“I cannot, ma’am.” Jeremiah tried to disentangle his arm while she laughed and clung to him and Weldon’s disapproval grew more and more apparent. The devil take the woman for making him feel like such a fool! “My sister expects me to return shortly.”
“I’ll vow a man like you has never answered to a woman in his life, let alone his sister,” said Caro, her tone shrewd as she released his arm. She smiled gleefully. “But then I should remember that myself, shouldn’t I?”
“Aye, ma’am, perhaps you should.” Jeremiah tried to look stern. Here in the morning sun he could see she wore no paint nor powder on her face, and little gold freckles that matched her lashes were scattered beguilingly across the bridge of her nose. Her cropped hair was simply dressed with a white ribbon across the brow, and only a narrow band of white work decorated the hem of her muslin dress.
She drew herself straight, folding her hands neatly before her as she carefully composed her expression. To Jeremiah’s surprise, she succeeded, for though nothing else had changed she suddenly looked every inch an imperious, aristocratic countess. Frederick, wherever he was, would be proud.
“If you would be so kind as to favor me with your company, Captain,” she said, her smile now no more than the merest genteel curve, “I would be quite honored. For a moment, that is all I beg of you. Only long enough so that I might thank you properly for your—your services last night.”
The butler sniffed, and inwardly Jeremiah groaned, guessing too well what services the man was imagining. At least if they went indoors they’d be free from Weldon. “Very well, then. But mind, not long.”
Jeremiah followed her down a long hall with a marble floor like a checkerboard. Lining the hallway on either side were life-size statues raised up on half-column pedestals. Some of the statues were men, some women, and all were mostly naked, and worldly though he considered himself, Jeremiah’s pace slowed as he passed beneath the line of sightless marble eyes. He’d been in his twenties before he’d seen a statue like these, in an expensive Jamaican fancy house, and he and his mates had marveled over the ancient goddess’s marble breasts and bottom for days afterward. What must it be like, especially for a lady, to live with such things every day?
As if she read his thoughts, Caro turned to face him, running her fingers lightly along the knee of young man with a kind of shawl draped over one shoulder and not a stitch more.
“He looks rather bashful, don’t you think? Almost shy,” she said. “Not very good for a warrior, which is what Frederick says he’s supposed to be. I never remember his true name, something ancient and foreign, so I call him Bartholomew instead. Bart’s one of my favorites.”
Jeremiah made a noncommittal sound between a grunt and a cough. “He doesn’t look like any Bart I’ve ever known.”
“Ah well, he’ll always be Bart to me.” She patted the statue’s muscular thigh with a fond familiarity that unsettled Jeremiah. She glanced up at him archly. “But then, of course, you’d prefer the ladies. Gentlemen do.”
She laughed merrily as she walked away from him. At the end of the hallway was a tall arched window, and the sunlight filtered through the sheer muslin of her gown, silhouetting the curves of her body as plainly as the statues that flanked her. Jeremiah swallowed, unable to draw his eyes away though he knew he must. For her to be ignorant of how much the sunlight revealed was bad enough, but what if she knew the effect, what if she’d planned it to entice him?
“Ma’am.” He looked down, away from her and away from the statues, and was surprised to see his hands clenched in tight fists at his sides. “Ma’am, I told you before I didn’t have much time.”
“Then it’s just as well we’re here,” she said as she reached the end of the hallway and threw open the double doors to the right. “This is the Yellow Room. My sitting room. Not even Frederick can enter without knocking. He calls it my—oh, what was it?—my ‘sanctuary.”
He would have known this place was hers even if she’d said nothing. Unlike the chilly formality of the rest of the house, this room was warm with color and cheerfully cluttered. The paneled walls were white with gilded trim, each centered with a painting of overblown roses spilling from baskets. More flowers formed the design of the soft wool carpet underfoot, and real ones—daffodils, hyacinths, Dutch tulips that filled the air with their scent—in Chinese porcelain vases clustered along the mantelpiece and table-tops among figurines of commedia dell’arte characters and sly-faced cats. The hangings and upholstery were all of yellow silk damask, and piled in the chairs and sofa were plump down-filled cushions with gold tassels.
Caro dropped into one of these, propped her feet up on a gilded stool as she carelessly tossed the bag with her bracelets and earrings onto the table beside her. She waved her hand airily for him to sit in the chair opposite hers. As if, thought Jeremiah, they were the oldest of friends; as if he hadn’t come here intending never to see her again.
“I really must thank you for saving me last night, Captain Sparhawk. Not that George would have done me any genuine harm, but your arrival was quite fortuitous. And, oh my, to see how he squirmed before you as a highwayman!” She clapped her hands with the fingers spread so only the palms touched. “I trust you won’t return his purse and ring to him, too. He’d only squander it on gaming, and besides, if he learned to do without then he might stop badgering me for more.”
Still standing, Jeremiah frowned, not liking the sound of a man who badgered a woman for money. “I dropped them both in the poor box at the seamen’s chapel in Portsmouth.”
“How perfect! Most likely it’s the first time he’s ever given a farthing to anyone other than his tailor.” She tugged on one of the ringlets held back by the ribbon, twisting the hair around her finger, and though she smiled, it seemed to Jeremiah that some of her merriment had slipped away. “You were very good to come to my rescue, especially since you’d just sent me on my way for trespassing. You were quite right, of course. I’d no business being there in your room that way without any reason, good or bad.”
He didn’t answer at first, and beneath the weight of his silence her cheeks slowly flushed. “You had a reason,” he said, wishing she’d told him the truth. “At least that’s what Jack told me.”
“I thought he might.” She pulled a daffodil from the vase beside her, pretending to study it to avoid meeting Jeremiah’s gaze. “He’s been so good to me through this, you know, always telling me whatever he could from the admiralty, but even he can’t perform miracles.”
She looked at him wistfully, her eyes bright with tears. “I thought you might be like that, too, for no other reason than that I wished it so. More likely you judge me as great a fool as the rest of the world, but I won’t believe that Frederick’s truly gone. I can’t believe it. That’s why I couldn’t let you kiss me, you see. You’re a very nice man, and a handsome one, too, but I love Frederick, and he’s my husband. If I’d kissed you, that would be as much as admitting that he wasn’t coming back. And God help me, I can’t do that.”
Jeremiah watched her unconsciously tear apart the flower in her hands, her thoughts turned inward to the husband she’d lost. Once again he was faced by the power of love, a locked room that he’d never enter. Widow or not, Caro was one woman who wouldn’t need the kind of consolation he could offer.
With a sigh he headed toward the door, pausing by her chair to lay his hand briefly on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Caro,” he said gently. “Sorry for everything.”
She bowed her head, staring down at the torn yellow petals scattered across her lap, and he walked past her to the door.
“Your friend David Kerr is still alive,” she said softly, so softly he almost didn’t hear her as his hand turned the latch.
But he’d heard enough to disbelieve it. “What did you say?”
“I said that David Kerr is still alive.”
“How