Julia Justiss – Regency High Society Vol 4: The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife (страница 1)
Miranda Jarrett
For Kathleen,
With affection and regards.
The Perfect Roommate and the Other Blonde.
About the Author
MIRANDA JARRETT considers herself sublimely fortunate to have a career that combines history and happy endings — even if it’s one that’s also made her family far-too-regular patrons of the local pizzeria. Miranda is the author of over thirty historical romances, and her books are enjoyed by readers the world over. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including two Golden Leaf Awards and two
Miranda is a graduate of Brown University, with a degree in art history. She loves to hear from readers at PO Box 1102, Paoli, PA 19301–1145, USA, or at MJarrett21@aol.com
“Look at them, Michel!” whispered Antoinette Géricault urgently. “Look at them and remember all they have stolen from you!”
Her fingers clenched the boy’s shoulders tightly, her nails sharp through the worn linen of his shirt. But Michel did not flinch. He deserved whatever discipline
And of her. He must be worthy of Maman’s love, for she was all he had.
“Look at them, Michel!” Her breath was hot on his ear as she leaned farther over his shoulder and out the single window of the attic room they shared.
The English family was leaving the sloop now, lingering on the gangway for their last farewell with the captain and crew. They were treated more as honored guests instead of passengers, and why shouldn’t they be? They were handsome and prosperous, well dressed and well fed, from the broad-shouldered father to the small, plump mother with a baby in her arms and four more children gathered around her.
The oldest boy, the one who looked to be Michel’s age, tugged on the leash of a rambunctious black puppy, all floppy ears and buggy-whip tail. The boy bent to pat his back, and the puppy licked his face in a wet, sloppy kiss. The mother laughed, her head tipped back so her merriment rang out clear to Michel’s ears, and with her free arm reached out to fondly hug the boy’s shoulders.
“Look at her, the shameless English whore!” whispered Antoinette furiously. “Look at how she can laugh at the suffering she has brought to us!”
Michel looked at the other boy, forcing himself to share her outrage.
He would never have two brothers to jostle and jest with the way this boy was doing. His father would never crouch down to point out something high among the mast-filled skyline of the harbor, something just for the two of them to share. His mother would never embrace him like that, openly, for all the world to see.
And his
“I did not know there was a daughter, too,” his mother was muttering. “Evil little creature, born of their sins. May she perish from the same shame that her father brought to me!”
Before this, Michel had not noticed the little girl, hidden from his sight by her mother’s skirts until she skipped forward to throw her arms around the puppy’s neck. Though she was scarcely larger than the dog, she showed no fear of it, shrieking with delight as the puppy tried to lick her face, too. The hood of her cloak slipped back and Michel could see her face, her round, rosy cheeks and her laughing eyes, her black hair charmingly tousled, the promise of her parents’ looks already confirmed in her beautiful little face.
Unconsciously Michel inched forward, drawn by the spell of the small girl’s happiness even from this distance. Beside him his mother smiled with grim approval.
“You will not forget now, will you, Michel?” she whispered, almost crooning. “You will never forget them until justice is done. For that man is Gabriel Sparhawk, and he is the one who murdered your father.”
He hadn’t meant to come here to the house, not on the night of the wedding. If anyone recognized him, he could be dancing at the end of a rope before he knew it, and then how would justice be served?
Another carriage stopped before the house, and Michel Géricault shrank back into the shadows of the tall hedge. More wedding guests—more red-faced, overdressed Englishmen and their blowsy ladies—braying to one other as they tried and failed to ape their betters in London.
The front door to the house swung open, candlelight flooding into the streets. Instead of the servant Michel had expected, the unmistakable figure of Captain Sparhawk himself appeared, his broad shoulders silhouetted in the doorway as he welcomed the newcomers to his daughter’s wedding. After a week of watching the man, following him like a shadow from his home to his countinghouse to his ships, Michel could look at Sparhawk now almost impassively, without the white-hot fury he’d felt at first. It was better this way, much better. He’d long ago learned that passion of any kind led to the kind of carelessness he could ill afford tonight.
Farther down the street he heard a woman’s soft laughter and the footsteps of her companion on the brick sidewalk, and swiftly Michel eased deeper into the tall bushes that formed the hedge. He was in an empty, formal garden now, between a
But from here Michel could see through the open windows into the house and the parlor itself, and like the set of a play when the curtain first rises, the scene beckoned him to stay, to watch. On a laden supper table in the center of the room sat the wedding cake, raised high on a silver epergne festooned with white paper lace and chains, and on another table was arranged a display of wedding gifts, a king’s ransom in silver glittering in the candlelight. A score of candles lit in an empty room, the finest white spermaceti, not tallow; that alone was an unimaginable extravagance.
A flicker of white in the moonlight at the far end of the house caught Michel’s eye, a pale curtain blown outward through an open window. But why only that window, on a night as still as this one, unless the curtain was being pushed by someone within? Warily Michel touched his belt with the pistols and knife, and swore softly to himself, wishing the street were clear so he could retreat through the hedge.
But to his surprise, a lady’s leg came through the window next, a long, slender leg in a silk stocking with a green fringed garter, followed by its mate as the young woman swung herself over the windowsill and dropped to the grass. Cynically Michel wondered if it was her father or, more likely, her husband that she’d escaped, and he glanced around the garden again to see if he’d somehow overlooked her waiting lover.
The girl paused long enough to shake out her skirts, her dark head bowed as she smoothed the cream-colored sateen with both hands, then hurried across the grass with a soft rustle of silk. As she came closer, the moonlight caught her full in the face, and unconsciously Michel swore again.
She froze at the sound, one hand raised to the pearls around her throat as her startled gaze swept the shadows until she found Michel.