Louise Allen – Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch (страница 38)

But this time she didn’t hesitate. “I’m sure. I love you, but I also trust you.”

“Then God help you, Caro, for putting your trust in me,” he said roughly. “No matter what you or the old lady say, the situation is far too dangerous, and I won’t put your life at risk. Besides, I want to be able to do whatever I must without worrying about you.”

“‘Whatever you must’?” Suddenly his real reason dawned on her, and her eyes flashed with anger and fear for him. “You’ll save your friends and Frederick as you promised, but that’s not all, is it? You’re going to Tripoli to find the man who stole your ship. I put the foolish idea into your head, and now you’re actually going to do it.”

He met her gaze evenly. “I can let Hamil haunt my dreams for the rest of my life, or I can face him, and prove to myself that I’m not a coward. I’m a Sparhawk, Caro, and I don’t see it as a choice.”

She shook her head wildly, trying to deny he could really want this. “But how can you? If he captures you again, you know he won’t let you go. He’ll kill you. It’s as simple as that, Jeremiah! He will kill you. You haven’t a ship, or men, or cannons, while he’s a pirate!”

“I don’t mean to fight him at sea. You’re right. I wouldn’t have a chance. But the man’s house is in Tripoli, and if I can reach him there—”

“No, I don’t want to hear it.” Agitated, she pushed herself from the bed and plucked her dressing gown from the floor, whipping it around her body. “I love you, but I won’t stay to listen to you plan your own death. It’s time I returned to my own room anyway.”

He lunged for her across the bed but she kept beyond his reach. “Damn it, Caro, come back here!”

“Damn you, Jeremiah, I won’t!” She retrieved the sheer blue shift and wadded it up into a ball in her hand, too hurt and angry to wish to be reminded of everything the shift had led to. With the silk shushing around her bare legs she went striding for the door.

“Caro, please. Please.”

Against her better judgment, she paused. She hadn’t expected to hear that note in his voice, and slowly she turned back. He was sitting in the middle of the bed bathed in moonlight, his tanned body dark against the white sheets and his black hair loose around his face, and he was so achingly beautiful that she could have wept just from the sight of him.

He held one hand out to her, an offering, not a summons. “Please, love,” he said softly. “This night could be all we ever have. Do you really want it to end like this?”

Still she hesitated, torn between sharing his love for tonight and the certain, bleak emptiness of a future without him.

He might have smiled; in the moonlight she wasn’t sure. “You said your room was lonely. It won’t have gotten any less so since you left it earlier.”

“I don’t want to be alone, Jeremiah,” she said plaintively. “I’ve never wanted that.”

“I never thought you did, love.”

She sighed and took one step toward the bed, then another. “No more talk of pirates or pashas if I stay.”

“Not a word.” He took her hand and pulled her up onto the bed with him, letting her dressing gown slide back to the floor in a silk puddle. “Instead let me tell you one more time how much I love you.”

Safe once again in his arms, her cheek resting in the hollow of his shoulder, she knew there was no other place under heaven she’d rather be.

His lips brushed the top of her hair, his eyes as clouded as their future together. Somehow he would find a way for them to be together. Somehow he would make their love last beyond this room, this night, and the magic of the moonlight in Naples.

With a sigh she burrowed closer, her hands sliding around his waist. “Now that I’ve finally found you, Jeremiah Sparhawk,” she whispered, “I don’t ever want to part with you again.”

“Nor do I, love,” he said softly, “nor do I.”

“What are you doing here, my dear Caroline?” asked Dorinda, barely containing her irritation. She waved aside the dressmaker with the length of deep red Circassian draped across her arm and motioned for Caro to come closer. “I would have thought you’d be besieged with the details of your journey and not have time to make calls. Did you not receive my note about Captain Tomaso?”

“Yes, of course. Everything you’ve done has been wonderful, and I’ll never thank you enough.” Caro sank into the little gilt chair beside the older woman’s, too distraught to notice the interest of the dressmaker and her assistants. “It’s Jeremiah who’s the problem.”

“A bit of discretion, my dear,” chided Dorinda. “It is unwise to advertise one’s personal woes.”

She glanced pointedly at both the lowered eyes and open ears of the dressmaker, mentally cursing her daughter-in-law’s foolish outburst. By nightfall Madame Duval would have repeated every word she overheard to as many of her customers as she possibly could. But then, considered Dorinda, that in itself might not be such a bad thing. All of Naples knew of poor Frederick’s capture. When his chit of a wife failed to return after attempting a rescue, a small show of grief on Dorinda’s part would gain her much sympathy, and might help keep any unpleasant suspicions at a distance.

