Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

to his ear so he could hear her over the wind. “Because this isn’t pretending. I love you, Michel Géricault, or Michael Geary, or whoever you are. I love you.”

      “No, Rusa,” he said wearily. “Don’t even say it. What about Carberry, eh? I thought you loved him.”

      She shook her head in furious denial. “I never cared for him the way I do for you. How could I? Tom was only a girlish attachment. I see that now. Even if he still wishes to marry me, I would not have him.”

      Michel’s smile was full of bleak amusement. “A wise decision, ma mie. Perhaps the best you’ve ever made. Now stop at that, and don’t spoil it by mistaking me for your next protecteur.”

      “You stop being so blessed noble, and listen to me!” Her fingers tightened in the loose folds of his shirt as she searched his face for some sign that he believed her. “I care for you, Michel, and I love you, and nothing, nothing you say can change that!”

      No woman had ever said such things to him before. No one had ever said she cherished him like this, or cared for him, or loved him. With every smile and jest, and even merely the graceful way she turned her head, she had become more and more dear to him, until in a handful of days she had somehow found and filled a place in his life that he’d never known was empty. For a long moment he closed his eyes, fighting the fierce joy her words brought him, joy he’d no right to claim for himself.

      For in his life there was no place for love, especially not from her, and he forced himself again to think of his mother and his promise to her, of his father and how he had died. He must never forget that. That was who he was.

      “No, Rusa,” he said hoarsely. “There’s too much you don’t understand.”

      “Then tell me!” she cried with desperation. “Is it our fathers? I want to know!”

      Her body was warm and soft against his side, and as he stared again out across the water again, he tried not to remember how sweet she’d been to hold in his arms.

       Anything else, mordieu, think of anything else!

      “The sun is so slow to rise or set in your Yankee waters, ma chère. Almost as if she knows how chilly the air will be for her, eh?” He smiled wearily. “In Martinique, the sun comes all at once. One moment the sky is blue-black with night, and the next, before you quite know how, it’s day.”

      “I know, because Father’s told me,” she said eagerly. “He says the sunsets are the same way, from day to night in an instant.”

      “He told you that, but nothing of Christian Deveaux?”

      She shook her head wistfully, brushing aside the strands of hair that the wind tossed across her face. “Perhaps he tells the boys, but not me or my sisters. He hardly speaks of the wars to us at all.”

      “He knew my father long before any war brought them together, ma mie,” said Michel slowly. “They were scarce more than boys when they first clashed. Over and over they’d meet on different islands, with different ships or crews, each seeking to destroy the other. On Statia, they still speak of how the two young captains, one French, one English, nearly cut each other to ribbons at noon while every fat Dutchman in town watched in pop-eyed horror.”

       “You are so beautiful, my son,” murmured Antoinette as she cradled Michel’s face in her hands. “I look at you, and see your father again before me. He was the most handsome man I had ever seen. Not brown and swarthy, like these strutting Creole men who fancy themselves such blades, but fair like an angel, with golden hair and eyes as blue as the water in the bay.”

       “But the scar, Maman,” protested Michel. Young as he was, he’d heard the stories and seen how the other mothers drew their children away from him. How could he not? “Everyone says he’d been marked by the devil.”

       “The devil!” She laughed bitterly. “The only devil your father knew was English, my son. A tall, green-eyed Englishman who hunted your father down without mercy. But at first he did not kill him. No, no. First he marked your father in a way that shamed him before the world.”

       Gently she turned Michel’s face to the right in her hands. “One side belonged to the angels, a face to make the queen herself weep from longing. But may God give rest to my poor Christian’s soul, not the other. The other belonged to hell itself.”

       Abruptly she twisted Michel’s face to the right, her fingers tightening so roughly that he struggled to break free. Her eyes black with fury, she jabbed her finger into Michel’s jaw and slowly dragged it up across his cheek to his forehead. “With his sword the English devil destroyed your father’s face, Michel, marking him so evilly that children shrieked in fear to see him and grown men crossed themselves if he passed them in the street. He was never the same after that, my poor, sweet Christian, and how could he be?”

       Lost as she was in her memories, her own face softened, so that Michel, frightened though he was, could see how Maman, too, had once been beautiful.

       “But one day such cruelty will be rewarded,” she whispered, her voice rich with the promise of vengeance. “One day Gabriel Sparhawk will find himself made to answer for his cruelty. And you, my son, will do it.”

      “You mean my father and yours fought with swords, before a whole town?” asked Jerusa in disbelief, unable to imagine such a thing. Father could be hot-tempered, to be sure, but he was also a respectable gentleman with white streaked through his hair who served on the council of their town and as a vestryman for their church. “Just the two of them?”

      “The crews of their ships were ordered not to interfere.” As soon as he’d been old enough, Michel had traveled to St. Eustatius himself to stand in the square where his father had fought, and he’d found an old man in a tavern there who remembered every thrust, every feint, every drop of blood spilled onto the cobblestones. “Everyone knew it was between the two men alone, not their countries. And it was far from the only time they met, ma chérie.”

      “But why would they do such a thing? What was their reason?”

      Michel shook his head, his voice curiously distant. “I don’t know, Jerusa. Ask your father, if you wish, for I cannot ask mine.”

      Miserably Jerusa saw how he was shutting her out, retreating into himself. Whatever had caused their fathers to hate each other so was long past any reconciliation now. It could just as easily have been her father who had died instead, but nothing either she or Michel could do now would change the past. So why, then, was he so determined to let it ruin their future?

      But maybe he already had. Maybe it was already too late for them, just as it was too late for their fathers.

      By now the sun had risen, the bright red circle clearing the horizon to mark a new day. But to Jerusa the wind seemed colder than it had been, her joy in the day gone, and she shivered as she eased herself away from Michel’s side and back to the rail for support.

      “No one has hired you to do this, have they, Michel?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “You came to Newport to kidnap me for yourself, not for anyone else.”

      He tried to tell himself that this was what he wanted. He’d dedicated his life to honoring his father this way, and he’d come too close to his goal to stop now. “A good guess, chère. But then, I never told you otherwise, did I?”

      “But why, Michel?” she pleaded. “Why take me?”

      When he turned toward her, his eyes were as cold and bleak as the wind. “Because you are your father’s favorite child. He will go anywhere to save you, Jerusa, even Martinique. You may have thought he’s abandoned you, ma mie, but I am certain he hasn’t. He will be there in St-Pierre, waiting for us.”

      “And then?” But already she knew. God help them all, she knew.

      “And