by Anna Randol
Once outside the office, Bennett again scanned their surroundings as the soldiers led them across the compound. Neatly stacked piles of stone and brick rested beside gaps in the walls. The holes should’ve been in their favor, but an increased number of guards had been posted to counteract the weakness. Damn. It was much easier to scale an unguarded wall than sneak through open ground avoiding sentries.
The soldier next to Mari leered down at her. He tugged on her hair and his companion laughed, snickering at some comment. Bennett didn’t have to speak Turkish to guess the nature of their discussion. All soldiers of their ilk thought the same.
But Mari could understand them.
He might not be armed, but he’d not allow these poor excuses for men to torment her further. “If you value your life, you will cease,” he snarled, grabbing the collar of the soldier closest to him and yanking him back. But three other men rushed to restrain him before he could do more than throw the man to the ground. Pain exploded through his skull as a panicked soldier slammed the hilt of his sword into the back of Bennett’s head. He blinked trying to clear his blurred vision, but a sword resting on Mari’s neck ceased his struggle.
A fist landed in his gut like a battering ram and he doubled over, trying to remind his lungs how to breathe. He was shoved forward toward the old Byzantine fortress.
But he allowed himself a small smile as he saw the distance the two guards kept from Mari.
Whether they recognized the threat in his voice or the fact that he stood a head taller than either of them, he didn’t know. But both men quieted and moved their hands to the hilt of their swords.
The guards led them into the old Byzantine fortress. Foul air wafted up a sharply angled staircase.
Bennett and Mari were shoved back as another soldier appeared at the top of the stairs, leading a group of three prisoners who’d been bound together in a chain. The last man’s face was so swollen his eyes were mere slits inside red, battered flesh. When he stumbled, the soldier didn’t stop but dragged his moaning body along behind.
Another voice outside yelled, “Fire!” One of the few words Bennett knew in Turkish. Muskets fired and Mari jerked next to him like she’d been the one hit. He reached for her to ensure she was unharmed, wanting to shield her from this, but the guard stepped between them with a cold sneer. He pulled his sword and motioned down the stairs. Bennett counted the stairs as they descended. Twenty-two. There was no place for a guard to stand watch except at the top and bottom.
Their descent ended in a hallway lit by two sputtering torches. Half a dozen heavy doors lined both sides. From the moans and shouts coming from within, prisoners occupied them all.
Mari’s shoulders remained straight and proud, but Bennett could see the way her hands trembled against her legs. And he could do nothing. Fury and disgust battled within him. He would have done anything at this point to spare her, but he was powerless. What had happened to his bold promises of protection? Mari had been right to doubt him all along.
He turned his thoughts before they crippled him. Besides the two guards that led them down, only one other lounged at the end of the corridor. If he could manage to disarm one, he could probably overcome the other two.
The new guard removed a heavy iron key ring from his belt and unlocked a door. With a grunting laugh, he shoved Mari between the shoulder blades, sending her sprawling on the filthy stone floor of the cell. Her pained gasp drove Bennett forward, until he knelt at her side.
The thick wooden door to the cell closed with a far too solid thud behind him. Bennett blinked, trying to adjust his eyes to the dimness, but it did little good. The only light in the fetid room seeped through the small crack under the door.
He helped Mari sit. “Are you all right?”
She rubbed her elbows. “I— Yes.” She scrambled to her feet. “There must be some way out.”
He heard her searching the walls of the room in the dark, but knew she’d find nothing. Before the door had shut he’d seen nothing in the cell but a moldering pile of straw.
Nevertheless, he joined in her search. It was either that or go mad from doing nothing. His fingers skimmed over the rough jigsaw of stone. He worked his way around once, then again. On the second attempt, he came across a bit of loose stone and pried it free from the mortar. He tried to chip at the hole but only managed to loosen a fine dust. Perhaps in a dozen years he might get somewhere, but not in a single night. Still, the rock was something. It was only the size of his palm, but after having been stripped of his knives, it felt solid and heavy in his hand. He would take any advantage he could, no matter how small.
The guards outside called taunts through the door. Apparently, eight inches of oak and a foot of rock imbued them with more confidence to antagonize him.
Bennett pulled Mari into his arms, placing himself between her and the door. “We will find a way out.”
“How?” she asked, her voice remarkably calm. But each of her shudders drove recriminations deeper into his heart.
If he had more time or more supplies they might have a chance, but with neither, the odds were practically nonexistent. He’d been on both sides of too many prisons during the war to nurture false hope. “We’ll attempt to escape when they move us.”
“In the morning when they take us to see the captain.” She drew a deep breath.
“We turn on our guards, take their weapons, and make for the wall.” Which they’d probably never reach. Even if they managed to gain the guns from the guards, that gave him only two shots. Four times that many soldiers lined the walls. And their escape would be in broad daylight.
“Will we make it?”
It would be suicide, but it was their only option. “I’ll do everything I can to see that we do.” He savored the feel of her in his arms, trying and failing to ignore the black thoughts in his mind. If they were unsuccessful in the escape attempt, could he find it within himself to do what it took to spare her? Mercy killings were common on the battlefield. It would be easy enough to snap her neck in a single, painless move.
