Dammit, if he only had one other member of Donovan & Sons here, he could do so much more. Temporary hirelings were all well and good but they weren’t the same. They weren’t men he’d already gone into battle with and could already trust to watch his back.
“Exactly. Peace be upon you.” Areef bowed, his expression troubled.
“And upon you be peace,” Gareth returned.
It would only happen if they stopped St. Arles.
Forests of white marble rose out of the floor and upheld the ceiling as far as the eye could see. Long dead faces swam amid curled hair and tendrils of moss, their vacant eyes always searching for an escape. Black water rippled knee deep over the floor, offering early warning of any intruders.
St. Arles studied the last remaining piece of the puzzle from a small ledge overlooking the ancient cistern.
Whitehall had promised competent help to take the chest into Chiragan. Having dealt with those London chaps before, he’d hardly dared hope to find tolerable assistance.
But these blokes promised to be quite efficient indeed.
A half dozen cold, calculating men looked back at him, with their arms crossed over their chests as if he mattered little more than their next meal.
“Gentlemen, the time has come to begin our attack’s next phase.”
Nobody moved, even though they were supposed to speak the Genoan dialect of Italian.
“Two of you must pose as porters in the European City to pick up a chest.”
Tension swirled suddenly, more vibrant than the moss.
“Why should we care about a chest?” the eldest one asked in excellent Italian.
Ah good, they did speak the language.
“After you pick it up—and discreetly kill its current owners—you will deliver it to Chiragan Palace.”
“For a bonus,” the elder pressed.
Excellent: he hadn’t hesitated at the mention of murder.
“A very large reward,” St. Arles agreed. Whitehall wanted no witnesses left alive, of course.
But this bounty came out of his private purse: He wanted the slut dead.
“Mail,” Gareth announced and dropped the damning little note onto the table. The embroidered cloth quivered but the chest underneath, containing all the rifles and ammunition, didn’t move a hairsbreadth.
Dynamite would totally eliminate it—and Adem’s home.
Beautiful Portia stopped brushing her hair, the golden strands gleaming brighter than fairy dust. Terror tightened her mouth before she started to draw the brush far more slowly over a single golden strand, again and again. “Did you open it?”
He propped his foot on the iron-bound beast.
“It’s unsigned,” he warned.
“Gareth, do either of us need trumpets and banners to recognize St. Arles’ work?” she retorted acidly.
He grinned privately, pleased with her return to normalcy.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “We’re to bring the trunk tomorrow afternoon to a quay in the European City. Once there, we prop it on end and wheel it through the crowd. Another porter will bump into ours and—”
“Exchange chests in the confusion, since they’re identical.”
“Except for the monogram,” he reminded her, very proud of her quickness.
She shrugged that objection off. “St. Arles had this trunk made; he probably has a duplicate waiting.” She let her brush fall into her lap. “What should we do?”
“I’ll deliver it.”
“No!” Fear, more potent than liquid mercury, ran through his veins.
“Portia, I’ve delivered far more hazardous freight a thousand times and he won’t be looking for me.” Plus, I’m expendable and you’re not.
“He asked for me, not you. If he doesn’t see me, what if he calls everything off? What if he increases his attacks on my friends?”
“We’ve already asked your solicitor and Donovan’s to help them. We must believe we’ve done everything possible and leave them in God’s hands.” He stopped to watch her expression, wishing he knew some magical words to ease her fear, wishing he could destroy St. Arles to remove its cause, wishing…
She wiped her hands over her face.
“We’ll both do it.”
“Portia!” How the hell could he stop her? By knocking her out again?
She stood up, her hips swaying underneath that frothy bit of clothing called a tea gown. All the lace and most of a gown’s buttons, but no corset was how he’d sum it up.
His idiotic cock promptly sat up and saluted, abducting most of his brain cells.
“Portia.” He tried to think of another way to dissuade her. “I, we…” His tongue was uncommonly thick in his suddenly dry mouth. He fumbled for words and stumbled upon the truth. “It’s probably a trap, meant to kill both of us.”
“Gareth.” Somehow she scratched his chest when she gripped his shirt with her slender little hands.
He shuddered and closed his eyes. He would not pick her up and tumble her upon that big bed. He was not a heathen, so help him, God.
She ran her hands up and down his front until the starched linen rubbed his back and shoulders like a thousand little fingers, igniting every previously indefinable urge. Heat danced into his bones, pricking him with his lust that throbbed with every beat of his heart. His eyelids sank until she became a golden blur, as evocative of joy as the dreams he’d once known in the Kentucky mountains.
“Portia, my darling.” Did he say those words? He caught her by her slender waist and let his fingers span her womanly hips.
“Gareth, my love, my life.” She softened and swayed toward him, ageless and ripe as the ancient waters lapping the house they rested in.
Love? The two of them, united in heart? That was a prospect more terrifying than facing a desert sandstorm without shelter.
And yet his heart yearned for her as much or more than his blood did.
“Portia.” He pushed back her gown to expose her white shoulders. “Sweetheart.” He bent his head to her lips and thrust his leg between her soft thighs.
She answered him eagerly, her little tongue seeking his. Her taste filled his mouth, spicy and warm like the breath of life.
