she had to do was get away from him.
“I don’t feel quite well,” she announced, praying she sounded convincing. “Whatever smelling stuffs you used to force me to sleep—I fear they’ve made me ill.”
He sighed with exasperation. “If you’re going to be sick, then use that bucket by the stall. Don’t foul the straw if you can help it.”
“It’s not that,” she said quickly. She felt herself blushing furiously from excitement, fear and embarrassment. “It’s that I must use the privy.”
He muttered to himself in French, and though she didn’t understand the words, Jerusa knew well enough that he was swearing.
She bent over from the waist, rubbing her stomach. “Truly. If you please, I must go.”
“You’re not going alone.” With another sigh he leaned forward to pull on his boots.
Jerusa saw her chance and seized it. She raced to the barn door, shoved it open just enough to slip through and raced outside. Swiftly she pushed the door shut and threw the long swinging bolt into the latches, barricading the Frenchman inside. With a little laugh of giddy exhilaration she turned and ran, away from the barn, the privy and the burned-out ruin of a house. She didn’t recognize the farm, or what was left of it, but that didn’t matter. Before her, to the east, lay the pewter gray of the water, and her salvation.
Without buckles, her shoes flapped awkwardly around her heels, and she kicked them away, and when the wind dragged the heavy blanket from her grasp and off her shoulders, she left that, too, behind, running as fast as she could down the narrow, overgrown path to the shore. One last windblown rise lay before her, then the sharp drop to the beach. She slipped and skidded on the wet grass and tall reeds lashed at her legs, but still she ran, her tattered skirts fluttering around her in the wind. The path turned to sand beneath the ruined stockings on her feet, and before her, at last, were the beach and the wide river that emptied into the bay.
Or was it? Confused, she paced back and forth along the water’s edge, trying to make sense of what she saw. The sinking sun to the west was behind her, so this should be the eastern shore of Aquidneck, with Portsmouth across the river in the distance.
But this short, sandy beach was all wrong, the distance to Portsmouth too far across the water. Jerusa shaded her eyes with the back of her hand and squinted at the horizon. Instead of the narrow tip of Sakonnet Point, which she expected, she saw what looked like two islands: Conanicut Island then, with Dutch beyond to the north, and a barren lump of stone that must be Whale Rock.
And there, to the east, washed in the pale light of the setting sun, was Aquidneck Island, and Newport.
“Newport,” she whispered hoarsely, the full impact of what she saw striking her like a blow. She wasn’t on her island any longer. She was on the mainland, an endless, friendless world that before she’d only seen from a distance, the same way that she was now gazing at her home. Her home, her family, her own darling Tom, all so hopelessly far beyond her reach. “God help me, if that’s Newport, then where am I?”
“Aye, ask your God to help you,” said the Frenchman roughly, “for you’ll have precious little from me.”
She turned slowly, rubbing away the tears that wet her cheeks before he could see them. His face was taut with fury, his blond hair untied and blowing wild around his face, and the pistol in his hand was primed and cocked and aimed at her breast.
“Don’t try to run again, ma chère,” he said so quietly she almost didn’t hear him over the sounds of the wind and the waves. “I’d far sooner keep you alive, but I won’t balk at killing you if you leave me no choice. I told you before, it’s you I want, Jerusa Sparhawk. Alive or dead, it’s you, and nothing else.”
Chapter Three
Joshua Sparhawk watched as his father, Gabriel, ran his fingers over the crumpled paper with the black fleur de lis. How many times, wondered Josh, how many times had his father touched that scrap of paper since Jerusa had disappeared last night?
“I just spoke with the leader of the last patrol, Father,” he said wearily, tossing his hat onto the bench beneath the window. “They’ve searched clear to Newport Neck and back again and found not a trace of her.”
“Not that I expected they would.” Gabriel sighed heavily as he sank back against the tall caned back of his chair. Though his black hair had only just begun to gray at the temples and his broad shoulders remained unbent, he would be sixty next spring, and, for the first time that Josh could remember, his formidable father actually looked his age. “Whoever took her is long gone by now.”
Once again he glanced down at the paper that was centered squarely on the top of the desk before him. To one side lay Jerusa’s jewelry, her necklace, ring and earbobs tucked within the stiff circle of the pearl cuff. On the other side was the pink rose in a tumbler of water, the fragile flower’s petals already drooping and edged with brown, an unhappy symbol for the Sparhawk family’s fading hopes.
“But we had to be sure, Father.” Josh frowned, unwilling to share Gabriel’s pessimism. If the black fleur de lis held some special significance, then he wished his father would share it with the rest of them. He still couldn’t quite believe that Rusa was gone, that she wouldn’t yet pop up from behind a chair to laugh at them for being such hopeless worrywarts. “There was still a chance we’d find her somewhere on the island. They had at most an hour’s start on us. How far could they go?”
“Halfway to hell, if they had a good wind.” Gabriel glared up at Josh from beneath the bristling thicket of his brows, the famous green eyes that he’d passed on to his children as bright and formidable as ever. “I told you before that the bastards came by water, and left by it, too.”
Unconsciously Josh clasped his hands behind his back, his legs spread wide in the defensive posture he’d used since boyhood to confront his father. He was doing his best to find his sister; they all were. But Father being Father and Jerusa being the one missing, even Josh’s best would never be enough.
“You know as well as I that we’ve checked with the harbormaster and the pilots, Father. We’ve stopped and boarded every vessel that cleared Newport since last night, and we’ve still come up empty-handed.”
“Oh, aye, as if these bloody kidnappers will haul aback because we’ve asked them nicely, then invite us all aboard for tea!” In frustration Gabriel slammed his fist on the desk. “They knew what they were about, the sneaking, thieving rogues. They slipped into town just long enough to steal my sweet Jerusa, then slipped back out without so much as a by-your-leave. That jackass of a harbormaster was likely so deep in his cups he wouldn’t see a thirty-gun frigate sail under his nose!”
“For God’s sake, Father, they had less than an hour, and if—”
Abruptly Josh broke off at the sound of the voices in the front hall. Perhaps there was fresh news of his sister.
But instead of a messenger, only Thomas Carberry appeared at the door to Gabriel’s office, pausing as he waited vainly for Gabriel to invite him in. When Gabriel didn’t, Tom entered anyway, irritably yanking off his yellow gloves as he dropped unbidden into a chair.
Unlike the two Sparhawk men, unshaven and bleary-eyed after the long, sleepless night and day