“What happens if we fail?” she asked against his coat, her voice little more than a whisper.
He pulled her tighter against him, offering her what strength he could. When he’d been at the hands of the French, he’d prayed for death after three hundred lashes. And they had been nothing more than stupid brutes intent on gaining the location of the approaching battalion. This new captain would be far more methodical, far crueler. Bennett rubbed slow circles on Mari’s back, hoping she’d attribute the iciness in his hands to the frigid stone walls.
She burrowed closer until he could feel every breath she took. His fingers followed the gentle curve in her spine up her back and lingered on her neck.
His hands shook so badly he had to drop them before she noticed.
Bennett breathed a savage curse. He couldn’t hurt her, not even to save her. He was a damned bloody failure as her protector. “They’ll torture us until we admit to spying for the British.”
Her chin dug into his shoulder but her shuddering ceased. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“Would you have believed me if I lied?”
She chuckled weakly. “No.”
“I’ll confess to being the spy. You’ll be my lover. They should accept that.” He didn’t add the rest of his plan—that he’d provoke the captain into torturing him first. It wouldn’t do much, but if the captain sated himself on Bennett’s pain, it might save her from being raped and brutalized before they were executed. Hell, when had that become the optimistic outcome?
She stiffened. “You will not.”
“I forced you into this.”
“I’m not a child. I had a choice.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him. “I am your protector.”
“Your orders again?”
“No.” His chest constricted until each breath hurt. Duty be damned. He had chosen to push her into this. He should have refused Caruthers in the
coach in Ostend. He should have found another way to protect his men. Now he’d failed all of them. His Mari, Sophia, and his men.
One of the guards shouted something through the door and Mari shrank against him in the dark.
“What did he say?”
Her cheek bumped his chest as she shook her head. “Please, don’t make me repeat it.”
He sat on the cold stone floor and pulled Mari into his lap. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, shielding her the best he could from the cell and the bastards guarding it. “Let us speak of something else.” But he struggled for a light topic.
“Why are you in such a hurry to return to England? Is it so terrible here?” She snorted softly. “And by here I meant Constantinople, not this cell.”
He kissed her temple. Pluck to the backbone. “My sister, Sophia.”
Mari went utterly still. “What’s wrong?”
“She—” Even Sophia would agree Mari had a right to know why he’d thrust her into danger, yet still he battled with the words. “After Napoleon’s escape from Elba, I made plans to return to the Continent with my regiment. My family held a small function to bid me farewell. My sister, Sophia, sent her regrets a few hours before. We’ve always been close, so I called on her the next morning. I was in a hurry so I didn’t bother to knock . . .” He drew a deep breath. “She’d been beaten so badly she couldn’t get out of bed. Her husband apparently took great pleasure in knocking her about when he was drunk.” He could still see her lying there in bed, the blankets she’d thrown over her face making the welts on her forearms even more visible. He knew Mari probably felt his tension but he couldn’t hide his rage.
Mari stroked the stubble on his chin, but it did nothing to soothe him. “Did you kill him?” she asked, her voice calm, almost expectant.
Bennett caught her hand and kissed her palm. “No, the bastard left London and I had orders to return to my regiment.”
Mari caressed his cheek. “You didn’t know what type of man he was?”
“No. Hell, I’d gotten drunk with him the week before. She hid it from all of us.”
“What did you do?”
“I picked her up out of bed and drove her to my family’s country estate. The rest of my family was still in London. She told the servants she’d been hit by a carriage, and I didn’t correct her.”
Mari’s head tilted back against his arm as if she was searching to meet his gaze in the darkness. “She went back to him, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” The admission wrenched from his throat. “My mother sent me a letter saying Sophia had reconciled with her husband and returned to him.”
“Didn’t they try to stop her?”
“They don’t know.” Disgust swept through him. “To get her to come with me, I had to swear to tell no one. Not even our family.”
“You kept that promise?”
He tensed. “Of course. I made a vow.”
Mari’s voice was quiet. “Most promises should be kept, but there are some that never should have been made.”
“Yet I did make it. I cannot disregard it.” A soldier was nothing without his honor. Neither was a gentleman. Both the life he’d been born to and the life he’d lived forbade it.
“You have to decide whether your duty is to your sister or to the words you spoke.”
Mari disliked the silence that fell in the cell after her overly profound statement. The guards’ voices were too clear outside. “Why did you come to Constantinople and not return home?”
“Orders.” Bennett’s deep voice pressed back the shadows of terror and made even that hated word no longer terrible.
She frowned. “Surely, they could’ve found someone else.”
“Not with the perfect excuse for visiting.”
“Ah, your cousin.” She couldn’t keep the distaste from coloring her words.
“Why do you dislike him?” he asked.
How could he ask that? He’d met the man. But she supposed Daller might be better at hiding his faults from people he wanted to impress. “He only has interest in those he thinks will be of use to him. Like when he found out about Esad’s dowry.”
“Dowry?”
