“While I admit that my desires are very much the same,” Roman said gently, “I am not free at the moment to pursue them. I have . . . obligations to fulfill.”
“To her?” Fran pressed.
Roman nodded. “And others. I don’t know how much longer we shall be traveling together. We have a specific destination in mind.”
“Venice?” Fran gave a knowing smirk, reminding him of what he’d initially told Asa van Groen.
“No. Not Venice,” Roman admitted.
“I don’t care,” Fran said. “If not now, then later, in the spring. And I want you to use the key, regardless of whether you decide to come home with me or not. Come home,” she urged. “Don’t you want that?”
He found himself looking at her mouth, wondering what it would be like if he kissed her now, followed her back to her brightly painted wagon. But the arousal he expected to feel never manifested.
A sudden cheer went up around the fire, and Roman and Fran turned their heads in the same instant to see a beaming van Groen leading Isra toward the fire by her hand. They were both beaming.
Isra’s eyes scanned the crowd, and Roman knew she was looking for him—he knew, and it made his heart beat faster. Her gaze lighted on him before he could raise his hand, and she stared, her smile becoming stiff.
He’d forgotten the lovely Fran was still in his grasp.
And so he set her from him, took her hand, and pressed her key into her palm. “Thank you,” he said. He closed her fingers around the metal and left her, moving through the crowd to reach the woman who was no longer looking for him but had turned away and was now being sheltered under Asa’s green velvet-clad arm as he addressed the band.
* * *
“God save the queen!” someone from the troupe shouted, and Isra couldn’t help the bit of a smile that returned to her mouth as the crowd applauded and whistled.
“Indeed!” Asa praised with a laugh. “The good mayor was so taken with her, he has requested we stay on to entertain some visiting dignitaries arriving on the morrow! So it is another night in Dubrovnik for us, good folk. And I’d wager the take this time tomorrow evening will be twice today’s!”
The crowd cheered again, and Isra felt a tug on her arm. Both hoping and dreading it was him, she looked up and saw Roman’s concerned face looking down at her.
“Where have you been?” he asked, glancing at Asa’s arm about her shoulder.
Isra opened her mouth to answer, but her words were precluded by the dark-haired man’s at her side.
“And let us not overlook the contributions of our noble Roman!” Asa cried. “Surely his commanding presence lent an air of such authenticity that the pharaoh himself will soon be demanding a return of his kin!”
The crowd laughed good-naturedly, but Roman paid them little heed as he looked down at Isra, still waiting for an answer.
“The mayor called us to audience,” she replied, hearing the coolness in her own voice. After the dreadful things the blond woman had said to her before the performance, the sight of Fran making good on her threat to lure Roman had been more than terrifying.
Lure him away from what, though? Isra demanded of herself. You do not own him. He does not want you. Has he no right to a woman if he chooses?
“Well done,” he said with a smile, no trace of concern left, no raised eyebrow at her tone. “You were in fine form tonight.”
“And now,” Asa called out, squeezing Isra’s shoulder ever so slightly, “we celebrate!” He looked to her and then to Roman. “We will all drink together, yes?”
Isra looked to Roman, hoping he would acquiesce to join the party so that she might also, but then a blonde head appeared once more at Roman’s right arm, and Fran leaned up to whisper something behind his shoulder. He turned his head toward her but said nothing as she slid away into the crowd with only a glance at Isra and the dark-haired leader of the band.
“I find I am quite tired,” Isra heard herself saying, although she hadn’t planned on begging off at all. She was finally being included, celebrated for an accomplishment, and she had looked forward to partaking of the company of people who accepted her for who she was.
Or who they thought she was.
But Isra was no fool, and she was experienced enough to know that a woman only whispers such things in the presence of others when it is obvious to everyone what she is offering.
What she had already offered Roman, if the scene Isra had witnessed upon her and Asa’s return was any clue.
She ducked out from beneath Asa’s arm. “I wish you both a festive evening in whatever amusements you find worthy.”
“Wait,” Roman called and reached out to take her elbow lightly.
Without thinking, she jerked her arm from his grasp. “Is there something you require of me, my lord?” she asked, but her eyes were trained on the flickering shadows on the ground.
“No,” Roman said after a heartbeat of time. “I was only going to escort you to the cart.”
“I know the way.” Isra left him then, without so much as a glance, walking into the dark maze of wagons alone.
The flickering fire did not penetrate past the first semicircle of conveyances, and by the time she reached her and Roman’s royally decorated cart, she had tripped twice, stubbed her toe on a wheel, and rammed her hip into a corner of a lowered wagon bed. Even the donkey was away in the communal corral, and that suited her greatly. She needed to be alone now. To relive this night in all its glory and agony; to cry in private.
She had just set one knee upon the board when she was seized by her hips and pulled backward through the air, landing against something hard and warm and definitely human. A moist, stinking hand clamped over her mouth before she could scream.
“Good evening, slave,” a nasal voice hissed into her ear.
Isra did not struggle against the guard from the gate; she knew from past experience that if one resisted immediately, it only brought about the violence sooner, precluded any hope of escape. So, although she didn’t relax, she willed herself not to strain away, to stand perfectly still against him.
