Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

Chapter Four

Jeremiah found Desire in her garden, sitting alone with a book turned open on her knee, in the shadow of a tall boxwood hedge. It was late in the day, too close to dusk for reading any longer, and she had pulled her cashmere shawl over her shoulders and around her arms against the chill. Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he failed to notice how she was here alone at this hour and not inside with Jack or the children, or speaking with the servants concerning supper, and in his eagerness he began speaking as soon as he’d spotted her.

“That woman, Des, that woman’s told me the most amazing thing! She swears that Davy Kerr is still alive, and I’m almost halfway to believing her.”

Desire looked at him sharply. “Whatever are you talking about, Jere? You’re making no sense at all. What woman?” “Caro Moncrief. Lady Byfield. You know, that pretty little countess who tossed me her diamonds.” He sat on the bench beside his sister, resting his hands on his thighs as he stretched his legs out across the grass. “Though I haven’t learned how just yet, she’s come by some sort of paper to the King of Naples that lists prisoners in Tripoli up for ransom, and Davy’s name’s on the list.”

“And you believed her?” asked Desire with dismay. “Oh, Jere, I thought you’d promised not to go near her again!”

“I never promised you anything of the kind, and a good thing, too.” Her lack of excitement disappointed him. Of anyone here in England, he’d expected Desire to be the one who’d understand. “Just as she was explaining it all to me, that same whining little bastard from last night—George Stanhope’s his name—appears on her doorstep, quarrels with her, and when she doesn’t say what he wants, he slaps some sort of smelling spirits over her face and hauls her off in his carriage, just like that! And the worst of it, Des, is that her own people, her butler, who saw the whole thing, are pretending none of it happened.”

“So of course you’ve appointed yourself her savior?”

“I can’t let him get away with kidnapping her, not when she knows about Davy!”

“Or says she does.” She took his hand in hers. “Listen to me, Jeremiah. You can’t let yourself get tangled in Lady Byfield’s affairs. She could have trumped up this whole business about David simply to draw you into her quarrel with George Stanhope. The whole county follows it like a sparring match. It’s been going on for years, all the way back to Frederick’s mother.”

“But Des—”

“No, you listen to me! Most likely Caro learned enough of your past from Jack to appeal to you, and because she can be quite—quite charming, you believe her. Even Jack’s willing to forgive her all manner of impositions, and he’s known her for years.”

“That’s Jack’s folly, not mine. I’m no greenhorn, Desire.” Indignantly he pulled his hand away, folding his arms across his chest. “The woman knew too much about Davy to be cozening me.”

She sighed with exasperation. “Listen to me, you great fool! Even if you manage to separate her from Stanhope, and if she has proof enough that David lives, what then? Go to Tripoli to rescue him, too? Or have you forgotten that America’s at war with the Turks, and that if you’re captured again, this time they’ll make sure they kill you?”

“Oh, aye, and what do I say to Davy’s wife? I’m sorry, Sarah, but I couldn’t go after him from fear of soiling my trouser hems?”

“And what do you say to me, Jeremiah?” demanded Desire. “We’re all that’s left of our family, you and I, and I don’t want you risking your neck because some pretty little chit winks and simpers your way. When I think of how close to death you were when they brought you here—”

Suddenly her voice broke, more emotion than he’d expected spilling over into her words. “I can’t lose you, too, Jere. I can’t. I want you to forget Caro Moncrief and all her foolishness, and I want you to sail for home the way you’ve planned, so I can picture you there in our old house, safe at last.”

She closed her eyes and pressed one hand over her mouth to try to stop the sob that broke through anyway. With her other hand she cradled her belly, striving to calm the child within her, who’d sensed her agitation and grown restless.

“Oh, sweetheart, forgive me,” said Jeremiah, remorse sweeping over him. Awkwardly he slipped his arms around Desire’s shaking shoulders and she buried her face against his chest. She wept from the heart and he let her, patting her back to comfort her as best he could. She was right, they were the last of their family, and he alone understood the depth of the sorrows they’d shared together: the early deaths of both their mother and father, and then, again too soon, that of their younger brother.

