It irritated her, that arm, and she inched away from him as far as she dared. Only once had Tom Carberry presumed to act this high-handedly with her, and she’d smacked him so hard with her fan that Newport spoke of nothing else for a week. She wasn’t about to make a scene like that now, not with the threat of the constable hanging over her head as long as they remained in port, but still Michel had no right to act as though he owned her.
Michel felt how she stiffened and pulled away from him. What the devil was she doing now?
“This is my wife’s first voyage, so you must excuse her if she seems somewhat anxious,” he explained for Hay’s benefit. Benefit, mordieu. What he wanted to do was toss the mate over the side for grinning like a shovel-faced English ape at Jerusa. “She’ll be less skittish once we’re under way.”
Skittish, indeed, thought Jerusa irritably as she refused to let Michel catch her eye. She’d show him skittish!
“Your first voyage, Mrs. Geary?” said Hay with far too much interest to please Michel. “Well, now, you couldn’t have chosen a pleasanter passage to make, or a sweeter vessel to sail in! Once we pick up the southerly currents, the Swan will be as gentle as a skiff on a pond.”
“You’re vastly reassuring, Mr. Hay,” said Jerusa sweetly, tipping her head to one side as she smiled at him. “My husband, you see, assures me that the best way to control my fears is to keep myself as free as possible of the detail of sailing. I know you’ll find it hard to countenance, Mr. Hay, being a gentleman of the sea like yourself, but I do not even know our destination, beyond that it is to the south!”
Hay scratched the back of his head beneath his hat and frowned. “What is there to fear in a place like Bridgetown?” he asked. “To be sure, some of the other islands might seem a bit untamed to a lady, but being under King George’s rule, Barbados is little different from Connecticut itself.”
Bridgetown! In amazement she turned to look at Michel. Her grandparents had lived on Barbados, on a hillside only a few miles from Bridgetown itself, and their sugar plantation was still run in the Sparhawk name. And her own mother and father had fallen in love there; even Michel knew that.
But could he really be doing this for her? If he truly couldn’t take her home to Newport as she had asked, was he instead taking her to the next best place?
“Yes, my dear, Bridgetown,” he said evenly. But his gaze never left Hay’s, and to her dismay, Jerusa could feel the tension already simmering between these two, tension she’d purposefully—and foolishly—fed. “I remembered how much you’ve always wished to visit your cousins there.”
Hay turned again toward Jerusa. “So you’ve family on Barbados, Mrs. Geary? I can assure you that—”
“You must have other duties to attend to, Hay,” said Michel curtly. “We’ll trouble you no longer. Has our dunnage been carried to our cabin?”
“Aye, aye, Mr. Geary, it has.” Automatically Hay responded to the authority in Michel’s voice, straightening to attention for him as he would for his captain. “You’ll find your cabin aft near—”
“I shall find it, thank you.” Michel’s grasp around Jerusa’s waist tightened again, and this time she knew better than to resist as he guided her toward the companionway and down the narrow steps.
The space between decks was low and cramped, and reflexively Jerusa ducked beneath the low beams overhead. Though they were aft, not far from the captain’s cabin, the close space was filled with the smell of the cargo in the hold, the sharp, raw scent of hundreds of hewn white oak staves that would be fitted into barrels for the rum trade. Smoky oil lanterns hung from hooks in the beams, and Michel unfastened one and lowered it as he stopped to unlatch the paneled door to their cabin. With a loud creak the door swung open, and though Michel stepped inside to hang the lantern on another hook on the bulkhead, Jerusa stayed in the doorway, too appalled to move.
It was, she thought, less a cabin than a closet, and a tiny one at that. A single bunk like a wooden shelf, a lumpy mattress stuffed with wool, a row of blunt pegs along one bulkhead and an earthenware chamber pot were all the furnishings. Not that the cabin had space for more; by comparison, their room at the inn belonged in a palace. But how could the two of them possibly spend an entire voyage in such close quarters?
Michel dropped the saddlebag onto the bunk and pulled a small sea chest from beneath it. As he did, the brig suddenly lurched as her sails filled with wind, and Jerusa staggered and barely caught herself against the bulkhead. Awkwardly she braced herself against the motion of the ship, feeling stiff and clumsy without the sea legs that every male in her family claimed to have been born with.
And so, of course, had Michel, or so it seemed to her from the effortless way he’d adjusted to the brig’s uneven roll. It was always that way with him, she thought grudgingly, just as he would have a sea chest waiting for him on board with only an hour’s notice, just as he could magically produce horses and calimanco gowns and baths in country inns. Nothing like that surprised her anymore.
Unlocking the chest with a key from his pocket, he glanced back over his shoulder at Jerusa.
“It’s a little late to turn overnice now, ma chérie,” he said as he began to transfer the contents of the bag into the chest. “This or the Seabrook gaol—those were your choices.”
Slowly she entered, closing the door behind her. “It’s only that I didn’t expect anything quite this small.”
“Believe me, Miss Sparhawk, there’s plenty worse,” he said without turning. “Or do all the berths on your papa’s ships come with feather beds and looking glasses?”
She looked at his back, feeling the sting of that “Miss Sparhawk” far more than his offhanded scorn. He hadn’t called her that since before the fire. Why, she wondered miserably, had he begun again?
“I’m glad we’re going to Barbados,” she began, hoping to set things to rights between them. “Though I’m sorry that I tricked Mr. Hay into telling me.”
“The Swan is going to Barbados,” he said curtly. “You and I are not. We’ll stay in Bridgetown only until I can find us passage to St-Pierre.”
“But that’s Martinique,” she said with dismay. “That’s French.”
“And so, Miss Sparhawk, am I.”
She didn’t need reminding, any more than she needed to be told she was English. Martinique was his home, not hers. She would have no friends there, no one to turn to except for Michel himself. Was this the reason he was being so cold to her? Because he no longer had to pretend otherwise?
Morbleu, why didn’t she speak? Michel hated it when she fell silent like this, keeping herself away from him. But then, maybe he’d already heard enough in the way she’d said “French” or the fact that she hadn’t bothered to hide her disappointment that they were headed for Martinique instead of Barbados. And worst of all was how she’d simpered before Hay, fluttering her lashes at the Englishman as bold as any light skirt in a tavern.
He’d let himself believe that things had changed between them, that she’d turned to him from affection, not just need. But in her blood she was still a Sparhawk, and in her eyes he would never be more than a baseborn Frenchman. It was his own fault to dream otherwise. Fool that he was, he’d come to care too much.
And
