly. “This night could be all we ever have. Do you really want it to end like this?”

Still she hesitated, torn between sharing his love for tonight and the certain, bleak emptiness of a future without him.

He might have smiled; in the moonlight she wasn’t sure. “You said your room was lonely. It won’t have gotten any less so since you left it earlier.”

“I don’t want to be alone, Jeremiah,” she said plaintively. “I’ve never wanted that.”

“I never thought you did, love.”

She sighed and took one step toward the bed, then another. “No more talk of pirates or pashas if I stay.”

“Not a word.” He took her hand and pulled her up onto the bed with him, letting her dressing gown slide back to the floor in a silk puddle. “Instead let me tell you one more time how much I love you.”

Safe once again in his arms, her cheek resting in the hollow of his shoulder, she knew there was no other place under heaven she’d rather be.

His lips brushed the top of her hair, his eyes as clouded as their future together. Somehow he would find a way for them to be together. Somehow he would make their love last beyond this room, this night, and the magic of the moonlight in Naples.

With a sigh she burrowed closer, her hands sliding around his waist. “Now that I’ve finally found you, Jeremiah Sparhawk,” she whispered, “I don’t ever want to part with you again.”

“Nor do I, love,” he said softly, “nor do I.”

“What are you doing here, my dear Caroline?” asked Dorinda, barely containing her irritation. She waved aside the dressmaker with the length of deep red Circassian draped across her arm and motioned for Caro to come closer. “I would have thought you’d be besieged with the details of your journey and not have time to make calls. Did you not receive my note about Captain Tomaso?”

“Yes, of course. Everything you’ve done has been wonderful, and I’ll never thank you enough.” Caro sank into the little gilt chair beside the older woman’s, too distraught to notice the interest of the dressmaker and her assistants. “It’s Jeremiah who’s the problem.”

“A bit of discretion, my dear,” chided Dorinda. “It is unwise to advertise one’s personal woes.”

She glanced pointedly at both the lowered eyes and open ears of the dressmaker, mentally cursing her daughter-in-law’s foolish outburst. By nightfall Madame Duval would have repeated every word she overheard to as many of her customers as she possibly could. But then, considered Dorinda, that in itself might not be such a bad thing. All of Naples knew of poor Frederick’s capture. When his chit of a wife failed to return after attempting a rescue, a small show of grief on Dorinda’s part would gain her much sympathy, and might help keep any unpleasant suspicions at a distance.

“You will excuse us, madame,” she said. “As you can see, my daughter-in-law is concerned over a family matter that we must discuss in private.”

Although the Frenchwoman bowed respectfully to Dorinda, her eyes were glinting with a businesswoman’s eagerness as she studied Caro.

“I am honored, Madame la Comtesse,” purred Madame Duval as she sank into a deep curtsy. “Perhaps your ladyship would be so kind as to permit me to call on you? I have in my shop at present a rose silk senchaw, très belle, tres riche, that would suit your ladyship’s—”

“She’s not staying,” said Dorinda curtly. “She leaves Naples this afternoon to seek my son, her husband.”

Dramatically the Frenchwoman clasped her hands over her breasts. “Ah, Madame la Comtesse, I wish you bonne chance, I wish you and your husband—”

“Good day, madame,” said Dorinda. As far as she was concerned, the dressmaker had learned more than enough to fuel her gossip, and she was in no humor to sit back and listen while Madame Duval lavished compliments on her upstart daughter-in-law. Capitano Tomaso’s ship left on the late afternoon tide, and Dorinda fully intended that Caroline be on board.

Reluctantly Madame Duval and her assistants gathered their samples and bowed their way from the room. Dorinda sat back in her chair, one finger arched against her cheek and her eyes hooded as she considered Caro. No matter what the spat was between them, the chit had clearly just tumbled from her lover’s bed, and Dorinda’s anger rose another notch. She recognized the signs well enough: the chit’s lips still swollen, almost bruised, her eyes shadowed from lack of sleep, her cheeks far rosier than they’d been yesterday. If the little harlot came any closer, Dorinda didn’t doubt that she’d smell the man’s scent on her still. What had her poor Frederick done to deserve such treatment?

But Dorinda knew the value of hiding her outrage, of biding her time. “Now then, my dear,” she began sympathetically. “What exactly is the problem with Captain Sparhawk?”

Caro took a deep breath, steadying her voice before the countess. She didn’t know how she’d survived Jeremiah’s farewell this morning, and, feeling battered and vulnerable, she had come to her former enemy as a last resort. “Jeremiah refuses to let me go with him to Tripoli.”