The candles and lamps had been lit within the house before she finally grew quiet, and he held her still a little longer to be sure.

“We’d best be off now, Desire,” he said gently. “Jack will be sending out the guard if we don’t go in soon.”

“He’s gone, Jere.” She pushed herself away from him with a final fragmented sob, and took the handkerchief he offered. “He left this afternoon, while you were out.”

“What do you mean he’s gone?”

“What other meaning can there be?” She sniffed loudly, fumbling with the handkerchief as she struggled for her composure. “His orders came for him to rejoin his ship, and by now I expect they’ve cleared Portsmouth to chase after Frenchmen again. He says the Peace of Amiens is nearly done, that this horrid General Bonaparte will break it any day now. Jack’s known for days, but he said he didn’t want to spoil our time together by telling me before he had to.”

Her voice wavered precariously. “He said…he said…oh damn, Jere, I don’t want to cry anymore!”

“Hush now, sweetheart,” he said gently, wishing for something, anything to say to ease her pain, “it will be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” she said bitterly, “not as long as men insist on making war, killing each other for their precious honor, or their king, or some forsaken scrap of land like this wretched Malta. God in heaven, Jere, I don’t even know where Malta is, and for its sake I may lose my husband!”

“Do you know exactly where he’s bound, how long he’ll be gone?”

She stared down at the handkerchief, rolling it tighter and tighter into a soggy ball in her hand. “You know he can’t tell me any of that, Jere. He can’t tell me anything beyond that he’s leaving. Jack’s like that with his orders: the word of the admiralty lords is his almighty God.”

“Then perhaps it’s time he bowed down to something a bit more exalted than his blasted navy.” Although Jeremiah had come to grudgingly respect his brother-in-law as a man, he could never accept Jack for what he represented, the pomp and authority of King George’s Royal Navy, the same navy that had killed Jeremiah and Desire’s father when they’d been little more than children. “How he can abandon you like this, so close to your time—”

“No, Jere, I won’t hear it from you again!” Awkward though she was, Desire rose swiftly to stand before her brother, her hands where her waist used to be. “Jack loves me, Jere. I’ve never once doubted him since we wed, and I never will. He’s a loyal, honorable man, loyal to me and our children and to his country, and I would no more question his right to do what he believes he must than I’d ask you to, oh, quit the sea and become a tinker instead.”

Jeremiah scowled, unable to follow her reasoning. She could preach all she wanted about loyalty, but the fact remained that her husband had left her when she needed him, and as her older brother, the one who’d always protected her, he hated to see her hurt like this. “I’m trying to be serious, and all you can do is make jests about tinkers!”

“And here I thought I was being serious, too.” She rested her hand with the sapphire wedding ring on his arm. “What I’m trying to say, Jeremiah, is that as difficult as it may be, I love Jack enough to let him go. Can’t you understand that?”

“No, sister mine, I cannot. After all the trouble the man went through to win you, he should damned well want to keep by your side!”

“You’ll never change, will you?” she said sorrowfully. She swallowed hard, her fingers tightening on his sleeve. “But maybe you’ll understand this. As much as I wish I could keep you here, I want you to sail for home now, tomorrow, before the French try to blockade the channel again.”

“Desire—”

“Hush, hear me out! If you’re healed enough to chase after Caro Moncrief, you’re more than well enough to travel. You’ve no real reason to stay here. I’ve had Jack book passage for you on an English ship bound for Jamaica, and from there you’ll have no problem finding a sugar sloop for the voyage up the coast to Rhode Island.”

“I can’t do it, Desire,” he said softly. “I’d be a coward if I did.”

“At least you’d be a live coward!”

“Since when has that been an issue for our family, eh?” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, her face pale and anxious in the twilight. “If you’d taken the safest course, you’d still be a spinster knitting stockings in our grandmother’s parlor on Benefit Street. We Sparhawks don’t always do the wisest thing, but we’re never cowards.”

“Oh, Jeremiah.” She sighed with resignation and leaned against his shoulder. “I thought at least I could try to convince you.”

