A Secret in Her Kiss (3 page)

The eyes rested in a sun-kissed face underlined by strong cheekbones and a straight, Roman nose. Her lips—Bennett pulled his gaze from their seductive, just-kissed fullness. His memory was far too active to dwell on that feature.

Rather than a soft English kitten, she was a panther. And like a panther, she appeared ready to go for his throat.

He met the challenge in her gaze with one of his own. She shouldn’t have tried to deceive him.

Completely and utterly unacceptable. Sophia had done that, allowing herself to be beaten time and time again.

Love for his sister had made him gullible and blind. He’d believed her when she had not attended family gatherings, claiming a sudden illness, even though she’d never been sickly as a child. He had believed her when she’d claimed the bruise on her cheek resulted from bumping into a door. Hell, he’d even teased her about it.

But he’d allow no emotions to interfere with his protection of Miss Sinclair. As soon as he received the locations the government wanted sketched, he’d arrange for her to draw them. Then he could leave.

Her hazel eyes flashed. “Stop glowering. It isn’t my fault I had to save your life.”

No, he wouldn’t let her rouse him this time. “Thank you for your quick thinking.”

She frowned and lowered her brows. Searching for the trap in his words, no doubt. She crossed her arms and stared out the window.

Her father, Sir Reginald, slouched next to her, a bemused smile on his face. Sir Reginald had given his daughter her coloring, but there the similarities ended. His face lacked the sharp angles that defined hers and his addiction had taken its toll, robbing the man’s skin of luster and his eyes of life.

Miss Sinclair glanced at him and caught his survey of her father. She quickly turned back to glare at the pane of glass beside her. Too quickly.

He sought to put her at ease. “His sickness is no reflection on you.”

Her mouth dropped open and her face jerked toward him. “Of all the arrogant, overbearing— Why do you suppose for one minute that I care a whit for your opinion about me or my father? Just because some imbecile assigned me to you, it doesn’t allow you free rein in my private life.”

Bennett clenched the seat cushion until his fingers ached. Control. The army had taught him control. As a Rifleman, he could hide unmoving in the brush for hours while enemy troops moved inches from his position. A mere slip of a woman didn’t have the power to rile him. “On the contrary, for the next month, it belongs to me entirely.”

Hell, how had that escaped?

Miss Sinclair sputtered. “The devil it does!”

Bennett rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’m here to protect you—”

“That’s a polite way of putting it. I agreed to do the drawings, not to accept a jailer.”

“You need to be alive to draw.”

“How do you propose to accomplish that? Your very presence threatens to expose me. I risk discovery every day. The risk increases monumentally if I’m entangled with an obviously British keeper who knows nothing about the country he’s been sent into.”

Bennett’s hands tightened on his knees. “What you are doing for the British is dangerous. Your ridiculous scenes put your life in jeopardy. Who did I meet with this morning?”

Staring at him defiantly, she folded the veil with crisp, tight snaps. “My maid.”

Without the guidance of her father, she’d grown too wild. Her excessive freedom ended here. “What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?”

Her lips stretched over her teeth in an expression that was more snarl than smile. “I’m busy.”

“With what?”

She lifted her chin and shrugged. “It doesn’t concern my work so it doesn’t concern you.”

“Your plans?” He waited silently, never letting his attention waver from her, a trick that had wrung information from the most hardened soldiers.

Apparently, Miss Sinclair was made of sterner stuff. When they drew to a halt at her residence, she still hadn’t answered him.

He jumped down, then assisted her out. The touch of her skin was as disturbing as before.

As if he were Prometheus holding stolen fire.

When she tried to pull away, he refused to let her, locking his fingers around her wrist. Her pulse fluttered under his fingers.

“Unhand me.”

“Not until I know what you are planning.” And until he convinced his brain that there was nothing extraordinary about this woman except her foolishness.

Suddenly, she twisted in his grasp, freeing herself. But he grabbed her waist before she’d managed a single step. The lithe muscles under his fingers tensed, and he tightened his hold before her next attempt to flee. “If you don’t tell me your plans, we will stand here all night.”

She shoved against his chest with both hands, but when that didn’t loosen his hold, she sighed. “I’ll stay at my house tonight like an obedient puppy.”

Bennett nodded at the concession. Good, perhaps she could learn who was in charge after all. “We’ll discuss my plans for you tomorrow morning at nine.”

She nodded.

“Do I have your word that you’ll not try to leave the house this evening?”

She glared at him. “If it convinces you to let go of me, then yes, you have my word.”

He loosened his grip, and she stalked away toward the coach.

Despite her glares and muttered oaths, he helped her remove her father. Once the man’s feet were on the ground, he teetered for a moment, then straightened and practically skipped into the house. She stalked after him, the silk of her robe clinging to softly supple hips.

