Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

my father’s pleas, were nothing against his false promises and candied words. Nothing!”

      Sadly Josh could guess the rest. Who couldn’t? “He seduced her?”

      Ceci nodded, shaking her little fist at Deveaux’s ghost. “He seduced her, monsieur, and took her from those who loved her to his grand house, built with the blood and tears of those he had robbed and murdered. And it was there she perished by his side, in the fire that God sent in his fury to destroy that evil place and Deveaux with it!”

      She wove her fingers into his to draw him closer. “You can understand it all now, monsieur, can’t you?” she said, almost pleading. “Why my father said what he did to you? It was because he loves me, monsieur, because he would not see me come to the same sorrow as poor Antoinette.”

      “He believes I would do that to you?” demanded Josh incredulously. “Just because I mentioned Deveaux’s name?”

      Ceci shook her head helplessly. “He said you would not seek out those left of Deveaux’s men unless you wished to join them yourself. He said—”

      “He can damn well listen to what I have to say!” said Josh hotly. What right did some little hotheaded French barkeep have to insult him like this? “I’m sorry about his sister-in-law, sorry as can be. But it’s my sister that concerns me now, and if asking about Deveaux is going to bring me any closer to finding her, then I mean to ask you or him or anyone else I please until I find her.”

      “But Papa said—”

      “I’m not done yet, Ceci!” Struggling to keep his temper, Josh forced himself to lower his voice. “Your father’s got it all wrong, mind? I don’t know what happened to Antoinette, but Deveaux didn’t die in that fire. I know because he lived long enough to try to kill my parents. Instead my father wounded him so gravely he decided to take his own life, there with my own mother as witness.”

      Now Ceci’s eyes were round as the moon above. “Your father killed Deveaux?”

      “My father wouldn’t lie about a thing like that,” he said sharply. “Why else would Deveaux’s men decide to kidnap my sister now?”

      “Revenge,” she whispered. “Oh, Monsieur Sparhawk, forgive me!”

      “You’re not the one who needs forgiving.” Suddenly weary of the whole misunderstanding, he freed his fingers from hers and stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “You tell your old papa that we’re on the same side. My sister Jerusa, his sister-in-law Antoinette—it all amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? You tell him that, Ceci. And if he’s got any notion of justice and wants to help, he can find me easy enough on the Tiger.”

      He turned and began to walk toward the boat, his shoes silent on the packed sand.

      “Wait, please, I beg you!”

      He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. She was standing with her fists clenched at her sides and her chin lifted high, the black shawl trailing like a ragged pennant from her shoulders.

      “He will help you, monsieur,” she said slowly. “If he has any hope of finding peace in this world or the next, he will help you.”

       Chapter Fifteen

      Michel lay in the hammock, cleaning one of his pistols and listening to the doleful ballad of lost loves and thwarted dreams sung by one of the Swan’s crewmen on the deck above. Michel sighed. He could sympathize all too well with whoever had written that ballad. His own love wasn’t exactly lost—she was lying soundly asleep in the bunk not three feet away from him, her hair tousled about her face and one arm thrown back enticingly behind her head—but she wasn’t exactly his, either.

      This last week together with Jerusa had been both the best and the worst of his life. She had rarely left his sight, day or night, and with so much time together, he’d come to appreciate her as a companion as well as a woman. Which was, he thought wryly, just as well, since companionship was all he and Jerusa were destined to share.

      Idly he kicked his foot against the bulkhead, rocking the hammock in time with the song. The hammock was one of the precautions he’d taken against being tempted again, and, even so, he’d been sorely tried by being able to hear Jerusa’s soft little sighs as she slept in the bunk across from him. Sacristi, he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman, but to give in to his desires would be the worst possible thing he could do for them both.

      And she knew it, too. After that first night aboard the brig, she’d been as careful as he had. There had been no more kisses, no more embraces and certainly no more of what they’d done so pleasurably that one time on the bunk. They slept in their clothes the way they had while traveling, and they made elaborate, self-conscious excuses whenever one or the other finally wished to change and needed the cabin’s privacy. The entire contrived arrangement, thought Michel with another sigh, would have been worthy of the great Molière himself.

      But this wasn’t the only truce they’d uneasily, silently declared between themselves. Since that first night, neither of them had spoken of their families or fathers, or of the circumstances that had brought them together aboard the Swan.

      And not once since then had she told him again that she loved him. He wasn’t surprised—what decent woman would profess to love a man who’d sworn to kill her father?—but he did feel more regret, more longing, than he’d ever admit to anyone, especially to Jerusa. No, he could not blame her. But what would she have said if he’d blurted out the truth, that he loved her, as well?

      His hands stilled as he thought again of how close he’d come. He’d realized since then that when she’d cried out to stop in his mother’s name, she’d been afraid of conceiving a child, not of his mother’s madness. His conscience had been the one to hear that. But however the warning had come, he’d listened. He did love Jerusa, more than he’d ever dreamed possible. But because he loved her, he refused to risk condemning her to the same terrifying half existence that his father had done to his mother.

      What would happen once they reached Martinique—especially since he expected Gabriel to have arrived first—was still to be seen, and how his mother would respond to Jerusa, he could only guess. But for now this journey was a no-man’s-land, a few brief, precious days when their lives really were as uncomplicated as those of the dull, respectable Mr. and Mrs. Geary.

      Deftly Michel pulled the flannel cleaning cloth, dipped in rosin, through the pistol’s barrel. In the damp air at sea he cleaned his guns daily. Another precaution, though this one was aimed at George Hay. The mate had said nothing else about Jerusa’s identity, but Michel believed in being careful. He had to. Even when she was at Michel’s side, Hay’s gaze seldom left Jerusa, and whether the man was interested in her solely for the reward her father had offered or for her beauty, as well, Michel wasn’t taking any chances. Wherever he was on the little brig, he kept one of the pistols hidden beneath his coat, and his long knife, too, was always within easy reach at the back of his belt. If George Hay was lucky, he’d never learn precisely how far Mr. Geary would go to protect his pretty wife’s virtue.

      Michel heard the shouted order to haul aback, and with an oath of disgust he stuffed the cleaning rag back into its bag and wiped his hands clean. For a vessel as fast and wellhandled as the Swan was, she was making a wretchedly slow passage because her captain was the most sociable old man Michel had ever known. Barker spoke every other ship the Swan’s lookout spotted, sometimes even changing his course to pursue a particularly interesting sail on the horizon, and at every invitation he’d drop his boat to go a-visiting like some eager spinster racing off to have tea with a new curate.

      Jerusa rolled over slowly, clutching the coverlet as she yawned. “Whyever are we stopping now?” she grumbled. “It must be the middle of the night.”

      “Eight bells, chérie. The sun’s high in the sky.” Even