Julia Justiss – Regency High Society Vol 4: The Sparhawk Bride / The Rogue's Seduction / Sparhawk's Angel / The Proper Wife (страница 44)

“True enough.” Gabriel took the tumbler, holding it critically up to the sunlight to see the pale gold color of the rum. At least he couldn’t question that; Josh had been careful to ship rum from the family’s firm in Newport, even though Martinique must have a score of distilleries of her own. “Though if there’s any justice in this life, the rogues that sailed with Deveaux have all gone to the devil with their master by now.”

“That’s what Ceci believed, too, until—”

“Ceci?” Gabriel frowned. “Who’s Ceci?”

“Mademoiselle Cecilie Marie-Rose Noire. Ceci. Her father owns the tavern where we met.”

“Ah, the barkeep’s daughter.” With a cynical sigh, Gabriel tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. “So, is she all the things a woman should be, Josh? Fair, charming, willing?”

Josh bit back his retort, but warmth still crept into his words. “She is both fair and charming, Father, but though she is the barkeep’s daughter, she’s not the slattern you seem determined to believe she is.”

“Then my sympathies to you, lad,” said Gabriel dryly. “If you’ve wasted your days with this girl instead of finding Jerusa, then at least you should have had her warming your bed during the night.”

And at last Josh’s temper spilled over. “Damn and blast, Father!” he exploded. “Is that all you can say about a woman? Will she warm my bed?”

But to Josh’s surprise, his father merely leaned back in his chair, rocking the tumbler gently in his hand.

“I haven’t thought that way about a woman since I met your mother,” he said slowly. “But you, lad. I’ve never heard otherwise from you. Not that at your age there’s anything wrong with seeing what the ladies have to offer, but this French girl—Ceci, was it?—must be a rare little bird to have clipped your wings so soon.”

Josh’s face went expressionless. Were his feelings that obvious, then, that even his father could read them? “She hasn’t ‘clipped’ my wings, Father,” he said stiffly. “I’ve known her but a week.”

Gabriel looked up at him from beneath his brows. “I didn’t say I was posting the banns yet, Josh.”

“A good thing, too.” Self-consciously Josh toyed with the cork from the bottle of rum. “That is, I like Ceci. I like her just fine. She’s clever and amusing and pretty and all that, but she was also the only person on this blessed island worth talking to.”

“Then I’d say in a week she’s made more headway than poor Polly Redmond has been able to make with you in Newport in the last two years.”

“Oh, hang Polly Redmond, Father!” Impatiently Josh jammed the cork back into the neck of the bottle. “Ceci’s special, aye, I won’t deny it. But what’s most important now is that she and her father are using all their connections in St-Pierre and beyond to help find any of Deveaux’s men, and Rusa with them.”

Eagerly Gabriel leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of a hunt finally begun. “So you have found something, eh, Josh? Are we any closer to bringing my Rusa back home? What kind of news did your barkeep and his daughter bring you?”

“The best in the world,” said Josh. “Monsieur Noire isn’t just any barkeep, Father. He lays the blame for his sister-in-law’s ruin and death at Deveaux’s door. And because of that, tomorrow, through him, I’m meeting the one man on this island who still admits to having sailed for Christian Deveaux. If anyone can make heads or tails of your black fleur de lis, then he can.”

“And we’ll be that much closer to the bastards that took your sister.” Gabriel’s green eyes were bright with ruthless anticipation. “You’ve done well, lad. And you tell that lady of yours from me that she’s a rare bird indeed.”

“We must be almost there, Josh,” called Ceci as she leaned over the side of the boat to see beyond the sweep of their single sail. “Papa said to look for a little house with red tiles on the roof that was nearly hidden by palms on the far side of Anse Couleuvre.”

“Anse means cove, doesn’t it?” said Josh, his arm resting lightly on the tiller as he squinted into the sun. It had been a long time since he’d sailed a boat this small, and he was enjoying responding to the feel of the wind and sea in a way he seldom could on a vessel as large as the Tiger. He was glad Ceci had trusted him enough to sail the boat alone, much preferring to have her company to himself than to share it with some gloomy Creole fisherman as a chaperon.

