Julia Justiss - Regency High Society Vol 4

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.”