Somehow his fingers fumbled well enough to undo her buttons but he’d never know how. He only cared that Portia moved against him, her curves teasing him until his recalcitrant barriers of vest buttons and suspenders and trouser fly disappeared.
Portia. Her sweet breast filled his hand, her plump nipple swelled eagerly to meet his thumb’s caresses, her pulse trembled in her throat when he nibbled it, over and over again until needy cries rose from her mouth. His darling.
Her hands swept over his bare skin as if every muscle, every scar was precious and beautiful to her. Lingered and coaxed until his bones turned to fire and liquid lust cascaded through his veins.
“Gareth.” A single word yet it meant everything, since she spoke it.
He lowered her to the bed and knelt over her. Her eyes were wild and desperate, yet they saw him. They had always seen him, as nobody else ever did.
He lifted her hips and entered her, welcomed by her womanly cream.
His woman, nobody else’s.
He thrust again, harder—and slid sweetly home, embraced and held to his root.
Portia moaned, rocking herself voluptuously against and upon him.
Pleasure wailed through him, too great and too familiar to be snatched immediately. He began to move again, driving both of them toward a barely glimpsed destination.
And oh, how she encouraged him, with voice and hands and body. Stroking him, gripping him, singing to him of her lust and love.
Until the passionate drumbeat roared hot and heavy through his cock, fueled by the scent of musk and barely restrained by the slick grip of her fiery hot sheath.
“Gareth!” Portia cried out and tumbled into passion’s whirlwind, climaxing with a rapturous energy that gave as much as it demanded.
He shouted and followed her, sho
oting jet after jet inside her. Ecstasy tunneled through him and rocketed out, rattling every bone and remaking every muscle in a coruscant torrent, like the inside of a waterfall. Rainbows pummeled his eyes until they rolled back inside his head.
He cuddled her afterward, linked by sweat, the raspy sobs of their recovering breaths, and the last sticky remains of their lust.
God help him, he was horrified he’d remembered to use a condom. But wanting to make her pregnant would prove he was in love.
He didn’t, quite, hurl the damn thing through a window into the Bosporus.
Chapter Thirty-four
“I will accompany you to exchange the trunks,” Portia stated again, far more forcibly.
“No.” Gareth dusted a nonexistent speck of dust off his bowler hat. Fiddling with his clothing was far better than considering his wife or looking too deeply into his heart.
“St. Arles will never send his trolls out if he doesn’t see me.” She was dressed like a female admiral in a closely fitted blue dress. She sounded like one, too.
“We need to buy time, Portia, so your friends can escape.”
Her sigh shivered his heart. “The last cable from my solicitor said he had some ideas.”
“Many of your friends still remain at St. Arles’ houses, despite how he’s firing others. They’re afraid of the unknown,” he added more gently.
She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and he hugged her consolingly. This early in the morning, no gardener should disturb them in a corner of Kerem Ali Pasha’s gardens.
“I wish…” Her voice trailed off, like how the sun was rapidly burning off the fog.
“Hmm?” he prompted, savoring her delicate scent and warmth pressed close to his heart.
“I wish Uncle William was here. Of course, you’re grand”—her enormous blue eyes beamed up at him—“but it would be comforting to know my uncle could back you up.”
“I understand, honey—and I feel the same.” Gareth plopped his hat on her head. “But we’ll manage.”
“Wretch!” She batted at the brim, forcing the oversized hat backward. “You just want to blind me so you can sneak off.”
“Would I do that?” Gareth drawled, pretending to be offended.
“Yes,” she snapped, backed by the certainty which came from years of acquaintanceship, and triumphantly slung the offending headgear onto his scalp.
Ahoogaa! boomed a horn in complete agreement.
They both turned toward the Bosporus to listen.
“That’s not one of the ferries, is it?” Portia asked.
“No, and it’s not a local freighter either.” He’d spent too many years around their ilk not to have learned their favorite cries. “Or a local navy ship.”
Oars dipped and splashed rhythmically into the water, like the accompaniment for an unknown song. Very well-trained crew, too.
Gareth grabbed Portia’s hand and headed at a dead run for the landing.
Sunshine painted the little dock until it appeared as vibrantly alive as the flowers behind it or the mansion rising solidly, if vividly pink, next to it. The sky was bright blue and even Constantinople’s ancient stones were a golden cascade beyond the Bosporus’s rippling waters.
A very long, sleek, black boat lay at anchor off the yali. A single golden stripe ran down her side and the Stars and Stripes waved gently above her, near a golden pennant.
Portia whooped and hugged Gareth.
Servants clustered at the garden gate and even the womenfolk watched from the windows.
A rowboat, white as the gulls circling overhead, nudged against the quay. The uniformed crew rested on their oars at a single command, every one of them careful not to cast a single glance at the veiled women observing their every move.
Who the hell had disciplined them that well? More importantly, who the devil had taught them such good manners?
A tall, well-built man in naval uniform leaped deftly out of the rowboat and onto the dock, showing the cat quickness which only long years around the water confers upon land mammals. Another man followed, similarly outfitted and equally graceful.
