Rayna walked stiffly beside him down the short flight of steps into the gardens. She was beginning to think herself seven kinds of fool, for the only light came from above, from the salon, and she was alone with this man.
“The flowers fade into insignificance when you are present,” the comte said in a ridiculously seductive voice.
“Hardly,” Rayna said, striving for calm. “I am a quite indifferent specimen.”
“There is no need for playacting,” he murmured. He clasped her arms in his hands, pulled her toward him, and kissed the cluster of curls over her ear.
“Let me go. I am not playacting, monsieur. If you are a gentleman, you will cease this nonsense.”
The comte’s response was to hold her wrists with one hand and close the other over her chin.
She felt him press her body against the length of him, felt him glide his tongue over her mouth. For an instant she was paralyzed with fear, and then she felt ferocious anger.
She pulled her hands free and hit him as hard as she could across his mouth with the flat of her hand.
The comte drew back, surprised and angered. He lightly touched his fingers to his cheek. “You will pay for that, little dove,” he said in a soft voice, and reached for her again.
Rayna suddenly remembered her brother Thomas telling her, with embarrassment clogging his normally steady voice, that if a man ever went beyond what was proper, she was to kick him with her knee. She remembered wondering why that would make a man cease being improper, but she brought up her knee nonetheless, and slammed it with all the force she could muster into the comte’s groin.
He fell away from her as if she had shot him. She saw his face contort with pain and his hands clutch convulsively at his groin.
“You damned little bitch.”
His voice sounded as if he were strangling, but she did not wait to hear any more. She dashed toward the steps that led back to the balcony.
Her fear returned in full measure only when she halted just inside the salon, trying to calm her breathing. She felt certain that anyone who saw her would know what had happened. She edged around the side of the salon and ducked into an antechamber. It was a small private receiving room, a room, she supposed, for diplomatic discussions. She fanned herself, discovered that her legs had somehow become weak as water, and sank down into a stiff-backed chair.
“Why the hell did you go outside with the comte?”
Rayna raised her flushed face and found herself staring up at the Marchese di Galvani.
“Have you no bloody sense at all?”
“A great deal, I daresay. I did get away from him, after all.”
“Yes, I saw you kick him in the groin. Most enterprising. Did you learn that trick from one of your brothers? No, don’t tell me. You were a fool to go outside with him.”
Rayna rose to her feet. “I have no intention, signore, of remaining here and listening to your insults. Perhaps I wasn’t wise to allow myself to be placed in such an intolerable situation, but it is over.”
“The comte is not a man to forget that he was bested by a woman. Damn, you have pulled the tiger from his cage.”
“Perhaps,” Rayna said, “you and my father see more eye to eye than I imagined. You are just as unfair as he is.”
Adam heard the slight break in her voice, and felt his anger ease. She looked pale and beautiful and immensely vulnerable. “Rayna,” he said, “I am simply worried for you. Promise me that you will not again allow him to be alone with you.”
“You mean as we are now, marchese?” She pictured him suddenly in laughing conversation with Arabella. “I am not a fool, signore, nor am I blind. Did you come in here because Arabella is otherwise occupied and you couldn’t be with her? Or perhaps Arabella sent you after me.”
“Stop ripping up at me. I came after you to be certain you are all right.”
Adam realized the last thing he wanted was to trade insults with her. Without thinking, he clasped her shoulders in his hands and pulled her toward him. To his besotted surprise, she did not try to fight him. She seemed to melt against him, her arms inching around his neck. He kissed her gently, and she parted her lips to him naturally.
When the marchese’s lips caressed her mouth, Rayna felt as if a door had opened and she had sailed through it. He suddenly released her, pulling her arms from his neck, and she stared up at him, her expression stunned.
“I don’t understand,” Rayna whispered, unable to look away from him. “Please, Pietro, I want—”
He dropped his arms to his sides and took a quick step back. “You don’t know what you want,” he said. “And stop looking at me like that. Is that how you looked at the comte?” He could have cut out his tongue when he saw the bewildered look in her eyes.
