Kitabı oku: «Regency High Society Vol 4», sayfa 2

Without buckles, her shoes flapped awkwardly around her heels, and she kicked them away, and when the wind dragged the heavy blanket from her grasp and off her shoulders, she left that, too, behind, running as fast as she could down the narrow, overgrown path to the shore. One last windblown rise lay before her, then the sharp drop to the beach. She slipped and skidded on the wet grass and tall reeds lashed at her legs, but still she ran, her tattered skirts fluttering around her in the wind. The path turned to sand beneath the ruined stockings on her feet, and before her, at last, were the beach and the wide river that emptied into the bay.

Or was it? Confused, she paced back and forth along the water’s edge, trying to make sense of what she saw. The sinking sun to the west was behind her, so this should be the eastern shore of Aquidneck, with Portsmouth across the river in the distance.

But this short, sandy beach was all wrong, the distance to Portsmouth too far across the water. Jerusa shaded her eyes with the back of her hand and squinted at the horizon. Instead of the narrow tip of Sakonnet Point, which she expected, she saw what looked like two islands: Conanicut Island then, with Dutch beyond to the north, and a barren lump of stone that must be Whale Rock.

And there, to the east, washed in the pale light of the setting sun, was Aquidneck Island, and Newport.

“Newport,” she whispered hoarsely, the full impact of what she saw striking her like a blow. She wasn’t on her island any longer. She was on the mainland, an endless, friendless world that before she’d only seen from a distance, the same way that she was now gazing at her home. Her home, her family, her own darling Tom, all so hopelessly far beyond her reach. “God help me, if that’s Newport, then where am I?”

“Aye, ask your God to help you,” said the Frenchman roughly, “for you’ll have precious little from me.”

She turned slowly, rubbing away the tears that wet her cheeks before he could see them. His face was taut with fury, his blond hair untied and blowing wild around his face, and the pistol in his hand was primed and cocked and aimed at her breast.

“Don’t try to run again, ma chère,” he said so quietly she almost didn’t hear him over the sounds of the wind and the waves. “I’d far sooner keep you alive, but I won’t balk at killing you if you leave me no choice. I told you before, it’s you I want, Jerusa Sparhawk. Alive or dead, it’s you, and nothing else.”

Chapter Three

Joshua Sparhawk watched as his father, Gabriel, ran his fingers over the crumpled paper with the black fleur de lis. How many times, wondered Josh, how many times had his father touched that scrap of paper since Jerusa had disappeared last night?

“I just spoke with the leader of the last patrol, Father,” he said wearily, tossing his hat onto the bench beneath the window. “They’ve searched clear to Newport Neck and back again and found not a trace of her.”

“Not that I expected they would.” Gabriel sighed heavily as he sank back against the tall caned back of his chair. Though his black hair had only just begun to gray at the temples and his broad shoulders remained unbent, he would be sixty next spring, and, for the first time that Josh could remember, his formidable father actually looked his age. “Whoever took her is long gone by now.”

Once again he glanced down at the paper that was centered squarely on the top of the desk before him. To one side lay Jerusa’s jewelry, her necklace, ring and earbobs tucked within the stiff circle of the pearl cuff. On the other side was the pink rose in a tumbler of water, the fragile flower’s petals already drooping and edged with brown, an unhappy symbol for the Sparhawk family’s fading hopes.

“But we had to be sure, Father.” Josh frowned, unwilling to share Gabriel’s pessimism. If the black fleur de lis held some special significance, then he wished his father would share it with the rest of them. He still couldn’t quite believe that Rusa was gone, that she wouldn’t yet pop up from behind a chair to laugh at them for being such hopeless worrywarts. “There was still a chance we’d find her somewhere on the island. They had at most an hour’s start on us. How far could they go?”

“Halfway to hell, if they had a good wind.” Gabriel glared up at Josh from beneath the bristling thicket of his brows, the famous green eyes that he’d passed on to his children as bright and formidable as ever. “I told you before that the bastards came by water, and left by it, too.”

Unconsciously Josh clasped his hands behind his back, his legs spread wide in the defensive posture he’d used since boyhood to confront his father. He was doing his best to find his sister; they all were. But Father being Father and Jerusa being the one missing, even Josh’s best would never be enough.

“You know as well as I that we’ve checked with the harbormaster and the pilots, Father. We’ve stopped and boarded every vessel that cleared Newport since last night, and we’ve still come up empty-handed.”

