Julia Justiss - Regency High Society Vol 4

“Oh, aye, nothing mean about that, nor meaningful, either!” growled Gabriel as he shoved back his chair and rose to his feet. “Ink and paper won’t fetch my daughter back out of the air!”

“My point exactly, Captain. How, indeed, could a lady vanish into the very air?” Belligerently Tom sniffed again as he, too, rose to his feet. “Nor am I alone in my surmise, sir. There’s others, many others, who shall agree, sir, that my bride’s disappearance mere minutes before our union has a decidedly insulting taint to it. An insult, sir, that I’ve no intention of bearing without notice.”

Josh grabbed Tom and shoved him back against his chair. As far as he could see, the insult was to Jerusa, and he’d be damned if he’d let anyone speak of his sister like that. “What the hell are you saying, Carberry?”

“I’m saying that I believe Jerusa’s jilted me,” said Tom, his words clipped with fury. He lifted both hands to Josh’s chest and shoved hard in return. “I’m saying that her disappearance is merely a convenient manner of explanation. I’m saying that the chit’s amusing enough, but neither she nor her dowry’s worth—”

At once Josh was on him, driving his fist squarely into Tom’s dimpled chin and knocking him to the floor. Tom’s own blow went wild, but as he toppled backward he grabbed the front of Josh’s coat and pulled him down, too. Over and over they rolled across the floorboards, whichever man was on top swinging at the other as they grunted and swore and crashed into furniture.

But while in height the two were evenly matched, Josh had long ago traded a genteel drawing room for the far rougher company on the quarterdeck of his own sloop, and Tom’s anger and dishonor alone weren’t enough to equal Josh’s raw strength and experience. Finally when Josh was on top he stayed there, breathing hard, pinning the other man down between his thighs.

“My—my sister’s too good for you, you stinking son of a bitch,” he gasped, breathing hard as he raised his fist to deal one final blow to Tom’s battered, bleeding face. “Why the hell didn’t they take you instead?”

But before he could strike, Gabriel caught his arm. “Enough, Joshua.”

He struggled to break his father’s grasp, Gabriel’s voice barely penetrating the red glare of his rage. “Father, you heard what he said—”

“I said enough, or you’ll kill him, and the bastard’s not worth that.”

Reluctantly Josh nodded, and Gabriel released him. As he climbed off Tom, he flexed his fingers where he’d once struck the floor instead of Tom. His hand would be too raw to hold a pen tonight, and already his lip felt as if it had doubled in size from the swelling, but one look at Tom made it all worthwhile. No ladies would come sighing after that face for a good long while.

Slowly Tom crawled to his knees and then to his feet, swaying unsteadily but still shaking off Gabriel’s offered hand as he headed to the door. He fumbled for his handkerchief and pressed it to the gash on his forehead.

“You’re a—a low, filthy cur, Sparhawk,” he gasped from the doorway, “an’ so—an’ so I’ll tell th’ town.”

“Then go and tell them, Carberry,” said Gabriel grimly, “but don’t come back here. It was only for your father’s sake and Jerusa’s begging that I agreed to your wretched proposal anyway, and thank God I’ve broken the betrothal before it was too late.”

“You broke it?” croaked Tom. “I came here t’end it!”

“My daughter didn’t jilt you, Carberry, but I did. Now get out.”

And this time Tom didn’t wait.

Shaking his head, Gabriel went back behind his desk. From the bottom drawer he pulled out a bottle of rum, drew the stopper and handed it to Josh. “Don’t let your mother see you until you’ve cleaned yourself up. You know how she feels about fighting.”

Josh smiled as best he could and took the bottle. The rum stung his lip but tasted good, sliding and burning down his throat. This was the first time his father had ever shared the bottle from his desk with him, and Josh savored the rare approval that came along with the drink.

It was one of the quirks of his family that though he and Jerusa had been born together twenty-one years before, their positions were curiously reversed. Josh was the third, the youngest son, always trying to prove himself, while Jerusa was the first and eldest of his three sisters, the beautiful, irrepressible favorite to whom everything came so easily. Not that he’d ever been jealous of her; Jerusa was too much a part of him for that, almost like the other half of his being.

Lord, he hoped they’d find her soon.

His father left the bottle on the desk between them. “You’ve traded with the French islands, Josh. Ever heard of a pirate named Deveaux?”

Josh shook his head. “The name’s not one I recall. Which port does he call home?”

“Once he sailed from Fort Royale on Martinique, but not now. I watched him take a pistol and spatter his own brains aboard the old Revenge. Your mother was there to see it, too, more’s the pity.” Gabriel sighed, his thoughts turned inward to the past. “Must be nearly thirty years ago, though I remember it as if it were yesterday. And that, I think, is what someone wants me to believe.”

He picked up the paper in his right hand, and to Josh’s surprise his father’s fingers were trembling. “This was Deveaux’s mark, lad. All his men had it burned into their flesh, and anytime he wished to take credit for his actions he’d leave a paper like this behind.”

“How could he have anything to do with Jerusa?” asked Josh. “You said the man is dead.”

“As dead as any mortal can be, and his scoundrel crew with him. The ones that weren’t lost in the wreck of his ship we took to Bridgetown for hanging. But now, Lord help us, I cannot swear to it.”

Josh held his breath, waiting with a strange mixture of dread and excitement for what must follow. There were some stories of his father’s past—and his mother’s, too—that were told so often they’d become family legends. But most of Gabriel’s exploits as a privateer he had kept to himself, and certainly away from the sons who would have hung on every heroic word.

Until now, when Jerusa’s life might be swinging in the balance between the past and the present….

Gabriel reached inside the letter box on his desk. In his palm lay a second paper, faded with age but still a perfect match to the new one found with the rose. “Deveaux kidnapped your mother on the night of our wedding as she walked in the garden of my parents’ house at Westgate. And everything—damnation, everything —about how Jerusa vanished is the same, down to this cursed black lily, even though there should be no one left alive beyond your mother and me to know of it.”

Josh stared at the black lilies, his head spinning at what his father said. Whoever cared enough to come clear to Newport to duplicate his mother’s kidnapping so precisely would want to see the macabre game to its conclusion.

“But obviously this Deveaux must have let you redeem Mother,” he said, striving to make sense of the puzzle. “He didn’t hurt her.”

“God knows he tried. He would have killed us both if he could,” said Gabriel grimly, “just as he murdered so many others. Christian Deveaux was the most truly wicked man I’ve ever known, Joshua, as evil as Satan himself in his love of cruelty and pain. When I think of your sister in the hands of a man who fancies himself another Deveaux…”

He didn’t need to say more. Josh understood.

“I can have the Tiger ready to sail at dawn, Father,” he said quietly, “and I’ll be in Martinique in five days.”