If she could only get one of those pistols for herself to balance the odds!
With an unconscious frown, she lifted a lock of her hair from her shoulder and twisted it between her fingers. Pistols or not, she wasn’t accustomed to men speaking to her as freely as this, and she didn’t like it. Moonlight and togetherness, indeed. As if she’d spend two minutes with such a man by choice.
“And these horses?” she asked dryly. “Did they have a place in our little ark, too?”
The corners of Michel’s mouth twitched in spite of himself. The provocative image of the girl before him in the lantern light, her hair tumbled about her face and her elegant clothes half-torn away, was so far from old Noah’s virtuous wife that he almost laughed. “These horses were here waiting for us, as I’d arranged.”
“Then you planned all this?” asked Jerusa incredulously. “You planned to bring me here?”
“Of course I planned it.” He slung the second saddle onto the mare. “Chance is a sorry sort of mistress, ma chère. I prefer to leave as little of my life in her care as I possibly can.”
“But you couldn’t have known I’d go into the garden!” she cried. “I didn’t know myself! I went on an impulse, a fancy! You couldn’t have known!”
He shrugged carelessly. “True enough. Originally I’d planned to take you from your new husband’s coach on your way to your wedding night in Middletown. With the servants already waiting to receive you, there would have been only the driver and your pretty Master Carberry. His father’s second house, isn’t it, there to the east of the high road to Portsmouth? Not quite as grand as your own at Crescent Hill, but it would have been comfortable enough for newlyweds, and the view from the front bedchamber is a fine one.”
She listened mutely, appalled by how familiar he was with the details of her life.
“It would have been dramatic, to stop a coach like a highwayman,” he continued. “I would, I think, have quite enjoyed it. Yet finding you alone in the garden was far easier.”
All of it had been easy enough, really. He’d spent so much of his life at the hire of whoever paid the most, listening, watching, making himself as unobtrusive as possible until the last, that learning about a family as public as the Sparhawks had been no challenge at all. No challenge, but the reward that waited would be far sweeter than all the gold in the Caribbean.
He smiled briefly at Jerusa over the mare’s chestnut back. “True, I don’t care for chance, but if she casts her favors my way I won’t turn my back, either.”
“You would never have succeeded!” she said hotly, insulted by his confidence. She might have been disarmed by his smile in the garden, but not now. “The Portsmouth Road isn’t Hounslow Heath! If the coachman hadn’t shot you dead, then you can be sure that Tom himself would have defended my honor!”
He cocked one brow with amusement. “What a pity we didn’t have the chance to test his mettle, ma petite. You could have been a maid, a wife and a widow in one short day.”
She opened her lips to answer, then pressed them together again with her rebuttal left unspoken as she realized the reality of what he’d said. Tom was the most genteel man she’d ever met, a gentleman down to the cut-steel buckles on his polished shoes. His elegance was one of the things she loved most about him, perhaps because it made Tom so different from her wilder, seafaring brothers.
But that same gentility wouldn’t have lasted a moment against the Frenchman. He might not kill her, but somehow she didn’t doubt that he would have murdered her darling Tom if he’d raised even his voice to defend her. He would be dead, and she would still be a prisoner.
She laid the bread on the bench beside her, the crust now as dry as dust in her mouth. A maid, a wife, a widow. Thank God she’d gone to the garden, after all. That single, pink rose might have saved Tom’s life, and under her breath she whispered a little prayer for him.
Michel watched how the girl seemed to wilt before his eyes. Perhaps she truly did love Carberry, though how any woman could lose her heart to such a self-centered ass was beyond reason. He’d seen Carberry only once from a distance, waving a handkerchief trimmed with more lace than a lady’s petticoat as he climbed into his carriage, but that glimpse had been enough to turn Michel’s stomach with disgust. Merde, he wouldn’t have had to waste the gunpowder on that one; more likely Carberry would have simply fainted dead away on his own.
Michel glanced out the window. The clouds had scattered, and the moon was rising. Time for them to be on their way.
He reached into one of the saddlebags, pulled out a bundle of dark red cloth and tossed it onto the bench beside Jerusa. “I expect you’ll wish something more serviceable for traveling. No doubt this is more common than you’re accustomed to, but there’s little place for silk and lace on the road.”
She looked up sharply. “Where are we going?”
“I told you before. South.”
“South,” she repeated, the single word expressing all her fears and frustration. “South, and south, and south again! Can’t you tell me anything?”
He watched her evenly. “Not about our destination, no.”
She snatched up the bundled clothing and hurled it back at him. “I’ll keep my own clothing, thank you, rather than undress before you.”
He caught the ball of clothing easily, as if she’d tossed it to him in play instead of in fury. “Did I ask that of you, ma chérie?”
She paused, thrown off-balance by his question. “Very well, then. Dare I ask for such a privacy? Would you trust me that far?”
His fingers tightened into the red fabric in his hands. “What reason have you given me to trust you at all?”
“Absolutely none,” she said with more than a little pride. “Not that you’ve granted me much of the same courtesy, either.”
He didn’t bother to keep the edge of irritation from his voice. “Whether it pleases you or not, Miss Jerusa, ours will not be an acquaintance based on trust of any kind.”
“I’d scarce even call this an acquaintance, considering that I’m your prisoner and you my gaoler,” she answered stubbornly, lifting her chin a fraction higher. “To my mind ‘acquaintance’ implies something more honorable than that.”
“There is, ma chère, nothing at all honorable about me.” The wolfish look in his blue eyes would have daunted a missionary. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
Heaven preserve her, how could she have missed it? “Damn you, what is it that you want?”
“I told you that before, too. I want you.”
“Want me for what?” she demanded. “For this? To haul about the countryside, to degrade and disgrace for your amusement? To—to be your mistress?”
There, she’d said it, put words to her worst fear, and the expression on the Frenchman’s handsome face did nothing to reassure her.
“You mean do I plan to force you, ma chère?” He came slowly to stand before her, his arms folded over his chest and his words an odd, musing threat. “For that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? I certainly can’t envision you, Miss Jerusa Sparhawk, the most renowned belle in your colony, cheerfully offering a man like me the pleasure of your lovely body.”
“No,” she repeated in a whisper, looking down to her hands clenched in her lap. “No.”
Her dark, tangled hair fell forward like a veil around her face to hide her shame. With a shy eagerness she had anticipated her wedding night,