“You will excuse us, madame,” she said. “As you can see, my daughter-in-law is concerned over a family matter that we must discuss in private.”

Although the Frenchwoman bowed respectfully to Dorinda, her eyes were glinting with a businesswoman’s eagerness as she studied Caro.

“I am honored, Madame la Comtesse,” purred Madame Duval as she sank into a deep curtsy. “Perhaps your ladyship would be so kind as to permit me to call on you? I have in my shop at present a rose silk senchaw, très belle, tres riche, that would suit your ladyship’s—”

“She’s not staying,” said Dorinda curtly. “She leaves Naples this afternoon to seek my son, her husband.”

Dramatically the Frenchwoman clasped her hands over her breasts. “Ah, Madame la Comtesse, I wish you bonne chance, I wish you and your husband—”

“Good day, madame,” said Dorinda. As far as she was concerned, the dressmaker had learned more than enough to fuel her gossip, and she was in no humor to sit back and listen while Madame Duval lavished compliments on her upstart daughter-in-law. Capitano Tomaso’s ship left on the late afternoon tide, and Dorinda fully intended that Caroline be on board.

Reluctantly Madame Duval and her assistants gathered their samples and bowed their way from the room. Dorinda sat back in her chair, one finger arched against her cheek and her eyes hooded as she considered Caro. No matter what the spat was between them, the chit had clearly just tumbled from her lover’s bed, and Dorinda’s anger rose another notch. She recognized the signs well enough: the chit’s lips still swollen, almost bruised, her eyes shadowed from lack of sleep, her cheeks far rosier than they’d been yesterday. If the little harlot came any closer, Dorinda didn’t doubt that she’d smell the man’s scent on her still. What had her poor Frederick done to deserve such treatment?

But Dorinda knew the value of hiding her outrage, of biding her time. “Now then, my dear,” she began sympathetically. “What exactly is the problem with Captain Sparhawk?”

Caro took a deep breath, steadying her voice before the countess. She didn’t know how she’d survived Jeremiah’s farewell this morning, and, feeling battered and vulnerable, she had come to her former enemy as a last resort. “Jeremiah refuses to let me go with him to Tripoli.”

Dorinda sniffed contemptuously. So the man wished to be rid of her. Dorinda could not blame him, and in a way she respected him more for it. The Italians had a marvelous word, cicisbeo, that they used to describe the acknowledged, ornamental lover of a married woman, a title no honorable man would ever aspire to. What a pity she would never have the pleasure of knowing this Jeremiah herself.

“The way I view it,” she said, “Signor Sparhawk has no choice but to take you with him.”

“Jeremiah says it’s too dangerous, that he won’t put me at risk.” Because he loves me too much. Caro stopped perilously short of saying the words out loud. Already she missed him. “He doesn’t even want me at the dock to see him off.”

“For God’s sake, girl, use your wits!” ordered Dorinda, her anger too great to sustain the feigned sympathy any longer. “I’ll wager you didn’t get to be countess by wringing your hands and wailing. And don’t forget that you are a countess, and no insolent Yankee sailor has any right to tell you what you may or may not do.”

Caro’s head drooped. “I’ve never done anything for myself,” she said softly. “Frederick didn’t wish me to. He considered it unseemly and ill fitting a lady of my station.”

“Fah on what foolishness Frederick wishes! You’re not helpless. You came here after him, didn’t you?”

Caro shook her head, unconvinced.

“Listen to me, girl. I don’t care how you do it—with your face, you should have no difficulty at all—but you owe it to my son to be on that ship. And you will do it, Caroline.” The old woman jabbed at the air with her diamond-weighted finger. “Or you will answer to me.”

As the hired skiff drew closer to the felucca that would carry him to Tripoli, Jeremiah’s misgivings grew. The two stubby masts and patched lateen sails were bad enough, but the dozen oars that bristled from each side of the little ship inspired even less confidence. Oars like that needed men to row them, men that in this part of the world were most likely Christian slaves, and as both a free man and a Christian himself, Jeremiah despised all that galleys represented. As a sailor he wouldn’t have trusted the shabby felucca on the river at home, let alone on the Mediterranean with its sudden storms and uncertain currents, and he wondered again if he’d been wrong to accept passage arranged by the old countess. Not that he had much choice; Naples was at war with Tripoli, too—at least theoretically—and all the other vessels daring to trade illegally between the two countries were bound to be as disreputable as this one.