Julia Justiss - Regency High Society Vol 4

Whatever are you thinking of, Jerusa Sparhawk? This man is your kidnapper, your enemy! He deserves no place at all in your thoughts, let alone in your heart! The minute you can you’ll escape and leave him as far behind as possible. Remember that, Jerusa, and forget these silly musings about honeysuckle and blue eyes!

“Come,” she said, all too aware of how strained her voice sounded as she gathered the mare’s reins to lead her. “We can’t dawdle in the road forever.”

But Michel didn’t move from her way. “Perhaps, ma chère,” he began softly, his accent seductively more marked. “Perhaps you don’t run away because you don’t wish to.”

From the way her eyes grew round, Michel knew he’d put into words what she’d secretly feared. A lucky guess. But then, so much of what had happened with her was lucky, at least for him, and he didn’t mean just how easy their journey had been, either. She was blushing now, her face so rosy her discomfiture showed even in the moonlight. Somehow he’d never expected the belle of Newport to blush at all, but he was glad she did, and gladder still that he was the reason.

“Of course I wish to return to Newport,” she said, struggling to sound as if she meant every word. “I want to go back to my poor parents, my home, my—”

“To your marriage to a faithless, fashionable popinjay?”

She frowned, toying with the reins. “Tom will be fine once I speak to him and explain everything.”

“‘Fine’?” Michel raised one mocking, skeptical brow. “That is what you wish in your husband? That he be fine?”

“Well, he will,” said Jerusa defensively. “Tom’s the man I love and the one I intend to marry. Oh, stop looking at me like that! It’s simply not something you would understand!”

“True enough, ma belle. All I can do is keep you safe.”

She glanced at him sharply, unsure of what he really meant, but he’d already turned away, leading his horse back in the direction they’d come, and leaving her no choice but to follow.

Michel was being possessive, that was all, just like any good gaoler would be with his prisoner. What else could he have meant by keeping her safe? Yet still her mind fussed and worked over the doubt he’d planted. The only thing Tom would ever fight to keep safe would be the front of his shirt, and then the enemy would be no more formidable than a glass of red wine. He certainly didn’t seem eager to come to her rescue, and that hurt more than she’d ever admit to the Frenchman. But that was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? A gentleman of wit and ideas, not some rough man of action?

Wasn’t it?

Michel, too, had seen the abandoned house earlier from the road. As they drew closer, picking their way through the overgrown path, the burned, blackened timbers that remained of the roof and the broken chimney became more clearly outlined against the pale dawn. The gelding snapped a branch beneath its hoof and a flock of swallows rose up through the open roof, their frightened chatter and drumming wings piercing through the early morning.

He glanced over his shoulder at Jerusa, so close on his heels that they nearly collided. Considering what he’d said to her about Carberry, he’d half expected her not to follow at all. Though it would have been a nuisance to track her down again, he was glad for other, less appropriate reasons that she’d decided to come with him.

“No doubt now that it was a fire that drove them out,” he said, stating the obvious. Though from the growth of plants and vines around the house, he guessed the fire must have taken place years ago. There was still a desultory pile of half-burned chairs and benches in the yard, and clearly no one had since returned to repair or rebuild. Unless, he thought grimly, no one had survived. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”

Jerusa sniffed self-consciously and smoothed her hair, still more disconcerted by the way she’d almost walked right into his back than the burned-out house before her. “Why shouldn’t I? We’ve come this far, haven’t we? If you don’t want anyone seeing us, what better place could there be than this?”

“I meant, ma belle, were you willing to share your sweet company with whoever might have lived here before?”

“You mean ghosts?” She stared at him, searching his face to decide if he was teasing or trying to frighten her, and couldn’t decide either way. She’d never met a man whose thoughts were harder to read. “You’re asking if I’m afraid of ghosts?”

He shrugged, all the answer he’d give. He’d said too much already. But the ruined house still made him uneasy, the way any place destroyed by fire always did.

How many times had Maman taken him to see the empty shell of his father’s house, the tall chimneys and pillars now snaked with vines, the charred walls crumbling and the windows blind as unseeing eyes? She had meant the visits to inspire him, to show him how grandly his father—and she, too, briefly—had lived. Twenty years, and still she could recite the contents of every room like a litany, the paintings and silver and gilded furniture with satin coverings. She said his father had been a grand gentilhomme, a Parisian by birth, a man of the world with the fortune to support his elegant tastes. Even the ruin of his house showed that.

But what Michel remembered most were the unearthly shrieks of the birds and monkeys within the empty walls, echoing like so many restless spirits, and the way Maman had wept so bitterly at what she’d lost.

“Well, if you hope to scare me away with tales of ghosts and goblins, you’re wrong,” declared Jerusa soundly. She felt she’d won a great concession from him when he’d decided to come here, and she wasn’t about to give it up simply because he wanted to frighten her. To prove her point she walked around him, pulling the mare behind her as she marched up toward the ruin. “You’ve no good reason to believe that anyone died here, let alone that the house is haunted. Besides, what ghost would dare show his face on a morning like this?”

What ghosts, indeed, wondered Michel, painfully aware of the irony of what she said. But how much could she truly know? Had Gabriel Sparhawk bragged to her and the rest of the family of how he’d burned his father’s great house to the ground?

“Here’s the well, just as I said, and there’s even a bucket, too,” announced Jerusa as she looped the horse’s reins around the well’s post. “Though the house may be abandoned, I’ll wager we’re not the only travelers who’ve stopped here.”

She shoved the cover back from the well, dropped the bucket inside and listened until she heard it hit the water with a distant, muffled splash. Next, to Michel’s surprise, she threw her weight against the long sweep, as expertly as any farm wife, until she’d slowly raised the dripping bucket to the surface. With both hands she caught it and set it on the ground for the thirsty mare.

Satisfied, she wiped her palms on the back of her skirt as she watched the mare drink before she glanced back at the Frenchman. “You didn’t think I could do that, did you?” she said smugly.

“I didn’t think you wished to, no,” he said gruffly.

“No, you didn’t think I could, even if I’d wished to.” She lifted her chin, her face lit with a triumphant grin and her hands on her hips. “You think I’m too much a lady to do such a thing. But I’m not nearly as helpless as you want to believe, and you’ll see, I’ll find the old kitchen garden, too. Whatever’s left growing there is bound to be an improvement over your infernal old cheese and stale bread.”

Before he could answer, she had disappeared around the side of the house, and he could hear her feet crashing through the brush as she began to run.