Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

      Michel rolled over on the sand, automatically reaching for the pistol at his waist that wasn’t there. But Jerusa wasn’t there, either. All that was left were the prints from her bare feet and the sweeping marks where her skirts had dragged across the sand. But mordieu, where could she have gone? She had been there beside him when they’d finally crawled from the surf, and she’d been curled beneath his arm after they’d collapsed here, high up on the beach where the palms would shelter them.

      “Jerusa!” Unsteadily he rose first to his knees, then his feet, using the palm for support as his gaze swept up and down the empty beach. His gun was gone but his knife had somehow remained in its salt-stiffened sheath, and he drew it now, straining his ears for sound. He was light-headed from hunger and swallowing too much seawater and the lingering weakness of the fever, and the last thing he wished to do was to track her down, wherever she’d wandered off to.

      Unless she hadn’t wandered off at all. Unless the beach wasn’t as uninhabited as it first had seemed, and while he’d been asleep like some great useless slug, some other man had come along to claim her. Unless…

      “Oh, good, Michel, you’re awake!” She came bounding toward him through the tall grass at the edge of the heavier forest, her bedraggled skirts looped up over her long legs and a small bunch of yellow-green bananas, still attached to their stem, tucked under her arm. “Look what I’ve found!”

      “You shouldn’t have gone off on your own like that, ma mie,” he cautioned. He might feel like the wrong end of a sailor’s leave, but she certainly didn’t. “You don’t know who or what you might have found.”

      “Oh, fah, Michel, don’t be an old woman about it,” she scoffed, shoving her tangled hair back from her face, and she looked so pointedly at the knife in his hand that he finally tucked it back in its sheath. “I’ve told you before I grew up on an island, and I can take care of myself, too.”

      He waved one arm through the air, encompassing the long empty beach, the wild, bright green forest and the vast turquoise sea. “This is hardly a proper little island in Narragansett Bay.”

      “No, and we’re not proper little islanders, either, are we?” She grinned mischievously. “Have you any notion of where we are?”

      He sighed, wishing he felt as cheerful as she did. “Somewhere off Dominica, perhaps, or maybe the Iles de la Petite Terre. Near enough that Mr. Hay and his friends should have kept to the Swan instead of scurrying off in their boats.”

      She followed his gaze to where the brig lay wedged between the rocks, held in place as neatly as if she’d been set there for display. In the bright, warm sunlight it was easy to forget yesterday’s storm and how close they’d come to disaster.

      “Do you think they reached land?” she asked. “I haven’t seen any sign of them in this cove, have you?”

      “No,” said Michel, letting the single word answer both her questions with chilling directness. “Later, as soon as the tide falls, we’ll want to go back aboard. There’s things I’d rather not leave for the wreckers to find.”

      “Wreckers?”

      “Of course, ma chérie,” he said, surprised by her naïveté. Did she really believe they’d been cast away on some storybook desert island? There had been French, Spanish and English prowling about these waters for the last three hundred years, and Indians before that, and the odds of finding a truly deserted island anywhere in the Caribbean would be slim indeed.

      “A prize like that brig won’t go unnoticed for long,” he explained. “And since she was abandoned by her crew, the salvage laws will let her be claimed by whoever wants her. Not that the wreckers will wait for the niceties of the law. I’ll wager that the first boats will be here by noon tomorrow, and then we’ll be on our way to St-Pierre.”

      “Oh,” she said so forlornly it was more of a sigh, as she dropped onto the sand, the bananas in her lap. “I didn’t realize we’d be rescued quite so soon.”

      Morbleu, she had believed they’d been stranded here for eternity! But as foolish as such an idea was, it did remain a pretty, tantalizing fantasy, and he could understand all too well why she’d wished for it. Waiting in Martinique with bleak certainty would be his mother and, quite likely by now, her father, and what wouldhappen there was now more than he could guess.

      But here on this island the world narrowed to the two of them, a world that existed without the grim entanglements of loyalty and honor and revenge. Here none of that mattered. He and Jerusa had survived the storm unharmed and they had each other, and he couldn’t blame her at all for wanting life to stay that uncomplicated. Sacristi, what he’d give to keep it that way, too!

      With a sigh he sat beside her, taking her hand gently in his. “Whatever else happens, chérie, remember that I love you.”

      She smiled wistfully. “And I love you, Michel.” She looked down at how neatly their fingers intertwined and wished their lives could do the same. He loved her and she loved him, but she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that what they shared could survive whatever lay ahead in Martinique.

      With infinite care she slipped her fingers free. “I thought you would be hungry,” she said, lifting the bananas from her lap. “I’m not certain, but I thought this must be some sort of fruit.”

      “Bananas, ma petite. Something else that you won’t find on your Narragansett island.” He took the bunch from her, snapped the ripest banana free and peeled back the skin. Breaking off a piece, he held it before her until she opened her mouth to take it from his fingers. “They’re everywhere in the islands.”

      She chewed it slowly, relishing the sweet, unfamiliar flavor before she finally smiled. “That’s very good,” she said, taking the rest of it from him to finish herself. “But surely you would like one, too?”

      He shook his head. “Before I eat anything, Rusa, we must find fresh water.”

      “Oh, I found that already.” Quickly she stood, thankful for something to do. “Near the bananas.”

      The path through the forest was wide and clear, so easy to follow from the beach that Michel was certain it was used by ships refilling their water barrels after long voyages. But he’d expected a utilitarian stream or river, not the exquisite clearing that Jerusa now led him to, and familiar though he was with the beauty of the islands, this took his breath away.

      Twenty feet above their heads, a narrow stream of fresh water rushed down from the island’s higher ground over smooth black rock before it fell, glittering like diamonds in the dappled sunlight, into a wide, clear pool. Tall, feathery ferns and trees shaded the pond, and yellow and lavender orchids punctuated the shadows with bright spots of bobbing color. The air around them was alive with the sound of falling water and the cries of the forest thrushes.

      And yet as beautiful as the place was, for Michel the loveliest part of it was Jerusa as she stood on one of the smooth, flat rocks that hung over the water, just within reach of the cascade. She held her arms slightly bent, her fingers spread and her shoulders raised as she let the cool drops of water sprinkle over her, and her smile was so full of unfeigned, open pleasure that Michel knew he’d never forget it.

      She laughed when she caught his eye, shaking her hair back over her shoulders and scattering a new shower of droplets into the air.

      “I’ll say it before you will,” she called over the sound of the water. “No, there is no place like this on any island in Narragansett Bay, nor any other place in all of Rhode Island, either.”

      He laughed with her as he came to kneel on another rock near hers, reaching down to scoop up the cool, clear water. No wine or brandy had ever tasted so fine to him, and he drank deeply, letting the water take away the parched heat from his throat. When he was done, he sat back on his heels to watch Jerusa.

      She’d inched closer into the waterfall itself, and she stood with her head arched back, her