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But the ease with which he’d handled the pistols had chilled her. Most men in the colonies knew how to shoot with rifles or muskets to hunt game, but pistols were only used for killing other men. Because of her father’s whim to teach her along with Josh, she was adept at loading and firing both, and good enough to recognize the abilities of others. The Frenchman was a professional. He could be a soldier, more likely a thief or other rogue who lived outside the law.
He turned back toward her, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. By the light of the single lantern, his blue eyes were shuttered and purposely devoid of any emotion as he studied her with cold, disinterested thoroughness.
Whatever he was, he wasn’t a gentleman to look at her like that. She flushed, wishing she hadn’t lost the blanket, but resisted the impulse to cover her breasts with her hands. Pride would serve her better. She wouldn’t gain a thing with fear or shame. And at least if they traveled by night, then she’d be spared for now the question of where and how they’d sleep here together.
“Where are we?” she asked. “Kingston? Point Judith?”
“South.” The truth was that Michel hadn’t bothered to learn the name of the nearest town. Why should he, when he’d no intention of lingering?
“South?”
“South,” he answered firmly. She didn’t need to know any more than that.
“Well, south, then.” Jerusa sighed. He’d been talkative enough in the garden. “Would it be a grave affront to ask how we came to be here?”
He didn’t miss the sarcasm, but then, humility was never a word he’d heard in connection with her family. “By boat, ma chérie, as you might have guessed. We sailed here together by the moonlight, just you and I.”
To do that the Frenchman must be a sailor, and a good one, too, to make that crossing alone and at night. A sailor who could handle pistols: a privateer, like the men in her own family, or a pirate?
If she could only get one of those pistols for herself to balance the odds!
With an unconscious frown, she lifted a lock of her hair from her shoulder and twisted it between her fingers. Pistols or not, she wasn’t accustomed to men speaking to her as freely as this, and she didn’t like it. Moonlight and togetherness, indeed. As if she’d spend two minutes with such a man by choice.
“And these horses?” she asked dryly. “Did they have a place in our little ark, too?”
The corners of Michel’s mouth twitched in spite of himself. The provocative image of the girl before him in the lantern light, her hair tumbled about her face and her elegant clothes half-torn away, was so far from old Noah’s virtuous wife that he almost laughed. “These horses were here waiting for us, as I’d arranged.”
“Then you planned all this?” asked Jerusa incredulously. “You planned to bring me here?”
“Of course I planned it.” He slung the second saddle onto the mare. “Chance is a sorry sort of mistress, ma chère. I prefer to leave as little of my life in her care as I possibly can.”
“But you couldn’t have known I’d go into the garden!” she cried. “I didn’t know myself! I went on an impulse, a fancy! You couldn’t have known!”
He shrugged carelessly. “True enough. Originally I’d planned to take you from your new husband’s coach on your way to your wedding night in Middletown. With the servants already waiting to receive you, there would have been only the driver and your pretty Master Carberry. His father’s second house, isn’t it, there to the east of the high road to Portsmouth? Not quite as grand as your own at Crescent Hill, but it would have been comfortable enough for newlyweds, and the view from the front bedchamber is a fine one.”
She listened mutely, appalled by how familiar he was with the details of her life.
“It would have been dramatic, to stop a coach like a highwayman,” he continued. “I would, I think, have quite enjoyed it. Yet finding you alone in the garden was far easier.”
All of it had been easy enough, really. He’d spent so much of his life at the hire of whoever paid the most, listening, watching, making himself as unobtrusive as possible until the last, that learning about a family as public as the Sparhawks had been no challenge at all. No challenge, but the reward that waited would be far sweeter than all the gold in the Caribbean.
He smiled briefly at Jerusa over the mare’s chestnut back. “True, I don’t care for chance, but if she casts her favors my way I won’t turn my back, either.”
“You would never have succeeded!” she said hotly, insulted by his confidence. She might have been disarmed by his smile in the garden, but not now. “The Portsmouth Road isn’t Hounslow Heath! If the coachman hadn’t shot you dead, then you can be sure that Tom himself would have defended my honor!”
