my way I won’t turn my back, either.”
“You would never have succeeded!” she said hotly, insulted by his confidence. She might have been disarmed by his smile in the garden, but not now. “The Portsmouth Road isn’t Hounslow Heath! If the coachman hadn’t shot you dead, then you can be sure that Tom himself would have defended my honor!”
He cocked one brow with amusement. “What a pity we didn’t have the chance to test his mettle, ma petite. You could have been a maid, a wife and a widow in one short day.”
She opened her lips to answer, then pressed them together again with her rebuttal left unspoken as she realized the reality of what he’d said. Tom was the most genteel man she’d ever met, a gentleman down to the cut-steel buckles on his polished shoes. His elegance was one of the things she loved most about him, perhaps because it made Tom so different from her wilder, seafaring brothers.
But that same gentility wouldn’t have lasted a moment against the Frenchman. He might not kill her, but somehow she didn’t doubt that he would have murdered her darling Tom if he’d raised even his voice to defend her. He would be dead, and she would still be a prisoner.
She laid the bread on the bench beside her, the crust now as dry as dust in her mouth. A maid, a wife, a widow. Thank God she’d gone to the garden, after all. That single, pink rose might have saved Tom’s life, and under her breath she whispered a little prayer for him.
Michel watched how the girl seemed to wilt before his eyes. Perhaps she truly did love Carberry, though how any woman could lose her heart to such a self-centered ass was beyond reason. He’d seen Carberry only once from a distance, waving a handkerchief trimmed with more lace than a lady’s petticoat as he climbed into his carriage, but that glimpse had been enough to turn Michel’s stomach with disgust. Merde, he wouldn’t have had to waste the gunpowder on that one; more likely Carberry would have simply fainted dead away on his own.
Michel glanced out the window. The clouds had scattered, and the moon was rising. Time for them to be on their way.
He reached into one of the saddlebags, pulled out a bundle of dark red cloth and tossed it onto the bench beside Jerusa. “I expect you’ll wish something more serviceable for traveling. No doubt this is more common than you’re accustomed to, but there’s little place for silk and lace on the road.”
She looked up sharply. “Where are we going?”
“I told you before. South.”
“South,” she repeated, the single word expressing all her fears and frustration. “South, and south, and south again! Can’t you tell me anything?”
He watched her evenly. “Not about our destination, no.”
She snatched up the bundled clothing and hurled it back at him. “I’ll keep my own clothing, thank you, rather than undress before you.”
He caught the ball of clothing easily, as if she’d tossed it to him in play instead of in fury. “Did I ask that of you, ma chérie?”
She paused, thrown off-balance by his question. “Very well, then. Dare I ask for such a privacy? Would you trust me that far?”
His fingers tightened into the red fabric in his hands. “What reason have you given me to trust you at all?”
“Absolutely none,” she said with more than a little pride. “Not that you’ve granted me much of the same courtesy, either.”
He didn’t bother to keep the edge of irritation from his voice. “Whether it pleases you or not, Miss Jerusa, ours will not be an acquaintance based on trust of any kind.”
“I’d scarce even call this an acquaintance, considering that I’m your prisoner and you my gaoler,” she answered stubbornly, lifting her chin a fraction higher. “To my mind ‘acquaintance’ implies something more honorable than that.”
“There is, ma chère, nothing at all honorable about me.” The wolfish look in his blue eyes would have daunted a missionary. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
Heaven preserve her, how could she have missed it? “Damn you, what is it that you want?”
“I told you that before, too. I want you.”
“Want me for what?” she demanded. “For this? To haul about the countryside, to degrade and disgrace for your amusement? To—to be your mistress?”
There, she’d said it, put words to her worst fear, and the expression on the Frenchman’s handsome face did nothing to reassure her.
“You mean do I plan to force you, ma chère?” He came slowly to stand before her, his arms folded over his chest and his words an odd, musing threat. “For that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? I certainly can’t envision you, Miss Jerusa Sparhawk, the most renowned belle in your colony, cheerfully offering a man like me the pleasure of your lovely body.”
“No,” she repeated in a whisper, looking down to her hands clenched in her lap. “No.”
Her dark, tangled hair fell forward like a veil around her face to hide her shame. With a shy eagerness she had anticipated her wedding night, and the moment when at last she would be free to love Tom as his wife. Once their betrothal had been announced, she had breathlessly allowed him all but the last freedom, so that it had been easy enough to imagine their lovemaking in the big bed in his father’s Middletown house.
“No.”
But there would be no bliss in having her maidenhead ravished by a stranger, no poetry or whisper-soft kisses in a bed with lavender-scented sheets, none of Tom’s tenderness or gentle touches to ease her nervousness.
All because, worst of all, there would be no love.
He took another step closer, his boots rustling the straw. “So then, ma chérie,” he asked, “your modest question is, Did I steal you away with the intention of raping you?”
Though dreading his answer, still she nodded, afraid to trust her voice. She knew she must not weep or beg for mercy, no matter that her heart was pounding and her breath was tight in her chest from fear. He was so much stronger, his power coiled tight and ready as a cat’s, that she knew full well he could do to her whatever he chose. Here, alone as she was, far from friends and family, how could it be otherwise?
Her head bowed, and every nerve on edge, she waited, and waited longer. When finally she could bear it no more and dared to raise her head, his face was bewilderingly impassive.
“If that is your question, Miss Sparhawk, then my answer, too, is no,” he said quietly. “You’re safe from me. The world is full enough of women who come to me willingly that I’ve never found reason or pleasure to do otherwise.”
Stunned, Jerusa stared at him. “Then you don’t—don’t want that of me?”
“I said I wouldn’t force you to lie with me, not that I didn’t wish to.” Again he held out the bundle of clothing to her. “Now go dress yourself, there beyond the horses, before I decide otherwise.”
Her eyes still full of uncertainty, Jerusa slowly took the rough clothing from him. “But why?” she asked. “Why else would you—”
