“No price is too great, lad, for what ye did this afternoon. ’Twas not easy to bring that sacque aboard
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while she was moving, but ye did it! Tell me what you want.”
“The only home I’ve got, my lord, is this ship. There’s a small cottage outside Plymouth, overlooking the sea, that I know I could buy for the owner is dead, and the heirs don’t need the place. It’s been empty these last two years, and only needs a bit of work to make it right again. Once I’ve my own house, I can look for a wife to come home to in another year or so. Would that be too much to ask ye, my lord?”
“Nay, lad, ’tis a cheap price ye would have of me, and so I hope ye’ll let me furnish yer house with all it will need to welcome a bride.”
Young Michael smiled almost shyly at Conn. “Thank ye, my lord,” he said. “I’m grateful for yer kindness.” He bobbed a little bow to Lord Bliss, and was gone from the room.
Conn shook his head.
His kindness?
Without the boy’s sure balance, and strong arms Aidan wouldn’t be sleeping here upon this bed. Michael would have his cottage, repaired, and furnished, and a bit more into the bargain as well, thought Conn. He would deposit in Michael’s name a nice sum of gold with the English Kiras. The boy would be a good match for some merchant’s or well-to-do farmer’s daughter. Pouring himself a goblet of Robbie’s fine burgundy Conn nibbled on the chicken that had been brought to him, but he found he was suddenly too tired to eat. He drank his wine down, and drawing a coverlet over Aidan he lay down atop the bed, and was quickly asleep.
The
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sailed serenely through the night on a light but steady breeze. It would take them several days before they reached the Aegean Sea, but they would be safe for they flew a pennant giving sure passage to all those who traded with Turkey. The night was lit with the glow of a waning moon, and as the sky began to turn from deep velvet black to ash gray Conn awoke, and arose from the bed. Aidan was still sleeping although she did not appear to be in as deep a sleep as she had the previous evening. He longed for, as well as feared her awakening. Was she really mad as Esther Kira had said? He heard the slight change in her breathing, and looked anxiously toward her.
Aidan was slowly rousing, but she did not open her eyes. As her brain began to function she remembered being handed the goblet of cherry sherbet which she had assumed was laced with poison, and indeed she had welcomed death. Better death than being bound to Murad for the rest of her natural days. Strange, she thought. She had not felt that way about Javid Khan, but then the prince had been the most tender and gentle of men. Death should have had no part of him for he was everything good about life.
She drew in a long, deep breath, and slowly let it out again. Where was she? Why had she been spared? Or had she? Perhaps the sherbet had just contained a sleeping potion to keep her quiet while some elegantly refined torture was devised prior to her execution. Murad, of course, would want to be involved in that. He occasionally enjoyed giving pain although at least she had been spared the worst of his nature on that account. Safiye, however, had told her of how a slavegirl had once displeased him so greatly that he had personally beaten her to death. A shudder raced through her body, and Aidan opened her eyes.
A ship? Why was she in a ship’s cabin?
On the floor by the bed she saw a mauve silk sacque. Recalcitrant women were drowned! Had not Safiye told her that? She was going to be drowned alive! Frightened Aidan sat bolt upright, and shrieked,
“Noooooo!”
Conn, across the room seated in the window seat staring out at their wake heard the animal-like sound that issued forth from her mouth, and leaping up he hurried across the room into her line of vision.
“Aidan! Aidan, my love!” His arms reached out to enfold her.
Terrified she scrambled back across the bed, her hand outstretched as if to fend him off. Her eyes were dull, unfocused, and filled with fear. “No!” she repeated. “No!”
“Aidan!” he persisted. “Look at me, sweeting! ’Tis Conn, yer husband.’Tis Conn!”
Conn?
What had she heard? Aidan attempted to gain control of the awful fear that was engulfing her. She forced herself to hear the voice. She forced her eyes to focus.
“Conn?” she said. “Conn! Oh, God! Is it really you? I don’t understand! What has happened? Where am I?”