He cocked one brow with amusement. “What a pity we didn’t have the chance to test his mettle, ma petite. You could have been a maid, a wife and a widow in one short day.”
She opened her lips to answer, then pressed them together again with her rebuttal left unspoken as she realized the reality of what he’d said. Tom was the most genteel man she’d ever met, a gentleman down to the cut-steel buckles on his polished shoes. His elegance was one of the things she loved most about him, perhaps because it made Tom so different from her wilder, seafaring brothers.
But that same gentility wouldn’t have lasted a moment against the Frenchman. He might not kill her, but somehow she didn’t doubt that he would have murdered her darling Tom if he’d raised even his voice to defend her. He would be dead, and she would still be a prisoner.
She laid the bread on the bench beside her, the crust now as dry as dust in her mouth. A maid, a wife, a widow. Thank God she’d gone to the garden, after all. That single, pink rose might have saved Tom’s life, and under her breath she whispered a little prayer for him.
Michel watched how the girl seemed to wilt before his eyes. Perhaps she truly did love Carberry, though how any woman could lose her heart to such a self-centered ass was beyond reason. He’d seen Carberry only once from a distance, waving a handkerchief trimmed with more lace than a lady’s petticoat as he climbed into his carriage, but that glimpse had been enough to turn Michel’s stomach with disgust. Merde, he wouldn’t have had to waste the gunpowder on that one; more likely Carberry would have simply fainted dead away on his own.
Michel glanced out the window. The clouds had scattered, and the moon was rising. Time for them to be on their way.
He reached into one of the saddlebags, pulled out a bundle of dark red cloth and tossed it onto the bench beside Jerusa. “I expect you’ll wish something more serviceable for traveling. No doubt this is more common than you’re accustomed to, but there’s little place for silk and lace on the road.”
She looked up sharply. “Where are we going?”
“I told you before. South.”
“South,” she repeated, the single word expressing all her fears and frustration. “South, and south, and south again! Can’t you tell me anything?”
He watched her evenly. “Not about our destination, no.”
She snatched up the bundled clothing and hurled it back at him. “I’ll keep my own clothing, thank you, rather than undress before you.”
He caught the ball of clothing easily, as if she’d tossed it to him in play instead of in fury. “Did I ask that of you, ma chérie?”
She paused, thrown off-balance by his question. “Very well, then. Dare I ask for such a privacy? Would you trust me that far?”
His fingers tightened into the red fabric in his hands. “What reason have you given me to trust you at all?”
“Absolutely none,” she said with more than a little pride. “Not that you’ve granted me much of the same courtesy, either.”
He didn’t bother to keep the edge of irritation from his voice. “Whether it pleases you or not, Miss Jerusa, ours will not be an acquaintance based on trust of any kind.”
“I’d scarce even call this an acquaintance, considering that I’m your prisoner and you my gaoler,” she answered stubbornly, lifting her chin a fraction higher. “To my mind ‘acquaintance’ implies something more honorable than that.”
“There is, ma chère, nothing at all honorable about me.” The wolfish look in his blue eyes would have daunted a missionary. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
Heaven preserve her, how could she have missed it? “Damn you, what is it that you want?”
“I told you that before, too. I want you.”
“Want me for what?” she demanded. “For this? To haul about the countryside, to degrade and disgrace for your amusement? To—to be your mistress?”
There, she’d said it, put words to her worst fear, and the expression on the Frenchman’s handsome face did nothing to reassure her.
“You mean do I plan to force you, ma chère?” He came slowly to stand before her, his arms folded over his chest and his words an odd, musing threat. “For that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? I certainly can’t envision you, Miss Jerusa Sparhawk, the most renowned belle in your colony, cheerfully offering a man like me the pleasure of your lovely body.”
“No,” she repeated in a whisper, looking down to her hands clenched in her lap. “No.”
Her dark, tangled hair fell forward like a veil around her face to hide her shame. With a shy eagerness she had anticipated her wedding night, and the moment when at last she would be free to love Tom as his wife. Once their betrothal had been announced, she had breathlessly allowed him all but the last freedom, so that it had been easy enough to imagine their lovemaking in the big bed in his father’s Middletown house.