“Oh, aye, as if these bloody kidnappers will haul aback because we’ve asked them nicely, then invite us all aboard for tea!” In frustration Gabriel slammed his fist on the desk. “They knew what they were about, the sneaking, thieving rogues. They slipped into town just long enough to steal my sweet Jerusa, then slipped back out without so much as a by-your-leave. That jackass of a harbormaster was likely so deep in his cups he wouldn’t see a thirty-gun frigate sail under his nose!”

“For God’s sake, Father, they had less than an hour, and if—”

Abruptly Josh broke off at the sound of the voices in the front hall. Perhaps there was fresh news of his sister.

But instead of a messenger, only Thomas Carberry appeared at the door to Gabriel’s office, pausing as he waited vainly for Gabriel to invite him in. When Gabriel didn’t, Tom entered anyway, irritably yanking off his yellow gloves as he dropped unbidden into a chair.

Unlike the two Sparhawk men, unshaven and bleary-eyed after the long, sleepless night and day of searching, Tom was as neatly turned out as he’d been for the wedding itself, his hair clubbed in a flawless silk bow, and his linen immaculate. For his sister’s sake, Josh had tried very hard to like Tom, or at least be civil to him, but to him the man was an idle, empty-headed popinjay, too concerned with dancing and the latest London novel. Of course the ladies fancied him to distraction, his sister most of all.

“Well, now, Captain,” Tom began as he crossed his legs elegantly at the knee. “What word do you have of my bride?”

Joshua watched how his father lowered his chin and drummed his fingers on the desk, his expression as black as thunderclouds. If Tom Carberry had any sense at all, he’d be running for cover by now.

“Your bride, Carberry?” rumbled Gabriel. “Damn your impertinence, Jerusa’s still my daughter first, and I’ll thank you to remember it!”

Undeterred, Tom sniffed loudly, an unpleasant habit he’d developed from overindulging in snuff. “You make it rather hard to forget, don’t you, Captain? But you’ve still not answered my query. Where’s Jerusa?”

The drumming fingers curled into a fist. “Where in blazes are the wits your maker gave you, boy? Do you think we’d all be scouring this blessed island and the water around it if we knew where Jerusa was? Not that we’ve had much help from you, have we?”

“I’ll beg you to recall, sir, that I ordered and paid for the handbills posting the reward for Jerusa’s return. Nothing mean about that!”

“Oh, aye, nothing mean about that, nor meaningful, either!” growled Gabriel as he shoved back his chair and rose to his feet. “Ink and paper won’t fetch my daughter back out of the air!”

“My point exactly, Captain. How, indeed, could a lady vanish into the very air?” Belligerently Tom sniffed again as he, too, rose to his feet. “Nor am I alone in my surmise, sir. There’s others, many others, who shall agree, sir, that my bride’s disappearance mere minutes before our union has a decidedly insulting taint to it. An insult, sir, that I’ve no intention of bearing without notice.”

Josh grabbed Tom and shoved him back against his chair. As far as he could see, the insult was to Jerusa, and he’d be damned if he’d let anyone speak of his sister like that. “What the hell are you saying, Carberry?”

“I’m saying that I believe Jerusa’s jilted me,” said Tom, his words clipped with fury. He lifted both hands to Josh’s chest and shoved hard in return. “I’m saying that her disappearance is merely a convenient manner of explanation. I’m saying that the chit’s amusing enough, but neither she nor her dowry’s worth—”

At once Josh was on him, driving his fist squarely into Tom’s dimpled chin and knocking him to the floor. Tom’s own blow went wild, but as he toppled backward he grabbed the front of Josh’s coat and pulled him down, too. Over and over they rolled across the floorboards, whichever man was on top swinging at the other as they grunted and swore and crashed into furniture.

But while in height the two were evenly matched, Josh had long ago traded a genteel drawing room for the far rougher company on the quarterdeck of his own sloop, and Tom’s anger and dishonor alone weren’t enough to equal Josh’s raw strength and experience. Finally when Josh was on top he stayed there, breathing hard, pinning the other man down between his thighs.

“My—my sister’s too good for you, you stinking son of a bitch,” he gasped, breathing hard as he raised his fist to deal one final blow to Tom’s battered, bleeding face. “Why the hell didn’t they take you instead?”

