Sparhawk's Angel (17 page)

C
ountless times Nick had imagined Rose in his bunk, lying here on his sheets and pillow, but never had he dreamed it would be like this. Small and too still, her magical silver eyes closed and the lids shadowed, her face as pale as the sheets she lay upon. Across the coverlet rested her left arm, her little hand like a doll's below the newly changed bandage. She had marveled so at all his scars; now she would have one of her own from the deep gash that ran nearly the length of her arm.

"She's doing admirably well, Captain," said Dr. Barker as he patted his waistcoat. "No fever to the wound, no putrefaction. Clean as they come. Damned fortunate I was able to save that pretty little arm, eh?"

Nick glared at him through bloodshot eyes. Three days of repairing the
Angel Lily
and the strain of sitting here helpless beside Rose had shredded what little patience he had.

"If you hadn't saved her arm, Barker," he growled, "I would have taken yours myself."

"Aye, saved the arm and that miraculous coat, too," continued Barker, unperturbed. "Cole told me there must have been at least sixty guineas sewn inside."

"One hundred," said Nick. "Not that it's any of your damned business.
The gold's a wedding gift from her father."

He was all too aware of the excitement Rose's gold-lined coat and hidden jewelry had caused among the crew, even more than the capture of the brig
Cynthia
itself had. Barker might be the best surgeon afloat, but he was also one of the biggest gossips, and he'd barely washed poor Rose's blood from his fingers before he was recounting the coat he'd had to cut away to tend to her arm.

Barker rocked gently back on his heels. "One hundred guineas, you say! That, combined with her ransom, not to mention the sapphires and the pearls, makes the lady worth quite a tidy sum, doesn't it? A most tidy, interesting sum! No wonder, Captain, you were so very eager to save her, pulling her free with your own hands!"

"Barker," said Nick. "Shut up."

The surgeon bowed his apology as he took his bag from the table. "Rest assured, Captain, that I meant no insult to the young lady."

"And you rest assured, Barker, that it's still not too late for me to claim that arm of yours."

"I've never doubted your word, Captain, and I won't be so foolish as to begin now." Barker bowed again, this time in farewell, leaving Nick alone with Rose.

Tenderly Nick smoothed her hair back from her forehead, and she stirred in her sleep. No fever, as Barker had said, and already the ugly bruises that marked so much of her body were beginning to fade. His little Rose was a hardy blossom indeed.

But the horror of how close he'd come to losing her remained fresh. He'd clawed through the wreckage himself to find her, the successful attack on the other ship forgotten as he'd shouted her name with an open desperation that had stunned his crew. Until, that is, they'd learned from Barker about Rose's hidden value. Then doubtless he'd risen yet another notch in their mercenary estimation.

Only he knew the real value of what he'd nearly destroyed by his own selfishness. Lily's question haunted him still. Had he really cared so little that he'd shamelessly risked Rose's life, or was it because he'd cared so much that he hadn't wanted to part from her? Not that it mattered now. Either way she'd still suffered, suffered horribly, and it was all his fault.

"You are too hard on yourself, Nickerson," said Lily softly. "I thought you were quite heroic, considering. As wonderfully broad as those shoulders of yours are, they still can't bear all the blame."

He raised his gaze to where she hovered protectively above her sleeping sister, and for the first time saw the strong resemblance between the two. "Who the devil else can claim it?" he demanded savagely. "My God, Lily, I saw what Barker had to do to save her arm!"

"So did I," said Lily. "And dreadful though it was, you'll recall that Rose had fainted dead away by that point. She won't remember a thing beyond that you were the one who rescued her."

"But she'll always have the scar to remind her." His eyes clouded, he lightly ran a fingertip across the back of Rose's hand. "I know how concerned you women are with how you look, Lily, so don't try to tell me otherwise. Rose was so flawless before this, and now every time she looks at her arm—nay, every time the weather changes, too, when she'll feel the pain again—she'll remember how bloody careless I was."

"Oh, pish, not Rose," she scoffed. "Or rather, not your
Rosie
. She'll have the sleeves of all her gowns fashioned to display the scar, just so she can brag about how she got it and how you saved her from worse. She'll dine on the tale for the rest of her life."

