Conscious of every face in the room turned toward him, Josh rose slowly to his feet. He knew he didn’t have much choice but to leave as the tavern keeper requested, but he hated the feeling of slinking away for something he hadn’t done. It had a low, cowardly feel to it, and Sparhawks were never cowards.
“Of course, monsieur, I’d ask your forgiveness if I’d offended your daughter,” he said, intensely aware of being the one Englishman among so many French. “But by my lights, I’ve done nothing to shame or dishonor her. You can ask her yourself.”
“Nothing, eh?” The Frenchman smacked his palm down hard on the table. “I’ll give you your nothing! For twenty-seven years no one has dared defile this house by speaking the name of Christian Deveaux, and now you come in here and speak of him to my daughter, my sweet little Cecilie, and then claim you’ve done nothing!”
“You know of the man, then?” asked Josh excitedly. “You remember him and—”
“I can never forget the black-hearted bastard of the devil, and for that reason alone you will never be welcome again in this house.” Noire spat contemptuously on the floor beside Josh. “Now get out, before my friends here toss you into the gutter where you belong.”
Instinctively Josh’s hands tightened to fists at his sides as his gaze shifted from Noire to the men who had come to stand behind him, fishermen and other mariners, some already with long-bladed knives in their hands and all of them spoiling for a fight.
Young though he was, Josh knew well enough that the line between being a hero and a fool could often be as fine as a hair. To walk away now went against every fiber of his being, but what good could he do for Jerusa if he let himself be carved to bits by a pack of ravening Frenchmen for the sake of his pride?
But if he had to leave, he could at least do it on his terms, not theirs. Measuring his motions so as not to startle them, Josh reached for the tankard and emptied it. Slowly, he reached into his pocket for a handful of sous to pay for what little he’d had the chance to drink and eat, and dropped the coins rattling onto the table. With all the bravado he could muster, he then walked directly through the little crowd of Frenchmen to the door. His head high, he did not deign to watch his own back, nor did he threaten or scowl at the men who were driving him away, and when he finally stepped out into the street unharmed, he managed to keep his sigh of relief to himself.
But when on an impulse Josh couldn’t explain he turned at the corner of the street to look back at the tavern, it was Ceci he saw in the second-floor window, her face small and sorrowful as she peeked from behind the louvered blue shutter.
And despite her father’s threats, he knew he would return.
“Shove off, Dayton,” roared the Tiger’s bosun. “Shove off now! That is if ye still bloody well can without topplin’ on yer pickled arse!”
Sitting in the boat’s stern sheets, Josh bit back his own reprimand and tried instead to look grimly above such tomfoolery, the way a captain should. No matter how many insults were bellowed at Dayton, the man was still so blissfully drunk on cheap Martinique rum that it was a wonder he could stand at all, let alone push the boat free of the shallows and into the deeper water.
And Dayton had supposedly been with the boat the whole evening; God only knew in what condition Josh would find the men he’d granted shore leave. He’d chosen his crew for this voyage carefully, looking for men with a reputation for sobriety, but St-Pierre was the kind of overripe, indolent place that could tempt a Quaker, let alone an idle seaman. Josh shook his head and felt in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. One more reason to find his sister as soon as he could, before every last man became a hopeless sot.
The boat lurched free at last, somehow Dayton managed to climb aboard, and Josh settled back glumly with his pipe for the short row back to the Tiger. If only he’d had more success in his inquiries tonight, then perhaps he’d be in a better humor. For a man who’d been as notorious as his father claimed, Christian Deveaux seemed now to inspire nothing but uneasy silence.
If only the evening had continued as pleasantly as it had begun, when he’d met little Ceci Noire. If only…
“Capitaine Sparhawk! Capitaine, wait, I beg you!”
He turned and saw the flicker of white petticoats and a handkerchief waving from the beach. She wore a dark shawl draped over her head that shadowed her face, but even across the water there was no mistaking Ceci’s voice.
“‘Vast there,” he ordered quickly. “Haul for shore. Handsomely now, lads, handsomely!”
He didn’t miss the amused, knowing glances the men exchanged among themselves as they turned the boat short round, but this time he didn’t care. They could gossip all they wanted between decks. He was simply going to talk to the girl, apologize if she expected it and listen to what she had to say. Where was the harm or the scandal in that?
She came skipping along the beach right to the water’s edge, heedless of the damp sand that clung to her shoes and hem. “Grâce à Dieu!” she cried as Josh climbed from the boat. “I feared I was too late, that I’dnever see you again to explain!”
Without thinking, Josh reached for her hand and felt her fingers tremble against his. “You shouldn’t be prowling around the waterfront alone like this, lass, not at this hour. Must be three o’clock in the morning at the least.”
“I had no choice, monsieur.” She shoved the shawl back from her face, and in the moonlight her dark eyes shone bright with excitement. “I couldn’t leave until Papa had closed the shutters and gone to sleep. But I’m safe enough. You forget my living depends on drunken rogues, and I know how to take care of myself.”
Josh could only shake his head, remembering how Jerusa had always claimed she, too, would be safe in Newport. “You could have waited until morning.”
“Mordieu, and let you go to your bed believing the worst of me?” She squeezed her fingers around his. “What you must believe instead is this—that until this night my father had never spoken that evil man’s name in my hearing! Not a word, no, not once, not even after what Deveaux did!”
“Then your father did know Deveaux?”
“Dieu merci, they never met. Deveaux was too clever, too grand for that. But Papa and ma chère Maman, may she rest in heaven by the side of the Blessed Virgin, how they suffered at his hands!”
She quivered now with the same righteous fury as her father’s, her face with its small, plump chin every bit as fierce. “Deveaux was born a gentleman, monsieur, and Papa says he was handsome enough to melt the sun from the sky, else Antoinette would never have done what she did.”
“Antoinette?” asked Josh.
“My mother’s sister, my aunt.” She was speaking so swiftly, driven by the shame to her family, that she was almost breathless with outrage. “Antoinette, too, worked in our petite auberge, and Papa says there was not a man in St-Pierre who did not worship her. But the only one she listened to was Deveaux. My mother’s tears, 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