Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda JarrettЧитать онлайн книгу.
instead was sent to live in the country. It was, I think, the one kind thing Mama did for me, and I thank her still. At least I grew up healthy and strong. But my only ‘education’ was what she forced into me during the last fortnight I was in her care, and oh, I was such an ignorant little girl!”
She smiled bleakly through her tears, remembering how much of an innocent she had been. “If Frederick hadn’t bought me, I would have followed in my mother’s path, and I would have died years ago, from the pox or consumption or some midwife’s quackery. Frederick saved my life, and for that I shall always love him.”
“But not as a wife?” asked Jeremiah gently, and she shook her head against the pillow without looking at him, her fingers twisting the sheet.
“That isn’t what he wanted. Frederick was—no, is—above the desires of the flesh. That’s what he called it—the ‘baser side of man’s animal nature’—and he promised he’d never sully our love that way. After what I’d learned from Mama, I wanted no part of it, either, so we suited each other famously. I would have if he’d wanted me to, yet he never did.”
“Then why the devil did he marry you?”
“He said it was to protect me. No one would dare slander the Countess of Byfield to her face, and if I outlived him, Frederick knew I’d be safe with his name. Oh, I know what is said of me in Portsmouth, but I was more his daughter than his mistress, let alone his wife. It was enough for me, and I was happy. Happy, that is, until Frederick disappeared. And then I met you.”
“Come here,” he said gruffly, and with a shuddering sigh she went to him, curling her body against him as his arm circled protectively around her. He should have guessed it all. The more he thought about what she’d told him, the more he realized she’d given him enough hints that a blessed idiot could have figured it out, just as he was ten times a fool for not realizing how much he was in love with her before this.
“I can’t help but believe that what we’ve done will only make things worse, sweetheart,” he said, “but you won’t see me wishing it undone, either.”
She searched his face. “You don’t?”
“How can I?” He sighed again, stroking her cheek. “I love you, Caro, and that’s the first time I’ve ever said that to any woman.”
Her smile was magical. “You do? Truly?”
He brushed away the tangle of her hair and kissed her gently, sweetly. He could imagine few situations more futile than falling in love as he had with another man’s wife, yet with Caro in his arms he still felt blissfully happy. “I do, truly, and more’s the pity for us both.”
“I loved you from the first time I saw you, sleeping at your sister’s house,” she confessed. “I tried then to guess the kind of man you must be to be so handsome, and I wasn’t disappointed.”
He grimaced, thinking how when she’d first seen him he’d been shaking and pale from a nightmare. “An illtempered, paid-out, rascally rogue?”
“No, of course not, and I won’t hear you say it!” She punched his shoulder with her small fist, and he groaned dramatically. “I knew you’d be kind and gentle and clever and brave, and you are all those things. A kind, gentle, clever, brave, rascally rogue.”
“Impudent little baggage.” As she laughed and wriggled out of reach, he tugged away the sheet that was twisted between them, wanting to feel again her skin against his. He pushed her back against the pillow, trapping her beneath his body, and kissed her until her laughter changed to little sighs of contentment and their kisses grew warmer, more impassioned. Reluctantly he broke away, seeing the dark smears of her blood on the sheet.
“Don’t tempt me, Caro,” he warned. “I’ve no intention of hurting you again tonight.”
“You won’t.” She ignored him, running her lip across the rough beard on his jaw. “You only hurt at the beginning. You are, you know, a large man.”
“And you’re a lovely woman,” he said softly. “The lovely woman I happen to love.”
“I love you, too, Jeremiah.” She found his lips and kissed him again, her happiness boundless. “Then I did the right thing after all.”
He sighed and held her closer. “Not necessarily. I will never regret making love to you, Caro, but before this night you could have had your marriage to Frederick annulled.”
She stared at him, shocked. “I would never have done that to Frederick. To shame him in front of the world like that—no, I could never have done it.”
That stung Jeremiah’s pride. “Then how shamed will he be if you present him with my child?” he said bluntly. “Or did the shopkeeper who sold you that dressing gown advise you on ways to avoid breeding, too?”
Embarrassed to be discussing such a thing with him, she shook her head. “It wouldn’t be likely, not the first time.”
“No? As you said yourself, there’s hundreds of bastards born every year from just that kind of ill-founded trust. Exactly how forgiving is your precious Frederick?”
She rested her cheek against the curling hair of his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. In all the time she’d spent this afternoon, agonizing over her feelings, she had, perhaps because of her own illegitimacy, never once considered conceiving a child.
“He would, I think, accept my child as his own,” she said slowly. “He cares so little for convention, and though he’d never admit it, he’d take great pleasure in displacing George as his heir.”
“Not your child, Caro. Ours.”
“Of course it would be ours. You know I’ve always wanted a baby,” she admitted shyly. “Your sister must have been brought to bed by now. I wonder if she had a little girl, or another boy like Johnny that looks like you?”
Jeremiah closed his eyes, fighting back the longing her words brought. A son of his own like his nephew Johnny, a boy to raise and teach and take to sea, a child conceived with the one and only woman he’d ever loved. Except that by law and the whim of Caro’s husband, the child—his child—could become heir to an earldom, raised not as a Sparhawk but as a Moncrief, an English child, not American, and one who’d never know his real father.
“Whether boy or girl, Desire’s child will carry its father’s name,” he said firmly, leery of Caro’s dreamy expression. “I’d want the same for any child of ours.”
“If there is a child,” she said, “I will take care of the consequences myself.”
“Nay, Caro, we will. When I return from Tripoli—”
“When we return from Tripoli,” she said serenely. “I haven’t sailed clear from England to be left behind now. Of course I’m coming to Tripoli with you.”
His black brows lowered. “I can’t allow it, Caro, not with the new war.”
“Your country’s war, not mine,” she countered, serenity replaced by stubbornness. “My country has faithfully paid its tribute to the pasha for years.”
“Yours, mine, ours,” he said impatiently. “The devil can take the whole lot for all it will matter to you!”
She pushed herself upright, sitting against the bolster. “Listen to me, Jeremiah. Lady Byfield has arranged it all as her way of thanking us. There was a note waiting for me here at the inn tonight that she’s already booked us places on a Neapolitan ship leaving with tomorrow’s tide for Tripoli and Tunis, and ordered her bankers to pay the ransom for Frederick and your friend Mr. Kerr.”
She paused and laid her hand on his arm. “She had the latest lists from Tripoli, Jeremiah,” she said gently. “Mr. Kerr is the only one of your crew who survived.”
Silently he shook his head. Though he’d known it was unreasonable, he’d kept on hoping