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 took your vessel last winter, Sparhawk,” said Hamil. Swiftly he reached out, grabbed the neck of Jeremiah’s shirt and tore the front in two. Instantly Jeremiah recoiled, his hands bunched in fists at his side as the two halves of his shirt fluttered back in the breeze. His chest was left bare, the jagged pale scar unmistakable beneath the whorls of dark hair, and Hamil’s smile was wide.

      “I took your Chanticleer,’ he continued, satisfied by what he’d seen, “and ye gave her up with nary a fight or a whimper.”

      “Damn your lies,” answered Jeremiah sharply. “Isn’t this scar proof enough? We fought your thieving deceit to our dying breath.”

      “Then why, Sparhawk,” taunted Hamil, “do ye still live?”

      “To see you go to the devil first, Hamil.” Forgetting all caution, Jeremiah spat at the Scotsman’s feet. “God help me, I’ll see you in your grave.”

      “As Allah wills,” said Hamil, glancing briefly at the spittle on his red boots, “ye cowardly son of a Yankee bitch.”

      Jeremiah lunged toward him, the shackles clanging across the deck, and immediately four of Hamil’s men seized his arms. He lashed out against them blindly, furiously fighting as much against his own sense of helplessness as the four men who held him fast. But he was still weak and his own strength soon exhausted, and as they jerked him, panting, roughly to his feet, Jeremiah barely had breath enough to curse them all.

      But Caro, where was Caro? Twisting wildly, he searched for her and found her, standing pale and rigid with self-control, with a turbaned sailor holding each of her arms. The longboat for shore was being lowered, and clearly she would be a passenger in it. With sickening clarity, Jeremiah realized how neatly he had let his temper play into Hamil’s hands. What easier way could there have been for her to be separated from him?

      “Where are you taking her?” he demanded. “By God, if you harm her—”

      “Ye shall do what, my fine Yankee captain?” The Scotsman stepped closer, his blue eyes bright with malicious amusement beneath his bristling ginger brows. An ill-fed boy rushed to kneel at his feet and wipe his master’s boots clean, and when he was done Hamil carelessly kicked him aside. “Ye canna help yourself. How can ye help the lady?”

      Nothing Hamil said could have wounded Jeremiah more, for what he said was the truth. She was at the ladder now, her pale hair blowing around her face and her blue eyes wide with longing and despair as she looked to him for the help he couldn’t give. They were going to take her and he might well never see her again, and there wasn’t a blasted, bloody thing he could do to stop them. So much, he thought bitterly, for the power of love. He had failed them all, his ship and crew and now his own dear Caro.

      “But ye are not the only cowardly American,” continued Hamil scornfully as he pointed over the larboard rail. “Ye have much company.”

      There in the shallows of the harbor lay the frigate Philadelphia, once the pride of the tiny American navy, run aground and then surrendered in confusion by her captain to the pasha’s men. Now in place of the stars and stripes that Jeremiah himself had proudly fought beneath flew the green flag with three white crescents of the frigate’s captors, and even at this distance Jeremiah saw how sadly ill kept the once-great ship had become.

      The three hundred Americans of the Philadelphia’s crew were already prisoners in that white city; Jeremiah would make it three hundred and one. He thought again of the wreck of his own hopes here in the same harbor, and craned his neck for one more glimpse of Caro.

      But the space where she had stood was empty, and so, he knew, was the place where his heart had been.

      “Where are you taking me?” asked Caro as the spray from the boat’s oars blew into her face. She clung to her seat as they raced across the bay, her gaze never leaving the xebec where Jeremiah still remained. “To some other prison?”

      Hamil frowned. “No prison, m’lady. Ye are a countess. Ye shall be a member of my household for so long as it pleases.”

      She didn’t want to know who would be pleased, or how. “I can tell you now you’ll get no ransom for me.”

      He shrugged. “It’s not for the ransom that I took ye, m’lady.”

      She could no longer make out the people on the xebec’s deck, and she wondered with despair if they’d taken Jeremiah back to the hold. Dear God, she prayed, let the lamp still be there, for she didn’t know what would happen to him if he was forced alone into the darkness. She could not forget her final sight of him earlier, exhausted and defeated as he sagged between the sailors supporting him, the pain and defeat in his eyes already almost beyond bearing. “What will you do with Captain Sparhawk?”

      “For his insolence, I should send him as a slave to the quarries. A man his size would be useful there, and the sun and the lash would go far to curing his temper.” His smile chilled her more than his words. “In a year ye would not recognize him.”

      She could not imagine a man as proud as Jeremiah a slave, toiling in a quarry like a pack animal. “It would kill him.”

      “Aye, perhaps it will,” said Hamil as casually as if they were discussing the likelihood of rain. “But ye best think no more of him, m’lady.”

      “But I love him,” she cried with anguish, “and I cannot forget him simply because you order it!”

      “Ye can, and ye must.” His face was stern, his voice disconcertingly quiet despite the threat it carried. If she had been a man, realized Caro, he would have killed her, too, without another thought. “Ye are in Tripoli now, m’lady, and I am your master. Ye have no others. Ye will do well not to forget it.”

      The city was enclosed by a high, thick, white wall, flanked by two fortresses, bristling with cannon to protect the harbor from invasion. Caro, Hamil and a small party of his men entered by the northwest gate that led to the harbor, riding on horses that had been waiting at the waterfront for them. As they rode slowly through the crowded, narrow streets, people were quick to run from Hamil’s path, some men bowing respectfully low and others merely staring with open awe at their country’s most notorious corsair.

      For Caro, there were only stares. At first she wondered why there were no women in the streets, until she realized that they were the shapeless, scurrying figures wrapped so completely in black that only one eye showed. Caro, sitting sidesaddle in her European clothes, her face uncovered and her pale hair loose to her shoulders, was a sight few Tripolitans could resist. She kept her eyes straight ahead, ignoring the leering men as best she could, but by the time they reached Hamil’s house, she was too hot and exhausted from the strain to notice much except the tall marble pillars that they passed between.

      With more gallantry than Caro either expected or wished, Hamil himself came to help her from her horse, his large, freckled hands familiarly taking her by the waist and lifting her from the ground. He was a large man, nearly as big as Jeremiah, and equally accustomed to the power his size granted. As soon as her feet touched the ground she swiftly eased herself away from his hands.

      He noticed her skittishness, his eyes narrowing, but said nothing, merely beckoning for her to follow him through a short passageway. To her surprise they entered an elegant courtyard, two stories high with open piazzas that faced onto the courtyard. More columns of polished Egyptian marble supported the piazzas, and the floor of the courtyard was inlaid with elaborate porphyry.

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