Julia Justiss – Regency High Society Vol 4: The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife (страница 33)

“Monsieur? Pardon?” said the serving girl. “S’il vous plaît, monsieur?”

“Forgive me, lass, my thoughts were elsewhere.” But the girl only stared blankly, and Josh groped for the foreign words to say the same thing. These last days his limited sailor’s French had been sorely tried, and having the girl waiting before him with a tray tucked beneath her arm wasn’t helping him concentrate. “Ah, plaît-il, mademoiselle?”

“Oui, monsieur, avec plaisir.” Like most of the women on the island, she was small and dark, her skin dusted gold and her cheeks full and blushed like peaches. But unlike all the other women, she didn’t scorn him but smiled instead, and enchanted, Josh grinned in return.

“What’s your na—oh, hang it, lass, I’ve forgotten myself again,” he said, but the girl only giggled behind her fingers, her black eyes sparkling with merriment. Though her striped bodice and skirts beneath her apron were cut modestly enough, there was still something charmingly, innocently flirtatious about her that no English serving girl could ever hope to copy.

“You’re anglais, aren’t you, monsieur?” she asked, cocking her head to one side like a small, bright-eyed bird.

“And you speak English,” said Josh with both delight and relief.

She raised one arched brow impishly. “It’s good for business. Papa has taught me English, Spanish and Dutch so I can sell his rum to any sailor who stumbles through his door.”

“So that’s how I seem to you?” asked Josh with a great show of forlorn self-pity. “One more stumbling, blind-drunk sailor?”

“Peut-être.” The girl tossed her black curls as she smacked his arm with her tray. “But how much rum would you buy from me if I told you that, eh?”

“Not a blessed drop,” he agreed. “But I might buy a whole cask if you told me your name.”

“Cecilie Marie-Rose Noire. You may call me Ceci. Most everyone else does, so I will not charge you for the cask of rum.”

“Generous and beautiful!” She couldn’t guess how much her teasing, good-natured banter meant to him after the disappointment of these last days. “My name is Joshua Sparhawk, captain of the sloop Tiger of Newport, Rhode Island, and you, Miss Ceci, may call me whatever you choose. Josh would suit me just fine.”

“A captain!” Her eyes widened. “But you are so young!”

Flattered, he considered briefly pretending he’d earned his place on the Tiger entirely on his own merit. Lord knows he’d let other pretty girls believe it before this. But somehow, with Ceci, he didn’t want to.

“I’m the captain, aye, and the Tiger’s been mine since I was nineteen.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve had the good fortune, y’see, to have my father as her owner.”

“Then you should be doubly proud, monsieur!” declared Ceci warmly. “Who expects more than a father? If you proved yourself worthy to him, then you must be a grand, fine sailor!”

“I do well enough.” He shifted his shoulders self-consciously, torn between relishing her praise and being shamed by it. He was proud of his skills as a sailor, but in his family such accomplishments were taken for granted, even expected. He knew that no matter what he did, he’d never come close to equaling his father or older brothers. But for little Ceci, he was the only Sparhawk that mattered. No, better than that: he was the only Sparhawk.

Swiftly he glanced around the room. It was still early for supper, and earlier still for the serious drinkers who would later fill every chair and bench and the spaces in between. For now, at least, he was the only patron.

“Could you join me, Ceci?” he asked. He rose to his feet to bow toward her, and saw how her eyes widened at his size. Well, so be it; beside these Frenchmen, the Sparhawks might be the lost race of giants. “I’d be honored by your company, and you’re the first soul I’ve met on this island I’d say that to.”

“Oh, monsieur, what you ask!” she demurred. “I’m a good girl, monsieur, a respectable girl. Papa would never allow such a thing.”

Yet from the way she blushed again and fidgeted with her apron as she peeked up at him from beneath her lashes, Josh was sure the invitation pleased her.

“What harm could come from it?” he asked, warming her with a smile made to break hearts. “There’s not another person in the place. Please, Ceci. Please.”

She shook her head, her black curls bobbing above the tiny silver rings in her ears.

“I swear I’m a good boy, too, Ceci. Respectable enough for any papa.”

