The sultan picked up a knife and stabbed a slice of lamb with it, which she supposed was preferable to his burying it in one of their throats. As the sun glittered off the plump emerald set into the weapon’s hilt, Clarinda realized it was not just any knife, but the jeweled dagger he had given to Ash the previous night as a reward for Ash’s bravery and a token of his own friendship.
After making short work of the lamb, he waved the knife in her general direction. “You need not blush so prettily, my little gazelle. As I have explained before, we are not so provincial here as they are in your homeland. We do not believe there is any shame in a woman learning all there is to know of pleasure in a man’s bed.”
While Clarinda briefly considered crawling beneath the table, Ash said cautiously, “You’ll have to forgive our confusion, Your Majesty. After my rather rash actions in the hall last night, I was left with the impression that you might be … displeased.”
Clarinda lifted her empty goblet in a silent toast to what must surely be the understatement of the century.
Farouk chuckled. “I will forgive your confusion if you will forgive my outburst. Despite my best attempts to embrace restraint and reason, I am still my father’s son, and sometimes my temper gets the best of me. But after a night spent in prayerful contemplation, I realized I should be thanking you.” He lifted his shoulders in a mock shudder. “After all, the last thing I needed was another wife.”
Clarinda exchanged a startled glance with Ash. She could tell from his wary expression that he, like her, could hardly dare to believe events were turning so swiftly in their favor.
“Your Majesty is, as always, the voice of restraint and reason,” Ash said, visibly warming to their discussion. “Which is exactly why I had hoped you would allow me to—”
“I have decided that Miss Cardew will make a much more enticing concubine than a wife,” Farouk said, cutting off Ash as if he hadn’t even opened his mouth. “With such a rare and exotic jewel in my harem, I will be the envy of every warlord in the region. And now that I have fulfilled my vow to you, Burke the Younger, and she is virgin no more, there will be no need for me to delay taking her to my bed.” Farouk turned his dark eyes on Clarinda, their possessive gleam impossible to misinterpret. “On this very night, I will make her my own.”
A
lthough Clarinda was paralyzed with shock, she still expected Ash to say something, do something. Anything at all. But he sat in stony silence as Farouk turned that calculating gaze on him.
“Since there will be no wedding,” the sultan said, “there is no further reason for you and Mr. D’Arcangelo to delay your journey. I shall see you on your way before nightfall.”
Just like that, Farouk’s trap snapped shut on their throats with the delicacy and precision of a French guillotine. Clarinda had allowed herself to foolishly forget that a man who wielded his degree of power had no need of poison or blade to vanquish his enemies. His every smile was as sharp and lethal as a blade, his every honeyed word laced with poison.
Ignoring Ash’s fierce gaze and the desperate shake of his head, Clarinda rose halfway out of her chair, determined to tell the overgrown bully just what he could do with his jeweled dagger and all of his high-handed plans for her.
It would be wise for you to tread with great care. Even the most gentle of beasts can lash out when wounded.
Solomon’s gentle words of warning echoed through her head. If she dared to defy Farouk, it would be Ash who paid the price. She might already be doomed, but he still had a chance to escape this place with his life … and his head.
Swallowing her fury with an effort that nearly choked her, she rose the rest of the way and spread the flowing skirts of her gown in a stiff parody of a curtsy. “You honor me with your attentions, Your Majesty. I shall look forward to having the opportunity to fully express my gratitude for the kindness and generosity you have shown me.”
Farouk’s eyes took her measure, the thoughtful gleam in them deepening. “And I shall look forward to it even more.” She flinched as his fist came down, driving the blade of the dagger deep into the table.
* * *
He was leaving her again.
Clarinda stood atop one of the highest minarets of the palace, the hot, dry wind whipping the hair around her face and searing the tears from her eyes before they could fall. The cool blue sea behind her might as well have been a million leagues away because there was nothing before her but desert as far as the eye could see.
