Julia Justiss – Regency High Society Vol 4: The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife (страница 17)

Jerusa nodded, all the answer she felt able to give. She sat curled over her bent knees, holding her side where Abigail’s nose had struck her. Her lungs still stung from the smoke, but each breath seemed to come a little easier. She was sure her side would be purple and sore for at least a week, and she touched herself gingerly, praying she hadn’t cracked any ribs. She wasn’t about to complain to Michel and have him go cutting her clothes off again to tend to her.

She looked back at the fire, more smoke now than flames, thanks to the rain. The last wall of the house, the one that had been struck by lightning, was completely gone now, and only the stone chimney remained like a lopsided pillar against the sky. The rain had spared the barn, but, even with the wind, the air was still thick with the smell of burning wood, and she shivered as she thought of how near she’d come to dying through her own carelessness with Abigail.

Michel handed her a cup of water and she drank it gratefully, the well water deliciously cool as it slid down her raw throat. He, too, was smudged with soot, and one sleeve of his shirt was torn nearly the length of his arm. He’d lost the ribbon to his queue, which allowed his hair to fall loose around his face, and small black scorched spots left from cinders peppered his waistcoat. Whatever his reasons, he’d clearly risked his life for her, and no one else had ever done that. Certainly not Tom Carberry.

“There now, I told you you’d feel better,” said Michel softly. With one finger he brushed a lock of her hair from her forehead. She was a brave little woman, he thought with fond admiration. He couldn’t think of another who would have stayed with the horses, as she had. “No real damage, eh, ma mie?”

Though he smiled, weariness had deepened the lines around his eyes and made his accent more pronounced. She doubted he’d rested at all while she’d been asleep.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “You didn’t have to come back for me.”

“Don’t thank me, ma chérie.” He winked wickedly. “I came back for Abigail.”

She tried to laugh, but all that came out was a croaking bark. “Then I thank you for Abigail’s sake. She’s unharmed?”

“She and Buck both. You can see for yourself how happily they’re grazing now, without an anxious thought in their heads. Horses can be charming, useful creatures, but they’re not particularly fearless in a fire.”

“Who is?” Her smile faded as she pulled his coat higher over her shoulders. Though she didn’t really need the coat’s warmth, she wasn’t yet ready to give up the security and concern—Michel’s concern—it represented.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she said quietly. “We didn’t lose a thing because you had the horses saddled and ready, even though we weren’t supposed to leave until dusk. Somehow you knew.”

He shrugged carelessly. “A guess, that was all. The high ground, the fact that the house had suffered from fire before, something in the air that felt like a storm. But don’t look at me like I’m a sorcerer, chère. If nothing had come of it, then I would have looked the fool, not the wise man.”

Of course it had been more than that. From the beginning, the place had made him uneasy in ways he didn’t want to explain. He looked past her to the smoldering ruin of the farmhouse and imagined again the empty, charred walls of his father’s house.

No, he didn’t want to explain that to her at all.

She brushed her fingers across the grass beside her and wondered what had made him fall silent. She wished he hadn’t. The terror she’d felt when she’d been lost in the smoke was still very real, and talking had helped her forget. Talking to him.

“If you’ll only take credit for saving Abigail’s life,” she said slowly, “and not mine with it, will you let me at least thank you for that?”

He raised his brows with feigned surprise. “A Sparhawk offering thanks? What’s happened to your pride, Miss Jerusa?”

“Oh, hang my pride, Michel, and let me be grateful!” Before she lost her nerve she leaned over and kissed him quickly, her lips barely grazing his. She sat back on her heels, breathless at her own daring, and unconsciously licked her lips as if to taste the fleeting memory of his.

He looked at her blandly. “Were you telling the truth that time?”

“About what?” she asked, flustered by the way he seemed to be studying her mouth. “About being grateful?”

“Of course not, ma chère. About kissing me. That tiny souffle was so slight I’m not sure but that I imagined it entirely.”

“You don’t believe I kissed you?”

“I don’t know what to believe, ma mie, not where you’re concerned.”

