The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  “Yes. Yes. Again.”

  He did as she wished. As his hands wrapped around her hips and he pushed deeper and deeper into her, touching a place so magical that words tumbled from her lips without shape, she had never more appreciated his great strength. Her cries and moans entwined with his.

  When all had subsided to a gratifying languor and he was lying beside her, kissing her shoulder and arm, sending tingles of delight all over her body, she said, “I finished bleeding two days ago.”

  The kisses ceased.

  He rose onto his elbow to look down at her. “What are you saying?”

  “That I shan’t get with child from this.”

  Bewilderment glistened in his eyes. Turning onto his back, he laid a forearm across his face and his chest moved with deep, uneven breaths.

  She shifted onto her side and took in the beauty of him, all taut, bronzed contours in the candlelight.

  “Women do not typically speak of such matters to men, of course,” she said, “unless the man is a physician, and even then infrequently. But I should think this a very useful thing for lovers to discuss.”

  His arm slid away from his face and he stared up at the canopy, his lips that had given her such pleasure closed, but his breathing still fraught.

  “Are you familiar with how a woman’s menses function,” she said, “that there are certain days in each monthly cycle in which she is unlikely to conceive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did not imagine this of you,” she said. “That you would be reticent to speak of it.”

  “I am not reticent to speak of it.”

  “Then what now is causing you discomfort?”

  “Not discomfort.” He met her gaze. “I am thinking how much I want you to bear my child.”

  Now she could not breathe properly either.

  She climbed onto him and saw him watching her as she trapped him between her thighs and he wrapped his hands around her hips—saw the questions and confusion in his eyes.

  “Do not speak,” she said, placing two fingertips over his lips, then replacing them with her own lips. “Do not say another word.”

  He met her kisses, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her against him.

  She awoke to thin silvery light peeking through the draperies and the scent of toasted bread. She was alone in the middle of his bed, the linens tucked up around her shoulders.

  A dressing gown of sapphire blue satin lay at the foot of the bed. She donned it and went to the kitchen. A fire in the hearth warmed the room. Standing at the stove, he wore only breeches.

  “You are unusually domestic,” she said, clutching the doorjamb. His bared shoulders and arms and back were all power and fluid beauty. “Shockingly so. I know no other man who can so easily prepare a pot of tea.”

  “A boy far from the comforts of home swiftly learns what he must to survive. And a man with secrets to hide does for himself as often as possible.” Finally he looked over his shoulder. “That color suits you.”

  The shadow of morning stubble darkened his jaw and around his mouth. As she remembered the things that mouth had done to her, her limbs grew liquid.

  “As a boy living in a foreign land,” he said, returning his attention to the kettle, “I learned that taking tea together, dining together—they are rituals of friendship.”

  Her satchel was on the floor nearby. On the table was breakfast: toasted bread, jam, cheese, eggs, and a beautifully painted dish of chickpeas from which arose the woody aroma of cumin.

  “Tell me your story,” she said, sitting down.

  “My story can wait. First you must eat. Then you must study. I will not allow this to distract you from your purpose.”

  “A few hours”—she had to clear her throat—“away from studying will harm nothing.”

  He leaned back against the counter.

  “Breakfast.” He gestured.

  “You have seen the worst of me,” she said. “The ugly and the irrational, the desperate and arrogant and selfish. All the worst.”

  “If this has been the worst of you, güzel kız, then your god has truly favored you.”

  “Why don’t you want to tell me your story? I will share it with no one.”

  “I trust that.”

  “Then why?”

  “Thousands of miles away. Years ago. It is a story that can hold no interest for a woman so thoroughly in this place and this moment.” But shadows again were in his eyes and she knew that his words were only a partial truth.

  Reaching for a piece of toasted bread, she played it between her fingers.

  “It is a story about you,” she said.

  After a moment, he spoke.

  “Tabir is a small kingdom, under the watchful eyes of nearby powers, yet independent. My father was an educated man, well traveled in his youth, and a friend to all. His first general had been his closest companion since childhood. But the general wanted more. When in secret he offered our Russian neighbors a monopoly on trade from our port, they assisted his coup. My father was killed. My mother, my sister, and I escaped with three servants. We traveled far in haste. We settled in Alexandria in Egypt under the protection of the patriarch of the Orthodox Coptic Church.”

  “A bishop?”

  “Thus my excellent catechism.” He almost smiled.

  “But why not—?”

  “The shah in Tehran? The emperor of the Ottomans in Istanbul?” He shook his head. “Both Iran and the Turks have tried to swallow Tabir into their borders many times. Fearing the very Russians who gave support to the general, the shah had only just made a treaty with France. As for my mother’s family in Istanbul, they had never much liked my father, and would have encouraged her to ally with the general, if only to give them an excuse to go to war with the Russians. It was best to allow them to believe us dead.”

  “But why did you hide among Christians?”