She had no way of knowing if Farouk had allowed Solomon to escort her to this place so she could watch Ash and Luca depart the palace for good as a boon or a punishment. She only knew she hated him all the more for it.
Up until the moment she had watched them ride through the outer gates of the fortress, she had allowed herself to believe Ash would never leave without her. Had clutched at the stone parapet ringing the tower and held her breath, just waiting for the moment when he would whip out a pair of pistols and stage some sort of dramatic rescue, creating a new legend that would live forever between the pages of the scandal sheets.
But the wind that carried the distant jingle of their harnesses to her ears had scattered the last of those dreams.
Ash was wearing the same coat and battered hat he had worn when she had come running into Farouk’s courtyard to find him standing there like a ghost from her past. Even from this distance with his back to her, she would have known the deceptively relaxed slouch of his shoulders, the lazy grace in the way he sat the horse. There was no mistaking him for any other man on this earth.
Clarinda wondered how many other women throughout the centuries had stood on this very tower and watched their men ride away. To other lands. To war. Perhaps even to the arms of other women. But at least they had been allowed to hold on to the hope, however meager, that their men might someday return.
At least this time Ash had left without saying good-bye. She had been spared his tender caresses, his pretty promises, the lies he told with each kiss and every breath. This time he had never even looked back.
What would he do now? she wondered. Where would he go? Would he return to Maximillian to tell his brother he had failed in his mission and that his bride was lost to him forever? Or would he take the money Max had paid him to rescue her and escape to some other foreign shore? Perhaps he was already dreaming of new lands, new adventures, new lips to kiss and hearts to steal.
She watched the two men grow smaller in the distance, her own heart growing so dry and brittle she feared she might turn into a pillar of sand that could be scattered by nothing more than a careless nudge of the wind.
At least then she would be free. Free to soar away from this place in the arms of the wind.
She let go of the parapet and stepped closer to the edge of the tower. Ash and Luca were almost out of sight now. A few more leagues and they would be swallowed by the billowing sea of sand. The distant wail of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer drifted to her ears like an echo from her own heart. She spread her arms wide and closed her eyes, no longer fighting the wind but embracing it.
Her eyes flew open. She was not about to let Ash’s desertion destroy her. She had survived his leaving and its devastating aftermath once before and she would survive it now. If loving him had taught her anything, it was that her heart was strong enough to bear even the cruelest blow. She wouldn’t give any man, whether it be Ash or Farouk, the power to destroy her. If no one was willing to save her, then she would save herself, even if that meant biding her time for months or even years while she waited for another opportunity for escape to present itself.
She turned away from the parapet only to find Solomon standing within arm’s reach of her and realized he had been waiting all along to pull her back from the brink.
Clarinda sat on the edge of the sleeping couch in her darkened alcove and waited for the women to come and escort her to the sultan’s bed. The lavender shadows of twilight had descended over the garden below well over an hour ago, but she hadn’t bothered to light her lamp. There was no longer anything—or anyone—in this place she cared to see.
Tonight she would be begging the women for another dose of their magical elixir. Perhaps if she willingly succumbed to its dark enchantment, she would be able to close her eyes and pretend it was Ash’s lips claiming her own, Ash’s hands caressing her naked flesh, Ash’s body moving over hers. Her lips thinned into a taut line. She would drink any manner of poison to blot out the bearded face of the man she had once believed to be her friend.
A draft danced across her skin, warning her that she was no longer alone. While she had been brooding, someone had silently slipped through the curtain shielding the door.
The woman they had sent for her was a forbidding figure, cloaked and hooded in a long black robe. Clarinda slowly came to her feet. After watching Ash ride out of her life for the last time, she had believed she would never feel anything again except for a desperate determination to survive. Yet still she found herself quailing with dread before this grim specter of her future.
Not sure she had any desire to see what lay beneath, Clarinda dragged in a shuddering breath as the woman reached up to tug back the hood.
