“Because of my family?” she asked wistfully. “Because of Tom?”
“Among others.”
“You mean whoever hired you.” Her pale fingers tightened around the green calimanco. “The one who’s paying you to kidnap me.”
Reluctantly he nodded. “Would you believe me if I told you how much I regret that?”
“No.” Her smile was swift and heartbreakingly brittle. “Because if it were true, you’d let me go free, wouldn’t you?”
He reached out to brush his fingertips across her cheek, and felt how she trembled beneath his touch. “It’s because it is true that I cannot,” he said sorrowfully. “I told you this isn’t simple, ma mie. If we had only met in another time, then—”
“Then I might be the queen of England and you the king of France, and we’d be not one whit better off.” She drew her face away from the light caress of his fingers, her eyes too bright with unshed tears. “You’d best wash yourself before the water’s too chill.”
For a long moment he held her gaze, hating himself for the coward he was, then turned away as she’d ordered, the drawn bed curtain like a wall of stone between them. No wonder his poor Maman had gone mad, if this was the price of caring too much!
Her heart pounding, Jerusa steadied herself against the bedpost. This must be more of the same glib foolishness calculated to break her spirit, she told herself fiercely, as meaningless as the endless stream of pretty, petty endearments that he sprinkled through his conversation. Hadn’t he always known the exact teasing, taunting words to say to make her alternately wish to throttle and then to kiss him?
Yet in her heart she knew this was different. She’d seen the yearning in his eyes as clearly as if he’d shouted it from the rooftops, and heard the confusion and sorrow in his voice that mirrored her own. He couldn’t have pretended that, could he? For once, had he really been telling her the truth?
And what of it, Jerusa? Why should it matter if he’s told you the truth now, far too late to do any good? He’s lied to you from the first word he spoke, and he hasn’t a single reason to change his ways now. Remember that, Jerusa! Don’t forget what he has done to you!
Don’t forget simply because he’s handsome as sin and his lazy smile makes your blood warm in ways it never did with Tom.
Don’t forget just because he saved your life, and then you risked yours in turn for him.
Don’t forget, only because in one halting moment of honesty he let himself be more naked and vulnerable than you yourself felt beneath his gaze.
Just because he cares for you, and God help you, Jerusa Sparhawk, you care for him…
The sound of the water splashing around him in the tub jerked her back to the present, and with a small flustered exclamation, she rushed to dress. He’d let her go untouched and granted her the privacy to dress when she hadn’t expected it, but she’d be a fool to depend on his word—or such a promise from any man, for that matter—by dawdling about in a wet sheet.
By the time he’d finished washing and dressing and had tugged the curtain back, she, too, was dressed and sitting on the stool by the window, struggling to comb her fingers through a week’s worth of knots in her damp hair. Her heart quickened when she heard him come stand behind her, but his voice when he spoke was as even as if nothing had changed between them.
“This might help, chère. Another trifle forgotten in our haste to leave Newport.”
She lifted the heavy weight of her hair with her arm and peeked out from beneath it. In Michel’s hand was a thick-toothed comb of polished horn. She smiled with relief, reaching to take it from him.
“No, ma belle,” he said firmly as he held the comb away out of her reach. “Let me do it.”
“Don’t be foolish, Michel, I can—”
“I said let me do it for you, chère,” he repeated, his voice low as he began to work the comb through her tangled hair. “You’ll be toiling all night if you try to do it yourself.”
Grudgingly she knew he was right, and, with a sigh, she sat straight for him with her hands in her lap. Over and over he drew the comb through her hair, each pass moving higher as he worked through the tangles.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she asked, wishing it weren’t so easy to imagine the tresses of scores of lovely, languid Frenchwomen sliding through his fingers. “Most men wouldn’t begin to know how.”
He chuckled softly. “I’ve been accused of many things, Rusa, but never of being a coiffeur. But you’re right. I’ve often played that role for my mother.”
“Your mother?” Jerusa smiled, intrigued by the notion. “How fortunate for her! As much as my brothers love my mother, I can’t imagine them ever doing such a thing.”
“Ah, well, perhaps if I’d brothers or sisters I wouldn’t have done it, either. But because there was only the two of us, I never thought it strange.”
She closed her eyes, relaxing beneath the rhythm of the comb through her hair. “There’d be your father, too, of course.”
“Not that I can remember, no. He died before I was born.”
“Oh, Michel, I’m sorry,” she said softly. Her own large family had always been such a loud, boisterous presence in her life that it was hard to imagine otherwise. “How sad for your mother to be left widowed like that!”
The comb paused, the rhythm broken. “She wasn’t widowed because she wasn’t my father’s wife.”
“Oh, Michel,” she murmured, her sympathy for him swelling. Though she’d heard the French were less strict than the English in such matters, any woman who let herself fall into such unfortunate circumstances was sure to be shunned by all but her closest friends. She’d heard the dire warnings often enough from her own mother. How much Michel and his mother must have suffered, how hard their life together must have been!
“But my father did intend to wed her,” Michel continued, his voice growing distant. “Maman was sure of that, for she loved him—loves him—with all her heart. But he was killed before she could tell him she was carrying his child, and then, of course, it was too late.”
“Was your father a soldier or a sailor?” she asked softly. Longing to see his face, she tried to twist about on the stool, but instead he gently held her head steady, beginning again to comb her hair. “You must have been born during King George’s war.”
“My father was a sailor, oui, a privateersman, a captain, the most successful of his time in the Caribbean.” Michel’s pride was unmistakable. “His name was Christian Saint-Juste Deveaux, and his home was more elegant and far more grand than many of the châteaux of France. Or it was, at least, before he was slaughtered by an Englishman and his house burned to the ground.”
Slaughtered by an Englishman: no wonder he’d been so unhappy over what she’d told Dr. Hamilton. But how could she have guessed? The coincidence was eerie. Both their fathers privateers, both captains prospering, though they’d fought on opposite sides of the same war.
But maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all. “My father was a privateer captain, too,” she said slowly, her uneasiness growing. “Though I expect you know that already, don’t you?”
Michel didn’t seem to hear her, or perhaps he simply chose not to answer. “Your oldest brother, Jonathan, or Jon, as you call him. He’s twenty-six years old, isn’t he?”
She hesitated, wondering why he should speak of her brother now. “Jon was twenty-six in April.”