But before he could strike, Gabriel caught his arm. “Enough, Joshua.”

He struggled to break his father’s grasp, Gabriel’s voice barely penetrating the red glare of his rage. “Father, you heard what he said—”

“I said enough, or you’ll kill him, and the bastard’s not worth that.”

Reluctantly Josh nodded, and Gabriel released him. As he climbed off Tom, he flexed his fingers where he’d once struck the floor instead of Tom. His hand would be too raw to hold a pen tonight, and already his lip felt as if it had doubled in size from the swelling, but one look at Tom made it all worthwhile. No ladies would come sighing after that face for a good long while.

Slowly Tom crawled to his knees and then to his feet, swaying unsteadily but still shaking off Gabriel’s offered hand as he headed to the door. He fumbled for his handkerchief and pressed it to the gash on his forehead.

“You’re a—a low, filthy cur, Sparhawk,” he gasped from the doorway, “an’ so—an’ so I’ll tell th’ town.”

“Then go and tell them, Carberry,” said Gabriel grimly, “but don’t come back here. It was only for your father’s sake and Jerusa’s begging that I agreed to your wretched proposal anyway, and thank God I’ve broken the betrothal before it was too late.”

“You broke it?” croaked Tom. “I came here t’end it!”

“My daughter didn’t jilt you, Carberry, but I did. Now get out.”

And this time Tom didn’t wait.

Shaking his head, Gabriel went back behind his desk. From the bottom drawer he pulled out a bottle of rum, drew the stopper and handed it to Josh. “Don’t let your mother see you until you’ve cleaned yourself up. You know how she feels about fighting.”

Josh smiled as best he could and took the bottle. The rum stung his lip but tasted good, sliding and burning down his throat. This was the first time his father had ever shared the bottle from his desk with him, and Josh savored the rare approval that came along with the drink.

It was one of the quirks of his family that though he and Jerusa had been born together twenty-one years before, their positions were curiously reversed. Josh was the third, the youngest son, always trying to prove himself, while Jerusa was the first and eldest of his three sisters, the beautiful, irrepressible favorite to whom everything came so easily. Not that he’d ever been jealous of her; Jerusa was too much a part of him for that, almost like the other half of his being.

Lord, he hoped they’d find her soon.

His father left the bottle on the desk between them. “You’ve traded with the French islands, Josh. Ever heard of a pirate named Deveaux?”

Josh shook his head. “The name’s not one I recall. Which port does he call home?”

“Once he sailed from Fort Royale on Martinique, but not now. I watched him take a pistol and spatter his own brains aboard the old Revenge. Your mother was there to see it, too, more’s the pity.” Gabriel sighed, his thoughts turned inward to the past. “Must be nearly thirty years ago, though I remember it as if it were yesterday. And that, I think, is what someone wants me to believe.”

He picked up the paper in his right hand, and to Josh’s surprise his father’s fingers were trembling. “This was Deveaux’s mark, lad. All his men had it burned into their flesh, and anytime he wished to take credit for his actions he’d leave a paper like this behind.”

“How could he have anything to do with Jerusa?” asked Josh. “You said the man is dead.”

“As dead as any mortal can be, and his scoundrel crew with him. The ones that weren’t lost in the wreck of his ship we took to Bridgetown for hanging. But now, Lord help us, I cannot swear to it.”

Josh held his breath, waiting with a strange mixture of dread and excitement for what must follow. There were some stories of his father’s past—and his mother’s, too—that were told so often they’d become family legends. But most of Gabriel’s exploits as a privateer he had kept to himself, and certainly away from the sons who would have hung on every heroic word.

Until now, when Jerusa’s life might be swinging in the balance between the past and the present….

Gabriel reached inside the letter box on his desk. In his palm lay a second paper, faded with age but still a perfect match to the new one found with the rose. “Deveaux kidnapped your mother on the night of our wedding as she walked in the garden of my parents’ house at Westgate. And everything—damnation, everything—about how Jerusa vanished is the same, down to this cursed black lily, even though there should be no one left alive beyond your mother and me to know of it.”

Josh stared at the black lilies, his head spinning at what his father said. Whoever cared enough to come clear to Newport to duplicate his mother’s kidnapping so precisely would want to see the macabre game to its conclusion.

“But obviously this Deveaux must have let you redeem Mother,” he said, striving to make sense of the puzzle. “He didn’t hurt her.”