  “Egypt’s pasha then, and now, is a brilliant but belligerent man. My mother believed he might use us in his battle with the Ottomans. She knew not whom to trust. Napoleon had abducted the Catholic pope and was holding him captive, and he had long had designs on Egypt. Perhaps the patriarch had reason to fear as well. Alliances were often unlikely in those years, as now.” His gaze slipped down her dressing gown. “Necessity makes strange bedfellows.”

  “I am not strange.”

  “You are beautiful.” His voice was husky.

  Beneath his hungry gaze, her skin flushed with warmth. “You repeat yourself.”

  “I shall do so as often as I please.”

  “You said you lived eight years in Alexandria.”

  “The patriarch resides in Cairo usually, but he believed that until I was older we would be best concealed in Alexandria. It is a vast port. All the world passes through it. No one would take notice of a few more strangers.”

  “It was there that you learned to paint from Joachim’s uncle.”

  “I was a boy when we arrived, and knew only that I was free at last from responsibilities. No more weapons training. No more endless hours memorizing treatises on tactics or law. No more dour holy men forever chastising me for my every misstep.”

  “Your father had men like that in his court?”

  “He believed all men worthy of respect.”

  “In Alexandria you were free of responsibilities.”

  “I ran through the streets of that city as any boy might. I grieved my father and his friends who had fallen to the sword that night. But I did not feel trapped in my anonymity.” The memories of happiness were bright in his eyes.

  She understood the freedom anonymity offered. Entirely.

  “You loved it there,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

  “I did. From my father’s betrayers I had learned that one cannot always trust one’s friends. In Alexandria I learned to trust strangers. And I learned that a man needn’t look or sound or eat or pray like another to become his brother.”

  “Did your mother and sister feel as you did?”
r />   “Aairah was always impatient that I should return and fight for our father’s throne. I used to tell her she would have been a much finer ruler than I. Eventually I could resist her pleas no longer. It was decided I would travel to Istanbul and seek the aid of the emperor of the Ottomans. Leaving my mother and sister in the patriarch’s protection, on my sixteenth birthday I set sail with my tutor. Only a day out of port, brigands boarded us. My tutor, an old man, told the pirates that I would bring them gold in ransom. They laughed as they killed him.”

  Libby gasped. “You saw them kill him? Why didn’t they believe him?”

  “We had fled Tabir with nothing. I had with me only two items to prove my claim to the throne: a letter from the patriarch and—”

  “The watch?”

  He nodded. “The captain recognized its obvious value and kept it for his own. It looks better on you, by the way.”

  She could not smile. “He did not believe it was a king’s, did he?”

  “None aboard could read the inscription, and the letter from the patriarch meant nothing to them. Many such letters are forged. Upon the sea, among thieves gold is the only language of worth.”

  “What did the pirates do with you?”

  “I was young and strong. At first they put me in the galley to row.”

  Thickly embedded in his ankle and foot, the scars had been months in the making. “At first?”

  He did not reply and the darkness now in his eyes spun fear up her spine.

  “What about after that?” she said.

  After a moment’s pause, he said, “They made use of me.”

  There was no anger in his voice. There was nothing. No emotion. No life.

  She stared at his handsome face, at his beautiful mouth, his graceful artist’s hands, his lean body, and anguish crawled through her insides.

  “I have learned, Elizabeth, that there are men of God on this Earth,” he said softly. “Men of honor and men of great faith, sons of Allah and Yahweh, brothers of Jesus, all of them striving for goodness—for truth. I have been blessed to know many such men.”

  Throat closed, she waited.

  “My captors,” he said, “were not among those men.”

  Fists tight in her lap, she forced her voice to evenness. “What of the patriarch’s sailors?”

  “Some survived the battle and were taken aboard too. I did finally convince the captain to seek ransom for me. I promised it would make him a wealthy man. The general’s mercenaries eventually came, but they were interested only in wealth that could be gotten immediately. They cut down the brigands. Shackled to the mast, I watched, assuming my death would follow.”

  So much violence and death. No wonder he cherished the homey task of making tea. No wonder he loved painting the nude female body, which was full of strength and generative life.

  “Was that when the ship caught fire?”

  “Yes. The mercenaries fled to their vessel. As they did, a boy tried to free me. He had no key or axe and he wept. I told him to shoot the chain. The bullet chose bone instead of iron.”

  “You told him?”

  “The men and boys with whom I had been bound to oars—some of them had become friends, such as we were. Chained in the hold, they would perish because of my arrogance. I had to try to free them.”

  Even in chains he had been a hero.

  “Did any of them survive?” she said.

  “Some.”

  “How did the British navy find you?”

  “The crown prince of Iran as a boy had met my father and admired him greatly. One of the mercenaries, it seemed, had sold the information to him that I still lived, and he requested Britain’s aid in finding me. The navy sent Captain Gabriel Hume’s ship. He sailed along the coast for months searching for me. It was pure luck that his lookout sighted the smoke.”

  His nightmares had been of that which had saved him.

  “Gabriel took me to London where I asked your prince for assistance. He declined. Russian power is growing along the Ottoman and Iranian borders. Britain plays them all carefully for whatever advantage it will give its own East India Company’s ships and caravans. My father’s realm, although a gem, is caught at the crossroads of empires.”

