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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      He took the lantern from the table beside the bed. “Along with you then, ma’am.”

      “If you can’t bring yourself to call me ‘Caro,’ then you must use Lady Byfield,” she said irritably as she followed him. “‘Ma’am’ is common.”

      “Common or not, it’s what we call ladies in my country,” he said drily. “I fought a war with your people over such things.”

      She didn’t answer, or maybe she was ignoring him, but he didn’t care so long as she was quiet and didn’t wake the rest of the house. He’d no wish to explain any of this to his sister, or worse, to his brother-in-law. Oh, he meant to have a few words with Jack in the morning, all right, but not with the subject of their discussion present the way she was now.

      The long hallway to the front stairs was dark, and the single candle lit their way only a few shadowy feet before them. Fiercely Jeremiah lifted the lantern higher, determined to control the wariness that could turn so easily into fear. He’d walked this hall a hundred times, no, a thousand, in daylight without coming to harm. What difference, then, could there be in the dark?

      He felt the woman beside him tentatively take his arm, and he patted her hand self-consciously to reassure her. If it had been a long time since he’d lain with a woman, it had been longer still since one had turned to him for comfort. He smiled wryly to himself, wondering what she’d do if she’d learned the truth about the sorry champion she’d chosen.

      But once outside, she scurried away from him, skipping down the stone steps with her white gown fluttering out behind her in the moonlight. He followed more slowly, for the wound still pained him if he moved too fast, and he’d no wish to begin wincing and gasping like an old man before her.

      The moon was almost full, the sweeping lawns around the house lit nearly as bright as by day, and Jeremiah relaxed. No demons here; here his only company was this sprite of a countess. The gravel of the drive crunched beneath their feet and with an exasperated mutter she stepped onto the grass instead.

      “You’ll ruin your slippers,” warned Jeremiah as he joined her. “The dew’s already fallen.”

      “I don’t care. It won’t be the first time, and I doubt it will be the last.” She paused, waiting for him to catch up. “I refuse to stay off the grass simply because ladies’ slippers are so insubstantial. It vexes Frederick, of course, but I lived in the country as a child, and if I could I’d go without shoes and stockings and garters altogether.”

      “Then shuck them off now. Where’s the harm?” The night was warm for April, and Jeremiah liked the idea of her vexing this infernal Frederick.

      She grinned at him. “I could, couldn’t I?”

      “Of course you can,” he said easily. “I won’t tell.”

      “Then I shall do it.” Modestly she turned away from him as she lifted her skirt, but as she bent to untie her garters, the white silk gown draped over her round, upturned bottom in a charming, if unintentional, invitation that Jeremiah found far more provocative than any mere show of her ankles ever could be. When he’d been younger, women had bundled themselves away in layers of petticoats and buckram, but the scanty fashions now were worse—or better—than if they’d come out walking naked. And this woman before him would tempt a saint to sin.

      Purposefully he looked up at the stars overhead and away from her. “I was raised in the country, too, and we didn’t wear shoes from May till September, excepting when Granmam made us dress for church on Sundays.”

      “On a farm?” she asked eagerly. She was upright again, safe for him to look at as they once again began walking down the hill toward the gates and the road. In the swinging circle of the lantern’s light her bare toes peeked out from beneath the hem of her gown. She held her slippers in one hand and her stockings in the other, the fine-gauge silk of the stockings still keeping the shape of her calves as they drifted out from her hand. “I’ve always liked farms.”

      “It was a plantation, really, though all that means is a bigger farm that the owner doesn’t work himself.”

      “A plantation? That sounds very grand.”

      “For Rhode Island, it was,” he agreed, remembering the last real home he’d had before he’d gone to sea. “My grandfather made a king’s ransom from privateering, and he must have spent half of it on that house alone. But I expect it would pale beside what a countess would call home, even in the country.”

      “Indeed,” she said softly. “A proper countess most likely would.”

      “You’d know better than I.” There was no mistaking the wistfulness in her voice, and he didn’t understand it. He brushed the back of his fingers lightly across her arm, just enough to make her look back at him. “Exactly why did you wish to see me, Caro? You must have come with some reason in mind.”

      She frowned as she realized he’d finally used her given name, and rubbed the place on her arm that he’d touched.

      “It doesn’t matter now,” she said swiftly, her words tumbling over one another. “I thought that we might help each other, but now I see how foolish an idea that was. I hadn’t expected—oh, but I’ll never see you again, so none of it matters anyway, does it? Look, there’s my coach, just beyond the gate. There’s no reason for you to come any farther.”

      “Don’t, lass.” He reached for her, but she scurried across the grass beyond his reach. “Damnation, I said I’d see you to your carriage!”

      “And I say it’s not necessary. Good night, Captain Sparhawk, and goodbye.”

      She turned and ran, holding her skirts up above her bare feet. He called her name, but she didn’t look back, and he let her go. She was right: most likely they would never see each other again. She was an English countess and he was an American shipmaster, and in another week, a fortnight at the most, he meant to be gone, back to Rhode Island to pick up the shattered pieces of his life as best he could.

      He watched her disappear through the door beside the gate, and he smiled to himself as he thought of her bare pink toes. He hoped she didn’t catch hell from Frederick when she got home. The man should take better care of his wife.

      But still Jeremiah wished she’d stayed a little longer.

       Chapter Two

      Caro’s feet skidded on the slippery grass, and the oath was already halfway from her lips before she swallowed it back. She hadn’t sworn like that in years; swearing had been one of the first bad habits that Frederick had convinced her to abandon. Ladies didn’t swear, and she was a lady, a countess, wife to a peer of the realm.

      But ladies didn’t let strange men kiss them, either, and for the first time the magnitude of what she’d done swept over her. She’d crept into the bedchamber of a man she didn’t know, a foreigner, with a question that she’d finally been too fainthearted to ask, and instead she’d smiled and laughed and behaved as commonly as the barkeep’s daughter he’d accused her of being.

      It didn’t matter that she’d gone there with the best intentions in the world. The truth remained that Frederick deserved better from her. He’d cherished СКАЧАТЬ