“You have your answer now, Jerusa, don’t you?” he said, shoving his hair back from his brow before he settled his hat. “Pick more berries if you wish. I’ll be with the horses.”
He turned and left her then, before he saw the bewilderment in her lovely eyes and before he was tempted to kiss her again.
One kiss was enough for them both. She had her answer, and he, God help him, had his.
Chapter Eight
Jerusa was dreaming.
She had to be, for she was ten years old again, and it was winter, and she was waiting on the back step to their house in Newport, hopping up and down to keep warm in the snow while Josh tried to hold the fuse straight on the little red Chinese firecrackers. It was past midnight, long past their bedtime, but because the new year was only minutes old and their parents and the other grown-ups were too busy drinking toasts and firing off empty muskets to notice, she and Josh had crept outside to set off the last of the firecrackers their older brother Jon had brought from London for Christmas.
“You must hold it steady, Josh, or I’ll never be able to light it,” she complained. In the streets others were setting off firecrackers, too, some loud enough to drown out the pealing of the First Day bells.
“You just hush, Rusa,” ordered Josh, “and mind the striker, or we’ll never be able to light it because you never made a blessed spark!”
But even as he spoke, the spark found the fuse, a bright flash along the tallowed cord, and Jerusa shrieked with excitement as Josh tossed the firecracker onto the paving stones. For an endless moment it lay rolling gently back and forth, and then with a mighty, deafening crash and a great burst of light, it exploded. “Wake up, Jerusa!” called Michel.
“Wake up now!”
She pulled the blanket higher over her shoulders and rolled away from him, her eyes still tightly shut. She wanted to stay with Josh and the snow and the firecrackers. There was another flash, and another firecracker exploded even more loudly than the first, and Jerusa smiled sleepily. Josh had sworn he’d only that one left from Christmas, the greedy little—
“Morbleu, woman, can you sleep through anything?” Michel grabbed the blanket from her shoulder and ripped it away. “You claim you’re so blessed good with horses. I could sure as hell use your help now!”
“And I thought you could blessed well do everything yourself,” grumbled Jerusa to herself as she sat upright, for he was already gone. They had decided to sleep in the empty barn, and she brushed at the bits of straw that clung to her skirt. “It can’t possibly be time to leave yet, and I—”
But she broke off abruptly at the brilliant flash of lightning at the open end of the shed, followed by the immediate crack of thunder. Joshua’s firecrackers, she thought, and then she heard the squeal of the frightened horses and the loud thumps and cracks as they panicked in their stalls. Dear Almighty, the horses!
Swiftly she pulled on her shoes and ran to the back of the barn to join Michel. He stood in the stall beside his horse, Buck, to hold him by the halter, stroking the gelding’s shoulder and murmuring in French to calm him. But in the next stall Abigail was skittishly dancing from side to side, tossing her head and trembling with anxiety.
Hurriedly plaiting her own long hair so it wouldn’t startle the horses, Jerusa glanced outside the barn’s open doorway. Though there was no rain yet, the sky was nearly dark as night, the racing clouds a flat gray-green and the wind blowing hard enough to whip the trees like grass. No wonder the horses were terrified.
“Be careful, ma chérie,” warned Michel softly without turning toward her. “That mare’s so on tenterhooks now that she’d strike at her own shadow.”
“Then that will make a pair of us,” she murmured, grateful for his concern. She’d need it. At Crescent Hill the grooms were the ones who stayed with the horses during storms, not her, but she’d overheard enough stories of the damage a frightened horse could do to be wary herself.
Slowly she inched into the stall toward Abigail. “Pretty girl,” she crooned softly. “I know you’re scared, but there’s not a thing out there that can hurt you. It’s just wind and thunder, a whole lot of noise and show that doesn’t amount to anything worth your notice.”
The mare’s ears pricked forward at Jerusa’s familiar voice.
“That’s it, girl,” she coaxed. “You know me, I’m only Rusa, and you know I wouldn’t tell you a word that’s false, would I? Pretty, pretty girl.”
With infinite care she reached for the halter, stroking the horse’s forehead as she hooked her fingers beneath the leather straps. She was surprised to see that Michel had already saddled the horse. Though the storm made it difficult to gauge the time, she wouldn’t have guessed they’d be set to leave so soon.
“There you are, Abigail. Easy as you please, pretty girl. Rusa didn’t tell tales, did she?”
From the gelding’s stall she heard Michel chuckle. “Ah, Buck, my fine fellow, perhaps you know. When will Rusa stop telling tales to me?”
“When will I stop telling tales?” she said, keeping to the same crooning tone she’d been using for the mare’s sake. There was another brief flash of lightning, another fainter rumble of thunder, and though the horse trembled and whinnied uneasily, Jerusa still held firm. Perhaps the storm would miss them, after all. “Easy, pretty girl, easy. I never started telling tales, unlike certain Frenchmen, who can’t begin to tell the truth.”
Her baby name, Rusa, had sounded exotic and foreign the way he said it, so soft and slurred and indolent that she wished she’d never let him hear it; one more thing he’d stolen from her. He laughed softly again, and though Jerusa couldn’t see his face, she could imagine his mocking smile well enough to make her cheeks grow warm.
“Ah, ma chère, I’ve never yet lied to you,” he said with amused regret, which she was certain was quite false, “yet you will never believe me.”
“Then tell me the truth. Tell me why you kissed me.”
“So easy a test, sweet Rusa, so easy!” He kept her in breathless agony while he murmured to the gelding in French. “I kissed you because we both wished it.”
“That’s not true!”
“You see how it is? I could not be more truthful, and yet you won’t believe me.”
A fresh gust of wind rushed through the doorway with a swirl of leaves, ripped from their branches, and as the mare’s nostrils flared, Jerusa caught the same scent of coming rain and salty air blown east from the sea. Abigail arched back, and Jerusa forgot answering Michel as she struggled again with the mare.
Then, from the yard outside, came a loud, sizzling crackle followed by a hiss like a hot poker in cold water, then the brittle explosion of splintering wood.
Her heart pounding, Jerusa whipped around toward the noise in time to see the last standing wall of the abandoned house burst into flames around the white ball of lightning. In an instant the dry timbers became a solid sheet of fire, the flames urged faster by the wind. As she watched, the first sparks spun through the curling smoke to the roofless henhouse, and that, too, soon grew bright with fire.
And directly to the west, next in the fire’s path, was the barn.
Michel was shouting to her, but as she turned toward his voice, Abigail plunged back and ripped herself free of Jerusa’s grasp. Frantically Jerusa lunged for the halter again, and as she did, the mare tossed her head and caught Jerusa’s side beneath her raised arm.
Almost as if it came from someone