Her breath froze in her throat. She must have already fallen beneath the spell of some powerful potion because it wasn’t one of Farouk’s handmaidens who stood before her but Ash, his golden eyes gleaming like a tiger’s in the darkness.
R
efusing to trust that Ash wasn’t the product of some sort of fever dream or delirium, Clarinda drifted closer to him.
His hair was windblown and the stubble on his jaw was already threatening to bloom into a full-fledged beard. A fine layer of sand coated his skin, making him look as if he’d been dipped in powdered gold. She reached up and ran her trembling fingertips over the thin, diagonal scar marring his otherwise perfect chin. That scar—that beautiful, beautiful scar—convinced her he was real.
Her pride dissolving beneath the force of her relief, she threw her arms around his neck with a muffled cry. He gathered her into his arms, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.
“Thank God you’re all right.” He rubbed his face against her hair, his voice hoarse with raw emotion. “I was afraid I’d be too late.”
“I thought you were gone for good,” she mumbled into his throat, savoring the warm, masculine spice of his scent.
He drew back and grinned down at her, his devil-may-care dimple making him look every inch the rogue he was. “Don’t you read the scandal sheets? Captain Sir Ashton Burke never leaves a job unfinished.”
She clutched at his shoulders, afraid to let him go for fear he would vanish all over again. “But how? How can you be here? I saw you ride away with my own eyes.”
“As soon as we were out of sight of the fortress, we doubled back and slipped up on the palace from the sea side.”
“How did you get back into the fortress? Past the harem guards?”
He wagged his eyebrows at her. “I’ve always prided myself on having friends in unusual places.”
“Solomon,” she whispered, knowing the answer to her question before she even asked it.
“We don’t have a minute to spare,” he said, dragging a second cloak out from under his own and whisking it around her shoulders. “Our
friend
can only keep the guards away from the outer gates for so long or someone will get suspicious. Remember how I told you the day might come when you’d have to be ready to travel and travel fast? Well, that day has officially arrived.”
Although she wanted to ask him a thousand other questions, some of which she’d been biting back for nearly a decade, she knew now was not the time. He tugged up the hood of his cloak to veil his features and she followed suit. Slipping an arm around her waist, he urged her through the curtain and down the stairs.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he paused in the shadow of the wall, touching a warning finger to his lips.
They could hear the muffled voices and low-pitched laughter of Farouk’s wives and concubines drifting out of the hall of the harem. At least her mysterious disappearance would give them something new to chatter about.
After looking both ways to make sure no one was watching, Ash tripped a hidden switch and slid open a panel to reveal a secret passageway lit by a single torch. He ushered Clarinda inside, then slid the panel shut behind them. They were halfway to the end of the passageway when Clarinda heard an indistinct moan coming from behind a nondescript cedar door set in the wall. She slowed her steps, giving Ash a questioning glance.
He eased open the door to reveal the two old women who had prepared her for his own possession, writhing about on the floor of the small chamber with their eyes closed.
“They were on their way to take you to the sultan’s bed,” he explained. “I had no choice but to
delay
them.”
Clarinda watched the women squirm and moan, baffled by their strange behavior. “What on earth did you do to them?”
He nodded toward the empty earthenware flask lying on the floor between them. “Let’s just say I gave them a taste of their own medicine.”
Judging by the blissful smiles curving the women’s toothless mouths, they were both enjoying decadent dreams of lovers from days gone by.
Drawing the door quietly shut, Ash sighed with regret. “I was tempted to lock Luca in there with them, but we had to leave our horses behind so I sent him to the stables to steal us some fresh mounts. He’s half-Gypsy, you know. They enjoy that sort of thing. We should probably hurry before he tries to make off with half the horses in Farouk’s stables.”
They had barely taken two steps when Clarinda once again jerked to a halt, clapping a hand over her mouth in horror.
“Good God, what is it now?” Ash snapped, his patience plainly beginning to fray.
“It’s Poppy! I can’t believe I almost forgot her!”