Ash slowed even more.
“I suspect you’ll make a very fine uncle, and your nieces and nephews will adore you. Most children can’t resist an adult with a naughty streak even greater than their own. You’ll be able to entertain them with stories about all of your exotic travels and dashing exploits, leaving out the seedier parts, of course, so as not to corrupt their tender young souls.” As the distance between them grew, her words began to tumble out even faster. “Perhaps you would even consider traveling to England with us for our wedding. I’m sure it would please Maximillian more than you could ever know to have his brother stand up for him at the altar.”
Ash froze in his tracks, then shook his head and kept walking.
Clarinda had promised herself she would not cry or beg this time, but she had no control over the furious tears that sprang into her eyes. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you’re running away again,” she called after him. “After all, running away is what you’ve always done best!”
Ash quickened his pace, each long stride more resolute than the last.
Pride had kept the lid on Clarinda’s anguish and fury for almost ten years, but now she didn’t have enough left to stop it from boiling over. She had believed she was no longer capable of loving with the same headstrong recklessness that had broken her heart and nearly brought her to ruin, but then he had come sauntering back into her life and proved her wrong.
“I’m such a fool,” she shouted, trembling with rage. “I should have known not to trust a single word—or a single kiss—that came from those lying lips of yours because you stood right there in that meadow after you made love to me and promised you’d come back for me. But you never did! You didn’t even have the decency to send me a polite letter begging off our engagement. You just left me standing there waiting for all those years while you went off and—”
“I came back!”
Ash roared, wheeling around to face her. His face had been stripped of the devil-may-care mask he wore so well to reveal the face of a man in the throes of a passion strong enough to destroy him. Strong enough to destroy them both. He retraced his steps one by one, stopping less than an arm’s length away from her before saying, more softly this time, “I came back.”
C
larinda gazed up at Ash in astonishment, struggling to understand how the boy she had last seen standing beneath the sturdy boughs of an English oak could have suddenly materialized in the middle of the Moroccan desert. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“I came back a little over four months later on the eve of your wedding to another man.”
“Dewey,” she whispered. No matter how often she said the name, she couldn’t seem to bring the bland, pleasant features that went along with it into focus in her memory.
“Yes, the Honorable Viscount Darby,” Ash said with excoriating sarcasm. “A far more suitable mate for a wealthy heiress than I could have ever hoped to be.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “How on earth did you find out I was supposed to marry Dewey?”
“As soon as my ship docked, I rode straight to your father’s estate. I was passing through the woods when I overheard the gamekeeper and his son discussing the grand wedding that was to be held there the next day.”
“So you just turned your horse around and left? Without saying a word to anyone?”
“That’s exactly what I should have done. But I waited at the edge of the woods until nightfall, until you appeared in the window seat of your bedchamber.”
He would have known she loved to curl up in that window seat every evening at twilight with a novel by Jane Austen or a book of poems by Lord Byron. He had scaled the rose trellis beneath her window countless times just to steal a good-night kiss from her eager lips.
The hard edge in his voice softened a degree. “You were wearing a cream-colored dressing gown and your hair was pinned up in an untidy knot on top of your head. You had your chin propped on your hand and you were watching the drive with the most wistful expression on your face. I assumed you were waiting for your adoring bridegroom to arrive.”
Clarinda briefly pressed her eyes shut. It hadn’t been her bridegroom she had been waiting for at all. “Why in the name of heaven didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you try to stop me from marrying him?”
Ash’s casual shrug conveyed volumes. “Why would I? You were on the verge of getting everything you ever wanted.”
“You were the only thing I ever wanted!” she cried.
“Well, then … everything you deserved. You were going to be the wife of a viscount. You were finally going to have a title to go along with your fortune. No one would ever be able to mock you again for not being a lady or make you cry. And most importantly, you were going to be marrying a decent man, something I wasn’t sure even then I could ever be.” Passion roughened his voice, reminding her of how it had sounded in the night when he had urged her to roll over to her stomach or lift her leg a little bit higher. “If I had been a decent man, I would have never compromised you. I would have been willing to wait until I had more to offer you than just a hasty tumble in the grass.”