She’d never agree to confine her movements to a carefully arranged schedule. Even knowing what little he did of her, his original stratagem was ridiculous. So rather than monitoring her from afar he’d have to—

Damnation. He wouldn’t be able to leave her side.

Chapter Three

M
ari glanced at her clock. Seven. That gave her two hours until her captor arrived. She ignored a small spurt of guilt. She’d only promised to not leave the house last night. She wrapped her veil around her head. She’d guaranteed nothing about her location this morning.

Breakfast was already laid out on the
sufra
. Her father hadn’t yet awoken then. When he was up and sober, he demanded a solid English breakfast served at a table. She knelt down by the leather mat and popped a green olive into her mouth. Thank heavens, he was still abed. She couldn’t have stomached the bland mass of grease that passed as an English meal. She untied the bag hidden in the folds of her robes and tucked in a hunk of feta cheese and slices of hard pastirma sausage. She didn’t have time to waste eating here.

As she draped her veil over her head, she opened the door and checked the street. Clear. She needed to speak to Nathan. If anyone could take care of Major Prestwood, surely an agent of the British Foreign Office could.

Mari threaded her way through the streets. The city already bustled with market goers eager to avoid the oppressive summer heat and purchase their produce before the flies discovered it. She kept her head down, veil pulled across her face, to avoid recognition.

She skirted a basket weaver’s stall and slipped down a narrow alley, picking her way around foul-smelling puddles and under lines strung with drying laundry.

The hairs on the back of her neck quivered. She bent over and pretended to adjust her shoe as she peered behind her.

People milled around in the market beyond the entry to the alley, but no one seemed to be giving her undue attention. Yet she was being watched. She could feel it.

She continued on her way, keeping her pace slow and measured. Seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten. She whirled about trying to catch sight of her pursuer.

Silence clung to the dark alley. Shadows flickered as sheets rippled in the breeze. But she could find no followers.

Her heart hammered in her chest. As the alleyway opened into a shady courtyard, she ducked through a small gap between two overgrown bougainvillea bushes, the branches plucking at her sleeves and thorns raking her arms. The bushes rustled behind her as someone tried to follow.

There. A cart. She dashed behind the lumbering vehicle, keeping pace beside a mountain of moving cabbage until she reached a street corner. Although the cart trod onward, she tucked herself behind the edge of a building.

Ignoring the burning in her chest, she strained to hear any sounds of pursuit. The tingling sensation that had triggered her flight faded.

She’d lost them.

She drew a breath into her starved lungs and rested her head on the cool stone of the building wall.

Her shaky legs urged caution so she altered her course three times. When she reached Nathan’s quarters, she circled around the building twice to ensure she was unobserved.

Mari pressed her ear against the shutters. No noise sounded within. She tapped twice on the slats covering the window and waited. She tapped again. When he didn’t respond, she retrieved the note she’d written from the sash at her waist.

She pulled on the loose slat, third from the bottom, and slipped the paper into the small crevice obscured by the loose wood. Nathan had said if she was ever in need of assistance, he’d rush to her aid.

She definitely needed him now. Surely, he’d agree Prestwood would only increase the danger to all of them.

Mari straightened and made her way to the main street. This time, she lowered her veil around her shoulders and nodded to people she recognized, calling out cheery
merhaba
s and asking after family members. If anyone questioned where she disappeared to this morning, she’d have a dozen witnesses to place her on the way to Esad Pasha’s house.

She trailed her hand along the wall surrounding Esad’s home. An entire neighborhood had been razed to provide ample space and prestige for the sultan’s favored one. A slave opened the gate at her approach and she entered the lush green courtyard. She stopped for a moment. A jasmine breeze enfolded her, and she allowed the splash of water from the central fountains to calm her.

If she closed her eyes, she could almost believe she was still a child feeding her lunch to the cascade of songbirds that trilled in their spacious cages. She had lain on the edge of the hidden fountain in the corner and dangled her toes in the water as she read book after book until she could identify every plant in this garden and then every plant in Constantinople. Since insects were a constant in the gardens, she’d learned them, too. One or two a day, or if she knew her father would be missing, she’d linger and learn four or five.

She smiled. It had taken her a year to realize Esad was planting interesting specimens in the garden for her to find.

“Mari! Dawdling in the courtyard as always, I see.” Esad’s voice boomed through the patio. Despite her attempts, his wife, Beria, had never managed to change the former military commander’s volume.

Mari ran to Esad and kissed both his cheeks. He wrapped his beefy arms around her in a tight embrace.

She laughed. “Your age is beginning to show. I think you only broke two of my ribs this time.”

