on the mare, either. “Though Father’s a sailor at heart, he does have an eye for a good Narraganset pacer, and the stable at Crescent Hill’s generally full. When Josh and I were young, you know, he and I always had matching ponies.”
“Pretty, privileged children on their ponies!” exclaimed Michel with withering sarcasm. It wasn’t just the matching ponies themselves, but how they represented an entire blissful childhood that he’d never known. He’d first gone to sea with a drunken privateer when he was eight, and learned to kill to save himself before he’d turned ten. “How charming the effect must have been! That would, of course, have been during the summers you spent at Crescent Hill?”
Reluctantly she nodded, disconcerted again by how much he seemed to know of her family’s life. “You don’t exactly ride like a farmer boy tossed on the back of his father’s plow horse, either,” she said defensively. “You sit like a gentleman.”
“I do many things like a gentleman, my dear Jerusa, but that doesn’t mean I am one.” He swung down from his horse, holding the reins in his hand as he walked toward her. “Is she really lame, then?”
“Nothing that a few hours’ rest likely won’t cure.”
Michel swore under his breath. Why couldn’t the mare have lasted one more night? Though the horizon was just beginning to gray with the light of false dawn, he had counted on riding at least for another hour. By his reckoning, they had one more night of traveling before they finally reached Seabrook and, God willing, Gilles Rochet and his sloop.
Unaware of his thoughts, Jerusa waved her hand in the direction they’d come. “I thought I saw a house there to the north when—”
“No, chérie, no houses,” he said curtly. “I, for one, have no wish to repeat our performance with the Faulks.”
Self-consciously she looked at the toes of her shoes. It wasn’t what had happened at the Faulks’ that she wished to avoid again, but what had followed. “I don’t think that would be a problem, Mr. Géricault. The house I meant looked to be a ruin. Against the sky the chimney looked broken-down, and part of the roof gone. From the hurricane two years ago, maybe, or a fire, I don’t know. But at least there’d still be a well, and maybe an orchard or garden.”
“Is that so.” Michel leaned his elbow across the sidesaddle, watching her. She’d just said more to him in the last two minutes than in the last two days, and though he rather enjoyed the change, it still put him on his guard. “Then tell me, ma chérie, exactly how you plan to try to leave me from this delightful ruin of a cottage?”
“Leave you?” Jerusa repeated, her face growing warm at the accusation, which, this time, was unfounded. She wished they could return to talking about the horse instead.
“Yes, yes, leave.” He sighed deeply, in a way that made her think again of what it had been like to rest her cheek against his chest. “I hadn’t expected you to give up just yet, you know.”
“Then you have more faith in me than I do myself. I have neither food nor water nor money, I’m in a place I don’t know, where no one knows me, and my horse is lame. You might not have bound me with chains or cords, Mr. Géricault, but what you’ve done has been thorough enough.”
His smile faded as he listened. Though the bitterness was still in her voice, something else had subtly altered between them. He couldn’t tell exactly what, not yet, but the change was unmistakable.
“No more of this ‘Mr. Géricault,’ ma chère,” he said softly as he stepped around the mare’s head to come stand before Jerusa. “Call me Michel. Please.”
She twisted her reins in her fingers, shaking her head. The distance she earned by using that “Mr.” was small and fragile, but with him she felt she needed every last bit, and she was almost painfully aware of the dark, inexplicable currents of emotion swirling between them now.
She forced herself to look away and to watch instead how her mare had begun to graze, tugging at the long wild grass that grew alongside the path. They had stopped near an old stone wall that was overgrown with a tangled mass of honeysuckle, and the sweet, heady fragrance of the white-and-yellow blossoms filled the air like perfume.
Michel clucked, and the mare’s ears pricked up as she eyed him quizzically. In spite of herself, Jerusa smiled and let her gaze follow the mare’s to the Frenchman. He stood with his hat in his hand, the pose of a careless supplicant, his hair pale gold in the fading moonlight and his blue eyes almost black, a half smile playing about his lips that was meant to be shared. With a start, she realized she’d never smell honeysuckle again without thinking of Michel Géricault. Would he, she wondered, say the same of her?
Whatever are you thinking of, Jerusa Sparhawk? This man is your kidnapper, your enemy! He deserves no place at all in your thoughts, let alone in your heart! The minute you can you’ll escape and leave him as far behind as possible. Remember that, Jerusa, and forget these silly musings about honeysuckle and blue eyes!
“Come,” she said, all too aware of how strained her voice sounded as she gathered the mare’s reins to lead her. “We can’t dawdle in the road forever.”
But Michel didn’t move from her way. “Perhaps, ma chère,” he began softly, his accent seductively more marked. “Perhaps you don’t run away because you don’t wish to.”
From the way her eyes grew round, Michel knew he’d put into words what she’d secretly feared. A lucky guess. But then, so much of what had happened with her was lucky, at least for him, and he didn’t mean just how easy their journey had been, either. She was blushing now, her face so rosy her discomfiture showed even in the moonlight. Somehow he’d never expected the belle of Newport to blush at all, but he was glad she did, and gladder still that he was the reason.
“Of course I wish to return to Newport,” she said, struggling to sound as if she meant every word. “I want to go back to my poor parents, my home, my—”
“To your marriage to a faithless, fashionable popinjay?”
She frowned, toying with the reins. “Tom will be fine once I speak to him and explain everything.”
“‘Fine’?” Michel raised one mocking, skeptical brow. “That is what you wish in your husband? That he be fine?”
“Well, he will,” said Jerusa defensively. “Tom’s the man I love and the one I intend to marry. Oh, stop looking at me like that! It’s simply not something you would understand!”
“True enough, ma belle. All I can do is keep you safe.”
She glanced at him sharply, unsure of what he really meant, but he’d already turned away, leading his horse back in the direction they’d come, and leaving her no choice but to follow.
Michel was being possessive, that was all, just like any good gaoler would be with his prisoner. What else could he have meant by keeping her safe? Yet still her mind fussed and worked over the doubt he’d planted. The only thing Tom would ever fight to keep safe would be the front of his shirt, and then the enemy would be no more formidable than a glass of red wine. He certainly didn’t seem eager to come to her rescue, and that hurt more than she’d ever admit to the Frenchman. But that was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? A gentleman of wit and ideas, not some rough man of action?
Wasn’t it?
Michel,