“You might as well try to coax the moon from the sky. Likely you’re right about Lady Byfield. Likely she doesn’t know any more about David Kerr than she’s already told me. But if she does, and if there’s even a breath of a chance that I can save Davy or any of the others…”

“Of course you must.” She sighed again, and with her handkerchief in her fist, she struck his arm. “It’s the very devil being a Sparhawk, isn’t it? Think if our greatgrandfather had been a tinker instead!”

“Us Sparhawks tinkers?” Jeremiah snorted. “We’d all have died out from boredom long ago.”

“Well, we’re never bored now.” She searched his face, her eyes still too bright. “You will be careful, won’t you? If there’s another war with France, then the whole continent will be turned upside down.”

“Ah, but Des, I’m an American, and none of it will bother me.” With his own handkerchief he wiped away the last of her tears. “If this Napoleon’s fool enough to go after England again, then he’ll get the whipping he deserves and right soon, too. You’ll see, this war, if there is one, will be done in no time, and your Jack will be home in time to see this baby christened.”

“Dear God, I pray you’re right.” Her smile was shaky, but at least, thought Jeremiah, it was a smile. “But Jere, please, please, tell me you’re doing this for Davy’s sake alone and not for that silly Byfield woman.”

Jeremiah saw the concern in his sister’s face, and thought of Caro Moncrief. Yes, Lady Byfield was silly. She was beautiful, too, and charmingly unpredictable, and she’d made him laugh for the first time in months. She was also married, and no matter what the rest of the county gossiped about her, she was clearly in love with her husband. But all that mattered to Jeremiah was that she needed him, and for that he wouldn’t abandon her.

Yet the deeper truth was something he couldn’t admit to Desire. She’d always looked up to him as her big brother, counting on him to be strong. How could he tell her how uncertain he’d become inside? How could he admit that because Caro needed him, he needed her, too?

“Oh, aye, of course I’m doing this for Davy,” he said softly, wishing he didn’t have to lie to Desire. “Come, sister mine, let’s go in the house.”

Slowly, painfully, Caro struggled to force her eyes open. There was a sticky sweet taste in her mouth and her head ached so badly she felt sick to her stomach. What had she eaten for supper? If only she could reach the chamber pot beneath her bed and not retch all over the carpet!

The shadowy figure of a man leaned over her. “Come now, Auntie, don’t play the sleepyhead with me. The servants said you were stirring and I haven’t all day to wait on your pleasure.”

“George?” Her voice was scarcely more than an ineffectual croak as she tried to focus on his face. “Leave my bedchamber before I have you tossed out!”

“How charming, Caro. Your eyes aren’t even open and already you’re giving orders as if you were born to it. Pity you weren’t, isn’t it?”

Her head still spinning, she weakly pushed herself up against the pillows. “You’ve no right to be here, especially to insult me. Where’s Weldon? Why did he let you in?”

George laughed, enjoying her confusion. “Weldon didn’t let me in. Rather he let you out.”

To Caro’s dismay, she realized he was right. Now she remembered how she’d argued with George on the steps of Blackstone House, how he’d grabbed her when she’d turned to leave him, and the same sickly sweet smell of the cloth he’d pressed over her face as he’d pulled her into the carriage.

“You’re my guest now, Caro,” he continued, “and I mean to be a most excellent host to you during your stay here.”

Caro’s dismay deepened as she looked around her. The slanting, water-stained ceiling overhead didn’t belong to any room she recognized, and the single casement beneath the eaves framed no more than a sliver of sky through the narrow, dirty pane. Watching from beside the window, the grim-faced woman with her arms crossed over her breasts bore no resemblance to her own laughing, lighthearted lady’s maid. The linens Caro lay upon were patched and dank, the bedstead hard and narrow, a servant’s bed without curtains or bolster, and beneath the coarse coverlet, she wore not her cambric night rail but only her shift. With an indignant gasp, she clutched the coverlet over her breasts and glared at George, seated beside the bed on the room’s only chair.

