Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

by an Englishman: no wonder he’d been so unhappy over what she’d told Dr. Hamilton. But how could she have guessed? The coincidence was eerie. Both their fathers privateers, both captains prospering, though they’d fought on opposite sides of the same war.

      But maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all. “My father was a privateer captain, too,” she said slowly, her uneasiness growing. “Though I expect you know that already, don’t you?”

      Michel didn’t seem to hear her, or perhaps he simply chose not to answer. “Your oldest brother, Jonathan, or Jon, as you call him. He’s twenty-six years old, isn’t he?”

      She hesitated, wondering why he should speak of her brother now. “Jon was twenty-six in April.”

      “My own age exactly. Did you know that, ma chérie? I, too, was born in April in 1745. But while your brother was blessed with both parents, I, alas, was not. Yours were wed on board your father’s sloop, weren’t they? Or rather your mother’s, since by rights the Revenge still belonged to her, didn’t it? That would be in September of 1744, in the waters off Bequia, with your grandfather there, too, to give his blessing.”

      “That is true,” she said faintly, her uneasiness growing as he told her details of her family that no outsider should know. “But of what interest can any of this be to you?”

      It was the reproach in her voice that finally stopped Michel. He hadn’t meant to tell her any of this, not here, not yet, but once he’d begun he had found it impossible to end the torrent of names and dates and circumstances he’d heard repeated to him since his birth.

      But maybe it was better this way. If Jerusa knew the truth as his mother had told him, then maybe she’d stop believing he was a better man than he was. She would scorn him as he deserved, and leave him free to honor his mother’s wishes and his father’s memory.

      He wouldn’t allow himself to consider the other alternative, that once she heard the truth, she might understand, and forgive. Morbleu, he’d never deserve that, not from her.

      “Why, Michel?” she asked again, her voice unsteady. “What purpose do you have in telling me these things I already know?”

      “Simply to prove the whims of fate, ma chère,” he said deliberately. “You’ve only to count the months to see that your brother, too, was conceived long before your parents wed.”

      “But that cannot be.” Jerusa’s hands twisted in her lap as she remembered again all her mother’s careful warnings. Her mother could never have let herself be—well, be ruined like that, even by a man like Gabriel Sparhawk. But as Michel said, Jerusa had only to count the months and learn the awful truth that neither of her parents had bothered to hide.

      “Two boys, Rusa, two fates,” continued Michel softly as he combed the last snarl from her hair. “Consider it well. One of us destined to be the eldest son of a wealthy, respected gentleman, while the other was left a beggar and a bastard. Two boys, ma mie, two fates.”

      Because she would never know, he dared to raise one lock of her hair briefly to his lips. “And two fathers, ma chérie,” he said in a hoarse whisper that betrayed the emotion twisting through him. “Our fathers.”

      He knew the exact moment when she guessed the truth, for he felt her shudder as the burden of it settled onto her soul. With a little gasp she bowed her head, and gently he spread her dark hair over her shoulders like a cape before he went to the bed for his hat and coat.

      He took his leave in silence, closing the door with as little sound as he’d opened it two hours before.

      Silence that was alive with the mocking laughter of the ghosts of the past.

       Chapter Eleven

      Her father had killed Michel’s father.

      No, slaughtered was the word he’d used. Her father had slaughtered his. Her father.

      She stared unseeing from the window, struggling to imagine Father this way. Of course she’d known he’d once been a privateer, the luckiest captain to sail out of Newport, and from childhood she’d heard the jests among her father’s friends about how ruthless he’d been in a trade that was little better than legalized, profitable piracy. She remembered how, as boys, her brothers would brag to their friends about how many French and Spanish rogues Father had sent to watery graves, and how he’d laugh when he caught them playing with wooden swords and pretend pistols as they burned another imaginary French frigate.

      But before now, none of that had mattered. To her, Father was gentleness itself, the endlessly tall, endlessly patient man with the bright green eyes who would always make room for her to climb onto his lap after supper and listen solemnly as she played out little games with her dolls on the table after the cloth was drawn. With her, Father never scolded if an impulsive hug left strawberry jam on the front of his white linen shirt, or refused if she begged to go down to the shipyard with him. With her, he always smiled and laughed or offered his handkerchief and his open arms when she wept, and not once had she ever doubted that he loved her as much as any father could a daughter.

      And yet it didn’t occur to her that Michel might have invented it all, or somehow mistaken her father for another man. In her heart she knew he’d spoken the truth. It wasn’t just that Michel had been so unquestionably right about everything else to do with her family; it was the raw emotion she’d heard in his voice when he’d told her, or rather, when he hadn’t told her. Another man would have delighted in horrifying her with the details of how Gabriel Sparhawk had killed Christian Deveaux, but not Michel. The pain he must feel had sealed all that tightly within him, and that, to her, was infinitely more terrifying than any mere bloodthirsty storytelling could ever be.

      Two fates, two fathers. Fate had cast her on the winning side, while Michel had lost everything. And now, somehow he meant to even the balance.

      Without any sense of how long she’d been sitting, she rose unsteadily to her feet. The shadows of the trees were long across the street below, and the smell of frying onions from the kitchen windows below told her that preparations for supper had already begun. Michel hadn’t said when he’d return, but odds were he’d be back before sundown, maybe sooner.

       Think, Jerusa, think! He’s told you all along he wanted you, and now you know why! You can leave him now, while he believes you too distraught to act, or you can sit here like a lump of suet, waiting until he decides exactly how he’ll avenge himself on your miserable self!

      She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then another. In a way he’d already made her escape easier. In a seaport town such as this one, she’d have a good chance of finding someone who would know her father or brothers, and dressed as she was now, she’d have an easier time of convincing them she really was who she claimed to be.

      Briskly she gathered her hair off her shoulders and tied it back with the green ribbon, trying not to remember the pleasant intimacy of having Michel comb it for her. She’d let herself be drawn into his games long enough, she told herself fiercely. It was high time she remembered she was Jerusa Sparhawk and stop playing at being this mythical Mrs. Geary.

      She bent to buckle her shoes, and smiled when she noticed he’d left his saddlebag on the floor beside the bed. Though Michel might have been born poor, he certainly didn’t seem to want for money now, and whenever he’d paid for things he’d taken the coins from a leather pouch inside the saddlebag. She didn’t mean to rob him exactly, but after he’d kidnapped her, she couldn’t see the harm in borrowing a few coins now to help ease her journey home.

      Swiftly she unbuckled the straps and looked inside. The contents were the usual for a man who was traveling—three changes of shirts and stockings, a compass, an envelope of tobacco, a striker and a white clay pipe, soap and a razor, one of the pistols plus the gunpowder and balls it needed.

      Gingerly