Miranda Jarrett - Regency High Society Vol 4 - The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife

“Indeed you don’t.” Sorrowfully Michel, too, shook his head. “I was lured to wed her by her pretty face and her father’s prettier purse, and now I’ll pay until she nags me to my grave.”

“‘Lured’ to wed me? Me?” exclaimed Jerusa. She knew exactly what he was doing, trying to play on the other man’s sympathy as a kind of woe-is-me, beleaguered husband so he’d put down his gun, but still she didn’t care for it one bit. She was the prisoner. The two men should be feeling sorry for her. “Since when did I lure you to do anything? Why, when I—”

“Hush now, dearest, and be quiet for this good man, if not for me.” Michel smiled sadly at the man at the other end of the gun. “You can see why we keep to the back roads. In a tavern or inn, this sorry excuse for a wife thinks nothing of shaming me before an entire company. By the by, I’m Michael Geary.”

“Oh, ‘Michael Geary’ indeed!” said Jerusa indignantly. “I’ll Michael Geary you!”

With her fists clenched she charged toward Michel, intent on doing him the kind of harm she’d learned from having three brothers. How dare Michel do this to her, twisting around everything she said in the worst possible way?

But she hadn’t taken two steps before the young man dipped the barrel of his musket across her shins, tangling it in her skirts so that she stumbled and nearly fell.

“There now, that’ll teach ye to mind yer man,” he said smugly as Jerusa glared at him. “Pa, too, considering as how he likewise told ye to stop yer scolding. My ma knows her place proper.”

Jerusa began to answer, then stopped. She wasn’t getting anywhere with these men, but perhaps the mother might be more willing to listen. Might, that is, if the poor woman weren’t so thoroughly cowed by her dreadful excuse for a husband.

And the red-haired man was dreadful, a man who had made absolutely no attempt to help her when she stumbled, said not a word to chide his son for his treatment toward a lady, and who even now was heaping a shovelful of salt onto her wounded pride by slinging his musket over his shoulder and reaching his hand out to help Michel —Michel !—to his feet.

“The name’s Faulk, sir,” he said with enough respect to show that he’d swallowed Michel’s ruse. “Abraham Faulk, sir, at your service, and that be Isaac. Bow proper to the gentleman, lad.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Faulk.” Michel shook the man’s hand with just the right amount of friendliness and distance to prove that he was in fact a gentleman, but a good-natured one at that. An English gentleman, noted Jerusa glumly; now, when Michel’s little slips into French could be most useful to her, he was speaking better English than King George himself.

In return, Faulk began bowing and grinning as if he were the one being honored. “Ye said ye was only guarding yerself with the pistol, sir, and so was I with my musket,” he said apologetically. “These days I must be careful to protect my land and my flocks from rascals and vagabonds.”

“No offense taken, Faulk, none at all. It’s the way of the world, and a man must be careful.” Unchallenged now, Michel bent to pick up his pistol and tuck it back in his belt. As he rose he glanced pointedly at Jerusa, enough to fan her anger afresh. “You have to guard what you hold dear.”

Faulk nodded vigorously. “Ye shall come ‘round to the house now, won’t you, Mr. Geary?” he asked eagerly. “Just to prove there be no hard feelings? A taste of cider, or rum, if ye are of a mind?”

“How civil of you! We’d be honored, my wife and I both,” said Michel warmly, “and if you can spare a handful of oats for the horses, why, they’d thank you, too.”

Jerusa’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. He had his gun back and they were free to go on their way. Why, then, would he wish to sup cider with a sheep farmer?

“A quarter hour or so, Mr. Faulk,” continued Michel, “and then I fear we must be on our way. But a quarter hour would be deuced pleasant.”

Jerusa watched how Faulk beamed at the Frenchman, her resentment simmering. She’d never met a man with such a gift for cozening and out-and-out lying. And charm: sweet Almighty, this Michel, or Michael, or whatever his name really was, could sell it from a wagon on market day. No wonder she’d trusted him in her mother’s garden.

As if he read her thoughts, he turned and smiled, his eyes as clear and open as his conscience had no right to be, and his hand held out graciously to her. “Come along, dearest, we’ll accept Mr. Faulk’s hospitality before we’re off again.”

Dearest! Briefly Jerusa considered spitting on him, or at least calling him the worst name she knew.

“Now, sweetheart. We don’t wish to keep Mrs. Faulk waiting on your fancy, do we?” Michel’s smile faded a degree as an unspoken warning flickered in his eyes for Jerusa alone. If she was mentally calling him every foul word she could imagine, then she was quite sure from the expression in those blue eyes that he was thinking not a whit better of her.

But it was the reminder of Mrs. Faulk, not that silent warning, that made Jerusa force herself to smile and take Michel’s hand. Surely the other woman would understand her plight. Soon, very soon, she’d be on her way home, and her smile became artlessly genuine.

She’d seen countless houses like the Faulks’, a style that was common in the colony: a gray stone wall at one end, with the chimney and fireplace, and the other three walls covered by weather-silvered clapboard. The few windows were small and old-fashioned with tiny diamond-shaped panes and no shutters, and the battened door was so stout that it might have done service against King Philip’s savages a hundred years before.

Though Jerusa had seen such houses all her life, she’d only seen them from a distance, usually from the window of her parents’ carriage, and while Michel and Isaac led the horses toward the barnyard, she eagerly followed Mr. Faulk through the open door of the little house. On the threshold she paused for her eyes to grow accustomed to the murkiness, for while it was still afternoon out-of-doors, the sun scarcely penetrated inside the house, and there was little light beyond what filtered through the small-paned windows and the glow from the embers in the fireplace. The entire first floor seemed to be only this single room, a parlor, kitchen and bedchamber combined into one, with the sagging, curtainless bedstead in the far corner.

“On yer feet, Bess, we’ve guests,” ordered Faulk sharply. “This be Mistress Geary, and she and her husband be stopping here on their journey to—where’d ye say yer was bound, mistress?”

“South,” said Jerusa faintly. Did the house really smell so much like the yard outside, or was it her own clothing that still carried the scent of the barn where she’d spent last night?

“South,” repeated Faulk with as much relish as if Jerusa had said London. “Now offer the lady some of yer cider, Bess, and be quick about it.”

“Ah, don’t ye be giving me orders, Abraham, ‘specially not before a stranger.” The woman came forward from where she’d been bending over a pot on the fire, wiping her hands on her apron. She was small and round, and clenched in her teeth was a white clay pipe, whose bowl glowed bright before her cheek. “Good day to ye, Mistress Geary, and pleased I am to have ye in my home.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Faulk,” said Jerusa quickly. “But before, uh, Mr. Geary joins us, there’s something I must say to you alone that—”

“Ah, do yer husband be as full of his own wind and worth as mine, then?” The other woman laughed merrily, the embers in her pipe bobbing. “Ordering ye not to speak less’n it pleases him?”