Miranda Jarrett - Regency High Society Vol 2 - Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

Jeremiah watched as she delicately arched her wrist and lifted the glass to her eye, her hands so dainty in the black kid gloves against the polished brass. Damn these overnice, ladylike airs of hers! He missed her impishness and her impulsive laughter and the way she’d tug on his sleeve like an impatient little girl. With her veil knotted back from her hat’s sugar-scoop brim, her face had the exact fashionable blandness expected of a countess. Only the freckles across her nose, like the gold pollen scattered across a lily, remained as he remembered.

Maybe it was the possibility of being reunited with Lord Byfield that had made her turn so proper on him, or maybe this really was the genuine Caroline Moncrief, and the woman he’d fallen in love with had been the artful imposter. Maybe his Caro, his passionate, impulsive, irrepressible Caro, wasn’t his at all, and didn’t exist beyond a handful of misadventures in Portsmouth calculated to bring him here to Naples with her, and those first two wretched nights aboard the Raleigh.

Whoever she was, she’d kept her distance since then. No more kisses, no more confessions, and somehow she’d rigged a way to get in and out of her clothes without his help. She didn’t need him for anything. And that, he told himself fiercely, was all for the best and fine with him.

Too bad he didn’t believe it, too.

“Is Sardinia a country in its own right?” she asked, focusing the glass.

“A kingdom, I think, if General Bonaparte hasn’t swallowed it up wholesale.” More of her polite small talk, he thought contemptuously. She wasn’t even looking in the direction of the island. “I’ve never put in there, so I can’t tell you much of the place.”

“Do you know the colors of their flag?”

“Red with yellow bars, I think. They’ve so few deep-water ships that I can’t have seen it more than a half-dozen times.”

Caro’s veil floated back up before her face, and impatiently she shoved it away without lowering the glass from her eye. “This flag might be red and yellow, but I don’t believe it is. No, now that it’s clear of the horizon, I can see it’s blue and white with the red.”

“What the devil?” Jeremiah grabbed the glass from her. Even at this distance, the tricolor of France was unmistakable, as were the three tiny dots of white topsail that crowned the masts of a frigate. And if Caro had spotted them from the deck, then the frigate’s lookouts high in those same sails would definitely have seen the Raleigh by now, and Jeremiah swore under his breath. To come so close to their destination and then be captured—it was too much like what had happened to the Chanticleer. No more war, he prayed, please God, no more fighting.

“It’s a French ship, isn’t it?” asked Caro, standing up on her toes to try to see better. “If England’s at war with them by now, as everyone said we would be, then they’ll try to catch us, won’t they?”

“Damned right they will.” Jeremiah squinted up at the Raleigh ’s own lookout, staring dreamily at the purple-blue hills of Sardinia, and he bit back the automatic reproach. This wasn’t his ship, no matter how much danger the man’s carelessness had put them in.

Bertle wasn’t on deck, but Hart was, and in three steps Jeremiah was at the other man’s side, thrusting his own glass into the mate’s hands. “You wanted to see Frenchmen, Hart. Well, there the bastards are, large as life and on your tail.”

With his eye to the glass, Hart twitched like a setter who’d just eyed a pheasant. “We’ll have some sport now, won’t we, sir?” he said as he chuckled with anticipation. “What luck! What bloody good luck!”

Jeremiah stared at him in disbelief. “If this is your idea of good luck, than I’d hate to see bad. Where’s the captain?”

“In his cabin, with orders not to be disturbed. He always retires after breakfast, you know.”

“I didn’t know and I don’t care,” said Jeremiah curtly. “Send one of the men for him directly.”

“What, and waste this chance to seize the glory ourselves?” cried Hart, his plump chin quivering with anticipation. “The cannonades, Mr. Sparhawk, the cannonades! I’ll send Johnson below for the powder and balls, and then we’ll—”

“Shove the damn things over the side for all the good they’ll do you.” Jeremiah looked back at the French ship, her sails now clearly visible without the glass. At last the sloop’s lookout had spotted the frigate, and at his excited cry the rest of the sloop’s crew had swarmed up the rigging to look for themselves. “A frigate that size carries at least thirty-six guns, each one capable of firing twice as far as your little brass popguns. You wouldn’t even have a chance to aim before they’d blown you clear from the water.”

He would have tempered his words if he’d seen Caro beside him, but instead of being shocked or frightened, she only nodded, her eyes bright with excitement. “Then we’d be fools to pick a fight, Jeremiah. Wouldn’t it be better if we outran them?”

He glanced up at the sails, gauging the wind, and shook his head. “With their size and all the extra canvas they can set, they’d have us by sunset. Besides, if we run, we’ll just be giving them the excuse to fire on us anyway.”

“Look here, you’re only a passenger,” protested Hart. “You’re not even English. You’ve no right to be giving orders to anyone aboard this sloop.”

“And neither are you, you smug little jackass,” snapped Bertle as he stumped up the companionway, still buttoning his breeches. “What’s all this yammering about a Frenchman?”

“There, south-southwest,” said Jeremiah, his patience fast disappearing. “I’d guess from the way they’re chasing us that Bonaparte’s declared war, and we’re set to be that frigate’s first prize. Start thinking fast, Bertle. My wife and I have no wish to risk our lives because of your indecision.”

Hart elbowed his way forward. “I told them we’d fight it out, sir,” he said eagerly. “I told them—”

Bertle cuffed the mate sharply, enough to send the younger man staggering to one side. “You could have told them you knew as much as a keg of salt horse and it would’ve amounted to the same thing. Use the brains God gave you, boy, and learn to keep your mouth shut when you can’t.”

“What other papers do you carry?” demanded Jeremiah. “Dutch, maybe, or Swedish? Anything to fool them with when we’re boarded?”

Bertle glared at Jeremiah as he pulled out a red bandanna and noisily blew his nose. “That’s a low Yankee trick, bad as sailing under false colors, and I won’t countenance it.”

With his hands folded across his chest, Jeremiah looked down at the other captain. “You’d rather lose your ship and cargo?”

Bertle’s mouth worked as he tried to come up with another, more respectable possibility.

“If we’re going to try to fool them,” said Caro, and all three men turned to look at her, “shouldn’t we take down our flag? They might not have seen it yet, you know. The way the wind was blowing I couldn’t make out theirs for the longest time, and they’d be looking into the sun to see us, too.”

“Strike the king’s flag, ma’am?” exclaimed Hart with horror. “To a Frenchman, ma’am?”

Bertle grunted. “Do what the lady says, Hart, and don’t make a great show of it. Fray the line so it looks like we lost our colors in a blow. And mind, we’re not so much striking to the bloody French as protecting what’s ours.”

Caro grinned, and for the first time in weeks Jeremiah saw a flicker of her former impishness. “Then give it to me for safekeeping, Captain Bertle. No galant gentilehomme would dare search a lady’s belongings.”