“It’s not as if I’m in the habit of kissing every man I see, you know,” she said indignantly. “But I’d have thought you’d have the decency to believe it when I did!”

He smiled with lazy charm, his teeth a white slash against his dark beard and soot-smudged face. She didn’t have to defend herself so vigorously—he’d known from the start that her bumbling popinjay of a fiancé hadn’t taught her a thing—but at least she’d forgotten entirely about the fire.

And so, for that matter, had he.

“I told you before, Rusa, I’ve never lied to you,” he said. “Decency or not, I haven’t begun now.”

With an exasperated grumble she threw herself against him, seizing his shoulders to steady herself as she planted her lips soundly against his. There, she thought triumphantly, he wouldn’t forget that!

But suddenly his mouth was moving against hers in a way she hadn’t intended at all, surely, seductively, and she forgot all her triumph as his lips slanted across hers to deepen the kiss. She shuddered as his tongue invaded her mouth, teasing and tasting her in dizzying ways she’d never dreamed possible. Shyly she let herself be led, echoing and responding to his actions until she realized that he, too, felt this other fire flaring between them.

Her fingers tightened into the hard muscles of his shoulders beneath the soft lawn shirt, and when she felt his hands circling her waist and spreading across the soft curve of her hips, she let herself be drawn closer to his body, relishing the new sensation of him beneath her. She was alive, gloriously alive, and he had saved her for this. He pulled her back with him onto the grass and she kissed him hungrily, as if she were famished, as if she hadn’t feasted on strawberries or—

Dear Almighty, what was she doing? Abruptly she tore her mouth away from his, pushing herself up on her arms to stare down at him. Her heart was pounding and her body ached in strange places that had nothing to do with her fall, and, to her shame, she realized she was sprawled across his body with her legs spread on either side of his.

“Oh, Michel,” she said breathlessly, unable to think of anything else to say as the color flooded her face. “Oh, my goodness.”

He laughed softly, and she felt it vibrate through her own body before she hurried to untangle herself from him. “Ah, Rusa, now I believe you’ve kissed me.”

Chapter Nine

With the storm done, Jerusa scarcely met Michel’s eyes as they prepared to leave. Even when for the first time he’d made a tiny fire so he could offer her tea, real, hot tea from his saddlebag, her thanks was no more than a swift, curt nod.

But he knew what she was doing as clearly as if she’d spoken. More clearly, maybe, than she did herself. Self-righteously she believed that he’d tricked her into kissing him so that she could blame him for the fact that she had enjoyed it as much as she had.

He hadn’t been quite that devious, but he’d admit to taking advantage of the opportunities that life—and pretty, sooty women—offered him. Why shouldn’t he? She had been the one to kiss him. What harm could possibly come from a single kiss?

At least that was what he tried to tell himself, and that was where his own confidence faded. Jerusa wasn’t some merry barkeep’s daughter or femme du soir who forgot each passing pleasure as soon as she found the next one. No, Jerusa Sparhawk was his enemy’s daughter, and she was supposed to be his prisoner. So why the hell was he rolling around in the grass with her like some besotted farmer on market day?

But it was worse than that. Much worse. Kissing her was unlike kissing any other woman in his life. She was hotter, sweeter, more fascinating, more beguiling. The innocent eagerness she’d shown with him today had very nearly shredded his self-control, the untapped passion of her lush young body crying out to be freed.

Yet if her passion could burn him with pleasure hotter than any fire from lightning alone, then it could also scorch a path to his soul if he let it. And he wouldn’t. All he had to do was look at his mother to see the disastrous results of loving and caring. Love led to ruin and madness and pain that lasted forever, and he wanted no part of it. He’d spent his whole life carefully building a wall of indifference around himself as protection. He wasn’t about to tear it down for the sake of one spoiled little English virgin who would cringe with horror when she finally learned who he was.

He looked at her graceful profile, staring resolutely ahead as she rode beside him. He must not forget who she was again. There would be no more kisses, no more dallying on the grass.