Dorinda sniffed contemptuously. So the man wished to be rid of her. Dorinda could not blame him, and in a way she respected him more for it. The Italians had a marvelous word, cicisbeo, that they used to describe the acknowledged, ornamental lover of a married woman, a title no honorable man would ever aspire to. What a pity she would never have the pleasure of knowing this Jeremiah herself.

“The way I view it,” she said, “Signor Sparhawk has no choice but to take you with him.”

“Jeremiah says it’s too dangerous, that he won’t put me at risk.” Because he loves me too much. Caro stopped perilously short of saying the words out loud. Already she missed him. “He doesn’t even want me at the dock to see him off.”

“For God’s sake, girl, use your wits!” ordered Dorinda, her anger too great to sustain the feigned sympathy any longer. “I’ll wager you didn’t get to be countess by wringing your hands and wailing. And don’t forget that you are a countess, and no insolent Yankee sailor has any right to tell you what you may or may not do.”

Caro’s head drooped. “I’ve never done anything for myself,” she said softly. “Frederick didn’t wish me to. He considered it unseemly and ill fitting a lady of my station.”

“Fah on what foolishness Frederick wishes! You’re not helpless. You came here after him, didn’t you?”

Caro shook her head, unconvinced.

“Listen to me, girl. I don’t care how you do it—with your face, you should have no difficulty at all—but you owe it to my son to be on that ship. And you will do it, Caroline.” The old woman jabbed at the air with her diamond-weighted finger. “Or you will answer to me.”

As the hired skiff drew closer to the felucca that would carry him to Tripoli, Jeremiah’s misgivings grew. The two stubby masts and patched lateen sails were bad enough, but the dozen oars that bristled from each side of the little ship inspired even less confidence. Oars like that needed men to row them, men that in this part of the world were most likely Christian slaves, and as both a free man and a Christian himself, Jeremiah despised all that galleys represented. As a sailor he wouldn’t have trusted the shabby felucca on the river at home, let alone on the Mediterranean with its sudden storms and uncertain currents, and he wondered again if he’d been wrong to accept passage arranged by the old countess. Not that he had much choice; Naples was at war with Tripoli, too—at least theoretically—and all the other vessels daring to trade illegally between the two countries were bound to be as disreputable as this one.

For reassurance he thought of the pistols and knives hidden beneath his coat, anonymous, serviceable weapons. He had brought little else with him, leaving his sea chest behind at the inn until he returned. Once in Tripoli, he planned to purchase the loose robes that were worn there, and he hoped that with his black hair and weatherworn skin he could at least be inconspicuous.

He looked back over his shoulder at the fairy-tale city he was leaving and picked out the orange-tiled roof of the inn. He did not intend to be gone long, a fortnight at most if he could help it, and despite his warning to Caro, he had every intention of coming back. After a lifetime of sailing away, now for the first time he had a real reason to return.

Saying goodbye to Caro this morning in the bed they’d shared had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. She hadn’t wept or clung to him, or tried again to convince him not to go; but the wistful, silent love in her eyes was more expressive than a week’s worth of recrimination from any other woman.

What he’d found with her last night went beyond happiness, beyond joy, to something he couldn’t find words to explain. It was almost as if in her he’d discovered a part of himself that he hadn’t realized was missing, a half that would make his life whole. He understood at last the wordless language that passed between his sister and her husband, and how impossibly dear love, real love, could be, even to a man like him. And passion. Who would have believed how much fire there was in his silver-haired Caro? He wiped his hand across his mouth as he caught himself grinning like a fool at the memory.

His Caro, his sweet, lovely, fiery Caro.

His Caro, who was wed to the man he’d sworn to risk his life to rescue.

Abruptly he turned his back on the city and concentrated instead on the felucca as the skiff bumped alongside. He grabbed the makeshift rope ladder and clambered aboard. For a moment he simply stood there, stunned by the noise and chaos around him.

Because of the felucca’s narrow hull, space in its hold was at a premium, and the deck teemed with both passengers and animal cargo. Everyone seemed to be arguing and shouting at once, none of it in any language Jeremiah could make out, not spoken this quickly. Sailors and passengers alike wore either long, loose robes and turbans or fitted European clothing, or, in several cases, a combination of both, with one elderly man in a striped robe with a dirty sash and a pair of shiny leather shoes with outsize polished buckles peeking from beneath the hem. The slaves chained to their benches wore nothing so dignified, only filthy trousers or bits of draped loincloths, their broad-shouldered, unwashed bodies glistening in the hot sun, and Jeremiah prayed that beneath their unkempt hair and beards none were Americans. Beyond them, a handful of women clustered together in the scant shade of one of the forward sails, and Jeremiah looked hastily away, well aware of the peril of admiring women, no matter how shrouded, in this part of the world. Lord, what would Caro in her white silk and diamonds have made of this!