“For God’s sake, go back to your parents,” he shouted at her.
Rayna picked up her skirts and raced from the room, not looking back.
Adam stood still, staring after her. He turned around slowly, his head slightly bowed, and walked to the fireplace.
“We both failed, it would appear, mon ami.”
The comte’s voice made Adam stiffen with anger. But when he turned to face the comte, there was a small smile on his lips. “Oh?” he said carefully.
“I saw the little English bitch fly out of here like a rabbit from a trap. The girl needs a lesson.”
It was all Adam could do to stay where he stood. “I misjudged her,” he said coolly, negligently flicking a speck of lint from his black velvet evening coat. “She is an innocent.”
The frown suddenly left the comte’s face, and he smiled widely. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I believe you’re right. A cold virgin.”
“It is probably best that we both keep our distance,” Adam said, trying to repress a feeling of dread at the comte’s smile. “There are other fish to be caught, after all. I don’t intend to waste any more of my time with that one.”
“True,” the comte said obliquely.
“I suggest that you do the same,” Adam said more sharply.
Gervaise tilted his head to one side, his full lips in a grin. “Methinks you still want the little fool,” he said. He turned and said over his shoulder, “We shall see, my friend.”
Chapter 9
Mediterranean Sea
The xebec skimmed the calm surface of the sea, its speed steady in the southerly wind. Kamal pulled his white full-sleeved linen shirt over his head and tossed it to his grinning servant, Ali.
“You have grown too pale in your palace, highness,” Ali said. “Now the sun will bake your back.”
Kamal grunted and flung back his head, closing his eyes against the bright afternoon sun. He felt his muscles relax in its soothing heat. He had been too long ashore, he thought, too tied up with all his administrative duties as a Bey. He opened his eyes when his xebec veered to port, and saw its sister ship pull closer to starboard. A third xebec lay in an inlet a mile or so to the north, waiting.
“A sighting?” he shouted to Droso, his captain.
“Not yet, highness,” Droso called back. He was a mammoth man, who looked the part of a savage corsair with his black beard and shaggy long black hair. But despite his looks, Droso was one of the gentlest captains of an Algerian privateering ship Kamal had ever known, and it was for that reason Kamal had selected him.
They were not privateering, Kamal corrected himself silently. Not this time. What they were doing was sheer piracy. He remembered his anger at reading his mother’s letter from Naples. He had left his bed to think, clothed only in his white wool trousers, his bare feet making no sound on the marble floor of the great reception hall, and walked into the walled garden. He had breathed in the sweet scent of hyacinths, jasmine, and roses, and stared up at the quarter-moon that cast silvery shadows on the stone walls. He had sensed Hassan’s presence without hearing a sound. “Who is there?” he asked softly.
“An old man, highness, merely an old man. But you are young, and should be abed.”
“You c
ould not sleep, Hassan?” He turned to face his minister, whose white hair was as silvery as the moonlight.
“If an old man sleeps, he but shortens the time left to him. I prefer to savor every hour, highness, knowing that I breathe and think, even when the moon is high.”
“Ever the philosopher.”
“You are thinking of your mother’s letter,” Hassan said.
“Yes. She tells me the Earl of Clare is not in Naples, and she wants the viper pricked closer to his nest.”
“I cannot think it is wise, highness.”
Kamal heard a reproof in his minister’s voice. “She asks me to lead a raid on another of the earl’s ships.” Hassan was silent, and Kamal, as if in argument with himself, said loudly, “I have promised her vengeance. See that we discover the next Parese ship to sail.”
“It is your judgment,” Hassan said quietly.
Kamal stared down at his hands, not raising his head to Hassan. “We will bring the men aboard here and keep them until the Earl of Clare shows his hand.”