She seemed to be making sense, he thought. Perhaps she was not mad after all. “Yer on Robbie’s vessel,
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sweeting. We’re out of Istanbul bound for England. I’ve been seeking ye since last summer, but I only reached Istanbul several weeks ago. Yer attempt on the sultan’s life yesterday made it possible for Esther Kira to help us to rescue ye. Had ye not done such a foolish thing, we would never have been able to get ye back short of storming the sultan’s palace which, of course, my brothers were all for doing. I’m afraid ye’ve quite spoiled their fun, Aidan, my love.” He tried to make his voice light.
“How did you rescue me?”
Conn quietly explained how Esther Kira had cleverly conceived the plan to rescue Aidan, and how young Michael Small had actually brought her aboard the vessel. He finished by telling her how they had opened the sacque to find not only Aidan, but her cat as well.
“Tulip? Tulip is here!” Aidan looked about the room, and then her eye lit upon the animal at the foot of the bed. “Ahh, this is Esther’s doing, God bless her!” Leaning over she reached out, and lifted the cat into her arms. The little beast’s golden eyes opened, and seeing his mistress, he purred. A tear slipped down Aidan’s cheek, and she said, “Javid loved him, too. He said Tulip was a perfect Tartar; unafraid, adventurous, and a great lover.” She placed the cat back at the foot of the bed, and then looked up at Conn. “Javid Khan is dead, you know. His brother killed him, and destroyed everything that was his, but for me. I was not there.”
“I know, sweeting,” Conn said gently for he could see the pain and sorrow in her eyes. It amazed him that he could be so objective in the face of the fact that his wife had obviously cared for this prince.
“The sultan said I wasn’t free,” Aidan continued, “
but I was
! Javid Khan had freed me on our marriage, and when he was killed I wanted to come home to ye, Conn. They said ye wouldn’t want me. They said ye had remarried another woman, and she would have yer children. They said without my papers I was not a free woman, and the sultan took me to his bed, and forced me to his will. I hated him! I wanted to kill him!
I wish I had!
”
“It’s over, Aidan,” he told her. “It’s all over, and yer safe with me now.”
“Ye haven’t taken another wife?”
Conn laughed softly. “Lord, sweetheart, I never had the time to even think about it for I was far too busy chasing after ye. Besides, I don’t want another wife. I have ye.”
“How can ye want me now, Conn? I have known two other men. One I cared for, and in this land I was considered his lawful wife. In our land, however, I should be considered an adulteress and bigamous wife, a whore! Women taken in slavery by the infidel are supposed to resort to suicide and martyrdom rather than yield themselves willingly, yet the women I have known here desired only to live. Was I wrong in choosing life? It is a question I wish I did not have to ask myself.”
“Let me answer it for ye then, Aidan. Ye were correct to choose life over death. I would not have had it any other way. I love ye, sweeting, even as I have always loved ye. I want ye, even as I have always wanted ye.” Taking her into his arms he laid her back against the pillows, and kissed her passionately, his lips nibbling softly against hers, his firm mouth pressing firmly on hers. He covered her face with his kisses, and she shivered, but Conn pressed onward with his suit. He had to show her that he still wanted her, that he loved her, and he did it in the only way he knew how.
Drawing off her little sleeveless bolero he lowered his head to her beautiful, full breasts, and caressed them with his lips. His fingertips brushed over the satiny globes, relearning their contours. He gently teased at her nipples, and saw them pucker as her body began to respond to him. With surprising agility he removed the silk gauze trousers, and kissing her navel tenderly, he stopped to pull his own garments off, and then he laid himself atop her.
Taking her face in his hands he kissed her mouth again, and said, “I adore you, my lost love.
Ye must believe me, Aidan!
”
She felt his body on hers, and his hands and his lips that roved and roamed across her flesh. He said he loved her, and she wanted very much to believe him. This was Conn, her beloved Conn. Conn for whom she had mourned these many months of her captivity. This was her husband,
her true husband
! She felt him enter her with such incredible gentleness that she began to weep. Slowly he moved on her, attempting to aid her in gaining her pleasure, but she could not. It was as if her body had been frozen as cold as the snows that had been imported into the harem to cool the sherbets.
Finally Conn could contain himself no longer, and he poured his seed into her waiting womb knowing as he did that she had had no joy of their coupling, and he was deeply saddened by it. Rolling off her he drew her into his embrace, and tried to comfort her. “It’s all right, sweeting, I love ye.”
