Sparhawk's Angel (18 page)

"Bien, bien!
Now here, let me—oh, my, Nick didn't tell me you've suffered some sort of accident!"

"It wasn't exactly an accident," she began, unsure of how much Nick would wish her to explain. "Nick was busy attacking another ship, and I was foolish enough to be struck by a splinter from our mast."

Jerusa swung around to face her brother, her hands on her hips. "How
could
you, Nick?"

"But it was my fault, not his!" Rose dared to smile shyly at Nick, who was balancing his youngest niece on his shoulder while the other two swung on his coat-tails. "Nick was the one who rescued me."

But instead of the smile she'd hoped for in return, his expression grew dark as thunderclouds, his mouth stern and set. "If you hadn't been on deck during action in the first place, Rose," he said sharply, "you wouldn't have needed rescuing."

And Rose's heart plummeted. She knew it was her fault, but before this he hadn't been so cruel as to agree.

"En voil
à
assez!"
Jerusa waved her hand at her brother in abrupt dismissal. "You can quarrel over this later in the house if you must, but I refuse to keep any guest of mine waiting here in the hot sun. Come, Miss Everard, let me help you."

Gratefully Rose took Jerusa's offered hand, but as soon as she stood she realized she'd need more than that. Her heartbeat was ringing like a bell in her ears, her forehead was hot and her hands like ice. She paused, struggling to stop Jerusa's face from spinning before her as she stepped from the cart, and instead crumpled unconscious to the paving stones in a soft sigh of silk.

Nick waited in the garden where Jerusa had banished him, and when at last she came to him, he rose instantly to his feet, his face lined with concern.

"She's sleeping now," said Jerusa to his unspoken question, "and I'm certain she'll be well enough when she wakes, though I told her I'd send up a tray with her dinner. But
mordieu
, Nick, how you could have thought she'd be equal to parading about in the summer sun with you after what she's been through! Colette and I changed that bandage, and now it's all I can do not to thrash you for the selfish, pigheaded brute that you are."

"She said she felt fine," muttered Nick defensively, unwilling to agree with his sister even though she was right. She was, after all, two years his junior, and had spent all of her speaking life trying to order his. "Rose is stronger than she looks. She told me herself that she was much better."

"Well, and what else was she supposed to say?" With an impatient sigh Jerusa dropped onto the teakwood bench shaded by lush tree ferns and pulled one of the loose cushions into her lap, thumping it with her fist as she wished she could do to Nick. "Especially if you've been as dreadful to her all along as you've been in my hearing.
Mordieu
, the way you snarled at her when she said you'd saved her! It's a wonder she didn't faint right then."

"I didn't snarl at her," he grumbled, fresh remorse sweeping over him. "I was ruddy furious with myself. If I'd half a brain, I would have insisted she go below before we'd even come into firing range. That's what I meant."

"Well, it certainly didn't sound that way." She looked at him curiously. "Just as I can't believe I've now heard you admit you were wrong. The first time I can recall, isn't it? Are you truly my bullheaded brother Nickerson, or has some otherworldly spirit carried you off and replaced you with another?"

Immediately he thought of Lily, and equally quickly thrust her from his
thoughts. "Bloody amusing, you are," he said. "How is Michel able to survive
each day without laughing himself silly?"

"He contrives to manage." She pushed a hairpin back in place. "Miss Everard's not at all what I expected from the note you sent with your man, you know. 'An English lady, taken with a prize and held now for ransom.' You can imagine what I thought."

The indignation in her voice came as permission for Nick to smile with relief. She wouldn't have let it show if Rose had been in real danger. "What, you thought I'd burden you with some ancient old dragon of a dowager, some sainted daughter of old Albion?"

"Of course not. It may have been over more than a year since you last showed your face here, Nick, but I doubted you've changed that much." She leaned back on the bench, crossing her ankles and hugging the pillow to her chest. She was past thirty now, the mother of four children, but Nick was willing to wager she still turned as many heads as when she'd been a belle in Newport. "I knew the lady would be young and beautiful, or at least agreeable, or else you would have left her with your agent in Charles Town instead of bringing her this much farther."