“You mix wisdom with folly,” Hassan said. “The Earl of Clare will know within the week that the Barbary pirates took his ship.”
“Yes, he will know.”
“And he will have to act. It is possible, highness, that he will come here.”
“Perhaps. If he does, I will hold him for my mother’s return.”
Hassan plucked a bit of lint from his red brocade robe. “A woman’s vengeance. It is a terrible thing, and yet so much can provoke it, things that none of us understand.”
“You speak in riddles, Hassan.”
“It is not my intention, highness. Your mother’s letter said that the Earl of Clare had not arrived in Naples. I do not believe that can be true. A man does not allow his possessions to be seized without taking action.”
“Still, he is not there.”
“Another must be, another acting for him. A man as powerful as the earl is not foolish or stupid. He would not walk into a trap.”
“You believe my mother is in danger?”
“No, and neither is the earl, at least for the moment. I wonder if the captain of the ship you will seize will know what happened twenty-five years ago to your mother. Treachery has a way of staying alive.”
“As does the desire for vengeance.”
Hassan turned away, stretching his stiff shoulders, and plucked a red bloom from an oleander.
Kamal smiled, watching him sniff in the sweet scent. “A woman smells sweeter, Hassan. You are not that old.”
“I am too old for a woman’s sweet scent and her wiles. A woman’s mind dances in circles that confound me. A woman’s lust makes me shrivel now.”
“Lust?” Kamal shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder if their lust is not but pretense, meant to make our own minds dance in circles.”
“What else can a woman do? If she does not have the skill to control a man, she has nothing. I have seen a man’s lust rule him, but never a woman’s. A man feels lust; a woman uses it to her own advantage. A man walks a fine line.”
“Be he Muslim or European?”
“Your blood and your European education did not prepare you to treat women as would a Muslim. You find them boring, their minds and conversation childish. You must accept what they are, highness, not what you would like them to be. Your Elena would make you an acceptable wife. And if she displeased you, you would simply divorce her. It is what a Muslim would do.”
Kamal sighed. “It is not easy for me, Hassan. You see, I do not trust Elena.”
“Trust a woman? Only a fool would do so, highness. What has trust to do with a man’s children? A woman gives you sons, and it is their trust that is yours. No, highness, no woman is to be trusted, even a mother.”
The moon dipped suddenly behind a cloud and Kamal could not see Hassan’s eyes. He heard movement behind the walled garden. Soon three of his Turkish soldiers came into view. He turned from Hassan to speak to them.
“Ho, highness,” Droso called down now. “The watch has spotted a Parese ship, the Heliotrope. She’s heavily loaded.”
The Heliotrope was sailing from the West Indies, Kamal knew, carrying sugar, rum, and tobacco. He caught his shirt from Ali and pulled it over his head.
“Is she alone, Droso?” Kamal called up as he fastened his wide leather belt about his waist.
“A babe for the plucking.”
And her captain thinks himself safe from the Barbary pirates, Kamal thought. He climbed the wooden steps to the wheel. The Heliotrope’s sails billowed white and full in the wind, and even from this distance Kamal could see her troughing deeply in the waves, her hold filled with cargo.
“Remember, Droso, no killing.” He had prepared to take an outgoing Parese ship, and thus had brought two other xebecs with him. But the Heliotrope had been away from the Mediterranean and did not know of her danger.
Droso regarded the young Bey with a mixture of affection and doubt. He was breaking tribute, but he was not planning to destroy those who could tell of his deed.
“My men will only protect themselves, highness,” he said.
Sordello, captain of the Heliotrope, swung up onto the quarterdeck at a yell from his first mate, Mr. Dibbs.
“What is it, Allan?”
“I don’t believe it, sir,” Allan said. “Barbary pirates, and it looks like they are closing on us.”
