“Leave you?” Jerusa repeated, her face growing warm at the accusation, which, this time, was unfounded. She wished they could return to talking about the horse instead.
“Yes, yes, leave.” He sighed deeply, in a way that made her think again of what it had been like to rest her cheek against his chest. “I hadn’t expected you to give up just yet, you know.”
“Then you have more faith in me than I do myself. I have neither food nor water nor money, I’m in a place I don’t know, where no one knows me, and my horse is lame. You might not have bound me with chains or cords, Mr. Géricault, but what you’ve done has been thorough enough.”
His smile faded as he listened. Though the bitterness was still in her voice, something else had subtly altered between them. He couldn’t tell exactly what, not yet, but the change was unmistakable.
“No more of this ‘Mr. Géricault,’ ma chère,” he said softly as he stepped around the mare’s head to come stand before Jerusa. “Call me Michel. Please.”
She twisted her reins in her fingers, shaking her head. The distance she earned by using that “Mr.” was small and fragile, but with him she felt she needed every last bit, and she was almost painfully aware of the dark, inexplicable currents of emotion swirling between them now.
She forced herself to look away and to watch instead how her mare had begun to graze, tugging at the long wild grass that grew alongside the path. They had stopped near an old stone wall that was overgrown with a tangled mass of honeysuckle, and the sweet, heady fragrance of the white-and-yellow blossoms filled the air like perfume.
Michel clucked, and the mare’s ears pricked up as she eyed him quizzically. In spite of herself, Jerusa smiled and let her gaze follow the mare’s to the Frenchman. He stood with his hat in his hand, the pose of a careless supplicant, his hair pale gold in the fading moonlight and his blue eyes almost black, a half smile playing about his lips that was meant to be shared. With a start, she realized she’d never smell honeysuckle again without thinking of Michel Géricault. Would he, she wondered, say the same of her?
Whatever are you thinking of, Jerusa Sparhawk? This man is your kidnapper, your enemy! He deserves no place at all in your thoughts, let alone in your heart! The minute you can you’ll escape and leave him as far behind as possible. Remember that, Jerusa, and forget these silly musings about honeysuckle and blue eyes!
“Come,” she said, all too aware of how strained her voice sounded as she gathered the mare’s reins to lead her. “We can’t dawdle in the road forever.”
But Michel didn’t move from her way. “Perhaps, ma chère,” he began softly, his accent seductively more marked. “Perhaps you don’t run away because you don’t wish to.”
From the way her eyes grew round, Michel knew he’d put into words what she’d secretly feared. A lucky guess. But then, so much of what had happened with her was lucky, at least for him, and he didn’t mean just how easy their journey had been, either. She was blushing now, her face so rosy her discomfiture showed even in the moonlight. Somehow he’d never expected the belle of Newport to blush at all, but he was glad she did, and gladder still that he was the reason.
“Of course I wish to return to Newport,” she said, struggling to sound as if she meant every word. “I want to go back to my poor parents, my home, my—”
“To your marriage to a faithless, fashionable popinjay?”
She frowned, toying with the reins. “Tom will be fine once I speak to him and explain everything.”
“‘Fine’?” Michel raised one mocking, skeptical brow. “That is what you wish in your husband? That he be fine?”
“Well, he will,” said Jerusa defensively. “Tom’s the man I love and the one I intend to marry. Oh, stop looking at me like that! It’s simply not something you would understand!”
“True enough, ma belle. All I can do is keep you safe.”
She glanced at him sharply, unsure of what he really meant, but he’d already turned away, leading his horse back in the direction they’d come, and leaving her no choice but to follow.
Michel was being possessive, that was all, just like any good gaoler would be with his prisoner. What else could he have meant by keeping her safe? Yet still her mind fussed and worked over the doubt he’d planted. The only thing Tom would ever fight to keep safe would be the front of his shirt, and then the enemy would be no more formidable than a glass of red wine. He certainly didn’t seem eager to come to her rescue, and that hurt more than she’d ever admit to the Frenchman. But that was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? A gentleman of wit and ideas, not some rough man of action?
Wasn’t it?
Michel, too, had seen the abandoned house earlier from the road. As they drew closer, picking their way through the overgrown path, the burned, blackened timbers that remained of the roof and the broken chimney became more clearly outlined against the pale dawn. The gelding snapped a branch beneath its hoof and a flock of swallows rose up through the open roof, their frightened chatter and drumming wings piercing through the early morning.
He glanced over his shoulder at Jerusa, so close on his heels that they nearly collided. Considering what he’d said to her about Carberry, he’d half expected her not to follow at all. Though it would have been a nuisance to track her down again, he was glad for other, less appropriate reasons that she’d decided to come with him.
“No doubt now that it was a fire that drove them out,” he said, stating the obvious. Though from the growth of plants and vines around the house, he guessed the fire must have taken place years ago. There was still a desultory pile of half-burned chairs and benches in the yard, and clearly no one had since returned to repair or rebuild. Unless, he thought grimly, no one had survived. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”
Jerusa sniffed self-consciously and smoothed her hair, still more disconcerted by the way she’d almost walked right into his back than the burned-out house before her. “Why shouldn’t I? We’ve come this far, haven’t we? If you don’t want anyone seeing us, what better place could there be than this?”
“I meant, ma belle, were you willing to share your sweet company with whoever might have lived here before?”
“You mean ghosts?” She stared at him, searching his face to decide if he was teasing or trying to frighten her, and couldn’t decide either way. She’d never met a man whose thoughts were harder to read. “You’re asking if I’m afraid of ghosts?”
He shrugged, all the answer he’d give. He’d said too much already. But the ruined house still made him uneasy, the way any place destroyed by fire always did.
How many times had Maman taken him to see the empty shell of his father’s house, the tall chimneys and pillars now snaked with vines, the charred walls crumbling and the windows blind as unseeing eyes? She had meant the visits to inspire him, to show him how grandly his father—and she, too, briefly—had lived. Twenty years, and still she could recite the contents of every room like a litany, the paintings and silver and gilded furniture with satin coverings. She said his father had been a grand gentilhomme, a Parisian by birth, a man of the world with the fortune to support his elegant tastes. Even the ruin of his house showed that.
But what Michel remembered most were the unearthly shrieks of the birds and monkeys within the empty walls, echoing like so many restless spirits, and the way Maman had wept so bitterly at what she’d lost.
“Well, if you hope to scare me away with tales of ghosts and goblins, you’re wrong,” declared Jerusa soundly. She felt she’d won a great concession from him when he’d decided to come here, and she wasn’t about to give it up simply because he wanted to frighten her. To prove her point she walked around him, pulling the mare behind her as she marched up toward the ruin. “You’ve no good reason to believe that anyone died