"Rose is all three, young, beautiful and infinitely agreeable," he said as he came to sit beside her on the bench. "Besides, she likes to wager. So what about her surprises you?"

"I didn't expect that she'd be in love with you," she said softly. "Not that you're unlovable—
mordieu
, other women have always found my wretched brothers irresistible—but this one, this girl, is different It's writ in her eyes, plain as day, and she's miserable because she can't help it. She loves you, Nick."

"I don't believe it," he said flatly, even as his heart quickened with irrational longing. It was foolish, wrong, hopeless, but still he hoped. Could this be, then, what she'd been trying to tell him earlier? "She's bound to wed another man, an English officer with the fleet on St. Lucia, and even though she scarcely knows the bastard, she still hasn't changed her mind. How could she be in love with me?"

"Because she is,
stupide!"
said Jerusa with exasperation. "And even more appalling was realizing that you love her in return."

"Hell, Rusa, now you're just plain talking nonsense," he declared, stunned. Oh, he desired Rose, and he cared for her, and he liked her a great deal, more, in fact, than any other woman he could remember, but he wasn't in love with her. Damnation, no. "I've never been in love with anyone, not that I can help."

"You are now," said Jerusa serenely. "I suppose with this girl you couldn't help it, and about time, too."

Nick drew himself up with as much dignity as he could. "And I tell you it hasn't happened yet. Besides, even if I wished to, I wouldn't know how to begin."

"You don't have to
know
anything," she scoffed. "You feel, you dream, you sigh, you love.
Quelle
b
ê
tise
!"

"Stop insulting me in French," he ordered crossly. "You're still a Newport lass, for all that you tied yourself to that Frenchman."

"You'll recall I was promised to marry another man, too, before Michel stole me away." She sighed fondly, remembering. "Just as you've done to Miss Everard."

"It's not like that at all, Jerusa." But it was, and he wondered why he'd never thought of the similarities before. Michel G
é
ricault had kidnapped his sister right out from under her priggish bridegroom's nose, and though Michel had taken her for complicated reasons of revenge, not ransom, he had brought her here to Martinique for safekeeping—just as Nick himself was doing with Rose.

But there the likeness would end, for he hadn't fallen in love with Rose the way Michel had with Jerusa, and he most certainly wasn't going to marry her in place of Lord Eliot, any more than Rose expected him to.

Jerusa smiled sadly. "It's only been eight years—you see how tall Alexandre and Louisa have grown!—yet it seems an eternity when I think of bow much has changed since then." She hugged the pillow more tightly and looked up to him. She didn't need to say more; they were both the age that had suffered most from the war, and both had lost too many friends to the fighting. "Has Newport truly changed as much as they say? A friend of Michel's swore I wouldn't recognize it."

"You wouldn't," said Nick, the grim images rising fresh again before his eyes. "More than half the houses are burned or abandoned, the wharves deserted and shops shuttered, even the trees in the churchyards cut down by the Hessians for firewood."

"And our house?"

He leaned forward, his shoulders sagging beneath the weight of what he'd seen. "Our house still stands, aye, because the British officers claimed it for their own, and everything in it besides. What they didn't destroy they shipped back to their own firesides in Britain, the devil take their black, thieving souls. The porcelain and the plates and every stick of furniture, down to the brasses from the front door. Even Mama's roses are gone, torn up by the roots to feed their nags."

When he'd returned at last, he hadn't known the British had taken the town. He'd meant to play the prodigal, come home with a ship of his own and gold in his pocket to toss in his father's face, but the town and the family of his boyhood had been swallowed by the war and lost forever.

"What of Mama and Father?" asked Jerusa anxiously. "You saw them, didn't you?"

"Aye," said Nick heavily, the old antagonisms flaring again. "They fled through Middletown to Providence even as the British were landing in Newport, and all they could take was what they could carry. I swear they live on their pride now, in a mean little house with smoking fireplaces that must break Mama's heart. Yet when I offered to help, Father nigh tossed me into the street. Damnation, Jerusa, you know how he is."

"He's exactly like you," she said unhappily. "In how you look, how you act, even your temper and your stubbornness, you've always been alike."