“If that’s what you believed, then why did you come back at all?”
He reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, the tenderness of his touch sending a shiver dancing over her skin. “Because I decided I’d rather live in a garret and eat bread and cheese for the rest of my life than spend another night without you in my arms.” His hand fell away from her, curling into a loose fist at his side. “But when I realized you couldn’t even wait four bloody months for me, I knew I had been right to leave, knew the best thing I could do was to go away and never darken your door again. So that’s what I did. I rode straight back to Portsmouth as if the very devil was on my heels and caught the first ship to India.”
Clarinda shook her head, staggered by his revelation. The treacherous joy singing through her heart was tempered by a wealth of regrets. “If only you had come to me … if only I had known you were right outside my window that night … if only …”
She was so caught up in mourning the years they had lost that she didn’t see the golden cloud approaching from the east until Ash shaded his eyes against the climbing sun to track it.
“What is it?” Clarinda asked, moving closer to him without realizing it. “Is it a sandstorm?”
The bitter twist of Ash’s lips should have warned her. “I do believe, my dear, that the cavalry has arrived. My brother always did have an impeccable sense of timing.”
That was when Clarinda realized the sand wasn’t being stirred by the wind but by hundreds of hooves pounding their way across the desert.
She stood paralyzed in place, watching the shimmering cloud grow larger and more inescapable right along with the trepidation in her heart.
Their oasis idyll had come to an end. They didn’t have three days. They didn’t even have three minutes.
Her bridegroom was coming for her.
T
he regiment of East India Company soldiers came bearing down upon the oasis, the hooves of their mounts sending up golden plumes of sand. Many of the men wore native kaffiyehs to protect their heads from the sun’s blistering rays along with their handsome scarlet coats and white-and-buff trousers.
As they drew closer, Yasmin ducked out of the tent flap and came tearing around the edge of the pool. Luca emerged right behind her, his chest bare and his breeches undone. He was wearing one boot and clutching the other in his hand.
As they joined Ash and Clarinda, Ash noticed that Luca’s olive-skinned chest and back were scored with several scratches, as if he’d spent the night wrestling with an angry cat.
“So many men,” Yasmin purred, eyeing the approaching regiment as if it were one of Farouk’s exotic buffets.
“Thank God they’re coming from the east,” Luca said, his shoulders sagging with relief. “For a minute there, I thought the sultan had changed his mind.”
“I almost wish he had,” Ash muttered. He would have gladly returned to almost any moment in time when he and Clarinda had been shut away from the rest of the world in Farouk’s palace of sensual indulgences.
Even among a regiment that large, it wasn’t hard for Ash to recognize the tall, dark man riding at their head. Max might not be a military commander, but he still wore the mantle of authority with the grace and ease of one who had been born to it. He was bareheaded, no doubt believing the sun wouldn’t have the audacity to burn him.
Ash had never seen Max behave with anything remotely resembling spontaneity, but as the riders approached the copse of palms, his brother flung himself off his horse before it even came to a full halt. Max came striding around the pool, his burning gaze fixed on the woman who stood next to Ash, her long flaxen hair dancing in the wind.
Ash stepped dutifully aside as Max pulled Clarinda into a fierce embrace. Cradling the back of her head in his palm, Max rested his clean-shaven cheek against the softness of her hair, his eyes closed as if he were enduring a pain too sharp and sweet to be borne. Ash recognized the look on his brother’s face only too well. He suspected it had been mirrored on his own just a few hours ago.
Clarinda’s arms slowly crept around Max’s waist. She buried her face in his broad chest, her shoulders hitching in a silent little sob. Ash could hardly blame her for crying after everything she had been through.
Everything he had put her through.