“I started to tell you about it yesterday. I think Esad fears never marrying me off. Or as Fatima claims, he wants to buy me a husband because I can’t attract one of my own.”
Bennett growled softly in her ear. “I cannot imagine that you’re unmarried due to a lack of offers.”
She smiled. “Very few. There isn’t exactly a generous pool of Englishmen to draw from. And most of the Ottoman men have had their marriages arranged for years. I won’t cause the jilting of some young bride.”
The door rattled as a key fumbled in the lock. Her fingernails dug into Bennett’s strong arms.
“Shh,” he whispered. “We have until morning, I believe.”
Wood scraped against stone as the door dragged open.
“Water.” A guard tossed a battered tin mug onto the ground. Half of its precious liquid splashed between the cracks in the stone. He leered at her with a wide, gap-toothed grin and spoke in English. “Unless you want to earn more?”
Bennett snarled and started to rise.
“You get nothing else until morning.” The door slammed shut.
Mari leaned over and groped for the cup, her fingers fumbling over the damp floor until she found the misshapen handle. She tried a sip of the stale, metallic water, then attempted to pass it to Bennett.
He refused. “Drink more.”
“I don’t think I can keep it down.”
“Try.”
She sighed and took another small drink. Surprisingly, although the water still tasted foul, she found she was parched. She gulped two big mouthfuls, mindful of reserving a larger portion for Bennett. “Here,” she said pressing it into his hands.
This time, he took the mug and raised it to his lips.
The water helped her gather her wits. Why was she wallowing in her fear?
Their plan might or might not work in the morning. Despite Bennett’s competence, she suspected it would be the latter, but she wasn’t about to spend the rest of her remaining hours huddled in a frightened ball.
The British might have forced her to draw, but as she’d told Bennett, she’d agreed when she should have fought.
There was no way she was going to make that mistake again. The Ottomans might have forced her into this prison cell, but contrary to the vile captain’s words, they couldn’t force her to be afraid unless she gave them that power.
If these were going to be her last few hours, she intended to enjoy them. She lifted her face and pressed a kiss to Bennett’s jaw. “Make love to me.”
He choked on the water. The cup rattled against the floor as he set it down. “I’m not going to make love to you in a filthy prison.”
“Then it’s the location you object to, not the sex?”
He shifted, and Mari felt his answer against her thigh.
Courage surged through her and she smiled. “I may not be able to control what happens tomorrow, but I can control what I do tonight. Besides, if the captain wants us to suffer, I plan to do just the opposite.” She pressed her hip against the bulge in his trousers.
He groaned and laced his fingers in her hair, his touch reluctant as if he were trying but failing to keep her away. “Why aren’t you cowering in terror? Hell, I’m sitting so you can’t see my legs trembling.”
She loosened the top button of his shirt, her fingertips burning from the contact with his chest. “I have far too many interesting ideas to waste my energy on fear.” She stretched up and kissed his neck. He was warm and solid. Strong, the perfect counterbalance to her own weakness. She trembled, not because of what fate might hold for them, but because of his nearness. She inhaled deeply, loving that the smell of sandalwood and Bennett’s skin erased the stench of the cell. If only she could breathe him in forever.
His fingers traced her face. “Are you sure? I plan to do everything in my power to se
e we’re freed.”
Mari closed her eyes, envisioning every detail of his face. The hard determination in his eyes. The way his brows would be drawn down and his lips firm. She lifted her finger to his mouth and smiled slightly when she found she was correct. “Will our plan work?”
“There’s a chance.”
“How large of one?”
His silence was the answer she’d expected.
She lowered her voice, allowing smoky resonance to enter her words. She pressed another kiss to his jaw, then one to the corner of his mouth. “Our incarceration might’ve accelerated my timeline, but it’s not why I’m doing this.”
His hand slid down her side. “Ah yes, your fascination with the Kama Sutra.”
“Well, I have wanted to try out a few things.” She gasped as his thumb brushed the underside of her breast. Her nipples tightened, her chest constricting at nothing more than that simple movement. This. This was what she’d wanted for so long.
No, a small voice whispered. Not this. Him. Bennett.
Mari took a deep breath, forcing air into her lungs. “Not that I can think of them when you do that.”
He lowered his mouth to her nipple and licked it though her shirt. “So you are doing this out of rebellion and curiosity? It’s a good thing Abington isn’t in this cell with you.”
She punched him in the shoulder. But then she opened her fingers and clutched his arm, unable to let go. “Beast.” But his body had gone rigid beneath her, compelling her to respond. How could she explain that while her rebellion might have sparked her actions, desire for him was what fueled them? “I wouldn’t do this with anyone else. Only you. I don’t simply want pleasure. I want you.”
His chest rumbled with a growl of pure male possessiveness as he dropped his mouth to hers. His lips were fierce and demanding, forcing her to forget the vile men outside. To forget everything but Bennett. Heat cascaded through her limbs.
He flicked her bottom lip with his tongue, then captured her chin with his fingers and pressed his lips to hers again. “Hmm . . . I think that’s two of the kisses from your book. How many more does it list? Eleven?”