Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

tumblin’ into it, pouring the Geneva spirits and limes down his throat as fast as the wench brings it.”

      “Very well, Mr. Lovell,” she said before she changed her mind. “We’ll search for Captain Perkins. Perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to find him before he’s—what did you call it?— ‘so bloody guzzled.’”

      “Aye, aye, missy,” agreed Lovell as he knuckled his forehead. “Mayhaps we will.”

      But as Jerusa followed him off the schooner and along the wharf, she found her uneasiness growing. He said nothing, nor did he try to take her arm like the other man had, but that in itself made her worry. He’d been interested enough earlier. His wiry frame was larger than she’d first thought, and now that he was ashore, all his initial unsteadiness from the rum seemed to vanish, making him menacing enough for other men to move from his path.

      She stopped and peered into the open door of the tavern where he’d told her Perkins would be drinking. From where she stood she couldn’t see any older men near the fireplace, but perhaps if—

      “Quit yer gawkin’,” growled Lovell. “Ye said ye would follow me, mind?”

      “You told me Captain Perkins would be in here, and I—”

      “Quit yammerin’ and mind me!” He grabbed her wrist and yanked her along after him, around the corner into a murky alleyway. “There’s another way to enter that the old man favors.”

      He jerked her wrist so hard that she yelped and stumbled. After the lantern’s light, the darkness here swallowed everything around her. But Lovell was still here: she could hear his breathing, rapid and hoarse, smell the fetid stench of cheap rum and onions and unwashed clothes, feel the pain from the way his nails dug into the soft skin of her wrist.

       Why, why had she trusted him? Why hadn’t she listened to her instincts and left him when she had the chance?

      With a terrified sob she tore her wrist free and stumbled again, pitching forward. As she fell she felt his hands tighten on either side of her waist, dragging her back to her feet, only to slam her hard against the wall behind her, trapping her there with the weight of his body.

      “Not so proud now, are ye?” he demanded. “Every bitch looks the same in the dark, even bloody Sparhawks.”

      Frantically she tried to shrink away from his body, but he followed relentlessly until she could barely breathe. The bricks were rough against her back, snagging at her clothes and skin.

      “Too good fer me, ye thought,” said Lovell furiously, grinding his hips against hers as he dragged her skirts up around her legs. “Ye gave yerself to that Frenchy, but still ye was too good fer me. But ye shall make it up to me now, won’t ye? First ye give me yer money, ye little trollop, then yer body, and then, ye high-nosed little bitch, yer precious little life.”

      She squeezed her eyes closed, fighting to shut out the terror of what was happening to her. Yet still she felt the cold edge of the knife as he pressed the blade against her throat, and with awful, sickening clarity she knew she was going to die.

       Chapter Twelve

      Instinct drew Michel to the alley behind the tavern. Instinct, and what he’d overheard from the indignant whore out front about a girl in a green gown dipping into her trade with the sailors.

      As it was, he was nearly too late. Back in the shadows, her face was hidden behind the seaman’s back, but at once Michel recognized her legs, forced apart on either side against the wall beneath her upturned skirts, legs that were pale and long and kicking as she fought for her virtue and her life. He would have recognized her legs anywhere; he had, after all, seen them that first night in her parents’ garden long before he’d seen her face.

      His Jerusa, his bien-aimée. And sacristi, he’d bought her those green ribbons not four hours past.

      But he’d wasted time enough. Once again she’d left him no choice.

      Michel drew his knife from the sheath at the back of his waist as he crept silently behind the sailor. Briefly he wondered who the man was, and why Jerusa had chosen him to trust. Whatever his name, he would be the one who suffered for trusting her. Another fate, another death to lay to the name of Sparhawk.

      The man jerked only once as Michel’s knife found its mark, his own knife falling harmlessly from Jerusa’s throat to the ground with a thump. While Michel stepped away, back into the shelter of the shadows, the man swore, his voice thick and his eyes already glazing with death. As he staggered backward, he pulled the girl with him, and they fell together in a tangle of arms and legs.

      Gasping for breath, she struggled frantically to free herself, still not aware that the grasp she fought belonged to a dead man. Unsteadily she tried to push herself up onto her hands and knees, and at last Michel reached down to pull her roughly to her feet.

      “You see what you have done, ma chérie?” he demanded. “No, don’t try to look away. If you had not run from me again, that man would live still.”

      Her eyes wild with terror, she shuddered and tried to break free. But Michel held her tight, turning her face so she was forced to see Lovell’s body and the spreading dark pool of blood around it. She had to understand what she’d done. She had to know the smell and feel of death, or she’d never understand him.

      “He—he was going to kill me, Michel,” she rasped, her voice ragged from fear and the pressure of the man’s knife against her throat. “He was going to rob me, and—and use me, and kill me.”

      “Then it was you or him, Jerusa,” said Michel relentlessly. “Because of what you did, one of you would have died here tonight. Was leaving me worth your life? Think of it, ma mie. That could be your blood.”

      “It would not have been like that, Michel, I swear!”

      “It couldn’t have been anything else.” He grabbed her hand and thrust it downward, into the warm, sticky puddle of Lovell’s blood. “Did you wish to be gone from me that badly?”

      She gasped and jerked her hand free, but not before her palm and fingers had been stained red. She stared at her hand in horror, her fingers spread and trembling.

      “What have you done, Michel?” she whispered as the horror of what had happened finally grew real. “God help me, Michel, what have you done?”

      He smiled grimly, his pulse only now beginning to slow. “Only what you drove me to do, Jerusa,” he said softly. “And God help you indeed if you ever leave me again.”

      “You’re fine, ma chère,” said Michel again as he carefully sat Jerusa on the edge of the trough beside the public well. He’d gotten her away from the alley by the rum shop as quickly as he could. He’d taken care, too, that no one had seen them come here, and at this time of night, the market square was empty except for a handful of yowling, skittering cats, but still he kept to the shadows. “I swear it, Rusa. You’re fine.”

      He smiled at her again, his face tight with forced cheerfulness. She didn’t look fine now, no matter what he told her or how much he wanted to believe it. Her eyes were wide and staring, her face pale even by the moonlight, and her hands and forearms were scraped raw from where she’d been shoved against the brick wall. Though she’d stopped gasping, her breathing remained quick and shallow, and Michel still wasn’t convinced she wouldn’t faint. Quickly he dipped his handkerchief into the cool water and stroked it across her forehead and cheeks.

      She closed her eyes and shivered, but the cool water seemed to calm her, and gently he touched the cloth to her cheeks again.

      “Right as rain, ma mie, I swear,” he said softly. “Isn’t that what you English say? Though how an Englishman reared in your infernal Yankee weather could ever make rain and right equal one another is beyond reason.”