“Nay,” she whispered, “it isn’t all right, Conn, but ye must understand that I have been badly used these last few weeks. It is not something that I can put from me easily. Do not be angry with me nor impatient, I beg of ye. I am grateful that ye would want me back.”
“Oh, Aidan, there was never a time when I didn’t want ye back, my love! I would have come sooner, but that we were forced to remain in Algiers the winter,” and Conn explained the predicament that had greeted them on their arrival in Algiers.
“I understand,” she answered him, and she drew the coverlet over her naked body.
“Tell me of the cat,” he said attempting to find a path that would be less painful for her. “Why is he called Tulip?”
A small smile touched her eyes. “When he awakens, and you can see his tail fully you will understand. The tip of it has the shape of a halfopened tulip bud, and its color is an orange in contrast to the rest of the tail which is creamy white. That is why he was given his name by Javid Khan.”
“Can ye tell me of the prince ?” he asked her curious.
She looked at him with haunted eyes. “Not yet,” she said low. “Please don’t make me speak of him. The wound is too fresh, Conn. I will tell ye this, though. He was a good man, and ye would have liked him.”
He questioned her no more. Esther Kira had been correct. The daring that had enabled her to attack Sultan Murad with a fruit knife had been naught but a temporary madness. Aidan was sane. She was in pain from the terrors of the last few weeks of her life, but she was sane. Returned to her own world, however, she was having a difficult time coping with her own sudden feelings of guilt. At first she would allow no one else but Conn to enter the cabin where they were housed. Young Michael would bring them meals, and water; and leave them at the door.
Robert Small understood her anguish for he had spent many years of his life in trading with the Near East. The few women who managed to escape their captivity usually had a difficult time readjusting themselves to their old life; for everything they had learned in their youth in their native Christian lands told them that they committed a great wrong in surviving their shameful, carnal captivity let alone returning to their homes to take up their old lives again. Only his beloved trading partner, Skye, had come through her own captivity whole; but then Skye was a woman of enormously strong will. Still, Aidan must also be strong else she would not have survived herself, let alone attempting an attack on the sultan’s life. Time, Robbie counseled Conn, was the great healer.
Time.
They had enough of that, Conn thought, for it would take them eight to ten weeks to reach England. They had followed a Venetian trade route from Istanbul to Greece where they had made port in order to take on fresh water and food. Crossing the Gulf of Messenia they had slipped into a Genoese shipping lane that brought them to their second port of call in Sicily. Leaving Sicily they alternated back and forth through the Mediterranean between Venetian and Genoese routes stopping again in the Balearic Islands and at Gibraltar before entering the Atlantic for the last leg of their journey home. To avoid any run-ins with the Spanish
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sailed well off her coast and across the Bay of Biscay around Brittany, and up into the English Channel. This was the longest leg of the voyage for they did not make port again between Gibraltar and London.
Aidan’s uneasiness eased somewhat over the weeks to the point where she was able to finally greet Robbie, and meet Conn’s three elder brothers who were, of course, anxious to see the lady whom they had spent so many months in rescuing. To Conn’s surprise his usually self-confident wife was somewhat shy and reserved, but as Shane and Shamus were equally shy of this lady who had such an adventure, there was no offense taken on their part. Brian, however, blunt as always, was the one who strangely put Aidan at ease.
Enveloping his sister-in-law in a bear hug he growled at her, “Poor, little lass. Ye’ve been cruelly used, but we’ve got ye safe again. Welcome home, Aidan, and thank God for it, I say!”
Aidan burst into tears, but when Conn would scold his elder brother for his words she defended Brian O’Malley heatedly to them all. “He
really
makes me feel welcome,” she said. “He makes me feel as if I have some hope of living a normal life again! Can ye not understand that?” Then she hugged Brian back. “Thank ye, my good brother,” she said looking up at him. “Thank ye with all my heart!”
Brian blushed to his brothers’ delight, and hoots of derision for they teased him about being softhearted over Aidan, and perhaps he was for Brian was a warrior at heart, and there was something in Aidan that spoke of her own personal strength and dignity that appealed to him. For a moment a familiar twinkle appeared in Aidan’s eye, but it was quickly gone, and Conn mourned its loss even as he ached for the inner turmoil of conscience that racked his wife.