“God knows he tried. He would have killed us both if he could,” said Gabriel grimly, “just as he murdered so many others. Christian Deveaux was the most truly wicked man I’ve ever known, Joshua, as evil as Satan himself in his love of cruelty and pain. When I think of your sister in the hands of a man who fancies himself another Deveaux…”

He didn’t need to say more. Josh understood.

“I can have the Tiger ready to sail at dawn, Father,” he said quietly, “and I’ll be in Martinique in five days.”

Chapter Four

“If you’re well enough to run away, ma belle,” said Michel curtly, “then you’re well enough to ride. We’ll do better to travel by night anyway.”

He bent to tighten the cinch on the first saddle so he wouldn’t see the reproach in her eyes. Silly little chit. What did she expect him to do after she’d bolted like that?

But then, in turn, he hadn’t expected her to run, either. He’d thought a petted little creature like Jerusa Sparhawk would whimper and wail, not flee at the first chance she got. And locking him within the barn—though that had made him furious, it also showed more spirit than he’d given her credit for. Much more. He’d have to remember that, and not underestimate her again.

Jerusa watched the Frenchman as he murmured little nonsense words to calm the horse. Kindness for the horse, but none to spare for her. He’d made that clear enough.

She forced herself to eat the bread and cheese he’d given her, even as she remembered that he’d threatened to kill her. Rationally she didn’t believe he would, though she wasn’t sure she had the courage to test his threat and try to escape again. If he didn’t want her alive, he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to kidnap her in the first place.

But the ease with which he’d handled the pistols had chilled her. Most men in the colonies knew how to shoot with rifles or muskets to hunt game, but pistols were only used for killing other men. Because of her father’s whim to teach her along with Josh, she was adept at loading and firing both, and good enough to recognize the abilities of others. The Frenchman was a professional. He could be a soldier, more likely a thief or other rogue who lived outside the law.

He turned back toward her, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. By the light of the single lantern, his blue eyes were shuttered and purposely devoid of any emotion as he studied her with cold, disinterested thoroughness.

Whatever he was, he wasn’t a gentleman to look at her like that. She flushed, wishing she hadn’t lost the blanket, but resisted the impulse to cover her breasts with her hands. Pride would serve her better. She wouldn’t gain a thing with fear or shame. And at least if they traveled by night, then she’d be spared for now the question of where and how they’d sleep here together.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Kingston? Point Judith?”

“South.” The truth was that Michel hadn’t bothered to learn the name of the nearest town. Why should he, when he’d no intention of lingering?

“South?”

“South,” he answered firmly. She didn’t need to know any more than that.

“Well, south, then.” Jerusa sighed. He’d been talkative enough in the garden. “Would it be a grave affront to ask how we came to be here?”

He didn’t miss the sarcasm, but then, humility was never a word he’d heard in connection with her family. “By boat, ma chérie, as you might have guessed. We sailed here together by the moonlight, just you and I.”

To do that the Frenchman must be a sailor, and a good one, too, to make that crossing alone and at night. A sailor who could handle pistols: a privateer, like the men in her own family, or a pirate?

If she could only get one of those pistols for herself to balance the odds!

With an unconscious frown, she lifted a lock of her hair from her shoulder and twisted it between her fingers. Pistols or not, she wasn’t accustomed to men speaking to her as freely as this, and she didn’t like it. Moonlight and togetherness, indeed. As if she’d spend two minutes with such a man by choice.

“And these horses?” she asked dryly. “Did they have a place in our little ark, too?”

The corners of Michel’s mouth twitched in spite of himself. The provocative image of the girl before him in the lantern light, her hair tumbled about her face and her elegant clothes half-torn away, was so far from old Noah’s virtuous wife that he almost laughed. “These horses were here waiting for us, as I’d arranged.”

“Then you planned all this?” asked Jerusa incredulously. “You planned to bring me here?”

“Of course I planned it.” He slung the second saddle onto the mare. “Chance is a sorry sort of mistress, ma chère. I prefer to leave as little of my life in her care as I possibly can.”

“But you couldn’t have known I’d go into the garden!” she cried. “I didn’t know myself! I went on an impulse, a fancy! You couldn’t have known!”