Though she tried not to laugh, her dimples betrayed her, twitching in her cheeks as her mouth curled. “Handsome, green-eyed boys are never respectable,” she scolded, “especially les Anglais. But if you dine from our kitchen, I will come back. Tonight there is a fine fricassé of chicken and red crayfish with onions, and our blancmanger—you would call it a pudding, no?—is fresh coconut with nutmeg, and—”

“You choose, Ceci,” he said softly. “Whatever brings you back here the quickest.”

She made a dismissive sound deep in her throat and tossed her head one last time as she headed to the kitchen, but it seemed to Josh that she was back again before he’d scarce begun to miss her.

“Papa has seen your sloop in the harbor,” she said as she carefully set a steaming bowl of pumpkin soup before him on the worn, bare table. “He says it is a very fine ship, and he wishes to know if you will be regularly trading in St-Pierre.”

Josh smiled wryly. Whether in Newport or St-Pierre, fathers with marriageable daughters all asked the same questions.

“I’m not in St-Pierre to trade, lass,” he said softly. “I’m here to find my sister.”

Briefly he told her how Jerusa had disappeared, and that he hoped to find her here on Martinique. While he spoke, Ceci slipped into the chair beside him, her little hands clasped on the table before her and her lips parted as she listened.

“That is so terrible!” she cried when he was done. “For your family, your sister, for you, monsieur! Whoever would steal a lady on her wedding night is a monster!”

“You’ll find no quarrel from me there.” He dipped his spoon into the soup, hot and spicy with flavors he couldn’t quite identify. Until he’d begun to eat, he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. “My father believes it is the work of Frenchmen connected to a long-dead pirate from this island named Christian Deveaux.”

From his pocket he pulled out a copy of the black fleur de lis found with Jerusa’s jewelry and smoothed the sheet on the table. “Though it’s been nearly thirty years since Deveaux sailed from Martinique, Father believes that some of his men must still be alive and acting in his name against our family.”

“I understand, monsieur.” Ceci nodded solemnly. “I do not know how it is among the men of your country, but here in mine, thirty years would be as nothing when a gentleman’s honor must be avenged.”

“For God’s sake, Ceci, we’re talking about pirates, not gentlemen!”

“Even the worst rogues have honor, monsieur.” She frowned, touching the paper on the table between them. “I thought that I knew every name on our island, but this Deveaux—why, I wonder, have I not heard of him?”

Josh sighed and pushed the empty soup bowl away from him, resting his chin in his hand as he leaned his elbow on the table. “It was long before either of us were born, lass.”

“But not before my father’s time.” She stood and leaned forward to take the empty bowl, and Josh caught the scent of her skin, spicy with the same fragrance as the soup. “He could remember pirates back to Captain Morgan! I’ll go ask him, and return with your fricassé.”

Josh watched her hurry across the room, her small, slim figure weaving gracefully between the tables. There were other patrons in the tavern now, calling her by name as they ordered their wine or rum, and with regret Josh realized he’d no longer have her company to himself. But maybe later, when she was done working for the night and he’d made the first round of the rum shops, he could return.

Smiling to himself, he looked back out the window to where the sun had dropped below the horizon and the first stars were beginning to glimmer in the evening sky. Jerusa would like Ceci; they were two of a kind, both beautiful and outspoken, and Josh suspected that somehow Ceci, for all her claims to being a good girl, was every bit as accustomed as his sister was to getting her own way.

“You, monsieur?” demanded the heavyset Frenchman with a barkeep’s canvas apron. “You are the English sea captain, non?”

“Aye,” said Josh warily. Ceci’s father: the man could be no one else. But why should the Frenchman be so all-fired angry with him? All he’d done was talk to the girl. “Is there a problem, Mr.—uh, Monsieur Noire?”

“Oui, oui, there is a problem, Sparhawk, and mordieu, it is you!” Noire grabbed the tankard from Josh’s fingers, slammed it on the table and pointed dramatically at the door. “This is a decent house, and I won’t have your kind here! You go, now, and do not come back ever again!”

Conscious of every face in the room turned toward him, Josh rose slowly to his feet. He knew he didn’t have much choice but to leave as the tavern keeper requested, but he hated the feeling of slinking away for something he hadn’t done. It had a low, cowardly feel to it, and Sparhawks were never cowards.