Nick shook his head. "Nay, Rusa, you're wrong. It's always been Jon who's his favorite. Jon was the one who never erred, who always had the best that Father could offer."

"But you're the one he's most proud of," she insisted, leaning forward to loop her arm through his, "the one he'll praise to strangers in taverns, bragging of where you've sailed and what you've seen, even of how many years you managed to stay away and keep out from under his thumb."

"I don't believe it, Jerusa," he said, shaking his head. "Not Father. I don't believe it at all."

"Just the way you don't believe that Rose Everard loves you, either," she said sadly. "You've always done this to yourself, Nick. Whenever you fear you've cared too much, that you've let too much of yourself fall over the balance, you run away to keep from risking more. You've done it to Father and Mama, disappearing clear to the other side of the world, and to me, too, as if a year meant no more than a day. And now,
mon cher fr
è
re
, you're doing it to Rose."

But the sound Nick heard as he began to defend himself was wrong for a garden, sharp and repetitious, and swiftly he looked for its source. Lily was clapping her hands, applauding, as she sat in the child's swing that hung from the gnarled mahogany tree.

"Your sister is a wonder, my dear Nickerson," she said, swaying gently so her skirts floated over the grass. "In these short minutes she has been able to answer, oh, so many questions that have plagued me."

"Why are you still here?" he demanded hoarsely, rising to his feet. Damnation, he'd done everything she could want, yet here she was again as if nothing at all had changed. Unless she never truly meant to leave him; unless he'd be cursed by her until he, too, was dead. "What happened to the promise that you'd be gone?"

"Nick?" asked Jerusa uneasily, coming to her feet beside him. "Nick, what is it?"

He closed his eyes and shook his head, realizing too late that he'd spoken aloud.

"Your sister seems both wise and intelligent, Nick," said Lily. "You could always tell her about me, the way you did with Rose."

He didn't answer beyond swearing under his breath, afraid to betray himself any more. His gaze swept across the walled garden, desperate to create some explanation that Jerusa would accept.

Jerusa was following his gaze, looking herself for an explanation. "Nick, is there something wrong?" she asked anxiously. "Michel is always warning me that I'm too careless of my safety, and if there's something amiss—
mordieu
, I must go to the children!"

"Nay, Jerusa, stay," he said, catching her arm before she ran into the house. "It's nothing, I swear. The children are fine."

Lily laughed. "I can make a real row if that will be easier to explain." She lifted her hand with a flourish and from somewhere in the house came a loud crash of breaking pottery.

Again Jerusa tried to pull away toward the house, and again Nick held her. "You're being skittish now, Rusa," he said softly as he glared over her head at Lily on the swing. "I told you there was nothing to fear, and there isn't. With your lively litter of brats, I'd wager something breaks once a day."

"Twice a day. And they're not brats, Nick, not really." She sighed and relaxed. "But what did you mean about the promise? What promise?"

"That blasted white bird over there." He pointed to the ancient molting parrot in a wire cage that hung from one of the trees. "Bit me last time I was here, and you swore to get rid of it by the time I returned."

"Oh, P
è
re Blanc." Jerusa laughed. "I know I promised, but the horrid old thing is Aim
é
e's pet, and for her sake I can't serve him the way he deserves. This time keep your fingers from his cage."

She patted his shoulder. "But I truly must go see what's been destroyed now. We dine at nine. Michel is looking forward to your news, I know. I'm glad you're here, Nick, alive and well. And I'm glad that the only ghosts you're seeing are unpleasant old parrots."

He laughed with her, albeit a bit uneasily, and stayed behind in the garden. She was barely through the door when he wheeled around to face Lily.

"That was a splendid recovery," she said merrily, kicking herself back in the swing so her wings nearly brushed the grass. "Fancy confusing
me
with a parrot!"

"What I fancy, Lily, is for you to be gone," said Nick, his temper rising. "You said you would leave once I'd improved myself, and blast and hell, I have. I've behaved as honorably with Rose as a mortal man could. I've brought her here to St. Pierre with her maidenhead intact, and she's Eliot's whenever he wants her. How much more honorable can I be? You heard my sister. I'm so blessed good now she thinks I'm a changeling. What more proof do you need?"