He shrugged carelessly. “True enough. Originally I’d planned to take you from your new husband’s coach on your way to your wedding night in Middletown. With the servants already waiting to receive you, there would have been only the driver and your pretty Master Carberry. His father’s second house, isn’t it, there to the east of the high road to Portsmouth? Not quite as grand as your own at Crescent Hill, but it would have been comfortable enough for newlyweds, and the view from the front bedchamber is a fine one.”

She listened mutely, appalled by how familiar he was with the details of her life.

“It would have been dramatic, to stop a coach like a highwayman,” he continued. “I would, I think, have quite enjoyed it. Yet finding you alone in the garden was far easier.”

All of it had been easy enough, really. He’d spent so much of his life at the hire of whoever paid the most, listening, watching, making himself as unobtrusive as possible until the last, that learning about a family as public as the Sparhawks had been no challenge at all. No challenge, but the reward that waited would be far sweeter than all the gold in the Caribbean.

He smiled briefly at Jerusa over the mare’s chestnut back. “True, I don’t care for chance, but if she casts her favors my way I won’t turn my back, either.”

“You would never have succeeded!” she said hotly, insulted by his confidence. She might have been disarmed by his smile in the garden, but not now. “The Portsmouth Road isn’t Hounslow Heath! If the coachman hadn’t shot you dead, then you can be sure that Tom himself would have defended my honor!”

He cocked one brow with amusement. “What a pity we didn’t have the chance to test his mettle, ma petite. You could have been a maid, a wife and a widow in one short day.”

She opened her lips to answer, then pressed them together again with her rebuttal left unspoken as she realized the reality of what he’d said. Tom was the most genteel man she’d ever met, a gentleman down to the cut-steel buckles on his polished shoes. His elegance was one of the things she loved most about him, perhaps because it made Tom so different from her wilder, seafaring brothers.

But that same gentility wouldn’t have lasted a moment against the Frenchman. He might not kill her, but somehow she didn’t doubt that he would have murdered her darling Tom if he’d raised even his voice to defend her. He would be dead, and she would still be a prisoner.

She laid the bread on the bench beside her, the crust now as dry as dust in her mouth. A maid, a wife, a widow. Thank God she’d gone to the garden, after all. That single, pink rose might have saved Tom’s life, and under her breath she whispered a little prayer for him.

Michel watched how the girl seemed to wilt before his eyes. Perhaps she truly did love Carberry, though how any woman could lose her heart to such a self-centered ass was beyond reason. He’d seen Carberry only once from a distance, waving a handkerchief trimmed with more lace than a lady’s petticoat as he climbed into his carriage, but that glimpse had been enough to turn Michel’s stomach with disgust. Merde, he wouldn’t have had to waste the gunpowder on that one; more likely Carberry would have simply fainted dead away on his own.

Michel glanced out the window. The clouds had scattered, and the moon was rising. Time for them to be on their way.

He reached into one of the saddlebags, pulled out a bundle of dark red cloth and tossed it onto the bench beside Jerusa. “I expect you’ll wish something more serviceable for traveling. No doubt this is more common than you’re accustomed to, but there’s little place for silk and lace on the road.”

She looked up sharply. “Where are we going?”

“I told you before. South.”

“South,” she repeated, the single word expressing all her fears and frustration. “South, and south, and south again! Can’t you tell me anything?”

He watched her evenly. “Not about our destination, no.”

She snatched up the bundled clothing and hurled it back at him. “I’ll keep my own clothing, thank you, rather than undress before you.”

He caught the ball of clothing easily, as if she’d tossed it to him in play instead of in fury. “Did I ask that of you, ma chérie?”

She paused, thrown off-balance by his question. “Very well, then. Dare I ask for such a privacy? Would you trust me that far?”

His fingers tightened into the red fabric in his hands. “What reason have you given me to trust you at all?”

“Absolutely none,” she said with more than a little pride. “Not that you’ve granted me much of the same courtesy, either.”

He didn’t bother to keep the edge of irritation from his voice. “Whether it pleases you or not, Miss Jerusa, ours will not be an acquaintance based on trust of any kind.”

“I’d scarce even call this an acquaintance, considering that I’m your prisoner and you my gaoler,” she answered stubbornly, lifting her chin a fraction higher. “To my mind ‘acquaintance’ implies something more honorable than that.”

“There is, ma chère, nothing at all honorable about me.” The wolfish look in his blue eyes would have daunted a missionary. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

Heaven preserve her, how could she have missed it? “Damn you, what is it that you want?”