“Your woman friend says you will welcome my company if I find you away from your great idiot guard. If you are nice, I return your pence.”
She nodded her head as best she was able with the hold she had been placed in, but waves of panic crashed in Isra’s head all the same, threatening to turn the blackness behind the cart into a wash of red. This could not be happening to her again.
The woman friend could be none other than Fran. No one else in the band had had so much turned a frown in Isra’s direction. The woman’s vitriol before the exhibition had only been a precursor to her true rage.
Why did the blonde hate her so much?
“Very good,” he cooed in her ear. “But if you are ill-tempered, I shall strangle your throat and do what I will any matter. You understand?”
Isra nodded again but had to squeeze her eyes shut. The red haze was growing. Although she wished to appear complacent about the man’s detestable plan for her, she had no intention of letting him have his way. She had vowed to herself in Damascus that she would never again be taken against her will; this man truly would have to kill her first.
But better he not know that just yet. She waited to see what his next move would be, and she didn’t have long to wonder.
“Anyone waiting for you in the cart?”
Isra shook her head.
“Good slave tells the truth. I watch it for hours and know the answer.” He urged her forward by pressing his groin into her bottom until she was trapped between him and the cart bed. “I take my hand from your mouth. If you scream, I knife your kidney; it shall not damage the parts I’m interested in. Now, go.”
Isra gasped a breath in through her mouth, relieved that the sewage stench of the man’s flesh was gone. She grasped the edge of the bed and hoisted herself up very carefully, slowly, thinking through each inch of movement. She forced herself to be still, not to scream or kick out, when the man grasped her
buttocks with both hands.
He was bluffing; he wasn’t holding a blade.
For some reason, the idea that he intended to rape her without thinking he needed a weapon to restrain her increased Isra’s rage tenfold. Her jaw trembled in her fury—she couldn’t still it; her eyes felt wide in their sockets, as if her eyelids had disappeared. She was a wild animal, moving, acting solely on instinct.
She clambered over the end of the bed and onto her pallet with exaggerated care, stretching out her arms beneath the satchels and parcels tossed against the board behind the driver’s seat as the man behind launched himself up against the wood and hooked a boot over the end.
Isra’s fingers scrambled under the pillow of her satchel and then she turned to rest on her heels and brace herself with her hidden hands as she watched the man pull himself the rest of the way inside.
He crawled clumsily, quickly, over the blankets toward her, pushing his stench ahead of him, his shadow rising above her against the canvas ceiling. She pulled Maisie Lindsey’s long dagger from beneath her satchel and held it forth in the darkness.
“Do not come any nearer,” she warned, but it came out as a strangled whisper.
He descended. “Shut up, sla—”
Isra felt the pop of the blade tip piercing the man’s clothing—or his flesh—reverberate up her arm as he fell onto her, and his answering scream nearly pierced her eardrums. She launched herself backward on her heels through the front flap of canvas, leaving the blade stuck somewhere inside her attacker. She fell over the driver’s seat, hitting her head on the footboard as she landed in the narrow well beneath the bench, while inside the cart the man continued to scream. She didn’t know where the blade had touched him, had been unable to see more than shadow on shadow in the pitch black of the shelter. He could be seriously wounded, or he could only be scratched and able to come after her.
She scrambled to her feet, trying to find her bearings to get down from the cart, but the world was spinning, tumbling her around and around.
“Roman!” she cried out, her voice still strangled in her panic-clenched throat as she clawed her way up from the foot well. “Roman!”
She fell out of the cart onto her shoulder and face in the dirt. Her cheek felt seared and she heard the crack of her pretend crown as it slid sideways and was crushed beneath her head. Above her the cart rocked as the man shouted and thrashed as if he could not find his way out of the blackness. She staggered to her feet, her screams becoming clearer, louder, as she backed away from the wagon.
“Roman! Roman!”
She heard the sound of footfalls pounding in the dark, the cry of a hunting bird pierce the alley. “Isra? Isra! Where are you?”
“Roman!” She seemed to be unable to say anything but his name.
In the next heartbeat, he grabbed her arm, turned her around. “What is it? Are you hurt?”
“A man,” she stammered as the roar of many running feet grew and the glow of carried torches bobbed and flashed between the carts. “A man in the cart. He—he attacked me.”
More of the band reached them then, and the torchlight cast Roman in black silhouette even as she was revealed by it.
Asa van Groen was the next to reach them. “Good God, what’s happened? Is that blood?”
Roman released her and leaped onto the driver’s seat in two great bounds.
Isra looked down to see her pristine flaxen gown splashed with bright red and thought of the leg of lamb Nickle had earlier procured for Kahn.
That was what Fran had intended: that Isra be offered up as a sacrifice. To be devoured by the fiend in the cart.
But she had no time to think on it, for in the next moment there was a gurgled scream and the cart lurched a final time. Something thudded onto the dirt beyond the cart and half the band left Isra and van Groen in a run to investigate.
Isra turned and saw Roman approaching her again, but this time his face was nearly unrecognizable. It was as if he wore a mask resembling the man she had come to know, but this man’s features distorted the pleasant expression into something undeniably dangerous and fearsome.
