Regency High Society Vol 4. Julia Justiss

treasury of gold and silver coins stamped with the heads of English, Spanish, French and Dutch monarchs, counted out half and tied it into a bundle in a handkerchief.

      “Take this, chérie,” he said brusquely as he handed it to her. “You may need it.”

      Bewildered, she shook her head. “Whyever would I need that?”

      “You may, that is all.” When she still didn’t take it, he set it beside her in the sand. “I’ll give you one of the pistols, too.”

      “I don’t understand, Michel,” she said, searching his face for an answer. Was she imagining it, or did he seem suddenly colder, more distant? “The money, the pistol. Why would I need them when you’re with me?”

      “Because I may not always be there,” he said, looking down at the pistol in his hand to avoid the fear in her eyes. “There’s always the chance that whoever finds us will want to take you with them, not me. Look at what happened on board the Swan, Rusa. You chose to stay with me, but what would have become of you if I’d died, or if the ship had sunk outright? No, ma chère. I want to know you’ll be safe, and this will help.”

      “Michel, that makes no sense, no sense at all!” She sat up abruptly and shoved the handkerchief with the coins back toward him. “For weeks you’ve scarcely let me from your sight. You’ve always been there to protect me, whether I wanted you to or not. You gave me a new name, new clothes, a whole new life where who I’d been didn’t matter so much as who I am. But now that you’ve made love to me, you believe you can send me on my way with a handful of coins?”

      He sat back on his heels, his palms on his thighs, and frowned at her, stunned that she would misunderstand so completely. “Jerusa, no. It’s because I love you that I care what becomes of you. These waters are still a haven for pirates, guardacostas, runaway slaves and navy deserters, rogues of every sort, and—”

      “That has never bothered you before in the least!” she snapped. His callousness wounded her so deeply that she couldn’t accept it, and fought back instead, striving to hurt him with words the same way he was doing to her. “Or is it because you’re one of those selfsame rogues that you can know so well what they’ll do?”

      He hadn’t expected that from her. He’d never tried to hide his history, but then, he’d never expected her to toss it back into his face like that, especially not after they’d spent most of the day making love.

      “Things are different in these islands, Rusa,” he said carefully, trying to explain. “Your waters to the north are less dangerous.”

      “Then why didn’t you simply leave me there in the first place?” She wrapped her arms around her body, an empty imitation of the embrace she suddenly feared she’d never feel again. “Why didn’t you leave just me where I was?”

      “I couldn’t, ma chère,” he said softly. “I had to steal you. In Martinique—”

      “Damn your Martinique!” she cried, anger and anguish melding to tear at his heart. “I know what you’re going to tell me. That my father will be there, and that you still intend to try to kill him, and you’d rather not have me there to be in your way. But what if he kills you, Michel? Have you considered that possibility? Have you considered what that would do to me, to lose you just as your mother lost your father?”

      He closed his eyes, his head bowed. “I won’t fail, Rusa,” he said hoarsely. “Mordieu, I cannot.”

      And for the first time she knew with chilling certainty that he was right.

      “You’re going to kill my father,” she whispered, her hands tightening around her arms. “You’ll kill him because he came for me.”

      “I have no choice, ma mie. No choice at all.” When he lifted his face, his eyes were haunted and empty. “But I love you, Jerusa.”

      She was trembling and she could not stop. He could talk all he wished of choices: had she chosen to love him as much as she did? “How can you say you love me when you’ve sworn to do such a thing to my family?”

      He shook his head, his blond hair glinting in the firelight. He was trying so hard to smile for her sake, but all that showed on his face was the misery in his soul.

      “I love you, Jerusa,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Je t’aime tant! Did you know I’ve never said that to anyone else? I’ve never loved anyone but you, Jerusa. Never. Perhaps that’s why I can’t explain this now. I don’t know the words. Sacristi, how can I say it so you’ll understand?”

      He plunged his hand deep inside the sea chest and pulled out the a small, flat package wrapped in chamois, and as he unwrapped it, Jerusa’s heart plummeted. The black-haired beauty with the laughing eyes.

       Was this, then, why he’d insisted on returning to the Swan this afternoon, to save this woman’s portrait from the looters? Was she Jerusa’s rival, one more reason why he would not want her in Martinique?

      “Here, ma chère, look.” Michel thrust the little portrait out for her to see, his hand shaking. “Look at her, my blessing and my curse!”

      “She—she is very beautiful,” said Jerusa haltingly. What else could she say?

      He studied the portrait himself, cradling the brass frame in the palm of his hand. “She was beautiful once. I can remember her that way if I try very hard, and look at this. Perhaps that is why she would never sell this, no matter that there was no food on the table and my belly was empty. For Maman, pride was enough.”

      “She’s your mother?” asked Jerusa, struggling to make sense of all he said.

      He nodded, absently tracing his finger around and around the oval brass frame. “Antoinette Géricault. She was only seventeen when my father loved her, ma mie, only seventeen when he died and when I was born.”

       When he was a child, the two portraits had always hung near his mother’s bed, low on the wall so Maman could see them as soon as she woke in the morning. The beautiful lady with the charming smile, the handsome gentleman turned in profile as if to admire her. It wasn’t until he was older that he’d learned the beautiful lady and the handsome gentleman were his parents, and heard the story of how Maman had saved the portraits, one in each pocket, as she’d run down the stairs the night of the fire that had destroyed everything else.

       The fire that had been set by Gabriel Sparhawk and his men….

      “Then she was the most beautiful girl in St-Pierre, and men would beg for her smiles. Christian Deveaux fell in love with her the moment he saw her, as she walked one morning from the market with a basket of white lilies.” Michel smiled, remembering how his mother would bend her arm as she told the story, showing him how the basket had rested against her hip, just so. “But that was long ago, before the sorrows claimed her beauty and her smile.”

       The sorrows, and the Sparhawks.

       That was how it had begun for him: every misfortune, every injustice was blamed on the Englishman Gabriel Sparhawk. He had murdered Christian Deveaux. He had destroyed poor Christian’s name and honor. He had robbed them of the fortune and position that should by rights be theirs. And worst of all for Michel, he had drained every bit of love from his poor Maman ‘s heart, and left it filled with the poison of hate.

       No wonder he had no memory of Maman ‘s smile beyond the one that was painted on the ivory oval.

      Quietly Jerusa came to stand behind him, drawn by the need to comfort him however she could. She rested her hands on his shoulders, her cheek against his, watching as he circled the frame and his mother’s face with his fingers.

      “I should like to meet your mother when we’re in St-Pierre,” she said softly. “If she’s your mother, Michel, I know I shall like her.”

      She