"Oh, aye, for however short a time that is, if she stays with me." He slumped back into his chair and rubbed wearily at his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept longer than an hour at a time; was it really four nights ago, before Charles Town? "But I've considered what you said, Lily, considered it hard and long. And you're right. As much as I care for Rosie, I can't keep hauling her in and out of scrapes with me. I've no right to do it."

He smiled up at her bleakly. "You're always yammering about making me better than I am. Will you be happy if I give her up?"

Lily gasped. "Not to Lord Eliot!"

Nick sighed and let his head droop forward, unable any longer to meet her eye. "If that's what she wishes, aye, to Lord Eliot. I'm taking her to Martinique, to St. Pierre, and I'm leaving her there. As soon as your father's people on Barbados pay her ransom, she'll be free to go wherever she pleases."

Lily's mouth rounded in a perfect circle of dismay. "But you can't do that to her, Nick!" she wailed. "She'll marry him and be utterly miserable!"

He looked up at her from under his brows. "I thought I was the only one you were protecting."

"You are, of course," she said, flattering her fan anxiously. "Of course you are, Nickerson."

"Then rejoice, Lily, for I've reformed." He'd never believed he'd catch her like this in her own kind of trap, but now that he had, he found little satisfaction in it. "You've won."

"But this isn't at all what I wished!" she cried.

"Nor I, Lily," he said heavily, "but there's no other way. I'm taking Rose to St. Pierre where she'll be safe. And nothing either one of you say will change my mind."

"I don't want to be here, Nick," said Rose, her chin low against her chest like a stubborn child's. "This is worse than being sent down into the hold with the rats and mice. Far, far worse."

"Well, thank you, too." Nick scowled, equally stubborn. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't share that opinion with my sister."

He knew this would all go much better if he could smile, but he was too much on edge to even try. The little two-wheeled cart jostled and bounced its way behind the pair of white mules, up the steep, angled streets of St. Pierre. He felt foolishly conspicuous in the pink-painted cart, his knees drawn up beneath his chin in the narrow space behind the driver and Rose's huge piebald trunk lashed behind them. And as always the sun here on land seemed to beat down on them with ten times the intensity that it did at sea. Since when, he wondered irritably, had the way to his sister's house become so damnably far?

"You'll be much better off here with Jerusa and Michel," he said, striving to sound reasonable. "A ship is not a fit place for a woman."

"So
you
say," said Rose mutinously. "
I
would have vastly preferred to stay aboard the
Angel Lily
than to be an unwilling inmate in your sister's house. Will she lock me in my chamber each night, I wonder?"

He sighed. "Don't be ridiculous, Rose. You'll be Jerusa's guest, not her prisoner. You might even come to like her."

"I won't if she's anything like you." Pointedly she turned her shoulder to him and stared out at the pastel houses lining the street. She wore the hat with the curving feather again and held a parasol tipped over her head for extra measure against the sun. Still swaddled in bandages, her wounded arm rested gingerly in a sling improvised from a sheer lawn fichu, elegant but also necessary. Perhaps it was the wound that was making her so disagreeable.

Perhaps. Nick knew better. She'd been prickly like this from the moment last night when he'd told her he was bringing her here. He couldn't blame her; he felt exactly the same way. But because they might never be alone together again, he was willing to try one more time to make her understand.

Gently his hand crept across to cover hers. "Forgive me, sweetheart," he said softly, keeping his voice low so the driver wouldn't overhear, even though he likely wouldn't understand. "Forgive me for everything."

She turned back to face him, sorrow filling her eyes. "But Nick, there's nothing—"

"Hush, Rosie, and hear me out. I know this isn't what you wanted. The devil knows it's not how I'd want things to end, either. But there's no other way, not for us, not now."

"In Charles Town and after, I thought there was," she said wistfully. "What you've given me, how you made me feel—no one else ever did that for me, or will again. I would have done anything to stay with you, Nick, anything at all."

