Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

to him. Why, he’s probably already on his way here, along with Tom and my brothers, and I don’t want to even consider what they shall do to you when they arrive and Father learns you’re French!”

      “‘When they arrive.’ That, ma belle, is the real question, isn’t it?” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat to pull out his watch and held it up for her to see. “It’s half past six. Nearly a full night and day have passed since we departed Newport together, and still no sign of any of your gallant knights. So how does it matter if I am French or English or dropped to earth from the moon itself?”

      She clutched the blanket more tightly, trying to fight her rising panic. She’d no idea so much time had passed, and she thought of how worried her parents must be. And Tom. Lord, how he must be suffering, to have her vanish on the night of their wedding!

      “Have you at least had the decency to send some sort of note to tell them that I am unhurt?” There were so many perils that could befall a woman in a harbor town like Newport, and she hated to think of her poor mother imagining every one. Without thinking, she touched her bare wrist where Mama’s bracelet had been before she remembered bitterly that this man had stolen it. The pearl cuff had been special, a gift to Mama on her own wedding day, which she had given, in turn, to Jerusa. “You can’t possibly know the pain you’ve caused my family!”

      “Ah, but I do.” His expression was oddly, chillingly triumphant. “But you can be sure I left behind a message that your father will understand.”

      “Then they will come,” she said, as much to convince herself as him. “They won’t abandon me. They’ll find us, wherever you’ve taken me.”

      “I’m sure they will,” he said easily, stretching his arms before him. Though he wasn’t much taller than Jerusa herself, there was no mistaking the strength in his lean, muscled body. “In fact I’d be disappointed if they didn’t. But not here, and not so soon.”

      “Where, then?” she asked, her desperation growing by the minute. “When?”

      “Where I please, and when I say.” Those cold blue eyes never left her face as he tucked the watch back into its pocket, and he spoke slowly, carefully, as if she were a child he wished to impress. “Remember, sweet Jerusa, that it’s my word that matters now, not yours. I know that will be a difficult lesson for a Sparhawk, but you seem a clever enough girl, and in time you’ll learn. You’ll learn.”

      But she didn’t want to learn, especially not from him. Jerusa shivered. How much longer could he intend to keep her his prisoner? It was bad enough that she had passed a night alone with him when she’d been drugged into unconsciousness, but what would he expect tonight, when she was all too aware of him both as her captor and as a man?

      “If it’s money you want,” she said softly, “you know my father will pay it. You already have my jewelry to keep for surety. Let me go free now, and I’ll see you’re sent whatever else you wish.”

      “Let you go free?” He looked at her with genuine amusement. “Not a quarter of an hour ago you were ready to lead me to the gallows yourself, and now you ask me to trust you?”

      “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant—”

      “It doesn’t matter what you mean, because I don’t want your money. I didn’t want your baubles, either, which is why I left them behind.” His voice slipped suggestively lower. “It’s you I want, Miss Jerusa Sparhawk. You, and nothing else.”

      She didn’t ask why. She didn’t want to know. All she wanted now was to go home to her family and to Tom and forget that she’d ever set eyes on this horrible Frenchman. How had the most glorious day of her life disintegrated into this?

      She should have known he wouldn’t bargain with her, just as she shouldn’t have trusted him in the garden in the first place. She wasn’t sure if she believed him about the jewelry, either, though it would be her luck to have stumbled into a man too honorable for theft but not for kidnapping.

      Luck. She remembered Mama’s half-serious warning as she’d helped Jerusa dress: bad luck to the bride who let the world see her in her wedding finery before she was made a wife. Jerusa had scoffed at the time, but look what had happened. Was there ever a more unfortunate bride?

      Unfortunate, homesick and more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

      She stared out the little square window, struggling to keep back the tears. A man like this one would only mock her if she wept, and no matter how bleak her situation was, she’d no wish to give him that pleasure. She’d given away too much already.

      Far better to remember that no matter what else happened she was still a Sparhawk, and Sparhawks were never cowards. Hadn’t Mama herself fought off a score of French pirates to save Father long ago, before they were married? Mama wouldn’t have stood about wringing her hands until she was rescued. Mama would have found a way to help free herself, and so, decided Jerusa with shaky resolution, must she.

      The rain had stopped, and a milky-pale sun was sliding slowly through the clouds toward the horizon. One night, one day. How far from Newport could they be? The land through the window was a fallow, anonymous pasture that could have been anywhere on the island. The key would be to find the water, Narragansett Bay or the Sakonnet River, for either would take her back to Newport. Even though she wasn’t a sailor like her brothers, she’d grown up on Aquidneck Island, and she was sure she’d be able to recognize nearly every beach on it. Certainly she’d have better bearings than some cocksure bully of a Frenchman.

      Now all she had to do was get away from him.

      “I don’t feel quite well,” she announced, praying she sounded convincing. “Whatever smelling stuffs you used to force me to sleep—I fear they’ve made me ill.”

      He sighed with exasperation. “If you’re going to be sick, then use that bucket by the stall. Don’t foul the straw if you can help it.”

      “It’s not that,” she said quickly. She felt herself blushing furiously from excitement, fear and embarrassment. “It’s that I must use the privy.”

      He muttered to himself in French, and though she didn’t understand the words, Jerusa knew well enough that he was swearing.

      She bent over from the waist, rubbing her stomach. “Truly. If you please, I must go.”

      “You’re not going alone.” With another sigh he leaned forward to pull on his boots.

      Jerusa saw her chance and seized it. She raced to the barn door, shoved it open just enough to slip through and raced outside. Swiftly she pushed the door shut and threw the long swinging bolt into the latches, barricading the Frenchman inside. With a little laugh of giddy exhilaration she turned and ran, away from the barn, the privy and the burned-out ruin of a house. She didn’t recognize the farm, or what was left of it, but that didn’t matter. Before her, to the east, lay the pewter gray of the water, and her salvation.

      Without buckles, her shoes flapped awkwardly around her heels, and she kicked them away, and when the wind dragged the heavy blanket from her grasp and off her shoulders, she left that, too, behind, running as fast as she could down the narrow, overgrown path to the shore. One last windblown rise lay before her, then the sharp drop to the beach. She slipped and skidded on the wet grass and tall reeds lashed at her legs, but still she ran, her tattered skirts fluttering around her in the wind. The path turned to sand beneath the ruined stockings on her feet, and before her, at last, were the beach and the wide river that emptied into the bay.

      Or was it? Confused, she paced back and forth along the water’s edge, trying to make sense of what she saw. The sinking sun to the west was behind her, so this should be the eastern shore of Aquidneck, with Portsmouth across the river in the distance.

      But this short, sandy beach was all wrong, the distance to Portsmouth too far across the water. Jerusa shaded her eyes with the back of her hand and squinted at the horizon. Instead of the narrow tip of Sakonnet Point, which she expected, she saw what looked like two islands: