“Here’s the well, just as I said, and there’s even a bucket, too,” announced Jerusa as she looped the horse’s reins around the well’s post. “Though the house may be abandoned, I’ll wager we’re not the only travelers who’ve stopped here.”
She shoved the cover back from the well, dropped the bucket inside and listened until she heard it hit the water with a distant, muffled splash. Next, to Michel’s surprise, she threw her weight against the long sweep, as expertly as any farm wife, until she’d slowly raised the dripping bucket to the surface. With both hands she caught it and set it on the ground for the thirsty mare.
Satisfied, she wiped her palms on the back of her skirt as she watched the mare drink before she glanced back at the Frenchman. “You didn’t think I could do that, did you?” she said smugly.
“I didn’t think you wished to, no,” he said gruffly.
“No, you didn’t think I could, even if I’d wished to.” She lifted her chin, her face lit with a triumphant grin and her hands on her hips. “You think I’m too much a lady to do such a thing. But I’m not nearly as helpless as you want to believe, and you’ll see, I’ll find the old kitchen garden, too. Whatever’s left growing there is bound to be an improvement over your infernal old cheese and stale bread.”
Before he could answer, she had disappeared around the side of the house, and he could hear her feet crashing through the brush as she began to run.
“Damned foolish woman,” muttered Michel as he swiftly tied his own horse and hurried after her. Here he’d been dawdling with his thoughts in the past, and all the while she’d been planning to skip away from him again. Not that she’d get far. He’d seen how her legs had nearly buckled under her when she’d first climbed from the horse.
But on the other side of the house he found no trace of her beyond the ragged path she’d cut through the weeds, and when he pushed open the gate to the garden, the rusty hinges groaned in protest. An ancient scarecrow, the straw stuffing gone from its head and its clothes in tatters, beckoned limply to him. In the damp morning air, the charred timbers still smelled of smoke, and once again he fought back his own uneasiness. Why the devil had he agreed to come here, anyway?
“Michel!” Her voice was faint in the distance, edged with excitement, or was it fear? “Oh, Michel, come quickly!”
Morbleu, what had she stumbled into now? As he ran along the path she’d taken, his fears raced faster, first to coarse, leering countrymen like the Faulks, then to rootless sailors without ships, thieving peddlers, vagabonds and rogues, all eager to do her harm, to hurt her, to steal some of her loveliness with their filthy hands. Was this, then, how he kept her safe?
And, for the first time, she’d actually used his Christian name….
“Michel, here!”
He’d never heard that note in her voice before. With a pistol primed and cocked in each hand, he ducked instinctively behind the shelter of a twisted elm tree. Carefully he inched around it, knowing that surprise would be his best weapon.
But mon Dieu, he hadn’t counted on being the one who was surprised, and certainly not like this.
There were no lewd farmers with muskets, no rummy sailors, no tinkers or vagabonds. Instead there was only Jerusa, washed in the rosy light of the rising sun, kneeling in the mud with her skirts looped up over her petticoats and picking wild strawberries as fast as she could. Her cheeks were flushed and her braid had come unraveled to spill little dark ringlets around her face, and her expression was a mixture of concentration and delight.
“Jerusa, ma chère,” he said, not bothering to hide his irritation. “Just what the hell are you doing?”
Jerusa sat back on her heels and grinned mischievously, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. She wasn’t quite sure why she suddenly felt so giddy in the face of his drawn pistols; was it the irresistible joy of an early morning in June, or the strawberries, or simply that she hadn’t slept more than four hours at a time since they’d left Newport?
“I’m picking strawberries,” she announced, “as you can see perfectly well with the eyes the good Lord gave you. And what, pray, are you doing with those guns?”
From ill humor alone Michel briefly considered firing them over her head, but instead merely uncocked them and shoved them back into his belt.
Her grin widened, and she tossed a berry high into the air, meaning to catch it in her mouth the way Josh did. But because she kept her eyes on Michel, not on the berry, her catch became more of a grab, and instead of landing the berry neatly in her open mouth, she managed to crush it with her fingers against her lips. She gulped and giggled as the red juice dripped from her mouth and between her white fingers.
“They’re very good, and vastly better than your moldy old cheese,” she managed to say, still laughing. “Very sweet.”
He was willing to wager his soul no berry could be as sweet as her lips would be to kiss. Her skirts gathered up to hold the berries in her lap gave him a tantalizing glimpse of her legs, clear to her garters, and even in mud-splattered white thread stockings, her calves and ankles were shapely enough to make him want to ease her skirts higher, above the smooth skin of her bare thighs until he might—
Morbleu, had she any idea of what she was doing to him? If he’d any sense at all he’d take her by the arm and drag her back to the house and the horses and they’d ride until they reached Seabrook. Until he’d be too exhausted to even consider what his body was now begging him to do.
Hell, they’d be shoveling dirt onto his coffin and he’d still want her.
“Now it’s your turn to catch, Mr. Géricault,” ordered Jerusa, “and pray you do better than I.”
She wasn’t surprised that the Frenchman caught the berry in his hand, not his mouth, for she couldn’t imagine him willingly doing anything that might make him look foolish. He never would. Men as dangerous as this one didn’t take risks like that. He didn’t even laugh. For that matter, she hadn’t laughed with him, either, at least not until just now. Why should she, considering what he’d done—no, what he was still doing—to her life.
But sitting here in a strawberry patch with the warm sunshine to ease her fears, Michel Géricault suddenly seemed less of a monster and more of a man. Only a man, she thought with new determination, and she’d yet to meet a man she couldn’t dazzle if she set her mind to it. Could he really be any different? Perhaps if she could beguile him into trusting her, he’d let down his guard long enough for her to escape.
She tossed another berry to him, and again he caught it, but this time as he bit into the fruit he smiled, a lazy, knowing smile, white teeth against his dark new beard, a smile that was more disconcerting than all his threats and guns combined. He would never be as handsome as Tom, but when he smiled, his face lost much of its hard edge and his eyes warmed, the blue reminding her more of a summer sky than winter.
With sudden shyness she ducked her chin, but still watched him from beneath the shadow of her lashes. He was the one who was supposed to be dazzled, not her. But for him to smile like that, maybe even he had felt the magic of this June morning.
“You know, Mr. Géricault,” she began, “I could keep casting berries at you one by one all day. It’s rather like feeding a goose.”
As if to demonstrate, she tossed one more berry to him and clapped her hands when he caught this one, too. Yet she noticed how his eyes narrowed a fraction with a predator’s watchful interest, and she realized how much he mistrusted even her playfulness.
Only a man, she reminded herself fiercely. He was only a man….
She forced herself to smile as brilliantly as she could. “But I do think, Mr. Géricault,