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 her to forget the pistols and the long, bloodied knife at his waist. He really wasn’t much better than the highwayman they’d pretended he was. Maybe no Americans were. His gift for self-preservation would make him perfect for the task she meant to set before him, and with his chivalrous inclinations on her behalf he’d be bound to agree. Now if only she could convince herself that her own feelings toward him were equally mercenary!

      For the first time, she wished she knew more of men and the world. Before she’d met Captain Sparhawk, she’d been able to divide them neatly in two: there were the precious few like Frederick and Jack Herendon, who treated her with kindness and respect, and then there were all the others, who looked at her with a blatant mixture of contempt and lust. But no man she’d ever met treated her like this oversize American, teasing and bantering with her one moment and then willing to fight to the death for her honor the next, and to her confusion, she liked it. She liked him, more than she should, certainly more than was proper for her as Frederick’s wife.

      Jeremiah covered her hand with his and the warmth of his touch raced through her. “You’re quiet, lass,” he asked with real concern. “Weariness, or is there something else that ails you?”

      “Weariness.” How could she ever admit that he was what ailed her? “Nothing more, nothing less.”

      Self-consciously she withdrew her hand, but as she sipped her cider, her eyes met his over the tankard’s battered rim. There was gray streaked through his black hair at the temples, and from the deep lines that fanned from his eyes when he smiled, she knew he’d seen much of life, not all of it good. But she also knew better than to ask. She had more than her own share of secrets to keep hidden.

      “Then I’d best find us lodgings for what’s left of the night.” He kept his hand on the table after she’d pulled hers back, unspoken admission of her rebuke, and he studied it now as if surprised to find it there. “Though truth to tell, I like where I am just fine.”

      In the crowded, noisy, smoky room his smile was for her alone, an invitation she had no right to accept. She must end this now, while she still could.

      “I told you I would pay you back your kindness with the information you wished about your friend, and I will. But first I must tell you of Frederick.”

      “You don’t have to,” said Jeremiah quickly, perhaps too quickly. But he didn’t want to hear again of the paragon that was Caro’s husband, or how much she loved him. No, he didn’t want to hear that again at all. “You’ve told me more than enough already, and I wouldn’t want you to speak of anything that might cause you pain.”

      Selfish, conniving bastard! He couldn’t believe he’d actually said that, especially after the lovely, grateful smile she gave him that he didn’t deserve.

      “No, Captain, I’ve scarcely told you anything.” With a sigh she pushed the pewter plate to one side and clasped her hands on the table before her. She looked very young in the old-fashioned bonnet, her face framed by the curving brim, and he’d meant it when he’d said no one would believe her a countess now. “Frederick’s mother, the dowager countess, still lives, though she is very old and not well. I’ve never been presented to her. Before I was Frederick’s wife there wasn’t any question of it, but when she learned we planned to wed, she left England for Naples so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge me. It was—is—very painful for Frederick, though of course I understand entirely.”

      Yet the way Caro looked down at her hands, rubbing one thumb against the other, told Jeremiah that she didn’t understand at all, and that the elder Lady Byfield’s scorn wounded her every bit as much as it did Frederick. Pompous old bitch, thought Jeremiah angrily. His sister had told him how she herself had been snubbed in certain aristocratic circles simply for being an untitled American who’d had the audacity to marry the younger son of an English lord, and he imagined what those same overbred vultures would make of poor Caro.

      “Two years ago this summer Frederick’s mother finally agreed to see him again,” she continued sadly, “and with great joy and eagerness he booked his passage to Naples. She specifically excluded me from her invitation, but Frederick held great hopes for their reconciliation. I wept for days and days after he sailed. We had never been apart, you know, not since my fourteenth birthday.”

      Jeremiah nearly choked on his ale. He’d known she’d been young, but fourteen, for all love!

      “I had one letter from him,” she said, unaware of his reaction, “brought by another ship that had met his, and then nothing more because—why is everyone running away?”

      All around them men were shouting and abandoning their drink and their women to crowd out the back door, some not waiting their turn and climbing through the windows instead.

      A laconic barmaid reached over to take Caro’s empty plate and swipe a rag across the tabletop. “It’s the pressgangs again, lamb,” she explained. “They’ve been at it so hot all this week that the few men left run like frightened coneys at the very hint o’ a lieutenant an’ his bullyboys.”

      Slowly the woman straightened, hands on her hips and her full breasts jutting out above her bodice as she languidly surveyed Jeremiah. “Best tell your pretty sailor man here to turn tail with the others ‘less he wants to spend the next seven years servin’ against the French.”

      Caro gasped and shoved her bench back from the table. “Oh, Captain, she’s right! There must be three score navy vessels in the harbor now—I saw them from the window at George’s house—and they’ll all be looking for men! Come, hurry, you don’t want them to take you!”

      “Hush now, lass, they’ll not take me.” He caught her wrist and gently forced her back down to her seat. “I’m an American, mind?”

      The barmaid sniffed. “Don’t be so sure, Yankee. There was two New Yorkers here the other night had their protections torn up right afore their eyes. The lieutenant called them bloody liars an’ read them into the king’s service anyways.”

      Alarmed all over again, Caro tugged at Jeremiah’s hand. “Hurry, then, there’s little to be gained taking chances like this!”

      “There’s no chance to it, Caro,” scoffed Jeremiah, touched and pleased by her concern. “I’m an American, and I’m a captain and owner of my own vessels. Six of ‘em, last I counted. They can’t touch me.”

      Pointedly the barmaid studied how he was dressed and sniffed again, not believing his claim for a moment. “Please yerself, Cap’n,” she said with a dismissive shrug, “for here they be now.”

      Abruptly the fiddler stopped playing in the middle of his tune, and every one of the people who remained—women, toothless old men and those missing limbs, sailors already serving with a ship and watermen protected by the crown—turned to stare in hostile silence at the six men standing in the doorway. At their head was a young navy lieutenant in a blue coat and two marines in red, and behind them stood three more seamen, clearly chosen for their size and fearsomeness.

      The lieutenant scowled as he scanned the room. Empty seats with half-full tankards and tumblers before them were testimony enough that they’d arrived too late to find any useful men.

      “An empty net tonight, eh, Lieutenant?” taunted one old man, his cackle echoed by the others. “The fish all slipped through yer net again?”

      Angrily the officer searched the room for the man who’d mocked him. His gaze stopped when he spotted Caro and Jeremiah at their table near the far wall, and with a tight-lipped, СКАЧАТЬ