“No.”
But there would be no bliss in having her maidenhead ravished by a stranger, no poetry or whisper-soft kisses in a bed with lavender-scented sheets, none of Tom’s tenderness or gentle touches to ease her nervousness.
All because, worst of all, there would be no love.
He took another step closer, his boots rustling the straw. “So then, ma chérie,” he asked, “your modest question is, Did I steal you away with the intention of raping you?”
Though dreading his answer, still she nodded, afraid to trust her voice. She knew she must not weep or beg for mercy, no matter that her heart was pounding and her breath was tight in her chest from fear. He was so much stronger, his power coiled tight and ready as a cat’s, that she knew full well he could do to her whatever he chose. Here, alone as she was, far from friends and family, how could it be otherwise?
Her head bowed, and every nerve on edge, she waited, and waited longer. When finally she could bear it no more and dared to raise her head, his face was bewilderingly impassive.
“If that is your question, Miss Sparhawk, then my answer, too, is no,” he said quietly. “You’re safe from me. The world is full enough of women who come to me willingly that I’ve never found reason or pleasure to do otherwise.”
Stunned, Jerusa stared at him. “Then you don’t—don’t want that of me?”
“I said I wouldn’t force you to lie with me, not that I didn’t wish to.” Again he held out the bundle of clothing to her. “Now go dress yourself, there beyond the horses, before I decide otherwise.”
Her eyes still full of uncertainty, Jerusa slowly took the rough clothing from him. “But why?” she asked. “Why else would you—”
“Because of who you are, ma belle,” he said. “Nothing else.”
Clutching the clothing to her chest, she rose to her feet and nodded, as if his explanation made perfect sense. As she walked past him he saw that she held her head high as any duchess, heedless of the ripped stockings on her bare feet or the tattered skirt that fluttered around her ankles. No, he decided, not like a duchess but a Sparhawk, for in her mind that would be better.
He watched as she went to the far end of the barn, to the last stall, and turned her back to him. She was tall for a woman, and the rough deal stall shielded her only as high as her shoulders. In preparation she draped the rough skirt and bodice and the plain white stockings he’d given her over the side of the stall, and then bent over, out of Michel’s sight, as she untied her petticoats and stepped out of them.
Out of his sight, perhaps, but not his imagination. With a clarity that was almost painful he envisioned the rounded shape of her hips as she dropped the layers of skirts, the long, shapely length of her legs as she shook them free of the crumpled linen.
Oh, he wanted her, that was true enough. Sacristi, he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her climb through the window into the garden. But forbidden fruit always seems sweetest, and Jerusa Sparhawk was a plump piece treacherously beyond his reach.
Morbleu, would he ever have agreed to this, given half a chance to refuse?
He thought of the last time he’d seen his mother before he’d sailed north to New England. The nurse he paid to watch her had tried to warn him at the door that Antoinette was unwell, but his mother had overheard the woman’s whispers and hurled herself at Michel like a wild animal, her jealousy and madness once again swirling out of control.
It took him until nightfall to calm her, his soft-voiced reassurances as crucial to her fragile peace as the opium draft she could no longer live without. The doctor had come, too, with his wig askew and the burgundy sauce from his interrupted supper specklng the front of his shirt. He had clucked and watched as his leeches had grown fat and sleek on Antoinette’s pale forearm.
“You must heed the warnings, Monsieur Géricault,” whispered the doctor with dark gravity. “When your travels take you away, she is inconsolable. Her passions can no longer be contained by one caretaker alone, and I fear, monsieur, that she will bring harm to others as well as herself. If you will but consider the care of the holy sisters and their asylum—”
“It would kill her,” said Michel softly, gently stroking his mother’s brow so her heavy-lidded eyes would flutter shut. “As surely as if you put a pistol to her forehead, this place you speak of would kill her.”
“But, monsieur, I must beg you—”
“No,” said Michel with unquestionable finality. “My mother gave everything she had for me, and now that I can, I will do the same for her.”