When she tipped back her head to smile up at Max through her tears, Ash’s worst fears were realized. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to witness between the two of them, but the genuine affection shining in her eyes struck him low in the gut, like a punch he hadn’t anticipated.
Clearly, Max hadn’t exaggerated his feelings for Clarinda. Although his brother was searching her face with hungry eyes, Ash could tell he wasn’t looking for the telltale signs of another man’s possession but was simply struggling to convince himself that this wasn’t all a dream. That she was actually alive and well and safe in his arms.
Max tenderly smoothed back her hair with one hand, murmuring something intended for her ears only. Ash was afraid Max was going to kiss her right there in front of them all and Ash was going to end up back in front of a firing squad for murdering his brother in cold blood in front of dozens of witnesses. Fortunately for them all, Max contented himself with pressing a fervent kiss to her brow. Given Max’s respect for propriety, he was probably waiting until after they were wed to kiss her on the lips for the first time.
Ash’s brother might annoy the hell out of him but he was everything Ash would never be—honest, steady, reliable. Clarinda might want Ash, but it was Max she needed. Ash watched through narrowed eyes as his brother peeled off his impeccably tailored cutaway coat and wrapped it around Clarinda’s shoulders to shield her from the curious eyes of his soldiers as if she weren’t already wearing a robe that covered her from chin to shin.
Keeping a protective arm close about her, Max turned to face Ash, his grave countenance lit by something akin to happiness.
Before he could speak, Ash steered Yasmin in front of him. “Max, this is Yasmin. She’s looking for a husband. Yasmin, this is my brother Max. He’s not married, you know. He’s an earl and he’s going to be a duke someday, which where we come from is almost as good as a sultan.”
“A duke, you say?” Yasmin sashayed even closer to Max, raking her luminous dark eyes over his impressive form. “If it is a wife you seek to warm your sleeping couch, my lord, you need look no further. Why, there are things I can do with my tongue that—”
Clearing his throat with a violent bark, Max gave Ash the evil eye. “I’m sure you’ll make some man a very fine wife someday, miss, but what my brother neglected to tell you is that I am already betrothed to Miss Cardew.”
Yasmin’s mouth formed a perfect
O
of disbelieving outrage. “Another one!? Is there any man between Morocco and England who is
not
betrothed to that greedy little ice princess?”
Max slanted Clarinda a puzzled glance. “Would you care to explain that?”
“No,” she replied, staring straight ahead.
Throwing her hands up in the air, Yasmin went marching back around the pool, a stream of Arabic curses spewing from her beautiful lips. When she slipped in her haste and almost fell
into
the pool, she nearly incited a riot as the soldiers jostled and shoved to see which one of them could be the first to dismount and rush to her aid.
Luca watched the whole scene with a lopsided grin. “Isn’t she spectacular? She’s going to make a wonderful mother for my children.”
“So what are you doing out here?” Ash asked Max, folding his arms over his chest as he surveyed his brother. “Were you afraid I’d run off with your money? Or your bride?” he added, taking great care not to look at Clarinda.
“When so many days passed without any word from you, I was afraid something might have gone desperately wrong.”
Ash couldn’t very well tell his brother something had gone desperately right. So right he wasn’t sure his heart—or his body—would ever recover from it. “It took longer than I expected to convince the sultan it would be in his best interests to free Miss Cardew.”
Max tightened his grip on Clarinda, his face grim. “When I think of all she must have endured …”
“The sultan never touched me,” Clarinda said simply. “Captain Burke arrived in the nick of time.”
Max looked at him sharply then, the unspoken question hanging in the air between them. After a moment’s hesitation, Max reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, withdrawing a cheque that could have been a twin to the one Max had given Ash when Ash had been fool enough to accept this job.
Max held the cheque out to him. “This can’t even begin to repay the debt I owe you.”
Somehow his brother’s heartfelt gratitude was more galling to Ash than Max’s contempt or his suspicion. Ash wanted nothing more than to tear the cheque into a thousand tiny pieces and hurl them back into Max’s earnest face.