“I’d hardly describe myself as your guest, George,” she said tartly, striving for as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances. “As despicable as you are, I didn’t think you’d lower yourself to kidnapping.”

He cocked his head, striving to look contrite. “Kidnapping seems a bit harsh. Think of it instead as an opportunity for you to reconsider certain of your…misconceptions.”

“Don’t try and put a pretty face on it, George,” she snapped. “It’s kidnapping, nothing less, and I’m certain the magistrates will agree with me. And my only ‘misconception’ was to trust you as much as I did.”

In her mind she was already framing the words she’d use to swear out a writ against him. Even with Frederick’s title to protect her, she’d have to be careful: to a magistrate, George would seem more a model English gentleman than a villain. He was a small man, the same height as Caro herself, and because his features were fine boned, almost too pretty, he favored expensive boots and coats cut to make him look like some bluff country squire. In a group of men George Stanhope was always the one who laughed the loudest, and among ladies he was known as a witty, agreeable partner, free with compliments and trinkets.

Yet from the first time George had bowed over her hand, Caro had not been fooled. She, too, was a sparrow made bright in false plumage, and she was quick to recognize the wish for the same in George. But where she would have loved a penniless Frederick for his kindness alone, all of George’s fawning attention had been dependent on her husband’s wealth and generosity. It was his expectations of Frederick’s death that paid George’s tailor and bought the gewgaws for his mistresses, and those same expectations that had made him bring her here.

He smiled now, still trying to charm her into compliance. “I didn’t ask for your trust, Auntie, only your common sense where poor old Frederick is concerned.”

“Frederick will have your head when he learns of this, and then you’ll find there’s nothing poor about him.” She tugged the coverlet higher. “Now that you’ve had your little amusement, would you please bring me my clothing so I might dress and go home?”

“I told you, Caro, you’re my guest, and I won’t part with your company just yet. But such a wifely, if belated, show of modesty!” Insolently his gaze flicked over her bare shoulders. “These last hours while you’ve been unconscious I’ve had time enough to acquaint myself with your most intimate charms.”

“But that woman…’’ She glanced at the grim serving woman across the room. Wherever her clothing had gone, she’d assumed that the woman had undressed her, not George.

George shrugged. “Oh, Mrs. Warren is paid well enough to watch—whether it’s you, me, or both of us.” He leaned closer over her, and she forced herself not to draw back. “Your husband is a far more fortunate man than I’d suspected.”

“You didn’t,” she said slowly. “Not even you would dare do that.”

He shrugged again, his very carelessness suggesting a one-sided intimacy.

Fighting against her own uncertainty, she refused to believe all that smirk suggested. Could she really have been that vulnerable? Surely she would know if he’d—he’d used her the way he implied. Unconscious or not, her body couldn’t have been so insensitive, so unknowing, that she’d feel no different now. She closed her eyes, unable to meet the implication in his, and instead she saw another man’s hands reaching for her, grabbing her, his gnarled fingers digging into her trembling, terrified flesh.…

George trailed his forefinger along her cheek, the nail grating just enough across her skin to jerk her back to the present. She was a woman now, not a child. She knew how to fight back. Furiously she struck his hand away from her face.

“Don’t you ever touch me again, George!” Anger and hatred made her voice icy cold. “Can you understand that? Never!”

George’s lips pressed together into a tight, narrow line, as all vestiges of his customary charm vanished. “Save your protests for when they’re justified, Caro. I haven’t laid a finger on your dubious virtue. You are, after all, merely a bit of garnish beside a much richer meal, and as delicious as you likely are, you’re not worth risking the whole.”

“You are vile!” She nearly spat the words.

“No, Auntie, I’m simply weary of waiting.” He pushed the chair back from the bed and walked over to the window, the morning sun making a bright halo of his golden hair. “Your room here has a most excellent prospect of the harbor. You’ll also note that you’re four stories above the ground. The door will be locked—to protect you from harm, of course—and Mrs. Warren will see to your meals and other needs. I’ll keep your gown and slippers myself, so they won’t become soiled.”