Later, much later, when the doctor had left and the nurse had gone to the apothecary for more of the opiate in the thick blue bottle, when Antoinette’s breathing had lost its ragged desperation and her ravaged face had softened with sleep, Michel had sat by her bed in the dark and told her all he would do in her name to Gabriel Sparhawk and his sons.
And somehow Antoinette had struggled her way through the haze of the drug and her own unsettled mind to hear him. Weakly she had shifted her head toward his voice, her face made more ghostly by the mosquito netting that shrouded her bed.
“The girl,” she rasped. “You will take the girl who is to be wed.”
Michel stopped, wondering if he’d imagined it.
“The Sparhawk girl, Michel. Bring the little virgin bride here to Martinique, to me.”
He hadn’t heard her voice sound this lucid in years. But what she asked—dear Lord, what sense did that make?
“What would you want with her, Maman? “he asked gently. “It’s the old man you want to destroy, the captain and his sons. Why waste your vengeance on some petulant little girl?”
“Because you will rob her of her marriage and her happiness the same way her father stole mine from me.” Her dark eyes glittered, though whether with tears or anticipation, Michel couldn’t tell. “What you do to the men will be for your father’s honor, Michel. But what sorrow you bring to this girl will satisfy mine.”
Michel sighed, his interest quickening as he watched the girl lift her arms to twist her hair into a lopsided coil, the lantern’s light caressing the rising curves of her white breasts exactly as he longed to do himself. Damnation, how would he survive the next weeks, maybe months, that they would be together?
He’d found it easy enough to agree when his mother’s request had been abstract, a faceless young woman he knew only by her family’s name and a distant, childhood memory. In a way it even made sense, for what better lure for the Sparhawk men than to carry off one of their women?
But Michel hadn’t bargained on the effect that Jerusa Sparhawk herself, in the very real flesh and blood, was having on him. It wasn’t just that he desired her—what man wouldn’t?—but, far worse, he almost felt sorry for her. And from long, bitter experience, he knew that pity was one thing he could not afford.
Especially not for the favorite daughter of Gabriel Sparhawk.
Jerusa tied the waistband on the dark skirt, smoothing the linsey-woolsey over her hips. As the Frenchman had warned, the skirt and bodice were not stylish, but the sort of sturdy garments that a prosperous farmer’s wife might wear to market. The bodice was untrimmed and loose, the square neckline modestly high, and the skirt fell straight without a flounce or ruffle to give it grace. But both were new and clean, which was more than could be said for her wedding gown.
She sighed forlornly as she looked one last time at the filthy, tattered remnants of what had been the most lavish gown ever made by a Newport seamstress. She thought of how carefully Mama and her maid had handled the fragile silk as they’d helped her dress, and against her will tears stung her eyes.
Swiftly she rubbed her sleeve against her nose, ordering herself not to cry, and reached around to undo the tight line of lacings at the back of her bodice. Twisting awkwardly, she struggled to find the end of the cording, only to discover it tied fast in a knot at the bottom eyelet. Of course the maid would have done that with the slippery silk, just to be sure. How would she have known that Jerusa would be forced to untie it herself?
Swearing under her breath, Jerusa bent her arms back and tried again. If she could only ease her thumb beneath the cord she might be able to work the knot free that way. If only—
“Let me help you,” said the Frenchman softly behind her, and she gasped as she felt his hand on her shoulder to hold her still.
“I can do it myself,” she said quickly, her face hot with humiliation as she tried to edge away. “Please, only a minute more and I’ll be ready.”
“I’ve watched you struggle, chérie, and I know you cannot. You’re trussed up tighter than a stewing hen for the kettle.”
She gasped again as she felt the edge of his knife slide beneath the lacings, the blade moving carefully up the length of her back as he snapped each crossing of the taut cord.
“My mistake, mademoiselle, and you have my apologies,” he said with mock chivalry. “I should never have expected a lady to be forced to dress without her maid.”
