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 little for convention, and though he’d never admit it, he’d take great pleasure in displacing George as his heir.”

      “Not your child, Caro. Ours.”

      “Of course it would be ours. You know I’ve always wanted a baby,” she admitted shyly. “Your sister must have been brought to bed by now. I wonder if she had a little girl, or another boy like Johnny that looks like you?”

      Jeremiah closed his eyes, fighting back the longing her words brought. A son of his own like his nephew Johnny, a boy to raise and teach and take to sea, a child conceived with the one and only woman he’d ever loved. Except that by law and the whim of Caro’s husband, the child—his child—could become heir to an earldom, raised not as a Sparhawk but as a Moncrief, an English child, not American, and one who’d never know his real father.

      “Whether boy or girl, Desire’s child will carry its father’s name,” he said firmly, leery of Caro’s dreamy expression. “I’d want the same for any child of ours.”

      “If there is a child,” she said, “I will take care of the consequences myself.”

      “Nay, Caro, we will. When I return from Tripoli—”

      “When we return from Tripoli,” she said serenely. “I haven’t sailed clear from England to be left behind now. Of course I’m coming to Tripoli with you.”

      His black brows lowered. “I can’t allow it, Caro, not with the new war.”

      “Your country’s war, not mine,” she countered, serenity replaced by stubbornness. “My country has faithfully paid its tribute to the pasha for years.”

      “Yours, mine, ours,” he said impatiently. “The devil can take the whole lot for all it will matter to you!”

      She pushed herself upright, sitting against the bolster. “Listen to me, Jeremiah. Lady Byfield has arranged it all as her way of thanking us. There was a note waiting for me here at the inn tonight that she’s already booked us places on a Neapolitan ship leaving with tomorrow’s tide for Tripoli and Tunis, and ordered her bankers to pay the ransom for Frederick and your friend Mr. Kerr.”

      She paused and laid her hand on his arm. “She had the latest lists from Tripoli, Jeremiah,” she said gently. “Mr. Kerr is the only one of your crew who survived.”

      Silently he shook his head. Though he’d known it was unreasonable, he’d kept on hoping that if Davy was still alive, maybe others were, too. Andrew Parker, Peter Collins, John Cramer, Jemmy Allyn, and all the rest, gone.

      “I’m sorry, love,” said Caro. “Lady Byfield said—”

      “Damn Lady Byfield!” he said furiously, angry at the fate that had claimed his men. “She can damned well keep her thank-yous, and you will stay here with them.”

      “But I want to be there when you free Frederick!”

      “What, are you afraid I might not bring him back after all?” he said angrily. “It would be easy enough, wouldn’t it? Poor old Frederick didn’t make it, sweetheart, so now you’re all mine.”

      She froze. “You would not do that, Jeremiah,” she said slowly, as much, he thought, to convince herself as him.

      “Wouldn’t I?” It would be easy, the only way he could know for sure he was hers forever, and for one tempting, dishonorable moment he let himself consider it. She could say all she wanted that Frederick was more father than husband to her; he still couldn’t very well go to the man and ask for her hand. “How sure are you?”

      But this time she didn’t hesitate. “I’m sure. I love you, but I also trust you.”

      “Then God help you, Caro, for putting your trust in me,” he said roughly. “No matter what you or the old lady say, the situation is far too dangerous, and I won’t put your life at risk. Besides, I want to be able to do whatever I must without worrying about you.”

      “‘Whatever you must’?” Suddenly his real reason dawned on her, and her eyes flashed with anger and fear for him. “You’ll save your friends and Frederick as you promised, but that’s not all, is it? You’re going to Tripoli to find the man who stole your ship. I put the foolish idea into your head, and now you’re actually going to do it.”

      He met her gaze evenly. “I can let Hamil haunt my dreams for the rest of my life, or I can face him, and prove to myself that I’m not a coward. I’m a Sparhawk, Caro, and I don’t see it as a choice.”

      She shook her head wildly, trying to deny he could really want this. “But how can you? If he captures you again, you know he won’t let you go. He’ll kill you. It’s as simple as that, Jeremiah! He will kill you. You haven’t a ship, or men, or cannons, while he’s a pirate!”

      “I don’t mean to fight him at sea. You’re right. I wouldn’t have a chance. But the man’s house is in Tripoli, and if I can reach him there—”

      “No, I don’t want to hear it.” Agitated, she pushed herself from the bed and plucked her dressing gown from the floor, whipping it around her body. “I love you, but I won’t stay to listen to you plan your own death. It’s time I returned to my own room anyway.”

      He lunged for her across the bed but she kept beyond his reach. “Damn it, Caro, come back here!”

      “Damn you, Jeremiah, I won’t!” She retrieved the sheer blue shift and wadded it up into a ball in her hand, too hurt and angry to wish to be reminded of everything the shift had led to. With the silk shushing around her bare legs she went striding for the door.

      “Caro, please. Please.”

      Against her better judgment, she paused. She hadn’t expected to hear that note in his voice, and slowly she turned back. He was sitting in the middle of the bed bathed in moonlight, his tanned body dark against the white sheets and his black hair loose around his face, and he was so achingly beautiful that she could have wept just from the sight of him.

      He held one hand out to her, an offering, not a summons. “Please, love,” he said softly. “This night could be all we ever have. Do you really want it to end like this?”

      Still she hesitated, torn between sharing his love for tonight and the certain, bleak emptiness of a future without him.

      He might have smiled; in the moonlight she wasn’t sure. “You said your room was lonely. It won’t have gotten any less so since you left it earlier.”

      “I don’t want to be alone, Jeremiah,” she said plaintively. “I’ve never wanted that.”

      “I never thought you did, love.”

      She sighed and took one step toward the bed, then another. “No more talk of pirates or pashas if I stay.”

      “Not a word.” He took her hand and pulled her up onto the bed with him, letting her dressing gown slide back to the floor in a silk puddle. “Instead let me tell you one more time how much I love you.”

      Safe once again in his arms, her cheek resting in the hollow of his shoulder, she knew there was no other place under heaven she’d rather be.

      His СКАЧАТЬ