Gareth would have far preferred to fight alongside, rather than against, either of them.
The first, and considerably more senior, fellow had already assessed his greeters with a born commander’s ease. He turned his gaze upon Portia.
“Mrs. Vanneck, I believe?” he asked, in the purest of South Carolina accents.
“Mrs. Lowell,” she corrected, her voice only slightly tinged by a note of thank God! “This is Gareth Lowell, my husband.”
“Sir.” The newcomers bowed to them both.
“I am Captain Elliott Pendleton of the SS Naiad, and this is my first officer, Theodore Barnesworth. Our services and the Naiad’s at your service, ma’am, while you cruise the world.”
“I-I don’t own a yacht,” Portia stammered.
“Mr. William Donovan thought you might be more comfortable in your own vessel than if you were dependent on hired accommodations.”
Kerem Ali Pasha, flanked by both of his sons, could just be glimpsed coming through the gardens.
“However, his yacht was not readily available, since it cruises in Pacific waters, ma’am. He sends his apologies for any disappointment,” added Barnesworth.
“Quite all right,” murmured Gareth. He’d swear the fellow had lost his earlobe to a knife, although it was well-hidden in neatly barbered hair beside his black eye patch.
“Mr. Donovan therefore acted with your grandfather, Commodore Lindsay, to find and purchase a suitable yacht. The Naiad was commissioned for Mr. Gould, but he had expressed some concern that the designers had sacrificed comfort in favor of speed.”
“Do you agree with Gould?” Gareth asked.
“I believe you will have no complaints in either quarter, sir.” Pendleton allowed himself a small smile.
This changed the game. If he could get Portia out of here…
“How big a crew?”
“Slightly more than fifty, sir, and all of the officers are former Navy. The Lindsay family brought each of us in.”
Portia beamed as if the sun, moon, and stars were floating out there upon the water.
The two naval officers looked her over protectively, proud as if they were watching a race horse run for the first time.
Kerem Ali Pasha stepped onto the quay and Portia, as the closest, turned to make introductions. But Pendleton stepped back for a last, more private word with Gareth.
“I served with Hal Lindsay, your wife’s uncle, in the Mississippi Squadron during the war between the States, as did Barnesworth and Murrah, the engineer. We’ll protect any member of his family, as well as we did him.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
The first genuine grin touched Gareth’s mouth in far too long.
“My old friend.” He bowed to Kerem Ali Pasha. “May we borrow your house for a very private conversation with our newfound friends?”
The delicate pink salon was almost overwhelmed by so much masculinity crowded into it. The yacht’s two officers, Gareth in his formal business attire, Kerem Ali Pasha wearing the fez and black robes of a high ranking state secretary. Even Adem’s military uniform with all the gold braid and Kahil’s simpler student tunic added to the impression of men gathered to do battle.
“Gentlemen, do you speak any French?” Gareth asked the yacht’s two officers.
“Reasonably well for technical matters,” Pendleton admitted, “although you’ll not catch me spouting any poetry.”
“Barnesworth?”
“I can’t write it but I can understand it well enough,” the younger man admitted warily.
“Good; we’ll converse in French. Kind sir, are we assured of privacy?” he asked their host.
“My mother has guaranteed it and my wife has promised to enforce it.” Kerem Ali Pasha folded his hands across his middle, like that of a man who prefers not to be aware of any details.
Portia started to question
him and then decided she too didn’t want to know. No government spy was a match for those two ladies.
“You are a great and powerful man in the Empire, as your father and grandfather have been before you. I brought my wife here for protection from burglars, which you have generously provided, and for which we thank you.”
Gareth bowed deeply, adding courtly flourishes. Portia echoed the movement, careful not to say anything. They needed the Turk’s help and one wrong word from a woman could curdle their chances.
She sensed, rather than saw, the two officers glance at each other but they too remained silent.
“But matters have grown worse. We have learned that evil men intend to break into Chiragan Palace and restore Sultan Murad to the throne.”
“No!” Kahil came to his feet. His father snapped his fingers and pointed. The young man slowly resumed his seat, his expression thunderous.
“What do these evil men desire?” the state secretary inquired, calm as if they discussed the latest popular play.
“They believe that my wife’s luggage contains a large enough bribe to make the palace guards disappear.”
Portia barely stopped herself from going slack-jawed in surprise. That was one description of a dozen rifles and their ammunition—but hardly the most accurate. It might be the most polite one, though.
“Bribes. Faugh!” Adem made a violent gesture then pounded his fists together. “They will be the death of our country.”
“Adem!”
Dark eyes clashed with darker before the sire won.
“Continue, please.” The saucer shook slightly in the old bureaucrat’s hand but his voice was completely steady.
“We believe they will take action tonight, sir, on the Night of Absolution,” Gareth said. “I have some ideas on how to stop them but doing so will require all of our assistance.”
“What is the Night of Absolution?” asked Pendleton.
“It’s one of five religious festivals when the mosques are outlined in lights,” Adem answered, his mind clearly elsewhere. “Many people spend the night outside in the streets, praying or visiting friends.”
“But why is it called the Night of Absolution?”
The Devil She Knows Page 22