“I don’t have a maid,” she said stiffly, grateful that her back was still toward him so he couldn’t see her confusion. He was right, she wouldn’t have been able to free herself without his help, but for him to volunteer to do so like this was an intimacy she didn’t want to grant. “My mother does, but I don’t. I don’t need one.”
With the strain of the lacing gone, the silk bodice slipped forward off her shoulders, and she raised her hands quickly to hold it over her breasts.
“You don’t need these stays, either.” With a gentleness that took her breath away, he ran his fingertips from the nape of her bare neck, over the sheer linen of her shift and down the length of her silk grosgrain stays to her waist. “I’ll warrant your waist is narrow enough without them, ma chère. I’ll cut them away, too, if you wish.”
“No!” Wild-eyed, she spun around to face him, clutching the bodice to her breasts. Her stays were her whalebone armor, her last protection against him. “That is, I thank you for your assistance, but no lady would wish to be—to be free.”
His smile was dark and suggestive enough to make her face hot. “No lady would be here in an empty barn with me, either.”
A score of tart rebuttals died on her lips as she searched his face. His blue eyes were almost black, half-closed as he met her gaze, the twist of his lips at once wry and very, very charming.
She’d spent all her life in the company of handsome men, and she’d believed there were few things left they could do to surprise or unsettle her. So why, then, did a single smile and an illicit caress from this one leave her feeling as breathless and blushing as this? He had kidnapped her and threatened to kill her, but this other, bewildering side of him and her own strange response frightened her most of all.
She swallowed, struggling to regain her composure. “As you say, no lady would be alone here with you or any other man. But you brought me here against my will and choice, and that changes everything.”
“Does it, ma petite?” He reached out to brush away a single lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead.
Still clutching the bodice, Jerusa couldn’t shove away his hand as she wanted. Instead she jerked backward and, to her horror, into the rough deals of the barn wall. He didn’t move closer. He didn’t have to, not so long as that same teasing, infernal smile played upon his lips to agitate her more than any other man she’d ever met. Dear Almighty, how had she let herself be cornered like this?
“You said I was safe with you,” she said raggedly. “You said you wouldn’t force me.”
“Tell me, Jerusa,” he said, his voice scarce more than a coaxing whisper. “Am I forcing you now?”
“I don’t even know your name!”
“It’s Michel. Michel Géricault. It would please me if you’d say it.”
“I don’t see why I must do—”
“Say it, ma chérie. I wish to hear it on your lips.”
Unconsciously she moistened her lips with the pink tip of her tongue, and he thought of how much more than his name he wished to be there. Was she as aware as he was of the current of excitement running between them? Fear alone might have parted her lips and flushed her cheeks so temptingly, but he was willing to wager it was more than that.
Much more.
“Say it, Jerusa. Say my name.”
Her eyes widened and she took a breath that was almost a gasp. “Michael Jericho.”
“Nay, pretty Jerusa, say it not like an Englishwoman but a French one, instead.” What the devil was making him do this to her, anyway? Morbleu, why was he doing it to himself? “You can, you know, if you try.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. Father wished me to learn French, but I’ve no gift for it.”
“Merely the wrong teacher. Together we’ll do our best to discover your gift and make your papa proud. Now try again, Jerusa. Michel Géricault. Softly now, with none of your English brittleness.”
She swallowed again, and he watched the little convulsion along her white throat. “Michel Géricault.”
“Perfection, ma chérie!” He smiled indulgently, the way a satisfied tutor might. “Do you think your papa would know my name when he hears it from you?”
“Does my father know you?” she asked breathlessly, so obviously reaching for a hope that was bound to be disappointed. “Is that why you’ve done this? My brothers and their friends are forever playing elaborate tricks and pranks on one another. Are you doing something in that fashion to my father? I’ve never heard him speak of you, but then, I don’t know all his acquaintances, particularly since you’re not from Newport.”
Tricks and pranks! Morbleu, if it were only that simple!
“I doubt your father even knows I exist,” he said softly, turning away to let her finish dressing. “I wished to be sure, that is all. But he’ll learn my name soon enough, my dear Jerusa. Soon enough for us both.”