“You can’t keep me here, locked away as your prisoner!” cried Caro, fighting her panic. She must not show any weakness before George. “Weldon must have seen what you did to me. He’ll send for the authorities, and they’ll—”

Smiling to himself, George tapped lightly on the window. “Weldon’s no fool, Caro. He knows how his bread will soon be buttered. He saw nothing unusual in your departure, and he’ll tell the other servants that you’ve gone.”

“You bribed my servants!” Unable to lie still any longer, she flung the coverlet around her shoulders and slid unsteadily from the bed. “First you kidnap me, and then you poison my people against me with your own worthless promises! This time I will go to Mr. Perkins and swear against you! When he realizes I’ve disappeared—”

“But he won’t, you see. Perkins believes you have gone to visit a friend to the north.”

“Not Perkins, too!” she cried. “God in heaven, George, when I tell this to Frederick—”

“But you won’t, Caro, because Frederick is dead.” He turned away from the window and headed toward the door, nodding curtly at Mrs. Warren to follow. “The sooner you accept his death and agree to begin the proper proceedings, the sooner you can leave.”

“No, George, I won’t do it! Frederick’s not dead. I would know it in my heart if he were! Somewhere he lives, somewhere he’s waiting for me, I know, and nothing you can say or do will change that!” She lunged for George’s arm to stop him before he locked her away, but her feet tangled in the trailing coverlet and she stumbled forward, her knees and arms hitting hard on the bare floorboards. “Wait, George, damn you, wait!”

“How charming,” said George, pausing with the door half shut. “The curse of an illegitimate child prostitute, seducer of a man old enough to be her father. You let Mrs. Warren know when you’ve come to your senses, Caro, and then we’ll speak again.”

She looked up as the key turned in the lock, and with a muffled cry of despair she sank back down to the floor, burying her face in the coverlet.

She tried to think of Frederick, to remember how his smile lit his blue eyes with pleasure when she played the pianoforte for him, no matter how many wrong notes she struck, to recall the faint fragrance of his tobacco on his coat and the contented sigh he made when he sat in the bargello armchair at the end of the day. She tried to imagine what he’d say to her now, if she could once again kneel on the floor beside him with her head resting on his knees, how gently he would stroke the back of her head and tell her not to fuss and worry, that life was too dear to waste it on ill feelings.

Why, then, was such hatred and greed destroying everything that Frederick had valued most? Why, why had he left her when she needed him so?

With a little sob of loneliness she curled deeper into herself, striving for the elusive comfort that her husband’s memory might bring. And then, strangely, the memory shifted. It wasn’t Frederick’s voice she heard in her head, but a deeper one, rumbling thick with an American accent.

“I’ll set it all to rights, sweetheart,” Jeremiah Sparhawk was saying as he held her against the hard muscles of his chest. His large hands along her body were warm and sure, a caress that fired her blood and made her heart race. “I won’t let that thieving bastard hurt you.”

She gasped and sat bolt upright. What had come over her? It must have been whatever drug George had used to rob her of her senses, returning again to steal her wits. Only once had she let the man kiss her, and here she was daydreaming of him like some moonstruck serving girl! She certainly had no business looking to Captain Sparhawk to rescue her, any more than she had the right to turn to him for comfort. He’d been furious when she’d left him at Blackstone House. What must his temper have been when she didn’t return as she’d promised?

She sighed deeply, rubbing her fingertips across her forehead. The American had been her last hope for finding Frederick, and even then Jack had told her she’d only have two weeks to convince Captain Sparhawk before he sailed for home. Now most likely he wouldn’t even speak to her, let alone risk his life to help find her husband.

Slowly she pushed herself up from the floor, drawing the coverlet around her shoulders like a shawl as she went to the window. From the houses across the street, she realized George had brought her to the attic of his own lodgings. She was surprised that he’d be so obvious, but then why should he bother to take her to a more secretive spot? No one would suspect him because no one was looking for her.

She stared down at the paving stones in the courtyard four stories below and groaned with frustration. She’d never be able to help Frederick as long as she was locked away up here. Somehow, she must find a way to escape.

Somehow she must, and soon.