Louise Allen – Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch (страница 2)
“Only a fortnight, eh?” The greedy lust in his eyes sickened Caroline. “Then you swear she’s still a virgin?”
“Never touched by any man, my lord,” said her mother, fighting back a cough. “Not even kissed.”
“Then come with me, little maid,” he said with a satisfied leer, “and I’ll teach you all you need to know.” His arm snaked around Caroline’s waist and pulled her close. Twisting frantically against his arm, she caught one final look of her mother, standing alone with the blood-soaked handkerchief pressed over her mouth, the tall plume in her hair nodding gently over her carefully expressionless face.
The music continued, the conversations around them never paused, as Sir Harry pulled Caroline, stumbling across the floor toward the doors that opened to the garden. Dear Lord, the garden: he meant to be alone with her already. He wouldn’t even wait until they’d returned to his house. She balked, catching the heel of her shoe in her skirts, and with a little cry pitched forward.
Swearing, he jerked her back to her feet. “Come along, you little hussy. Spirit in a woman’s one thing, but outright defiance is quite another. Unless that’s your game, eh? You play the wicked lass, and I’ll correct you?”
Shaking her head, Caroline stared at him with desperate bewilderment. “No, sir, forgive me, I never meant to play any games on you!”
His small eyes narrowed as he suddenly twisted her wrist so sharply that she yelped with pain. “On me or under me, we’ll try them all in time, won’t we, my little cat?”
“Release the lady, Wrightsman,” said a mild voice behind them, and, her heart still pounding with fear, Caroline turned to see her defender. He didn’t look like a hero—thin and ungainly as a crane in a plain brown silk coat, his gray-streaked hair cropped short in monastic severity—but in Caroline’s eyes he was already worthy of a white horse. “I don’t believe she wishes to keep your company any longer.”
“What she wishes doesn’t matter, Byfield,” growled Sir Harry. “She’s Merry Miriam’s daughter, and I’ve bought her services from Miriam herself.”
The gray-haired man frowned. “Her own mother sold her to you?”
“Aye, and drove a harder bargain than any moneylender,” said Sir Harry sourly. “I’ll have you know I’ve paid a king’s ransom for this little whore’s maidenhead.”
“If she still has a maidenhead, then she’s hardly a whore,” reasoned Byfield. “For that matter, to my eye she looks too young for any sort of venal activity. Since when have your preferences turned to children, Wrightsman?”
Sir Harry snorted. “Since Christmas week in Bath with that infernal actress. Left me with the French pox, damn her eyes! Even an old puritan like you must know the only real cure comes from lying with a virgin, and that means the girl’s bound to be young. How else can a man be certain the chit’s what she claims?”
Incredulous, Byfield stared down his nose at the other man. “You would knowingly ruin the poor girl that way? Pox her in the empty hope of curing yourself?”
“She’ll be paid well enough for her trouble, you can be sure.”
“I don’t care what you gave that sorry excuse for a mother, Wrightsman. I won’t stand by and let you do this. Come round to my banker in the morning and you shall have double what you paid.”
“Damn your interference, Byfield, it’s the girl I want, not the money!”
“Triple it, then, and find yourself a new physician instead. Who can put a price on an innocent’s soul?” His smile grave, the sixth Earl of Byfield held out his hand to Caroline. “Here, child. You’re coming home with me, and I swear no one shall ever touch you against your will again.”
And at last Caroline wept.
He would not be afraid.
Jeremiah took a deep breath and rested his hand over the open top of the lantern’s globe, sealing the candle and its flame within beneath his palm. As the air was exhausted, the flame slowly began to flicker and dim, and the shadows in the bedchamber grew darker, deeper, closing in on Jeremiah as the small light faded. He could feel his heart pounding in his breast, his blood racing, every muscle tensing to run and escape the blind, irrational panic that was swallowing him as completely as the night itself. The little flame twisted one final time and guttered out, leaving only the smoking spark on the wick and the endless, silent, eternal blackness.
With a choking sound deep in his throat, Jeremiah lifted his hand, his eyes desperately intent on the tiny glowing spark. His breath tight in his chest, he willed it back to life, struggling to concentrate on this last dot of light as the only way to fight the blind terror that would smother his life if he let it.
God, why had he let it go so far?
Slowly, as if it heard him, the spark glowed brighter, stronger, until at last it became a flame again, dancing double in the curved globe. Still Jeremiah stared at it, unable to look away. For now the shadows were gone, the demons vanquished. But how long would they stay away, how long before he found any lasting peace? With a groan of despair he dropped back onto the bed, his arms thrown across the pillows beneath his head.
What the devil had happened to him? It hadn’t always been this way. He was a Yankee, a Rhode Islander by birth, nobody’s fool, a deep-water captain raised on the Narragansett. The first time he’d fought for his life he’d been only eleven, beside his privateering father in the War for Independence, and through two more wars he’d never turned his back on a fight, whether with swords or pistols or his own bare fists.
He’d battle hurricanes at sea or thieves and rogues on land. Who or what made little difference to him, as long as he won. His temper was notorious, his courage undoubted. He stood over six feet tall with shoulders to match, and years of hard living had made his body equally hard, scarred, lean and muscular.
No one who knew him would ever call him a coward. No one would dare. But he himself knew the truth.
He, Captain Jeremiah Sparhawk, was afraid of the dark.
He stared up at the pleated damask canopy overhead, still struggling with the terror. He was safe here, safe in his sister Desire’s great house on the hill outside of Portsmouth. She was a fine lady now, his sister, married to an English nobleman, Rear Admiral Lord John Herendon. If Jeremiah listened he could just make out the sound of their guests in the music room below, the laughter and merriment that he’d wanted no part of this evening, or any other since he’d been brought here four months ago. Yet Desire had welcomed him when he’d needed a haven, sat by his bedside when the pain and fever had threatened his sanity, and not once had she questioned him when he’d begged to leave the lantern lit at night.
He woke with a ragged cry, soaked with his own sweat, and instinctively lunged for the pistol he kept beneath his pillow. Clutching the gun in both hands, he rolled over onto his back, ready to challenge the demon that dared follow him here into the light.
“Forgive me if I startled you, Captain Sparhawk,” said the woman standing beside the bed, “but you can lay that pistol down. At least you won’t need it on my account.”
Still not sure if he was dreaming, Jeremiah stared at her with the gun gripped tightly in his hands.
“Please,” she said gently. “I promise I’m no threat.”
She didn’t look like any nightmare he recognized. Far from it. She was so beautiful it almost hurt him to look at her, dressed all in white, from the egret’s plumes in her blond hair to the toes of her white satin slippers. If no devil, then an angel?
But heaven’s angels were neither male nor female, and the way the white silk of her gown spilled over the full curves of this one’s body left little doubt that she was decidedly female, decidedly of this earth. Her mouth was full and very red, her eyes very blue, widely set and tipped up at the corners. She watched him evenly, not at all embarrassed that he wore trousers and nothing else, waiting for him without any sign of fear.
He uncocked the pistol and lowered it slowly, that gentleness in her voice making him wary. He didn’t want sympathy or pity, especially not from a woman he didn’t know. “How did you get in here?”