  “What of your sister and mother?”

  “I was in England only months before I received word that my mother and her servants had been struck down, and my sister taken to Tabir to be married to the general against her will to legitimize his rule. By the time I heard the news, she was to bear to him a second child.”

  “She was a captive wife?”

  “I was told that if I ever returned to Tabir, she and her children and all who supported us would be killed. That threat remains.” He folded his arms. “You know the rest of the story.”

  “Why do you use a false name? Why do you not live in London or Paris, anywhere you wish, and be feted according to your blood, and where you might petition government for aid?”

  “I do petition the British government. And Iran. The emperor as well. Regularly.”

  “But you might live as befits royalty.”

  “Spending hours each day with my tailor and valet? Drinking up gossip at parties to spit out again at the next entertainment? Sleeping all morning so that late into every night I can be a marvelous curiosity for the fashionable elite to fawn over? And all the while ceaselessly currying the favor of allies whose armies are larger than the entire population of Tabir?”

  He fell silent.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said.

  “After all that I have seen, Elizabeth, all that I have done and been, how could I live that life?”

  “But you are still waiting to return. For your sister’s sake.”

  “No longer waiting. War is coming. When the shah’s army rides to retake lands that Russia now holds, that army will pass within miles of Tabir.”

  Chill skittered across her skin. “Will you go now? To war?”

  “My sister is safe at present. She has allies in the palace and among the neighboring local lords. The general still has the promise of Russian protection. Iran remains quiet as yet. There is time.” He bent his head. “And I am needed here.”

  Standing, she took up a slice of bread and went around the table to him. Breaking the piece into two portions, she gave him half and bit into the other.

  He smiled. “What are you doing?”

  “Eating as you bid me do, and feeding you too, so that we will both have sufficient energy for how I wish to spend the day.”

  Dropping the bread on the table, he circled his arms around her and drew her snugly hip to hip with him.

  “And how do you wish to spend the day?” he said, kissing her cheek, then the other cheek.

  “In your bed,” she said, resting her palms on his chest, then sliding them up and over his shoulders. He was warm and beautiful. “Or wherever else in this house you wish to give me pleasure and receive it in return.”

  He answered by giving it to her right there, great pleasure that left her clinging to him and suffused with satisfaction and thoroughly alive.

  The day passed in that manner. He had, she discovered, extraordinary reserves of virility. When she asked if this was common, he peered at her like she was daft and said he hadn’t any way of knowing, and what sort of a gentleman did she think he was anyway? She dissolved into laughter, which gave him opportunity to show her precisely how virile her laughter always made him.

  When the clock in the parlor chimed six and Libby left his bed to dress for the final meeting of her mentor’s private surgical course, she kissed the sleeping prince on his lips, but was not surprised when he did not wake.

  Chapter 26

  Tabirshah

  “Seems you’re feelin’ fine, Joe,” Archie said, casting her a quick glance as they entered the alleyway.

  “I do feel well.” Spectacular, except for the soreness in parts she had never before used as she had used them over the past twenty-four hours. She wondered if healthy young men got sore
from extensive lovemaking. She would ask Ziyaeddin. Then she would make him make love to her again.

  “You truly all right, lad?”

  “Yes, Archie. Why do you ask?”

  “Your cheeks an’ chin are all reddened, like you’ve sprouted a rash . . . or such.”

  The powder she had donned to cover the burn from his whisker stubble had disintegrated beneath the adhesive. She had hoped her whiskers would hide it. Apparently not.

  “I’m well.” She halted before the door and reached for the bell.

  “You’re thinkin’ I’m an old hen for worryin’ o’er you,” Archie said, frowning. “But somebody’s got to.”

  The door opened and she was saved further probing stares as they went into the surgery hall.

  When they were all present and smocked, Mr. Bridges said, “Mr. Smart, make the initial incision.”

  Libby drew back the linen.

  Dallis.

  “I know this woman. She has been missing—my friend—her friend has been searching for her.” She looked back down at the pretty face. It was pale now, the lush lips dulled. “I know her.”

  “The woman you knew is no longer present,” Mr. Bridges said. “Now, do make the incision or Mr. Chedham will.”

  The long eyelashes lay peacefully on the beauty’s cheeks, as though she had only fallen asleep. Libby’s hand around the knife was damp and cold.

  There was nothing she could do for Dallis now. She could only discover for Coira the cause of her friend’s death.

  She got to work.

  Seventeen: the age of Elizabeth Shaw when she had intruded upon him in the library of Haiknayes Castle and altered the course of his life. But there the similarities between her and the girl who sat before him now ended.

  “Dear me,” Miss Hatch said, batting her eyelashes, “I believe I’ve a tear in my flounce.” Bending over to examine the imaginary tear, and affording him an ample view of the bosom spilling from her bodice, she lifted to him eyes filled with limpid helplessness.

  It was the fourth such excuse she had invented to lean over. She had fabricated three excuses to lift her skirts to her knees too.

  He’d had enough.

  Wiping his brushes clean and taking up his walking stick, Ziyaeddin left the room.