LITMIR.BIZ

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his life depended on it. Reluctantly she laid the gun back into the bottom of the bag. There was no way a woman could carry a weapon like that, at least not concealed, and if she wished to slip away unobtrusively, holding a pistol in both hands before her as she walked through the town would hardly be the way to do it.

      She ran her fingertips along the saddlebag’s lining, searching for an opening that might hide the pouch with the money. She found a promising oval lump and eased it free. But instead of the pouch full of coins, the lump turned out to be a flat package wrapped in chamois. Curiosity made her open it, and inside lay a small portrait on ivory, framed in brass, of a black-haired young woman. Her heart-shaped face was turned winsomely toward the painter, her lips curved in a smile and her finely drawn brows arched in perennial surprise, which seemed to Jerusa very French.

      Carefully she turned the portrait over, but there was no name or inscription on the back that might give her a clue of the pretty sitter’s identity. Not that she really needed one. Clearly the woman must be Michel’s sweetheart if he carried her picture with him. Whoever she was, she was welcome to him, decided Jerusa firmly as she wrapped the chamois back over the portrait. More than welcome, really, she thought with a sniff. So why did she feel this odd little pang of regret when she remembered how he’d smiled when he’d kissed her?

      The rapping on the door was sharp and deliberate, startling her so much that she dropped the picture into the bag.

      “Mrs. Geary, ma’am?” called the maidservant that Jerusa recognized as one of Mrs. Cartwright’s daughters. “Mrs. Geary, ma’am, are you within?”

      “I’ll be there directly.” With haste born of guilt, Jerusa shoved the picture back into the lining of the bag and rebuckled the straps to make it look the way she’d found it. Swiftly she rose to her feet, smoothing her hair as she went to open the door.

      The girl bobbed as much a curtsy as she dared with a tray laden with a teapot, sugar, cream and a plate full of sliced bread and butter in her outstretched arms.

      “Compliments of me mother, ma’am,” she said as she squeezed past Jerusa. “Since Mr. Geary said to hold your supper for half past eight on account of him returning late, we thought in the kitchen you might get to feeling a mite peckish waiting for him.”

      “Mr. Geary’s business can occupy considerable time,” ventured Jerusa, praying she’d sound convincing, “but he didn’t tell me he’d be so late this particular day.”

      “Oh, aye, he told me mother not to bother looking for him afore nightfall.” Bending from the waist, the girl thumped the tray down onto the floor while she cleared away the wash pitcher and candlestick from the washstand for a makeshift tea table. “I expect he didn’t tell you so you wouldn’t worry over him. He’s a fine, considerate gentleman, your husband is.”

      “He is a most rare gentleman,” said Jerusa, barely containing her excitement. If he wasn’t expected back until evening, then she’d have plenty of time to make her escape. “Did he say anything else before he left?”

      “Nay, ma’am, save that you was to have whatever you desired.” Squinting at the uneven table, the girl squared the tray on its top as best she could and then stood back, her arms stiffly at her side. She cleared her throat self-consciously. “Would you like me to pour for you, Mrs. Geary? Me mother wants me to learn gentry’s ways so I can do for the gentlefolk.”

      “Why, yes, thank you,” murmured Jerusa. “That would be most kind.”

      She swept into the room’s only chair, gracefully fanning her skirts about her legs in her most genteel fashion for the girl’s benefit. Though she didn’t have the heart to tell her that, in the households of the better sort, ladies preferred to pour their own tea, regardless of how many servants they kept, she did want to hear what else the girl might be coaxed into volunteering.

      The girl bit the tip of her tongue as she concentrated on pouring the tea without spilling it. “Much as me mother would wish it otherways, we don’t get much custom from the gentry,” she confided once the tea was safely into Jerusa’s cup. “‘Tis mostly sea captains and supercargos of the middling sort, tradesmen with goods bound for other towns, and military gentlemen rich enough to pay their way. Rovers and wanderers, ma’am, though me mother tries her best to sort out the rogues among ‘em afore they stay.”

      Jerusa took the offered teacup with a nod of thanks and added a sprinkle of sugar to the tea before she poured it from the cup into the saucer to cool. “But in my experience it’s always the travelers who tell the most amusing tales.”

      The girl snorted and rolled her eyes. “Oh, aye, ma’am, and some ripe ones I’ve heard, particularly when the gentlemen fall into their cups! Mermaids and serpents great as this house, oceans made of fire and land that shivers like a custard pudding beneath your feet, all of it, ma’am, the fancies of rum and whiskey.”

      Jerusa lowered her gaze to the saucer of tea, tracing one finger idly around the rim. “I fear that what Mr. Geary and I have heard in our travels has been much less wondrous and far more gossip. A man whose house had been struck by lightning five times, another mad with grief over the death of his sons.”

      She paused, daring herself to speak the last. “And, oh, yes, the bride carried off from her own wedding.”

      “Lud, a bride, you say?” The girl’s eyes widened with fascination. “I haven’t heard that one afore! Do you judge it true, or only more barkeep’s claptrap?”

      “Who’s to say?” said Jerusa, realizing too late that the offhanded shrug of her shoulders was pure Michel. “But I wonder that you’ve not heard it yourself here in Seabrook. They say the lady was from one of the best families in Newport, a great beauty and much admired, and that she vanished without a word of warning from her parents’ own garden, not a fortnight past.”

      “Nay, ma’am, then it cannot be but a yarn.” The girl sighed deeply with disappointment. “If she vanished straightaway like you say, then wouldn’t her bridegroom come a-seeking her? If he loved her true, then he would not rest until he’d found her again, ma’am, no matter how far he must journey. Sure but he’d come through Seabrook, wouldn’t he? But we’ve not had a word of a sorrowful gentleman searching for his lover here, else I or me mother would’ve heard of it.”

      “But perhaps he went north, toward Boston instead,” said Jerusa more wistfully than she knew. “Perhaps he didn’t come south at all.”

      “Now I ask you, ma’am, what sort of villain would take a lady to Boston?” scoffed the girl. “Nay, he’d be bringing her south, toward the wickedness to be found in the lower colonies, and that bridegroom should’ve been after him hot as a hound after a hare. False-hearted he’d be otherwise, wouldn’t he?”

      Sadly Jerusa wondered why she was the only one who had any faith in Tom Carberry. Like the Faulks before her, this girl echoed Michel’s sentiments regarding Tom, sharing suspicions that, unhappily, Jerusa had been driven to consider herself.

      “But what of the poor lady’s family?” she persisted. “Surely you’ve heard news of them? Handbills, or a reward offered for her safekeeping?”

      “Nary a word nor a scrap, ma’am,” declared the girl soundly. “Pretty as it may be, Mrs. Geary, I fear I warrant your tale false.”

      Heartsick, Jerusa wondered what she’d done to make her family abandon her like this. She thought again of the father who’d loved her so well, and of her brothers, Jon, Nick and Josh. Especially Josh. Sweet Almighty, surely Josh wouldn’t have given up on her like this?

      Unless Michel had sent some sort of message to them, full of lies to make them doubt. Maybe he’d told them she was already dead and beyond their help. Could he be planning to avenge his father’s death by taking her life, lulling her into an ill-founded sense of trust and dependence until he decided the perfect moment to kill her? The pistol from the saddlebag that she’d held in her hand might be the very one he meant to use on her.

      “If there’s no other way to oblige you, Mrs. Geary,

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