Sweet Almighty, hadn’t she found trouble enough with lies and deceit? Had she forgotten what it was like to tell the truth?
The man was inching closer, his hand hovering toward hers to take it. “Yer shepherd shouldn’t have let ye roam, pretty little lamb, or some great wolf might carry ye off. Or do ye be lookin’ fer another shepherd?”
Uneasily she backed away. Behind this man were a half-dozen others that were his friends, each one grinning at her like the very wolf their leader had described.
And Lord help her, she’d never felt so much like that lost lamb.
“Come along now, little lamb,” coaxed the red-haired man. “The lads an’ I will see ye be treated right proper.”
The devil take the truth. These backwater sailors wouldn’t believe it anyway. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, drawing on every bit of her mother’s training on how a lady should stand to earn the respect of others.
“I don’t need your assistance, sirrah, and I never did,” she said imperiously as she pointed to the vessel tied to the nearest dock. “I’ve business with the master of that schooner there, and I’d be obliged if you would let me pass so I don’t keep the gentleman waiting.”
Briefly the man glanced over his shoulder and then back to her with disbelief written over every feature. “Ye have business wit’ old man Perkins? A sweet little lass such as ye wit’ him?”
“Captain Perkins’s age has no bearing on my business,” she said primly as she read the schooner’s name on her quarter-board. “All you need know is that I’m expected directly on board the Hannah Barlow.”
Crestfallen, the man shook his head as he and the others shuffled from her path. “It be beyond my reason,” he muttered unhappily. “A pretty lass wit’ old Perkins.”
Amazed though Jerusa was that her bluff had worked, she still couldn’t resist giving her skirts an extra flick as she walked past them. How Michel would have laughed to see the hangdog looks on their faces after they’d swallowed her story about this Captain Perkins!
But her triumph was short-lived as she walked along the wharf and had her first close look at the Hannah Barlow. The gangway was unguarded, without a single crewman in sight on the deck, and cautiously Jerusa stepped aboard. Only a piebald dog with a cropped tail growled at her halfheartedly before he lowered his head and went back to sleep in a nest of old canvas beside the mainmast.
Not good signs, she thought uneasily, and wondered if she’d traded one unfortunate situation for a second that was worse. Thanks to her father and brothers, Jerusa’s knowledge of ships was far better than most women’s, and what she saw of this schooner did little to reassure her. Her paint was faded and peeling, her planking stained, her lines bunched in haphazard bundles rather than the neat coils that any conscientious captain would have demanded.
“What ye gawkin’ at, missy?” growled a man sitting slumped on the steps of the companionway. Hidden by the shadows, she’d missed him before, and from the meanness in his eyes she wished she’d missed him still. “Yer kind’s not wanted on board here. Go along, off with ye! Take yer stinkin’ trade to them who’ll buy it.”
“I’m not—not what you think,” said Jerusa with as much dignity as she could muster. “My name is Jerusa Sparhawk, of Newport in Rhode Island.”
“Oh, aye, and I’m the friggin’ royal Prince o’ Wales.” The man took another pull of the rum bottle in his hand, his gaze insolently wandering over Jerusa. “Off with ye, ye little slut, afore I set the cur on ye.”
Jerusa felt herself color at the man’s language, but she stood her ground. “I’m not leaving before I see Captain Perkins.”
“He ain’t here.” With a grunt the man pulled himself upright, swaying slightly from the rum. He was rangy and hollow eyed, his dark hair braided in a tight sailor’s queue that swung between his shoulder blades as he slowly climbed to the deck to stand before her. “And he won’t be back until he’s so bloody guzzled that the men will have to carry him aboard on a shutter.”
Jerusa sighed with impatient dismay. No wonder the other men had been so appalled that she’d call on this Captain Perkins! “Then who are you?”
“John Lovell, mate on this scow, for all it’s yer business.” He squinted at her closely. “Ye said yer name was Sparhawk? Of the Plantations?”
“Oh, yes, in Newport,” answered Jerusa excitedly. She’d never expected her savior to be so sorry a man, but he was the first she’d met who seemed to recognize her name. “My father is Captain Gabriel Sparhawk.”
The man studied her closely. “I’ve a mind of him. Captain Gabriel, eh? Privateerin’ bloke, weren’t he?”
Jerusa nodded, her excitement growing. “He sailed in both the Spanish and French wars.”
“Did sharp enough to set hisself up as regular guinea-gold gentry, didn’t he? I seen him once paradin’ about Bridgetown, fine as a rum lord.” His eyes glittered beneath their heavy lids. “Ye have the look of him, missy, right enough. But what the devil would his daughter be doin’ here on her lonesome in Seabrook?”
“I was kidnapped by a Frenchman who wishes to hurt my father for—for something he did in the last war,” she explained, unable to bring herself to repeat Michel’s justification. “He’s made me ride all across the countryside here to Seabrook, but this has been the first time he’s left me alone long enough to escape.”
“Hauled ye about, has he?” He smiled, looking her over again and noting her new gown. Half his teeth were broken off, and the stubs that remained were brown from tobacco. “Ye don’t look like ye suffered overmuch.”
“I haven’t exactly,” she said hurriedly, not wishing to discuss such details. “At least not in the worst ways a woman can suffer.”
Lovell grunted and drank again from the bottle, and from his expression, Jerusa was sure he was busy inventing all the details she’d omitted.
“Kidnappin’ should earn that Frenchman a trip to the gallows,” he said. “Don’t ye want to swear against him with the constable so’s ye can see him dance his jig on a rope for what he done to ye?”
She could picture the scene all too easily. Michel at the gallows with his hands pinioned, his white shirt and gold hair tossing in the wind as the hangman slipped the noose over his head, her stern-faced father at the center of the crowd waiting for justice to be done, and she herself—no, she wouldn’t be there. How could she bear to witness his hanging, knowing she’d killed him as surely as if she’d put a pistol to his head and fired? Once she’d wanted nothing better, but now the idea alone sickened her.
And how could it be otherwise? Unlike Michel, revenge held no charms for her. Whatever had begun with their fathers must end here, with them.
“I cannot wait the time it would take for the Frenchman to be captured and tried,” she said with only half the truth. “I’m free of him now, and that’s what matters most to me.”
Skeptically Lovell turned his head to look at her sideways and then spat over the schooner’s side. “Seems to me, missy, that ye shall lose a powerfully fine chance to rid the world of one more bloody Frenchy.”
She