Unlike so many women, she was fearless in the little boat, hopping back and forth from one side to the other until he finally had to tell her to sit still or risk capsizing them. Not that he’d put any damper on her eagerness; still she leaned over the side to point out landmarks to him or jumped to her feet to help him set the sail on another tack. She’d looped the sides of her skirts up through her pockets so they didn’t flap in the wind, and she didn’t particularly seem to care that the makeshift style offered him frequent views of her charmingly plump knees as she clambered about the boat.

They’d been fortunate in their weather, too, after two days of storms that had closed the port. But this was a cloudless day that made the water so translucent and smooth that the little boat flew like the wind itself. The bright, lush green of the tropical trees and plants flowed down the hills almost to the water, and today even the misty clouds that always hung about the crest of Montagne Pelée, the tall, barren mountain that dominated Martinique’s skyline, were a light pink haze.

“So if the anse in Anse Couleuvre stands for cove, what’s the couleuvre?” he asked as she came to sit beside him. He had yet to kiss her, and he wondered what she’d do if he leaned across the tiller right now. Strange to think that he’d known her less than a fortnight. It seemed more like a lifetime. “Covered? Colorful?”

“Non, non, Josh! It means snake, of course!” She laughed merrily and clapped her hands so that he didn’t mind in the slightest that she’d corrected him. “Snake Cove. For the fer de lance.”

Josh sighed pitifully. “I’m afraid I don’t know that one, either, sweetheart.”

“Oh, but you would if one bit you!” Ceci’s eyes widened dramatically beneath the yellow-striped scarf she’d used to tie back her hair. “The fer de lance is a most evil snake—as long as your arm, mon cher!—who lies in the forest and waits to pounce on poor travelers, who die within hours from its bite if the panseur does not arrive in time to cut away the poison. And only on this island, only on Martinique. These snakes are to be found nowhere else.”

She cupped her fingers like the head of a snake with her thumb as the jaw as she moved them together. “Snap, snap, snap, and goodbye to you, my poor Josh!”

“Well, pleasant sailing and goodbye to you, too, Ceci,” he said, laughing. “I do believe I’ll keep to the beach.”

“That is wisest, true,” said Ceci, letting her snake become demurely clasped hands in her lap once again. “Though I would be surprised if this Jean Meunier will be any more gracious to us than the fer de lance himself. Papa had to give three kegs of rum to Claude Boulanger simply to learn where the man keeps himself, but if any man on Martinique can help you find your sister, it is he.”

“Jean Meunier,” repeated Josh carefully, practicing the name. Thanks to Ceci, his French was much improved, but still he didn’t want to take chances with mangling the man’s name. Too much depended on it.

“Oui, c’est bon.” She leaned back against the stern to trail her fingers in the wake. “But I suppose since you are English, you could call him by his English name, too—John Miller.”

Josh looked at her sharply. “How can he be English? The man sailed with Deveaux during two wars against the English. How could he fight against his own countrymen?”

“I’m only telling you what I know, mon cher, not why it is. Papa says Deveaux chose his men for their wickedness and greed, not for their loyalties. They fought for him, and for gold.”

Josh thought of his own father and suspected the same could have been said of Gabriel’s crews during the same wars. Why, he wondered, had this John Miller decided to sail for one captain and his flag over another? Though his father had told him a few more of his privateering stories on the voyage south, Josh sensed that Gabriel wanted to keep the past as firmly behind him as he could, and that having Christian Deveaux so tangled in Jerusa’s disappearance had made it doubly painful to him. Did her kidnappers know that about him, as well?

Ceci was the first to spot the red-roofed house, and Josh pulled their boat up onto the black sand beach beside another boat that must belong to Miller. The place hardly had the look of a pirate’s stronghold. In addition to the cheerful red roof tiles, a vine with crimson flowers had been trained to grow over the wall in front of the house, and someone had carefully outlined the walk of black sand with white shells.

But as soon as Ceci began up the path, a single musket’s blast rang out across the water. Josh grabbed her, shielding her with his body as he pulled her to the ground, while scores of parrots and other birds raced shrieking into the sky from the gunshot.