“Is he dead?” Isra asked, her voice breathy with anxiety and dread when faced with this different Roman. “Did I kill him?”
“What in hell is going on?” Asa demanded. “Is who dead? Why are you covered in blood?”
Roman ignored the man. “Yes, he’s dead.” Even his voice sounded different; flat, emotionless. “But you didn’t kill him. I did.”
Zeus came around Roman from behind. He glanced at Isra apologetically and then looked to van Groen.
“We have a problem, boss.”
Chapter 16
Asa van Groen swept past Isra, touching her arm in what might have been meant as a comforting gesture, to follow his man around the side of the cart. The rest of the band, who had been standing there staring at Isra, followed, leaving her alone with this huge blond man who looked so much like Roman but at this moment was not.
“Are you hurt?” he asked again in a gruff voice, his eyes sweeping over her ruined gown. She could only barely see the dark washes over the wide skin of his forearms in the gloom.
Isra shook her head and then wondered if he could see the motion. “No.” She didn’t know if she had cut her head when she’d fallen, but she couldn’t feel anything now, so she chose to believe it was only bruised.
“I’m sorry, Isra,” he said, and she could hear the loosening of his voice, as if the Roman she knew was trying to return. “I should never have allowed you to return to the cart alone. I failed to protect you. Please forgive me.”
Even though an instant ago terror had still gripped her, turning her skin to ice, her heart galloping in her chest, his words melted her fear like a scrap of old candle wax dropped into a fire. Her chest seemed to expand, her nostrils flared.
Here before her stood the most noble, capable, honest man she’d ever known. So completely had he assumed the responsibility of her that he was prepared to bear the burden of wrong perpetrated by a lecherous, soulless criminal. He’d killed a man for the sake of protecting her, and Isra knew full well the weight that action carried on a person’s heart, no matter how much the one killed might have deserved his fate. What that man had tried to do could in no way be Roman Berg’s fault.
But Isra knew whose fault it was.
“I owe you my life, again,” she said, struggling to make her voice steady.
It was Roman’s turn to shake his head. “You did well enough on your own. I’m only sorry you were forced to defend yourself.” He paused, his head turning toward the cart slightly for a moment. “Everything in the cart is ruined. The bedding, the clothes.”
Isra rolled her lips inward. The blade must have struck the man in a vital location. Now Roman had lost many of his possessions and Isra had nothing once again. Her anger grew.
She knew whose fault it was.
“I wish to return to the fire now, my lord.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said, stepping to her side.
“No,” she said, holding up her palm. “I will be safe there.”
“Roman.” Asa van Groen stepped from behind the cart. “A moment?”
Roman looked back to Isra, his uncertainty obvious.
“Only nearer the fire,” she promised. “In the light.”
“Van Groen can wait.”
She laid her hand on his chest when he approached her, and she could feel the steady thump of his heart through his thick musculature. What a precious organ it was beneath her palm, what a pure and spotless soul it powered. Her eyes shimmered with tears and she was glad for the darkness.
“I will be fine,” she said.
He reached up and grasped her wrist with his palm but did not remove her hand from his chest. “I feel as if I can never let you from my sight again,” he said.
“I am too much trouble,” she acknowledged in a whisper.
His thumb stroked the inside of her wrist. “No.”
“Roman?” v
an Groen called again.
She pulled away from him through sheer will—a will to exact an answer for what he had been forced to do for her sake. “Asa needs you.”
“Wait for me at the fire,” he said, and she knew it was no command but rather his way of giving his blessing for leaving, his way of telling her he trusted her judgment in whatever it was she meant to do, even after she had so recently failed him.
“As you wish.”
And then she turned and left him, heading toward the communal area that had been all but abandoned now by the members of the band, called away from their revelry by the disastrous goings-on at Roman and Isra’s cart.
She stepped into the close, quiet ring of conveyances, her eyes scanning the wooden and canvas walls until she spied the small, expertly painted wagon directly across the fire. The woman had to be inside it; she was nowhere else to be seen and she certainly hadn’t come at Isra’s panicked screams.
Isra walked steadily toward Fran’s wagon, her eyebrows lowered, the ghostly echo of Roman’s heartbeat still thumping against her palm.
* * *
“This is not good, Roman,” van Groen said as Roman came to his side. The strongmen joined them in standing over the crumpled body of Isra’s attacker, while the rest of the band clustered some distance away, whispering among themselves and casting furtive glances in their direction.
“You had no choice, I understand,” van Groen assured him, “and I am in your debt for not allowing harm to come to Is—” He broke off. “Our queen.”
Roman grimaced in the dark. He hadn’t realized until now that he had shouted Isra’s name in his panic to locate her. He didn’t know who else had heard him besides van Groen at his very heels, but Roman’s respect for the man grew more than a bit at the idea of him catching himself and not repeating her name before those gathered.
“Who knows what other mischief he might have caused,” van Groen added. “But now . . .”
“Now we have a body to contend with,” Roman finished for him.
“You want we should take it to the shore?” one of the men asked.
Van Groen shook his head. “No, the gates are already closed. Besides, that won’t work this time with the tide.”
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