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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      Caro had expected Jeremiah to be surprised, even a bit irritated, to find her on board the felucca with him. She had, after all, disobeyed his orders, and by now she knew him well enough to understand that orders weren’t something he gave lightly. But she hadn’t expected him to be as angry as he was now, staring as coldly at her as if she’d dropped from the sky.

      “You might say you’re glad to see me, Jeremiah,” she said, her smile fading. She had so anticipated this moment, and now that it was here, it wasn’t at all what she’d counted on. “I’m vastly glad to see you again, you know.”

      “Ha!” exclaimed Tomaso, shaking Caro by the arm. “You would dare to pretend you know this gentleman?”

      “She does,” said Jeremiah grimly, “just as I know her. This, Captain Tomaso, is Caroline Moncrief, Countess of Byfield, though she doesn’t look like much of anything right now.”

      “I do not believe it, Capitano,” said Tomaso flatly. “This creature a contessa?’

      Delighted that her disguise was such a success, Caro’s smile returned. She had done what the dowager countess had advised and taken responsibility for herself, and she was proud of how well she’d done. Remembering how in Portsmouth the secondhand gown and bonnet had hidden her in plain sight, she had literally bought the clothes from the back of a maidservant at the inn.

      Not that anyone should guess she was an English countess, not dressed in a rough full-sleeved shift beneath a laced black bodice, two coarse petticoats, thread stockings and worn shoes that tied with dirty pink ribbons. She had tried to pin her hair severely back the way the maidservant had worn hers, but since Caro’s fashionably cropped tendrils had refused to sleek back, she had been careful to cover her hair and shadow her face with the oversize black shawl that, too, had come from the maidservant.

      “Captain Sparhawk’s right,” she said to Tomaso. “I am Lady Byfield. Didn’t you receive word that I would be a passenger?”

      Hearing the unmistakable upper-class accent in her speech, Tomaso hastily released her arm. “Forgive me, ma donna, I did not know! But how would I, eh? You dress yourself like una domestica, you pay for yourself on the wharf like all the others, you sleep on the deck with them. How would I know otherwise when this ribaldo accuses you of cutting his purse, eh?”

      “You wouldn’t, and that was the point.” Free of the heavy shawl, she tossed her hair back in the cool night breeze, unaware of the interest that her pale, loose hair caused among the sailors and other male passengers. “It was a disguise.”

      Unsatisfied, Tomaso shook his head and raised his shoulders. “But I do not understand. Why such a disguise, eh? You are a great English lady. Is it some jest, una facezia, that I cannot see?”

      “That’s two of us, Tomaso.” Jeremiah took her arm, his grip every bit as rough as the Italian’s had been. “Come along, love. I’m eager for answers.”

      She went meekly as he led her down the short companionway to the tiny cabin, and when he released her to bolt the door and light the little lamp hooked to the bulkhead, she stood with her hands folded, waiting patiently. She had nothing to fear, nothing to hide. Her reasons for joining him were the best.

      Yet from the look in Jeremiah’s eyes when he turned around to face her, she knew at once he wasn’t going to agree.

      “Don’t start, Jeremiah, not until you’ve heard—”

      “I’ll start whenever I damned well please, Caro, and nothing you say will change that.” Pointedly he lowered his eyes to her clothing. The tightly laced bodice accentuated the curve of her waist and hips in a way that her more fashionable French chemises never could. “What the hell are you doing here, rigged out like that?”

      “Like this?” She lifted the side of her skirt and glanced down at it almost as if she’d forgotten herself what she wore. “That’s quite simple. I wanted to come on board without any extra fuss, so I dressed myself like this to look like the others. I remembered what you said that night in Portsmouth.”

      “For God’s sake, Caro, can’t you see the difference?”

      “The difference?” she repeated uncertainly, and looked again at her petticoats. “I suppose these are worse than what you bought me that night, smelling as they do of the kitchen. Frederick would be absolutely appalled to see me like this. That’s why I brought a gown of my own to wear when we free him, white mull—oh, Jeremiah, I left my bundle on the deck!”

      “Whatever was in it is gone now,” he said. “You might be too fine a lady to steal from your fellows, but believe me, they won’t feel such scruples about you.”

      Hoping to retrieve her belongings, she tried to squeeze past him. “But if I went and asked—”

      “You really don’t understand, do you, Caro?” He blocked her path, his body filling half the cabin and his fury the rest. “What’s different isn’t the rags on your back. It’s that you were alone, among strangers who’d sooner do you harm than blink. Can you guess what kind of mercy you’d have found from that crew on deck if I hadn’t come to vouch for you?”

      Jeremiah could, all too vividly, and the horror of what might have happened to her, either on board the Colomba or wandering about the Neapolitan waterfront, fueled his anger at how much she’d foolishly risked.

      “Damnation, Caro, this isn’t some little masquerade for your amusement! Why the hell didn’t you stay in Naples where I’d know you’d be safe?”

      “Oh, yes, and Naples is such a fine, safe place!” Her own temper flaring, Caro shoved at the hard wall of his chest. “Have you ever considered what would happen to an English lady if Bonaparte’s army returned? Why do you think Frederick’s mother is so eager to make peace with me so she can go home to England? She told me that I—”

      “Why are you suddenly so thick with a woman who despises you? How can you trust a blessed word she says?”

      “At least she believes that I can do things for myself!”

      “Don’t argue with me, Caro,” ordered Jeremiah, his voice as stern as if he stood on his own quarterdeck.

      “And don’t give orders to me!” Furiously Caro lashed out at him, her hand nearly reaching his cheek before he grabbed her wrist.

      “Stop it, Caro,” he said, more softly this time, but with the same commanding tone. “Do you want that whole pack of jackals topside to believe you’ve lost your wits?”

      “I don’t care a fig what they believe!” With a cry of wounded frustration, she struggled to pull free and try to strike him again, but he held her as tightly as if they’d been bound together. He was so much larger, so much stronger, and in that moment she hated him for it. “And you don’t care, either, not about what they think or whether I’m safely left behind in Naples! All that matters to you is that I obey, like some well-trained little dog, so that you can feel free to go off alone and get yourself killed with a clear conscience. That’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

      “How can you say that after all we’ve done together?” he demanded, his eyes glittering СКАЧАТЬ