of the roof and the broken chimney became more clearly outlined against the pale dawn. The gelding snapped a branch beneath its hoof and a flock of swallows rose up through the open roof, their frightened chatter and drumming wings piercing through the early morning.
He glanced over his shoulder at Jerusa, so close on his heels that they nearly collided. Considering what he’d said to her about Carberry, he’d half expected her not to follow at all. Though it would have been a nuisance to track her down again, he was glad for other, less appropriate reasons that she’d decided to come with him.
“No doubt now that it was a fire that drove them out,” he said, stating the obvious. Though from the growth of plants and vines around the house, he guessed the fire must have taken place years ago. There was still a desultory pile of half-burned chairs and benches in the yard, and clearly no one had since returned to repair or rebuild. Unless, he thought grimly, no one had survived. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”
Jerusa sniffed self-consciously and smoothed her hair, still more disconcerted by the way she’d almost walked right into his back than the burned-out house before her. “Why shouldn’t I? We’ve come this far, haven’t we? If you don’t want anyone seeing us, what better place could there be than this?”
“I meant, ma belle, were you willing to share your sweet company with whoever might have lived here before?”
“You mean ghosts?” She stared at him, searching his face to decide if he was teasing or trying to frighten her, and couldn’t decide either way. She’d never met a man whose thoughts were harder to read. “You’re asking if I’m afraid of ghosts?”
He shrugged, all the answer he’d give. He’d said too much already. But the ruined house still made him uneasy, the way any place destroyed by fire always did.
How many times had Maman taken him to see the empty shell of his father’s house, the tall chimneys and pillars now snaked with vines, the charred walls crumbling and the windows blind as unseeing eyes? She had meant the visits to inspire him, to show him how grandly his father—and she, too, briefly—had lived. Twenty years, and still she could recite the contents of every room like a litany, the paintings and silver and gilded furniture with satin coverings. She said his father had been a grand gentilhomme, a Parisian by birth, a man of the world with the fortune to support his elegant tastes. Even the ruin of his house showed that.
But what Michel remembered most were the unearthly shrieks of the birds and monkeys within the empty walls, echoing like so many restless spirits, and the way Maman had wept so bitterly at what she’d lost.
“Well, if you hope to scare me away with tales of ghosts and goblins, you’re wrong,” declared Jerusa soundly. She felt she’d won a great concession from him when he’d decided to come here, and she wasn’t about to give it up simply because he wanted to frighten her. To prove her point she walked around him, pulling the mare behind her as she marched up toward the ruin. “You’ve no good reason to believe that anyone died here, let alone that the house is haunted. Besides, what ghost would dare show his face on a morning like this?”
What ghosts, indeed, wondered Michel, painfully aware of the irony of what she said. But how much could she truly know? Had Gabriel Sparhawk bragged to her and the rest of the family of how he’d burned his father’s great house to the ground?
“Here’s the well, just as I said, and there’s even a bucket, too,” announced Jerusa as she looped the horse’s reins around the well’s post. “Though the house may be abandoned, I’ll wager we’re not the only travelers who’ve stopped here.”
She shoved the cover back from the well, dropped the bucket inside and listened until she heard it hit the water with a distant, muffled splash. Next, to Michel’s surprise, she threw her weight against the long sweep, as expertly as any farm wife, until she’d slowly raised the dripping bucket to the surface. With both hands she caught it and set it on the ground for the thirsty mare.
Satisfied, she wiped her palms on the back of her skirt as she watched the mare drink before she glanced back at the Frenchman. “You didn’t think I could do that, did you?” she said smugly.
“I didn’t think you wished to, no,” he said gruffly.
“No, you didn’t think I could, even if I’d wished to.” She lifted her chin, her face lit with a triumphant grin and her hands on her hips. “You think I’m too much a lady to do such a thing. But I’m not nearly as helpless as you want to believe, and you’ll see, I’ll find the old kitchen garden, too. Whatever’s left growing there is bound to be an improvement over your infernal old cheese and stale bread.”
Before he could answer, she had disappeared around the side of the house, and he could hear her feet crashing through the brush as she began to run.
“Damned foolish woman,” muttered Michel as he swiftly tied his own horse and hurried after her. Here he’d been dawdling with his thoughts in the past, and all the while she’d been planning to skip away from him again. Not that she’d get far. He’d seen how her legs had nearly buckled under her when she’d first climbed from the horse.
But on the other side of the house he found no trace of her beyond the ragged path she’d cut through the weeds, and when he pushed open the gate to the garden, the rusty hinges groaned in protest. An ancient scarecrow, the straw stuffing gone from its head and its clothes in tatters, beckoned limply to him. In the damp morning air, the charred timbers still smelled of smoke, and once again he fought back his own uneasiness. Why the devil had he agreed to come here, anyway?
“Michel!” Her voice was faint in the distance, edged with excitement, or was it fear? “Oh, Michel, come quickly!”
Morbleu, what had she stumbled into now? As he ran along the path she’d taken, his fears raced faster, first to coarse, leering countrymen like the Faulks, then to rootless sailors without ships, thieving peddlers, vagabonds and rogues, all eager to do her harm, to hurt her, to steal some of her loveliness with their filthy hands. Was this, then, how he kept her safe?
And, for the first time, she’d actually used his Christian name….
“Michel, here!”
He’d never heard that note in her voice before. With a pistol primed and cocked in each hand, he ducked instinctively behind the shelter of a twisted elm tree. Carefully he inched around it, knowing that surprise would be his best weapon.
But mon Dieu, he hadn’t counted on being the one who was surprised, and certainly not like this.
There were no lewd farmers with muskets, no rummy sailors, no tinkers or vagabonds. Instead there was only Jerusa, washed in the rosy light of the rising sun, kneeling in the mud with her skirts looped up over her petticoats and picking wild strawberries as fast as she could. Her cheeks were flushed and her braid had come unraveled to spill little dark ringlets around her face, and her expression was a mixture of concentration and delight.
“Jerusa, ma chère,” he said, not bothering to hide his irritation. “Just what the hell are you doing?”
Jerusa sat back on her heels and grinned mischievously, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. She wasn’t quite sure why she suddenly felt so giddy in the face of his drawn pistols; was it the irresistible joy of an early morning in June, or the strawberries, or simply that she hadn’t slept more than four hours at a time since they’d left Newport?
“I’m picking strawberries,”
