before, Mr. Hay, you had to guess whether this gun was loaded and primed or not,” she said, her raised voice almost giddy. “You can guess again if it pleases you, or you can leave again. But remember that either way I have nothing to lose.”
He stared down at the gun, then at her, before he backed away. “Then damn you to hell, Miss Sparhawk. You and the Frenchman both!”
This time he didn’t bother to slam the door when he left, and Jerusa had to put all her weight behind her shoulder to force it closed against the wind and spray that were sweeping down the passage.
“Rusa, chère.”
Jerusa whipped around. Michel was sitting up in the bunk, watching her.
She ran to him, the pistol swinging clumsily in her hand as she threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Michel, you’re alive! Thank God you didn’t die, and, oh, Michel, how much I love you!”
“Then put down the pistol before you kill me.” He smiled weakly as she pulled away to drop the gun onto the bed. “Now, what is happening, ma mie? What did Hay want now?”
“He wanted me to come with him in the boat,” she explained breathlessly. “He said the Swan is sinking, and he wanted me to leave you behind and go with him.”
His smile vanished, his face drawn and serious as he listened to the groans of the dying ship. “Then go to him now, ma bien-aimée. Hurry, before it’s too late.” Briefly he lifted her fingers to his lips before he returned his hand to her, gently pushing her away. “I would not have you die because of me. Au revoir, ma mie.”
“No, Michel, I won’t do it!” she cried, her eyes filling. “He couldn’t make me leave without you, and neither can you. Why do you think I had your gun?”
He stared at her with disbelief. “You threatened him?”
She grinned through her tears. “I did the same thing you did. If he’d challenged me and the pistol hadn’t fired, I suppose he could have hauled me off with him the way he wished, but otherwise—well, he didn’t choose to trust me, either.”
“Oh, Rusa.” His smile was tight, and if she hadn’t known better she would have thought that he, too, was close to tears. “Perhaps we truly do deserve each other.”
“Then maybe there’s a place in that boat for us both.” Now that he was back with her, the storm seemed less frightening. If he wasn’t ready to die, then she wasn’t, either, and together they would find a way to safety. “Do you think you can walk?”
“As well as anyone can on board a sinking ship, chère.” He shoved back the coverlet and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk. With Jerusa’s help he was able to reach the steps, and by the time they had fought their way against the wind to the deck itself, by will alone he was supporting her as much as she was him as they huddled in the companionway, shielding themselves from the full force of the wind.
As much as Jerusa had guessed at the havoc the storm had caused during the long afternoon and night, she still was unprepared for the sight of the wreck that the Swan had become. The shattered stump was all that remained of the mainmast, and along with the mast itself and all the sails and lines, the starboard rail had also gone over the side. The brig had settled low into the water and the waves broke and washed freely across her now, sweeping everything else away and leaving the deck oddly empty.
Empty of lines and rope, buckets and hatch covers, and empty, too, of any other people except for them. The davits that lowered the boats to the water were empty, also, and with a desperate disappointment, Jerusa realized that George Hay had kept his word and abandoned her and Michel to die together aboard the sinking brig.
But Michel was pointing in the other direction, over the bow. Through the blowing rain and spray Jerusa could just make out a long, shadowy shape on the horizon, land that seemed to be creeping closer every second. No, they were racing toward it, decided Jerusa, and abruptly they stopped. With an impact that tossed them both back down the steps, the Swan was hurled against an outcrop of rocks so large that it was almost an island, and then stayed there, her hull wedged awkwardly between the two largest rocks.
“Hurry, Rusa,” shouted Michel urgently as they climbed back to the deck. “There’s no guessing how long she’ll hold.”
Hand in hand they ran across the deck, now strangely still beneath their feet, forward to the bow. The island Michel had first spotted remained a tantalizing distance across the water, though exactly how far—a hundred yards, two hundred?— Jerusa couldn’t guess. He drew her to the very edge of the deck, where the rail had been before it had been washed away. Below them the bow hung free over open water, beyond the rocks that trapped the hull.
Michel cupped his hand around Jerusa’s ear so she could hear him. “If we stay on board the Swan, she’ll only break up around us, ma chérie. But if we can reach the island, we’ll have a chance of it.”
His eyes were bright with excitement, his whole body so alive with the challenge of what lay before them that she couldn’t believe she’d feared he would die. Not Michel, she thought with boundless happiness, not today.
“I love you, Michel Géricault!” she shouted, as much for the world to hear as for him.
He grinned back at her, his hand tight around hers and the wild daring in his eyes that she’d come to know as his. “And I love you, Jerusa Sparhawk!” he shouted back. “Now jump!” And with a wild, joyous whoop, she did.
Chapter Seventeen
“Jerusa?”
Michel rolled over on the sand, automatically reaching for the pistol at his waist that wasn’t there. But Jerusa wasn’t there, either. All that was left were the prints from her bare feet and the sweeping marks where her skirts had dragged across the sand. But mordieu, where could she have gone? She had been there beside him when they’d finally crawled from the surf, and she’d been curled beneath his arm after they’d collapsed here, high up on the beach where the palms would shelter them.
“Jerusa!” Unsteadily he rose first to his knees, then his feet, using the palm for support as his gaze swept up and down the empty beach. His gun was gone but his knife had somehow remained in its salt-stiffened sheath, and he drew it now, straining his ears for sound. He was light-headed from hunger and swallowing too much seawater and the lingering weakness of the fever, and the last thing he wished to do was to track her down, wherever she’d wandered off to.
Unless she hadn’t wandered off at all. Unless the beach wasn’t as uninhabited as it first had seemed, and while he’d been asleep like some great useless slug, some other man had come along to claim her. Unless…
“Oh, good, Michel, you’re awake!” She came bounding toward him through the tall grass at the edge of the heavier forest, her bedraggled skirts looped up over her long legs and a small bunch of yellow-green bananas, still attached to their stem, tucked under her arm. “Look what I’ve found!”
“You shouldn’t have gone off on your own like that, ma mie,” he cautioned. He might feel like the wrong end of a sailor’s leave, but she certainly didn’t. “You don’t know who
