Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

changed her mind and left her poor groom and half the town waiting alone before the minister! Jilted the man cold, she did, without leaving one word to comfort him.”

      “That’s not true!” cried Jerusa, leaping to her feet. “I didn’t jilt him, I swear!”

      The only sound in the room was the pop and hiss of the fire.

      Mrs. Faulk cleared her throat. “Not to shame ye, Mistress Geary,” she said gently, “but ye must be mistaken. This girl we be speaking of is gentry, Captain Gabriel Sparhawk’s daughter.”

      Faulk glanced uneasily from Michel to Jerusa. “True enough, mistress. I’ve seen Miss Sparhawk once with my own eyes, riding through the streets in Newport in an open carriage, a wonderfully proud beauty covered with pearls and plumes, like a very princess. And though you be a fine enough lady, mistress, ye don’t be her.”

      “But I am her!” cried Jerusa indignantly. She’d never considered that they’d doubt who she was. “You must believe me because it’s true! I couldn’t possibly have jilted poor Tom the way you said, because I was kidnapped instead, carried away from my own house by that man!”

      She swung around to point at Michel, half expecting him to turn and flee. What else could a man as low as a kidnapper do?

      But Michel didn’t run away. He didn’t even look guilty. Instead, with a low sigh, he set the tankard with the rum on the table beside him and came to stand before Jerusa, his arms folded across his chest.

      “Sweetheart, please,” he said softly. “You promised.”

      “I never promised you anything!” answered Jerusa scornfully. “You’re a villain, a rogue, a kidnapper, and I hope they hang you for all the grief you’ve brought my family!”

      He sighed again, all resignation and patient sorrow. “My dear, the Sparhawks are not your family. Your parents live in Charlestown, not Newport, and you can’t have jilted your bridegroom because you’ve been wed to me these last three years.”

      “That’s not true, none of it!” Fighting her panic, Jerusa turned from Michel to the worried, fearful faces of the Faulks. “Surely you’ll believe me and take me back home! You must believe me! This man isn’t my husband. He isn’t even Mr. Geary!”

      “Be easy now, mistress,” said Mrs. Faulk cautiously. “Faith, I’d never have told ye the scandal if I’d known it would strike ye like this.”

      “But I am Jerusa Sparhawk!” Jerusa pressed her hands to her cheeks, desperate for the words that would make them believe her. Without the silk gowns and jewelry that had made such an impression on Faulk, words were all she had. “Gabriel Sparhawk’s my father and Mariah Sparhawk’s my mother. You’ve only to look at me to know it’s true! I was born on the twelfth of April in 1750, the same day as my twin brother Josh, and I’ve two older brothers and two younger sisters besides, and, oh, everyone in Newport would know me. Everyone!”

      Yet one look at the Faulks’ faces told her they didn’t.

      “Please, please believe me!” she pleaded. “I need your help to return to my family!”

      “I didn’t hear nothing about a kidnapping,” said Faulk with exaggerated care, staring somewhere past Jerusa’s shoulder to avoid meeting her gaze. “Only that the bridegroomhisself swore he’d been left, and that that be the end of the match for him.”

      “Tom said that?” Jerusa shook her head, unable to accept such blasphemy. Even in nightmares, life didn’t take such dreadful twists, and she felt herself sliding helplessly into the depths of her fear. “No, not my darling Tom! I love him, and he loves me. You must be wrong. You must be!”

      “She’s unsettled, that’s all,” explained Michel with a sorrow so genuine it left Jerusa speechless. There was a warmth to his eyes, a tenderness softening his hard-edged face that seemed too heartfelt to be playacting, and in spite of everything else he’d done to her, she felt the color warm her cheeks. She could, in that instant, almost believe he cared for her. Yet how could he be so sympathetic when all of what he said were lies?

      “Most days she’s perfectly well,” he continued gently, “but on others, she believes herself someone else entirely. It will pass. It always does. Yet you can see now why I choose not to take the poor lass into public houses.”

      “Oh, God bless ye, Mr. Geary,” murmured Mrs. Faulk. “What a terrible burden she must be to ye!”

      “But it’s not true,” whispered Jerusa hoarsely. “God help me, none of what he says is true!”

      Protectively Faulk rested his hands on his own wife’s shoulders. “Is there aught we can do to help ye, Mr. Geary? Ropes or such to control her rages?”

      Michel shook his head. “Thank you, no. She’ll be well enough when there’s just the two of us again. Once we’re on our way, the breezes will help dispel her tempers, and she’ll be meek as a new lamb.”

      He stepped forward and laid his hands on Jerusa’s shoulders, an empty mockery of Faulk’s own gesture. “Isn’t that true, sweetheart? Shouldn’t we be leaving these good people so you can feel better?”

      Jerusa stiffened beneath his touch, but the fight was gone from her now. No wonder the Faulks believed him instead of her; he made sense, and she didn’t. It wasn’t just the plain clothing Michel had given her that made her seem less the “gentry” that Faulk had expected. It was instead the role Michel had chosen to play for himself, that of her caring, concerned husband, that made every word she’d said ring so false.

      And even worse was realizing that he would do it again if she dared try to seek help from another.

      “You will come with me now, won’t you, dearest?” he said gently.

      “Very well,” she said, her voice so low that the Faulks wouldn’t hear her bitterness. She was still Michel’s prisoner, true, but at least by accepting his will in this she could deprive him of the pleasure of having to carry her forcibly from the house. “Decide what you please, and I shall follow.”

      The moon was nearly risen before Michel stopped to rest the horses. Since they’d left the Faulks’ farm, Jerusa had said not a word to him, and the silence between them had grown deeper and more uncomfortable with every step.

      He tried to tell himself it was better this way. What was the point of listening to her ill-timed attempts at conversation or deflecting yet again the same questions she insisted on asking, which he’d no intention of answering? She was his prisoner, his hostage, his bait, his enemy. That she was also quite beautiful must be inconsequential. She was neither his friend nor his lover, and the sooner he remembered that and stopped thinking of her as a woman, the better for them both.

      Easy to resolve, impossible to do. How could he ignore how neatly his hands fit around her waist as he helped her from her horse, or the way her scent filled his senses as she brushed against him? On her, even the unassuming clothing he’d bought seemed to accentuate the ripe, full curves of her body, and he couldn’t forget the glimpse he’d had of her breasts, firm and lush, above her stays when he’d cut her from her tattered wedding gown. Mordieu, why was nothing easy where this woman was involved?

      He watched her as she returned from the bushes, her eyes carefully downcast to avoid meeting his. At least this way he wouldn’t have to pretend he wasn’t watching her. In the moonlight her face was pale, her hair, in its loosened braid, a dark cloud around her shoulders. Maybe it was seeing her so often by moonlight that had unsettled him this badly.

      Unsettled: that was how he’d described her to the Faulks, the same term the Parisian doctor from Port Royal preferred. What devil had put such a word into his mouth last night, anyway?

      He held out a flask he’d taken from the horse’s pack. “Mrs. Faulk’s cider,” he explained as she stopped before him. “She sent it along especially for you.”

      Jerusa glanced at the flask, reminded again of how