Julia Justiss - Regency High Society Vol 4

“If you’re well enough to run away, ma belle,” said Michel curtly, “then you’re well enough to ride. We’ll do better to travel by night anyway.”

He bent to tighten the cinch on the first saddle so he wouldn’t see the reproach in her eyes. Silly little chit. What did she expect him to do after she’d bolted like that?

But then, in turn, he hadn’t expected her to run, either. He’d thought a petted little creature like Jerusa Sparhawk would whimper and wail, not flee at the first chance she got. And locking him within the barn—though that had made him furious, it also showed more spirit than he’d given her credit for. Much more. He’d have to remember that, and not underestimate her again.

Jerusa watched the Frenchman as he murmured little nonsense words to calm the horse. Kindness for the horse, but none to spare for her. He’d made that clear enough.

She forced herself to eat the bread and cheese he’d given her, even as she remembered that he’d threatened to kill her. Rationally she didn’t believe he would, though she wasn’t sure she had the courage to test his threat and try to escape again. If he didn’t want her alive, he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to kidnap her in the first place.

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.