Sordello wheeled to starboard. Two xebecs, each boasting three masts with the black flags of Algiers flying at their peaks, were slicing smoothly through the water toward them.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath. “It must be a mistake, Allan. Aye, perhaps a new rais.” Sordello shouted to his cabin boy, Marco, “Fetch our passage papers from my strongbox.”
“We can’t outrun them, sir,” Allan said, fighting a knot of fear in his belly.
“I don’t intent to. We will allow them to board us, and present our papers. No heroics, Allan, and raise a white flag quickly. We are too close to home to risk the fools firing at us.”
“Aye, captain,” Allan said, releasing the wheel to Sordello.
Sordello hoped his feelings did not show on his face. One bloody week from Genoa, and this. Never in his five years as captain of the Earl of Clare’s ships had he been approached by xebecs. The earl’s ships were well known. Am I and all my men to end up stinking slaves in Algiers? He shook away the image of his wife, Maria, smiling at him in farewell. He gazed toward the far horizon, away from the swiftly approaching xebecs. There was another Italian ship, sailing as impudently as the Heliotrope had but five minutes before, secure in the safety of tribute. But both xebecs were heading directly toward him, seemingly oblivious of the other merchant ship. He felt hair prickle at the back of his neck.
He saw a huge man standing at the railing of the closer pirate ship, his coarse black hair whipping about his heavy face. Another man, tall and fair-haired, dressed in white wool trousers and a full-sleeved white shirt, appeared to direct him from the upper deck near the wheel. A score of privateers, armed with scimitars, lined the rail, ready to board his ship. Sordello felt the ship heel to starboard as the grappling ropes thrown from the xebec caught the railings. He took a sheaf of passage papers from Marco, straightened his shoulders, and strode down from the quarterdeck to meet the captain. His sailors were milling nervously about, their faces drawn with fear. He waited for the two ships to draw together.
The giant man gave a shout, and a score of men swarmed onto the Heliotrope’s deck.
“We fly the white flag,” Sordello shouted as one of them lunged toward him.
“Hold, you fool,” Droso shouted.
Sordello felt like a stunted child when at last the captain stood before him, his legs spread wide on the tilting deck.
“You are the captain?” Droso asked.
“Yes,” Sordello said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “There is a mistake. We sail under safe passage. We are under tribute.”
Droso shrugged. “You may discuss that with his highnes
s.” He tossed his black head toward the fair-haired man in white still aboard the xebec.
“I have our papers.”
“Show them to his highness,” Droso said shortly. “You will tell your men to behave, and no one will be killed. Most of us will remain aboard to bring the ship into port. You, captain, will come with me.”
His highness? What the devil did the Dey of Algiers want with him? Or was it one of his beys? Had the earl not paid tribute? The thought was too appalling to consider. He clutched the papers tightly in his hand and followed the giant captain to the xebec.
“Captain.”
Sordello turned at Mr. Dibb’s voice. “There will be no harm done to anyone, Allan. I will straighten out this mess. Do as the corsairs bid you.”
“His highness is below,” Droso said when Sordello stepped aboard the xebec, and gave him a light shove in the back.
He made his way through the hatch and down a narrow companionway. The huge man stopped before a closed door and rapped lightly. At the sound of a voice calling, “Enter,” Droso opened the door and pushed Sordello inside.
Kamal rose from a sofa of pillows and furs and silently studied the Heliotrope’s captain. He was a man of Hamil’s age, Kamal thought, and he was frightened. He said to Droso, “I want you to captain the ship into port. Ensure that there is no violence.”
“Yes, highness,” Droso said, and bowed himself from the cabin.
Kamal switched from Arabic to Italian to reassure the man. “There will be no harm done to your men, captain. Will you be seated?”
Sordello drew himself up to his full height. The man he faced was young, a good ten years younger than he, with sun-bleached blond hair and eyes as blue as the Mediterranean. He looked to Sordello more like a Viking than a corsair.
“Who are you?”
“I am Kamal, Bey of Oran and foreign-affairs minister to the Dey of Algiers.”
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