you too distraught to act, or you can sit here like a lump of suet, waiting until he decides exactly how he’ll avenge himself on your miserable self!
She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then another. In a way he’d already made her escape easier. In a seaport town such as this one, she’d have a good chance of finding someone who would know her father or brothers, and dressed as she was now, she’d have an easier time of convincing them she really was who she claimed to be.
Briskly she gathered her hair off her shoulders and tied it back with the green ribbon, trying not to remember the pleasant intimacy of having Michel comb it for her. She’d let herself be drawn into his games long enough, she told herself fiercely. It was high time she remembered she was Jerusa Sparhawk and stop playing at being this mythical Mrs. Geary.
She bent to buckle her shoes, and smiled when she noticed he’d left his saddlebag on the floor beside the bed. Though Michel might have been born poor, he certainly didn’t seem to want for money now, and whenever he’d paid for things he’d taken the coins from a leather pouch inside the saddlebag. She didn’t mean to rob him exactly, but after he’d kidnapped her, she couldn’t see the harm in borrowing a few coins now to help ease her journey home.
Swiftly she unbuckled the straps and looked inside. The contents were the usual for a man who was traveling—three changes of shirts and stockings, a compass, an envelope of tobacco, a striker and a white clay pipe, soap and a razor, one of the pistols plus the gunpowder and balls it needed.
Gingerly she lifted the gun with both hands, considering whether to take it, too. It was heavier than the pistols her father had taught her to fire, the barrel as long as her forearm, the flintlock polished and oiled with the professional care of a man who knew his life depended on it. Reluctantly she laid the gun back into the bottom of the bag. There was no way a woman could carry a weapon like that, at least not concealed, and if she wished to slip away unobtrusively, holding a pistol in both hands before her as she walked through the town would hardly be the way to do it.
She ran her fingertips along the saddlebag’s lining, searching for an opening that might hide the pouch with the money. She found a promising oval lump and eased it free. But instead of the pouch full of coins, the lump turned out to be a flat package wrapped in chamois. Curiosity made her open it, and inside lay a small portrait on ivory, framed in brass, of a black-haired young woman. Her heart-shaped face was turned winsomely toward the painter, her lips curved in a smile and her finely drawn brows arched in perennial surprise, which seemed to Jerusa very French.
Carefully she turned the portrait over, but there was no name or inscription on the back that might give her a clue of the pretty sitter’s identity. Not that she really needed one. Clearly the woman must be Michel’s sweetheart if he carried her picture with him. Whoever she was, she was welcome to him, decided Jerusa firmly as she wrapped the chamois back over the portrait. More than welcome, really, she thought with a sniff. So why did she feel this odd little pang of regret when she remembered how he’d smiled when he’d kissed her?
The rapping on the door was sharp and deliberate, startling her so much that she dropped the picture into the bag.
“Mrs. Geary, ma’am?” called the maidservant that Jerusa recognized as one of Mrs. Cartwright’s daughters. “Mrs. Geary, ma’am, are you within?”
“I’ll be there directly.” With haste born of guilt, Jerusa shoved the picture back into the lining of the bag and rebuckled the straps to make it look the way she’d found it. Swiftly she rose to her feet, smoothing her hair as she went to open the door.
The girl bobbed as much a curtsy as she dared with a tray laden with a teapot, sugar, cream and a plate full of sliced bread and butter in her outstretched arms.
“Compliments of me mother, ma’am,” she said as she squeezed past Jerusa. “Since Mr. Geary said to hold your supper for half past eight on account of him returning late, we thought in the kitchen you might get to feeling a mite peckish waiting for him.”
“Mr. Geary’s business can occupy considerable time,” ventured Jerusa, praying she’d sound convincing, “but he didn’t tell me he’d be so late this particular day.”
“Oh, aye, he told me mother not to bother looking for him afore nightfall.” Bending from the waist, the girl thumped the tray down onto the floor while she cleared away the wash pitcher and candlestick from the washstand for a makeshift tea table. “I expect he didn’t tell you so you wouldn’t worry over him. He’s a fine, considerate gentleman, your husband is.”
“He is a most rare gentleman,” said Jerusa, barely containing her excitement. If he wasn’t expected back until evening, then she’d have plenty of time to make her escape. “Did he say anything else before he left?”
“Nay, ma’am, save that you was to have whatever you desired.” Squinting at the uneven table, the girl squared the tray on its top as best she could and then stood back, her arms stiffly at her side. She cleared her throat self-consciously. “Would you like me to pour for you, Mrs. Geary? Me mother wants me to learn gentry’s ways so I can do for the gentlefolk.”
“Why, yes, thank you,” murmured Jerusa. “That would be most kind.”
She swept into the room’s only chair, gracefully fanning her skirts about her legs in her most genteel fashion for the girl’s benefit. Though she didn’t have the heart to tell her that, in the households of the better sort, ladies preferred to pour their own tea, regardless of how many servants they kept, she did want to hear what else the girl might be coaxed into volunteering.
The girl bit the tip of her tongue as she concentrated on pouring the tea without spilling it. “Much as me mother would wish it otherways, we don’t get much custom from the gentry,” she confided once the tea was safely into Jerusa’s cup. “‘Tis mostly sea captains and supercargos of the middling sort, tradesmen with goods bound for other towns, and military gentlemen rich enough to pay their way. Rovers and wanderers, ma’am, though me mother tries her best to sort out the rogues among ‘em afore they stay.”
Jerusa took the offered teacup with a nod of thanks and added a sprinkle of sugar to the tea before she poured it from the cup into the saucer to cool. “But in my experience it’s always the travelers who tell the most amusing tales.”
The girl snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh, aye, ma’am, and some ripe ones I’ve heard, particularly when the gentlemen fall into their cups! Mermaids and serpents great as this house, oceans made of fire and land that shivers like a custard pudding beneath your feet, all of it, ma’am, the fancies of rum and whiskey.”
Jerusa lowered her gaze to the saucer of tea, tracing one finger idly around the rim. “I fear that what Mr. Geary and I have heard in our travels has been much less wondrous and far more gossip. A man whose house had been struck by lightning five times, another mad with grief over the death of his sons.”
She paused, daring herself to speak the last. “And, oh, yes, the bride carried off from her own wedding.”
“Lud, a bride, you say?” The girl’s eyes widened with fascination. “I haven’t heard that one afore! Do you judge it true, or only more barkeep’s claptrap?”
“Who’s to say?” said Jerusa, realizing too late that the offhanded shrug of her shoulders was pure Michel. “But I wonder that you’ve not heard it yourself here in Seabrook. They say the lady was from one of the best families in Newport, a great beauty and much admired, and that she vanished without a word of warning from her parents’ own garden, not a fortnight past.”
“Nay,
