style="font-size:15px;"> Clutching the clothing to her chest, she rose to her feet and nodded, as if his explanation made perfect sense. As she walked past him he saw that she held her head high as any duchess, heedless of the ripped stockings on her bare feet or the tattered skirt that fluttered around her ankles. No, he decided, not like a duchess but a Sparhawk, for in her mind that would be better.
He watched as she went to the far end of the barn, to the last stall, and turned her back to him. She was tall for a woman, and the rough deal stall shielded her only as high as her shoulders. In preparation she draped the rough skirt and bodice and the plain white stockings he’d given her over the side of the stall, and then bent over, out of Michel’s sight, as she untied her petticoats and stepped out of them.
Out of his sight, perhaps, but not his imagination. With a clarity that was almost painful he envisioned the rounded shape of her hips as she dropped the layers of skirts, the long, shapely length of her legs as she shook them free of the crumpled linen.
Oh, he wanted her, that was true enough. Sacristi, he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her climb through the window into the garden. But forbidden fruit always seems sweetest, and Jerusa Sparhawk was a plump piece treacherously beyond his reach.
Morbleu, would he ever have agreed to this, given half a chance to refuse?
He thought of the last time he’d seen his mother before he’d sailed north to New England. The nurse he paid to watch her had tried to warn him at the door that Antoinette was unwell, but his mother had overheard the woman’s whispers and hurled herself at Michel like a wild animal, her jealousy and madness once again swirling out of control.
It took him until nightfall to calm her, his soft-voiced reassurances as crucial to her fragile peace as the opium draft she could no longer live without. The doctor had come, too, with his wig askew and the burgundy sauce from his interrupted supper specklng the front of his shirt. He had clucked and watched as his leeches had grown fat and sleek on Antoinette’s pale forearm.
“You must heed the warnings, Monsieur Géricault,” whispered the doctor with dark gravity. “When your travels take you away, she is inconsolable. Her passions can no longer be contained by one caretaker alone, and I fear, monsieur, that she will bring harm to others as well as herself. If you will but consider the care of the holy sisters and their asylum—”
“It would kill her,” said Michel softly, gently stroking his mother’s brow so her heavy-lidded eyes would flutter shut. “As surely as if you put a pistol to her forehead, this place you speak of would kill her.”
“But, monsieur, I must beg you—”
“No,” said Michel with unquestionable finality. “My mother gave everything she had for me, and now that I can, I will do the same for her.”
Later, much later, when the doctor had left and the nurse had gone to the apothecary for more of the opiate in the thick blue bottle, when Antoinette’s breathing had lost its ragged desperation and her ravaged face had softened with sleep, Michel had sat by her bed in the dark and told her all he would do in her name to Gabriel Sparhawk and his sons.
And somehow Antoinette had struggled her way through the haze of the drug and her own unsettled mind to hear him. Weakly she had shifted her head toward his voice, her face made more ghostly by the mosquito netting that shrouded her bed.
“The girl,” she rasped. “You will take the girl who is to be wed.”
Michel stopped, wondering if he’d imagined it.
“The Sparhawk girl, Michel. Bring the little virgin bride here to Martinique, to me.”
He hadn’t heard her voice sound this lucid in years. But what she asked—dear Lord, what sense did that make?
“What would you want with her, Maman? “he asked gently. “It’s the old man you want to destroy, the captain and his sons. Why waste your vengeance on some petulant little girl?”
“Because you will rob her of her marriage and her happiness the same way her father stole mine from me.” Her dark eyes glittered, though whether with tears or anticipation, Michel couldn’t tell. “What you do to the men will be for your father’s honor, Michel. But what sorrow you bring to this girl will satisfy mine.”
Michel sighed, his interest quickening as he watched the girl lift her arms to twist her hair into a lopsided coil, the lantern’s light caressing the rising curves of her white breasts exactly as he longed to do himself. Damnation, how would he survive the next weeks, maybe months, that they would be together?
He’d found it easy enough to agree when his mother’s request had been abstract, a faceless young woman he knew only by her family’s name and a distant, childhood memory. In a way it even made sense, for what better lure for the Sparhawk men than to carry off one of their women?
But Michel hadn’t bargained on the effect that Jerusa Sparhawk herself, in the very real flesh and blood, was having on him. It wasn’t just that he desired her—what man wouldn’t?—but, far worse, he almost felt sorry for her. And from long, bitter experience, he knew that pity was one thing he could not afford.
Especially not for the favorite daughter of Gabriel Sparhawk.
Jerusa tied the waistband on the dark skirt, smoothing the linsey-woolsey over her hips. As the Frenchman had warned, the skirt and bodice were not stylish, but the sort of sturdy garments that a prosperous farmer’s wife might wear to market. The bodice was untrimmed and loose, the square neckline modestly high, and the skirt fell straight without a flounce or ruffle to give it grace. But both were new and clean, which was more than could be said for her wedding gown.
She sighed forlornly as she looked one last time at the filthy, tattered remnants of what had been the most lavish gown ever made by a Newport seamstress. She thought of how carefully Mama and her maid had handled the fragile silk as they’d helped her dress, and against her will tears stung her eyes.
Swiftly she rubbed her sleeve against her nose, ordering herself not to cry, and reached around to undo the tight line of lacings at the back of her bodice. Twisting awkwardly, she struggled to find the end of the cording, only to discover it tied fast in a knot at the bottom eyelet. Of course the maid would have done that with the slippery silk, just to be sure. How would she have known that Jerusa would be forced to untie it herself?
Swearing under her breath, Jerusa bent her arms back and tried again. If she could only ease her thumb beneath the cord she might be able to work the knot free that way. If only—
“Let me help you,” said the Frenchman softly behind her, and she gasped as she felt his hand on her shoulder to hold her still.
“I can do it myself,” she said quickly, her face hot with humiliation as she tried to edge away. “Please, only a minute more and I’ll be ready.”
“I’ve watched you struggle, chérie, and I know you cannot. You’re trussed up tighter than a stewing hen for the kettle.”
She gasped again as she felt the edge of his knife slide beneath the lacings, the blade moving carefully up the length of her back as he snapped each crossing of the taut cord.
“My