"No, Rose, don't say that." He looked down at her hand, groping desperately for the right words to make her accept what had to be. The sacrifice she wanted to make was so much greater than she realized, and as much as he wanted her, he couldn't let her do it because he had so little to offer in return. He would never forget finding her small, battered body nearly crushed beneath the rubble of the fallen mast, and he would never forgive himself for letting it happen. "You can't mean it."

"But I do," she said sadly. "God help me for a fool, I do, and I think I always will."

"
Nous sommes arriv
é
s, m'sieur
," said the driver in his thick Pierrotin patois, grinning as he hopped down from the cart to tie the mules to the post before the house. "
Ici
la r
é
sidence de M'sieur et Madame G
é
ricault. Tr
è
s belle, tr
è
s grande, non?"

"Very grand, yes," murmured Rose. To her dismay Nick was already climbing down, too, patently relieved to be freed from her. She twisted the handle of her parasol, struggling to keep back the tears of disappointment and regret. She hadn't meant to make him run away. It had taken her so long to find the courage to tell him how she felt, and now—now it was too late. Not that he'd wanted to hear it, anyway. He couldn't have made that any more clear.

She looked up at the house before her, trying to concentrate on something other than the aching, empty place inside her chest. It was, as the driver had said, a grand house, one of the largest she'd seen, three stories tall and wide enough to seem square. The thick stone walls were painted a cheerful yellow and the shutters and door the same brilliant blue as the water in the bay, and the slanting roof was covered with orange clay tiles. Clumps of flowering vines—red, fuchsia, violet—climbed the front of the house, and towering behind it were the same top-heavy palmetto trees Rose had first seen in Charles Town. The windows on the upper floors appeared to have no glass in them at all, only thin grated bars to let in the breezes that came up the hill from the bay below, and white lawn curtains that fluttered in the summer air. Chattering birds and children's laughter drifted to them from beyond the garden wall, and from somewhere within the house came the sound of a woman's voice singing to herself in the lilting island French.

The whole effect was charmingly light and gay, so different from the dark, dank, brick houses of fog-ridden Portsmouth. How, thought Rose wistfully, could one be anything other than happy living in such a house? Though Martinique was a French island and St. Lucia English, the two were less than fifty miles apart by sea, so perhaps Lord Eliot's house would be like this. She prayed it was; then maybe she, too, could learn again to be happy.

Suddenly the blue door flew open, and a tall, black-haired woman came rushing down the steps to throw her arms around Nick. Spilling through the door after her came a tall blond boy and three smaller girls, giggling and jostling one another, and two terriers that raced circles around them all with noisy, yapping excitement.

The woman, of course, was Jerusa Sparhawk G
é
ricault. Rose would have recognized Nick's sister anywhere, not just from the wide green eyes, high cheekbones and generous mouth that were a softer, feminine version of his, but from the energy that seemed to spin around them both, the supreme self-confidence that would always make them the center of any gathering.

In such company Rose knew she'd always be lost along the edges, just as she was now, sitting forgotten and forlorn in the little cart while the driver carried her trunk into the house and Jerusa and Nick laughed and the children shrieked and the dogs barked. She told herself it was her injured arm that kept her from joining them, that she was still so weak from lost blood and now the hot sun that she wasn't sure she could climb down and walk unassisted. That was true—she did feel appallingly light-headed—but even more than she feared fainting in the dust at Nick's feet was her dread that he'd frown or glower at her interference, or worst of all, simply ignore her. Lord help her, she couldn't bear that, and with her heartbeat throbbing in her head, she closed her eyes and bowed her head.

"And you must be Miss Everard!" The woman's voice was low and rich, her manner kind, and slowly Rose opened her eyes to find Nick's sister smiling up at her, shading her eyes against the sun with the back of her hand. "
Bonjour
, and welcome to my home! I'm Jerusa G
é
ricault, and my brother is being his usual horrid self by abandoning you and not bothering to introduce us properly.
Venez
, this sun is wickedly hot, and I've both tea and chilled cider waiting inside. You see, even after all these years on Martinique I can't quite give up my Yankee tastes!"

Rose smiled weakly. "Either one would be most agreeable, madame."