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

“And I also said we were leaving. Just not on horseback.” Carefully he laid two guineas on the edge of the table where Mrs. Cartwright would be sure to find them, a more than generous settling of their account. Generous enough, he hoped, that she’d also forget Master and Mistress Geary had been her guests if the constable did come asking questions.

“By sea, then,” she said uneasily, clutching her bundle to her chest in both arms. “By ship?”

“By ship.” He took the single candlestick from the table and turned to face her. “But you needn’t worry that I’ll take you back to the Hannah Barlow.”

In the draft from the window the candle’s flame flared and flickered, dancing shadows across the angular planes of his face, masking his expression from her.

“Or to Newport?” Reminding herself of all they’d shared together, she dared to ask, and dared more to pray he’d say yes.

For a long moment he stood before her in silence with his fingers cupped around the little flame to shield it. Mordieu, why had she asked this one thing of him? Her eyes were so luminous, filled with candlelight and hope he’d no choice but to destroy. If he did what Jerusa asked, he’d turn his back on his mother and his father’s memory. But by granting Maman her wish, he was destroying the first real chance for happiness he’d ever found for himself and a future that had nothing to do with the past.

“Michel?” she asked tentatively, her voice scarce more than a whisper. Was it one more trick of the flickering candlelight, or were the pain and bitterness in his eyes really that keen?

But before she could decide, he looked away, above her head to the door and the journey beyond. “Come. I had to bribe the captain to sail early before the tide was turned, and we shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

She swallowed. “And where are we bound, Michel?”

“South, ma chère,” he said, taking care not to meet her eyes. “South, and away from Newport.”

In these last shadowy hours before dawn, Seabrook was quiet and still. The slender crescent of the new moon gave little light, but still Michel walked as confidently through the unpaved streets as if he’d done it a thousand times before. For all Jerusa knew, he had, and as she hurried beside him, she realized again how little she truly did know of him.

To her relief, they headed to the opposite end of the waterfront from the Hannah Barlow and to another wharf where a small brig was tied. Even by the meager light of the one lantern hung at the entry port and the second by the binnacle, Jerusa could tell that this brig was better managed than the Hannah Barlow would ever be. The crewmen bustled about with lastminute preparations before sailing, tugging a line a bit more taut or hurrying off to obey an order. Though the ship was smaller and more provincial than anything the Sparhawks owned, she felt at least they’d be sailing with a competent captain.

“Is that you, Mr. Geary, sir?” called a man from the larboard rail as Michel and Jerusa walked up the plank. “The cap’n’s below, but he asked me to welcome you aboard in his stead.”

He held his hand out to Michel. “George Hay, sir, mate. We’re glad to have you aboard the Swan, Mr. Geary, indeed we are. We don’t usually carry much in the way of passengers or idlers, but as Cap’n Barker says, your company will be a change from our own dull chatter. And you, ma’am, must be Mrs. Geary.”

Lifting his hat, Hay smiled and bowed neatly to Jerusa. She liked his face, broad and friendly, and because his manners and speech were so much better than most sailors’, she wondered if he might be a son or nephew of the Swan’s owner, sent to sea to learn the trade before he took his place in the countinghouse. As she smiled in return, she wondered wistfully what might have happened if earlier she’d come aboard the Swan seeking help instead of the Hannah Barlow.

She felt Michel’s arm slip around her waist. She knew it was entirely proper for him to do while they were pretending to be husband and wife, yet somehow to her the possessiveness of the gesture seemed based more on jealousy than affection.

It irritated her, that arm, and she inched away from him as far as she dared. Only once had Tom Carberry presumed to act this high-handedly with her, and she’d smacked him so hard with her fan that Newport spoke of nothing else for a week. She wasn’t about to make a scene like that now, not with the threat of the constable hanging over her head as long as they remained in port, but still Michel had no right to act as though he owned her.

Michel felt how she stiffened and pulled away from him. What the devil was she doing now?

“This is my wife’s first voyage, so you must excuse her if she seems somewhat anxious,” he explained for Hay’s benefit. Benefit, mordieu. What he wanted to do was toss the mate over the side for grinning like a shovel-faced English ape at Jerusa. “She’ll be less skittish once we’re under way.”

Skittish, indeed, thought Jerusa irritably as she refused to let Michel catch her eye. She’d show him skittish!

“Your first voyage, Mrs. Geary?” said Hay with far too much interest to please Michel. “Well, now, you couldn’t have chosen a pleasanter passage to make, or a sweeter vessel to sail in! Once we pick up the southerly currents, the Swan will be as gentle as a skiff on a pond.”

“You’re vastly reassuring, Mr. Hay,” said Jerusa sweetly, tipping her head to one side as she smiled at him. “My husband, you see, assures me that the best way to control my fears is to keep myself as free as possible of the detail of sailing. I know you’ll find it hard to countenance, Mr. Hay, being a gentleman of the sea like yourself, but I do not even know our destination, beyond that it is to the south!”

Hay scratched the back of his head beneath his hat and frowned. “What is there to fear in a place like Bridgetown?” he asked. “To be sure, some of the other islands might seem a bit untamed to a lady, but being under King George’s rule, Barbados is little different from Connecticut itself.”

Bridgetown! In amazement she turned to look at Michel. Her grandparents had lived on Barbados, on a hillside only a few miles from Bridgetown itself, and their sugar plantation was still run in the Sparhawk name. And her own mother and father had fallen in love there; even Michel knew that.

But could he really be doing this for her? If he truly couldn’t take her home to Newport as she had asked, was he instead taking her to the next best place?

“Yes, my dear, Bridgetown,” he said evenly. But his gaze never left Hay’s, and to her dismay, Jerusa could feel the tension already simmering between these two, tension she’d purposefully—and foolishly—fed. “I remembered how much you’ve always wished to visit your cousins there.”

Hay turned again toward Jerusa. “So you’ve family on Barbados, Mrs. Geary? I can assure you that—”

“You must have other duties to attend to, Hay,” said Michel curtly. “We’ll trouble you no longer. Has our dunnage been carried to our cabin?”

“Aye, aye, Mr. Geary, it has.” Automatically Hay responded to the authority in Michel’s voice, straightening to attention for him as he would for his captain. “You’ll find your cabin aft near—”

“I shall find it, thank you.” Michel’s grasp around Jerusa’s waist tightened again, and this time she knew better than to resist as he guided her toward the companionway and down the narrow steps.

The space between decks was low and cramped, and reflexively Jerusa ducked beneath the low beams overhead. Though they were aft, not far from the captain’s cabin, the close space was filled with the smell of the cargo in the hold, the sharp, raw scent of hundreds of hewn white oak staves that would be fitted into barrels for the rum trade. Smoky oil lanterns hung from hooks in the beams, and Michel unfastened one and lowered it as he stopped to unlatch the paneled door to their cabin. With a loud creak the door swung open, and though Michel stepped inside to hang the lantern on another hook on the bulkhead, Jerusa stayed in the doorway, too appalled to move.