“I told you that before, too. I want you.”

“Want me for what?” she demanded. “For this? To haul about the countryside, to degrade and disgrace for your amusement? To—to be your mistress?”

There, she’d said it, put words to her worst fear, and the expression on the Frenchman’s handsome face did nothing to reassure her.

“You mean do I plan to force you, ma chère?” He came slowly to stand before her, his arms folded over his chest and his words an odd, musing threat. “For that’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? I certainly can’t envision you, Miss Jerusa Sparhawk, the most renowned belle in your colony, cheerfully offering a man like me the pleasure of your lovely body.”

“No,” she repeated in a whisper, looking down to her hands clenched in her lap. “No.”

Her dark, tangled hair fell forward like a veil around her face to hide her shame. With a shy eagerness she had anticipated her wedding night, and the moment when at last she would be free to love Tom as his wife. Once their betrothal had been announced, she had breathlessly allowed him all but the last freedom, so that it had been easy enough to imagine their lovemaking in the big bed in his father’s Middletown house.

“No.”

But there would be no bliss in having her maidenhead ravished by a stranger, no poetry or whisper-soft kisses in a bed with lavender-scented sheets, none of Tom’s tenderness or gentle touches to ease her nervousness.

All because, worst of all, there would be no love.

He took another step closer, his boots rustling the straw. “So then, ma chérie,” he asked, “your modest question is, Did I steal you away with the intention of raping you?”

Though dreading his answer, still she nodded, afraid to trust her voice. She knew she must not weep or beg for mercy, no matter that her heart was pounding and her breath was tight in her chest from fear. He was so much stronger, his power coiled tight and ready as a cat’s, that she knew full well he could do to her whatever he chose. Here, alone as she was, far from friends and family, how could it be otherwise?

Her head bowed, and every nerve on edge, she waited, and waited longer. When finally she could bear it no more and dared to raise her head, his face was bewilderingly impassive.

“If that is your question, Miss Sparhawk, then my answer, too, is no,” he said quietly. “You’re safe from me. The world is full enough of women who come to me willingly that I’ve never found reason or pleasure to do otherwise.”

Stunned, Jerusa stared at him. “Then you don’t—don’t want that of me?”

“I said I wouldn’t force you to lie with me, not that I didn’t wish to.” Again he held out the bundle of clothing to her. “Now go dress yourself, there beyond the horses, before I decide otherwise.”

Her eyes still full of uncertainty, Jerusa slowly took the rough clothing from him. “But why?” she asked. “Why else would you—”

“Because of who you are, ma belle,” he said. “Nothing else.”

Clutching the clothing to her chest, she rose to her feet and nodded, as if his explanation made perfect sense. As she walked past him he saw that she held her head high as any duchess, heedless of the ripped stockings on her bare feet or the tattered skirt that fluttered around her ankles. No, he decided, not like a duchess but a Sparhawk, for in her mind that would be better.

He watched as she went to the far end of the barn, to the last stall, and turned her back to him. She was tall for a woman, and the rough deal stall shielded her only as high as her shoulders. In preparation she draped the rough skirt and bodice and the plain white stockings he’d given her over the side of the stall, and then bent over, out of Michel’s sight, as she untied her petticoats and stepped out of them.

Out of his sight, perhaps, but not his imagination. With a clarity that was almost painful he envisioned the rounded shape of her hips as she dropped the layers of skirts, the long, shapely length of her legs as she shook them free of the crumpled linen.

Oh, he wanted her, that was true enough. Sacristi, he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her climb through the window into the garden. But forbidden fruit always seems sweetest, and Jerusa Sparhawk was a plump piece treacherously beyond his reach.

Morbleu, would he ever have agreed to this, given half a chance to refuse?

He thought of the last time he’d seen his mother before he’d sailed north to New England. The nurse he paid to watch her had tried to warn him at the door that Antoinette was unwell, but his mother had overheard the woman’s whispers and hurled herself at Michel like a wild animal, her jealousy and madness once again swirling out of control.

It took him until nightfall to calm her, his soft-voiced reassurances as crucial to her fragile peace as the opium draft she could no longer live without. The doctor had come, too, with his wig askew and the burgundy sauce from his interrupted supper specklng the front of his shirt. He had clucked and watched as his leeches had grown fat and sleek on Antoinette’s pale forearm.