Beside the women on the deck were baskets of squabbling chickens, and tied unceremoniously to one of the felucca’s lines were several goats, their stench unmistakable as the wind shifted toward Jeremiah. It was more a blasted ark than a decent merchant ship, he decided grimly, and however brief the voyage was—Tripoli was scarcely more than two hundred miles from Naples—it wouldn’t be short enough.

“Ah, signore Capitano Sparhawk!” said a short, round-bellied man whose entire face seemed curved into his smile. “I am seldom so honored, eh? Another captain aboard mia cara Colomba!’

“Captain Tomaso,” said Jeremiah, his voice determinedly noncommittal. The other captain wore a ring on his pinkie with an opal the size of a pigeon’s egg and his hair was tied back with an elaborate silk bow, a macaronis’ affectation, but his fingernails were ringed black and the cuffs of his shirt were grimy and frayed, and that told more than enough of the man to Jeremiah. At least he spoke English, though after Nelson’s occupation, most Neapolitans in water trade seemed to have some grasp of the language. “A fine day for sailing.”

“Bellissima!” Tomaso beamed, his smile growing even wider as he patted his belly with both hands. “But wait until you see mia dolce Colomba fly across the water. Then you will see perfection!”

He bellowed a handful of orders to his men, and the felucca’s sails were dropped to catch the wind. Jeremiah lifted his hat long enough to wipe his sleeve across his brow. It was hot in the sun, and his head ached dully from lack of sleep. Best to go find whatever wretched place passed for his cabin and get some rest.

Damnation, but he missed Caro!

“There, Capitano, I told you how she flies, eh?” bragged Tomaso. “Like an angel she is!”

More like a sow, thought Jeremiah irritably. To him the Colomba felt sluggish and low in the water, the long oars on either side making her unresponsive to the wind. “I’m going below, Tomaso.”

“Alone, eh? You didn’t bring your graziosa amante, eh? They told me you would.” He kissed his fingertips and winked broadly. “A bellissima donna!”

“She’s not coming.” And a good thing, too, decided Jeremiah. Though Tomaso and Bertle were as different as shipmasters could be, there was still something intangible there in both men that made Jeremiah uneasy and on his guard. “This is no journey for a lady.”

“She’s not coming?” Tomaso’s face puckered with sly regret and he clucked his tongue. “My poor fellow, to be scorned! Women, eh, so fickle, so cruel!”

“Not this lady,” said Jeremiah curtly. He slung the canvas bag with his few belongings over his shoulder. “I’m going below.”

“Ah, you English!” called Tomaso, not in the least offended. “Always eager for the next place to sling your hammocks!”

Jeremiah didn’t bother to correct him. Not only did he want no further conversation with the man, but it might also serve him better for now to be believed an Englishman. An Englishman, for all love; Lord, how merrily Caro would laugh at that!

A gaunt little ship’s boy showed him to what passed for a cabin, a dirty closet half below the waterline. Grateful again that he’d spared Caro this, he wearily hung his hammock and soon drifted off to sleep, lulled by the shuffling of the goats on the deck overhead. He slept deeply, only dreaming once, of Caro skipping along beside him in Portsmouth, the old coverlet sliding off her bare shoulders as she reached out to take his hand.

It was dark when Jeremiah woke and, disoriented, he tensed with terror, his hand at once on his knife, until he recalled where he was. The felucca and Tomaso and Naples and Tripoli and Davy and Caro, always Caro. He forced his sleep-thick brain to sort it through, striving to calm himself. At least there’d been no nightmares, no Hamil to haunt him, and he sighed, slipping the knife back into its sheath.

Above him there was a babble of indignant voices he couldn’t hear well enough to understand, among them Tomaso’s apparently trying to intercede. He rolled from the hammock, his mouth dry and his shirt plastered to his chest, and decided to go topside, hoping that the wind off the water might clear his head.

By the smoking light of an oil lantern hooked to the mast, he could just make out Tomaso’s broad silhouette, gesturing alternately to three of the male passengers. Between them was a smaller figure, one of the women, and Jeremiah watched with idle curiosity, wondering what grievous insult one of the men had brought onto the other through the woman.

But perhaps it was the woman herself who’d caused the trouble. To Jeremiah’s amusement, she tossed her head and waved one hand back defiantly at Tomaso. This one was no ordinary, obedient Turkish woman, and Jeremiah almost wished Tomaso would let her speak. He could use the entertainment.