ill humor alone Michel briefly considered firing them over her head, but instead merely uncocked them and shoved them back into his belt.
Her grin widened, and she tossed a berry high into the air, meaning to catch it in her mouth the way Josh did. But because she kept her eyes on Michel, not on the berry, her catch became more of a grab, and instead of landing the berry neatly in her open mouth, she managed to crush it with her fingers against her lips. She gulped and giggled as the red juice dripped from her mouth and between her white fingers.
“They’re very good, and vastly better than your moldy old cheese,” she managed to say, still laughing. “Very sweet.”
He was willing to wager his soul no berry could be as sweet as her lips would be to kiss. Her skirts gathered up to hold the berries in her lap gave him a tantalizing glimpse of her legs, clear to her garters, and even in mud-splattered white thread stockings, her calves and ankles were shapely enough to make him want to ease her skirts higher, above the smooth skin of her bare thighs until he might—
Morbleu, had she any idea of what she was doing to him? If he’d any sense at all he’d take her by the arm and drag her back to the house and the horses and they’d ride until they reached Seabrook. Until he’d be too exhausted to even consider what his body was now begging him to do.
Hell, they’d be shoveling dirt onto his coffin and he’d still want her.
“Now it’s your turn to catch, Mr. Géricault,” ordered Jerusa, “and pray you do better than I.”
She wasn’t surprised that the Frenchman caught the berry in his hand, not his mouth, for she couldn’t imagine him willingly doing anything that might make him look foolish. He never would. Men as dangerous as this one didn’t take risks like that. He didn’t even laugh. For that matter, she hadn’t laughed with him, either, at least not until just now. Why should she, considering what he’d done—no, what he was still doing—to her life.
But sitting here in a strawberry patch with the warm sunshine to ease her fears, Michel Géricault suddenly seemed less of a monster and more of a man. Only a man, she thought with new determination, and she’d yet to meet a man she couldn’t dazzle if she set her mind to it. Could he really be any different? Perhaps if she could beguile him into trusting her, he’d let down his guard long enough for her to escape.
She tossed another berry to him, and again he caught it, but this time as he bit into the fruit he smiled, a lazy, knowing smile, white teeth against his dark new beard, a smile that was more disconcerting than all his threats and guns combined. He would never be as handsome as Tom, but when he smiled, his face lost much of its hard edge and his eyes warmed, the blue reminding her more of a summer sky than winter.
With sudden shyness she ducked her chin, but still watched him from beneath the shadow of her lashes. He was the one who was supposed to be dazzled, not her. But for him to smile like that, maybe even he had felt the magic of this June morning.
“You know, Mr. Géricault,” she began, “I could keep casting berries at you one by one all day. It’s rather like feeding a goose.”
As if to demonstrate, she tossed one more berry to him and clapped her hands when he caught this one, too. Yet she noticed how his eyes narrowed a fraction with a predator’s watchful interest, and she realized how much he mistrusted even her playfulness.
Only a man, she reminded herself fiercely. He was only a man….
She forced herself to smile as brilliantly as she could. “But I do think, Mr. Géricault, we’d both find it a good deal more agreeable if I give you half of what I’ve picked all in a lot. Then we could sit on the wall and eat them in a halfway civilized manner at the very least.”
What, he wondered cynically, was sprinkled on those berries to make her change her tune so abruptly? Oh, he liked it—he liked it just fine—but she was woefully mistaken if she thought he’d turn her loose for a few smiles and fluttered lashes. She might have been the reigning belle of her provincial little Yankee town, but beside the Frenchwomen he’d known, who’d raised flirtation to an art, she was only one more green, country virgin.
He held out his hand to her and helped her to her feet, enjoying her surprise at his gallantry. Her hand was so small in his, fine boned and fragile, exactly the kind of well-bred hand she would have, and he held it a fraction longer than he should, just long enough to disconcert her into tugging it away.
“As you wish, Miss Sparhawk,” he said, trying not to stare at the way the berries had stained her mouth such a vivid, seductive red. “Not that a stone wall will be much warmer than the ground.”
“Fine words, those, after you’ve made me sleep on the ground!” She perched on the wall, carefully keeping her skirt bunched to hold the berries.
“There was musty straw one night, too, as I recall.” He sat beside her, close enough that her skirts ruffled against his thigh, and close enough, too, that her eyes widened uneasily. But she didn’t move away, and to his amusement he wondered which one of them had won that particular point. “Yet I’ll agree, ma belle, that the accommodations haven’t exactly been fit for a lady.”
Only a man, thought Jerusa as she struggled to keep her composure. Only a man, even if he insists in practically sitting in my lap!
Swiftly she reached up to pluck his hat from his head and began to scoop his share of the strawberries into the crown. “Then I suppose I must be thankful it’s summer, not December or January, else my bed would be a snowbank.”
“Ah, but consider, ma belle, that June in New England must be equal to December in most other places.” He took his hat from her with a slight nod of thanks, as if he’d always used it as a serving bowl. That one, he thought wryly, he’d concede to her. “In Martinique a day like this would make the ladies run for their shawls and huddle next to a fire.”
Her green eyes lit with genuine interest. “Is that where your home is? Martinique?”
“It has been,” he said, purposefully noncommittal and already regretting that he’d volunteered as much as he had. “I’ve traveled many places, ma chérie, and seen many things.”
“Men can do that, can’t they?” Slowly she began to pull the leaves of the hull from the berry in her hands. Unlike every other man she’d known, this one didn’t talk incessantly about himself. Could he really have that much to hide? “And have you a wife to keep your home in Martinique, Mr. Géricault?”
The idea alone struck Michel as so ridiculous that he didn’t bother denying it. “You’re an inquisitive little soul, Jerusa Sparhawk.”
“Well, and why not? You already know everything there is to know about me.”
“Ah, but that’s much of my trade, ma chérie,” he said lightly. He could tell her that much, for she’d never understand. “Soldier-man, sailor-man, beggar-man, thief—I’ve tried them all, and more besides. Now I trade in secrets. For kings or governors, rich men or merely desperate ones.”
“You’re a mercenary?”
“I do the things that others haven’t the courage to do. For a price, of course.”
Again he flashed that lazy smile that made her wonder if he’d invented it all to tease her. It could be true; she’d certainly heard worse nonsense from men, and at
