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

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СКАЧАТЬ Portsmouth. Could I possibly stay with her?”

      Jeremiah sighed, unsure of how to answer without wounding her more, but that sigh was answer enough for Caro.

      “No, of course not,” she said quickly with forced cheerfulness, now trying to spare him. “Whatever am I saying, inviting myself into her house like that?”

      “It’s not what you’re thinking, Caro,” he said. “My sister’s not much for any guests these days, not with her husband just gone off with the fleet and her third child due within the month.”

      Caro’s face softened. “Oh, a baby!” she murmured. “How fortunate your sister must be to have a family like that! I’ve always wanted—no, I shouldn’t go wishing for more, not after all the good things life’s given me. Of course your sister couldn’t take in a stray like me at such a time. Please wish her well when you see her again.”

      But this time her attempts to be the grand, gracious Lady Byfield failed miserably. Her words might be brave, but the forlorn slump of her shoulders told a different story that didn’t escape Jeremiah.

      Gently he slipped his arm over her shoulders. “I’m not about to cast you off alone, Caro. First we’ll find you something more suitable to wear and a decent place to stay, then we’ll consider the rest one step at a time.”

      “The poor damsel is most grateful,” she said with more wistfulness than she’d intended. “And I do intend to pay you back.”

      “Oh, hush,” he scoffed gruffly. “I’ll hear none of that. My coin spends every bit as well as yours, and since I’ve brought you this far, you’ll be my guest.”

      She smiled, thinking how different Captain Sparhawk’s offer of hospitality was from George’s. He didn’t resemble any other gentleman she’d ever known, but she liked him. She liked him very much. “I didn’t mean to pay you with guineas, though your offer is most generous. You’ve done me a great favor, and so, if you’ll let me, I’ll do one for you. Your friend Mr. Kerr—”

      “Later, Caro,” said Jeremiah sharply, drawing her closer beneath his arm. “We’ve company.”

      They had come to a neighborhood that Caro didn’t recognize, one with narrow streets and ancient, dilapidated buildings whose upper stories jutted crazily over their heads. The paving stones beneath her bare feet had been replaced by hard-packed dirt, and the stench wafting from the street made her long for shoes of any sort. Two sailors were weaving toward them, navy men with long pigtails down their backs and round, flat-rimmed hats with embroidered ribbon bands, and unsteady as they were on their feet, there was no mistaking the eager hunger in their eyes as they stared at Caro.

       A lifetime ago, but she’d never forgotten that look in a man’s eyes. Greed and lust, a predator’s cold need, marking her, using her, ruining her beyond redemption. All she had, all she was, to be sold to the man with the deepest pockets.

      “Tumbled the chit right out o’ her hammock, sheets an’ all, did you, mate?” asked the first seaman, fumbling in the bag around his neck for another coin as he leered at Caro. “Saints, but she’s finer than any o’ the drabs we seen in the fancy houses on Water Street. How much’ll you take for a turn wit’ her?”

      “Not a farthing,” said Jeremiah with a quiet authority that startled Caro.

      “Ah, mate, we’s only askin’ to share yer good fortune!”

      “The lady’s with me,” said Jeremiah, his voice rumbling deeper. “And she’s not for sale.”

      The man raised his hands and backed away, intimidated by the threat in Jeremiah’s voice. “Meanin’ no offense, gov’ner. She’s yours, an’ there it ends. No offense.”

      But his companion had had his courage bolstered by more rum, and he lurched toward Caro to snatch the coverlet away. “Come on, lovey, let’s have some sport.”

      The knife was in Jeremiah’s hand in an instant, the long blade flashing in the moonlight. The second sailor yowled and stumbled back, clutching his arm where blood was already darkening the slashed sleeve of his jacket.

      “I told you,” said Jeremiah as he guided Caro past them, “the lady’s with me.”

      “You would have killed him, wouldn’t you?” whispered Caro. The ease and violence with which he’d defended her stunned her. Frederick would never have dreamed of doing such a thing, even if he’d been able. “Just like that, you would have killed him.”

      Jeremiah made a disgusted sound deep in his chest as he wiped the knife’s blade clean. “If I’d had to, aye. But that bit of English foolishness wasn’t worth the killing.”

      She tried to smile. “But this bit of English foolishness was worth defending that way?”

      He glanced at her sharply, surprised by the quaver in her voice. She looked small and waifish, her mouth pinched and her eyes still wide from what she’d just witnessed. Belatedly he realized that while dockyard arguments and drawn knives were nothing new to him, she’d be accustomed to more tender circumstances. He longed to take her in his arms and reassure her, to hold her until the fear left her eyes, but the memory of that well-loved husband stood uneasily between them, and instead all he did was slip the knife back in the sheath at his waist and clear his throat.

      “There’s nothing foolish about you, lass,” he said gruffly, “except, maybe, the way you’ve rigged yourself out. But we’ll remedy that directly.”

      He pounded on the door of a shop with men and women’s second-hand clothing hanging from a rod in the window until a sleepy old woman answered the door.

      “Can’t ye read the sign, ye great bluff baboon?” she said. “We’re closed.”

      “Not now, are you?” Jeremiah raised a guinea in his fingers to glitter in the moonlight, and at once the woman opened the door. “The lady needs a gown, and whatever else she pleases.”

      “Ain’t ye the Lord Generous,” grumbled the woman, eyeing Caro critically. “What’s become o’ yer own clothes, girl?”

      “She lost ‘em throwing dice with a crimp,” answered Jeremiah dryly. “Look quick about it, ma’am, we haven’t all night.”

       Chapter Six

      Within an hour Caro was dressed decently, if not fashionably, in a linsey-woolsey gown with a checkered scarf tied around her throat and over her breasts and a chip bonnet with a limp pink rose on her head, and perched on a bench across a table from Jeremiah in a bustling tavern near the water. Before her sat a slice of onion pie topped with yellow cheese and a tankard of cider, and nothing in her life had ever tasted so good. Although she guessed the hour must be closer to dawn than midnight, the tavern was full of sailors, shipwrights, carters, colliers and their women, and Caro leaned closer to Jeremiah to hear him over the din of their laughter and shouted conversations and the fiddle player near the hearth.

      “I said, Caro, that Stanhope will think you’ve vanished from the face of the earth.” He thumped his own tankard of ale down on the oak table for emphasis. “As far as he’s concerned, you have. Look at you! No one would ever believe you’re a СКАЧАТЬ