Julia Justiss - Regency High Society Vol 4

“Most days she’s perfectly well,” he continued gently, “but on others, she believes herself someone else entirely. It will pass. It always does. Yet you can see now why I choose not to take the poor lass into public houses.”

“Oh, God bless ye, Mr. Geary,” murmured Mrs. Faulk. “What a terrible burden she must be to ye!”

“But it’s not true,” whispered Jerusa hoarsely. “God help me, none of what he says is true!”

Protectively Faulk rested his hands on his own wife’s shoulders. “Is there aught we can do to help ye, Mr. Geary? Ropes or such to control her rages?”

Michel shook his head. “Thank you, no. She’ll be well enough when there’s just the two of us again. Once we’re on our way, the breezes will help dispel her tempers, and she’ll be meek as a new lamb.”

He stepped forward and laid his hands on Jerusa’s shoulders, an empty mockery of Faulk’s own gesture. “Isn’t that true, sweetheart? Shouldn’t we be leaving these good people so you can feel better?”

Jerusa stiffened beneath his touch, but the fight was gone from her now. No wonder the Faulks believed him instead of her; he made sense, and she didn’t. It wasn’t just the plain clothing Michel had given her that made her seem less the “gentry” that Faulk had expected. It was instead the role Michel had chosen to play for himself, that of her caring, concerned husband, that made every word she’d said ring so false.

And even worse was realizing that he would do it again if she dared try to seek help from another.

“You will come with me now, won’t you, dearest?” he said gently.

“Very well,” she said, her voice so low that the Faulks wouldn’t hear her bitterness. She was still Michel’s prisoner, true, but at least by accepting his will in this she could deprive him of the pleasure of having to carry her forcibly from the house. “Decide what you please, and I shall follow.”

The moon was nearly risen before Michel stopped to rest the horses. Since they’d left the Faulks’ farm, Jerusa had said not a word to him, and the silence between them had grown deeper and more uncomfortable with every step.

He tried to tell himself it was better this way. What was the point of listening to her ill-timed attempts at conversation or deflecting yet again the same questions she insisted on asking, which he’d no intention of answering? She was his prisoner, his hostage, his bait, his enemy. That she was also quite beautiful must be inconsequential. She was neither his friend nor his lover, and the sooner he remembered that and stopped thinking of her as a woman, the better for them both.

Easy to resolve, impossible to do. How could he ignore how neatly his hands fit around her waist as he helped her from her horse, or the way her scent filled his senses as she brushed against him? On her, even the unassuming clothing he’d bought seemed to accentuate the ripe, full curves of her body, and he couldn’t forget the glimpse he’d had of her breasts, firm and lush, above her stays when he’d cut her from her tattered wedding gown. Mordieu, why was nothing easy where this woman was involved?

He watched her as she returned from the bushes, her eyes carefully downcast to avoid meeting his. At least this way he wouldn’t have to pretend he wasn’t watching her. In the moonlight her face was pale, her hair, in its loosened braid, a dark cloud around her shoulders. Maybe it was seeing her so often by moonlight that had unsettled him this badly.

Unsettled: that was how he’d described her to the Faulks, the same term the Parisian doctor from Port Royal preferred. What devil had put such a word into his mouth last night, anyway?

He held out a flask he’d taken from the horse’s pack. “Mrs. Faulk’s cider,” he explained as she stopped before him. “She sent it along especially for you.”

Jerusa glanced at the flask, reminded again of how easily he’d thwarted her at the farm. She didn’t want the cider; she didn’t want to take anything from him.

“Go ahead, ma chérie,” he said, irritated by her silence. He’d expected her to be angry for what he’d done, but she’d no right to turn sullen. “I swear it’s not poisoned. Not by me, or by Mrs. Faulk.”

“A dubious recommendation,” murmured Jerusa. Though the Frenchman’s eyes were masked by the shadow from his hat, there was no mistaking his mood, surly and ill-humored. He hadn’t shaved since they’d left Newport, and the dark stubble around his jaw only made him look less like the gentleman he’d pretended to be. “No doubt she thought her celebrated cider might benefit a poor, pitiful mad creature like myself.”

“She believed you would enjoy it.” Inwardly he winced at her words, shamed. He had never before used madness as a pretense, and he didn’t know what had made him do it now. To draw from his own mother’s distress to save a useless chit like this one, the daughter of Gabriel Sparhawk— morbleu, what had he been thinking?

“Indeed.” Finally she took the flask, carefully avoiding touching his fingers, and swept back her hair from her forehead as she briefly lifted the flask to her lips to drink. “Then that was all Mrs. Faulk should have believed.”

He shrugged. “She believed what she wished.”

“What you wished, you mean,” said Jerusa tartly. “There’s a difference.”

His mouth curved into a mocking smile. “All your life you’ve had everything your own way, haven’t you, Miss Jerusa? How instructive for you to have it otherwise!”

She dismissed his question by ignoring it. “You don’t care for my questions, Monsieur Géricault,” she said with icy politeness, “but can you please tell me why you told them what you did about me?”

“You left me no choice.”

“No choice,” she repeated incredulously. “Wasn’t it bad enough to claim I was your wife without insisting I was witless, too?”

His jaw tightened. He wasn’t accustomed to explaining his actions to anyone. It was much of the reason he’d been so successful. At least until now.

She sighed impatiently. “They were going to let us go free anyway. There was absolutely no reason for us to go traipsing back to their home. Except, of course, your great love for cider.”

She shoved the flask back against his chest and turned away. Swiftly he seized her arm and jerked her back around to face him.

“I may not like your questions, ma petite folle, but you’ll like my answers even less,” he said, holding her fast as she tried to break free. “Do you flatter yourself to think I’d truly want you for my wife? But as my wife, you also have my protection. Didn’t you notice how those men left you alone once I said you were a respectable woman? What do you think they would have done to you otherwise?”

“They were farmers, not brigands!”

“They were men, chère.”

“They would not have dared a thing when they learned who I was!” She struggled again, uneasily aware of the same odd sensations his touch had caused that first night in the barn. No matter how much he claimed to be her protector, she sensed that the darkness hiding within him could be infinitely more dangerous.

“But they didn’t believe you, ma chérie. The Sparhawks are gentry. Even the Faulks know that, and only a madwoman would insist otherwise. I merely added to what you’d already begun.”

Damn him, he was right. She’d put the doubts in their minds from her first outburst. And if Michel hadn’t graced her with the feigned respectability of being his wife, the suggestive leers of the two Faulk men could easily enough have led to worse. Any woman who’d let herself sleep beside a man in an open field was asking for it.