Esad grinned and released her. His smile rearranged the stern wrinkles on his leathery face. “I keep telling Beria civilian life is making me soft. That proves it.”

“A new turban?”

“Indeed. What is your opinion?” Garish crimson and indigo clashed with lemony yellow. He claimed he’d spent so long confined to a military uniform that he had to make up for lost time, but she suspected his outlandish taste in clothes stemmed more from a desire to nettle his long-suffering wife.

“How does Beria like it?”

Esad raised his bushy eyebrows, his eyes twinkling. “She said it was an abomination that would cause the sun to bury itself in the desert so it would be spared the glare. She forbade me from wearing it to the sultan’s palace, which serves me well, in any event.” He winked. “I have an even better one.”

Mari shook her head, but didn’t scold him. His choice of clothing was also a calculated ploy to make his enemies underestimate him. Esad’s brusque manner and large girth led many opponents to believe he’d gained his military position based on brawn. They’d yet to see that under his flamboyant attire stood one of the keenest minds in the empire.

“It has been a long time since your last visit. Have you been avoiding me?” His face grew serious. “I know you asked me not to execute that rebel, but I had no choice. She was part of a Greek plot to assassinate the sultan.”

“I know.” She knew quite well. Lidia had once met with the same group of rebels as Mari. But over the past few months, Lidia had grown impatient and sought out more radical separatists. Although Mari was angry at the Greek woman’s death, she wasn’t angry at Esad, at least not anymore. He had been doing what he had seen as his duty.

Her stomach knotted at the thought of the dead woman’s bloated face as she hung on the city wall, serving as a warning for all who would support a free Greece.

Unfortunately for the Ottomans, the gruesome sight had inspired the exact opposite reaction in Mari. No longer could she be content to creep to secret meetings and make plans that never amounted to anything.

The Ottoman Empire was crumbling. Even though Esad would deny it with his dying breath, she’d seen the tension in his eyes when he returned from council meetings. And the more power they lost, the tighter their stranglehold became on their outlying territories, like Greece.

She did her small part to loosen that fist. All she did was draw, but of the five fortifications she’d drawn and passed on to the British, one had been destroyed by brigands, two were mysteriously plagued by sabotage, and two complained of continually tainted food supplies.

None of the five was able to subjugate the Greeks.

So she kept reassuring herself, whether she was drawing of her own free will or because the British forced her, she was still working toward her mother’s greatest wish of freedom for her people.

Yet it wasn’t the same. Not in her heart where it really mattered. They had robbed her of her right to choose and made her a slave as surely as the ones the Ottomans sold in the market.

She’d sworn long ago that no one would ever force her to do anything against her will again. But the English had proven her promise wasn’t as strong as she’d thought, and she hated them as much for that as she hated herself.

She shouldn’t have come here today. She was no longer a child to flee to Esad’s side when she was troubled. Especially when she couldn’t burden him with the problems she faced.

Esad looped an arm around her shoulders before she could escape and led her through the intricately tiled archway that marked the main hall of the house. “Now confess.”

Confess? Mari tripped over her feet.

“One of my men saw you in the square with that English soldier.”

The blood drained from her face and pooled in her feet. Heavens, they must have told Esad about the kiss.

Confound Major Prestwood. It was his fault she’d been lured back to Esad’s in the first place. She’d just needed that tiny bit of comfort. Of sanity. But the comfort here was no longer hers to claim.

Esad moved her to one of the low benches built into the walls. “It must be serious then. Perhaps we should sit.”

Mari sat with a plop and tucked her feet beneath her. She clenched her hands together.

Esad studied her. “At least tell me his name.”

That at least was information she could share. Achilla had been more than happy to share the information she’d gathered on the man last night. “Major Bennett Prestwood of the Ninety-fifth Rifles. He’s a cousin of the ambassador’s.”

“Recently arrived in Constantinople?”

She nodded reluctantly. He’d no doubt already found out the details for himself despite this interrogation. “Quite.”

A woman didn’t kiss her husband in public, let alone a stranger. Disappointment flickered in Esad’s eyes at her admission, and she hastened to dispel it. “Our mothers knew each other.”

Which quite possibly wasn’t a complete lie. Perhaps they had met at some point. Her mother had thrown herself into the social scene when they lived in England, constantly trying to raise funds to help the Greek rebels. Yet the lie knotted up her insides, and she ducked her head so Esad couldn’t see the falsehood in her face.

Understanding lit his voice. “They had hopes for the two of you.” Esad understood much about her English upbringing, but he conveniently filled in the few gaps in his knowledge with Ottoman traditions. Such as mothers arranging matches for their children. “Are their hopes justified?”

“No!” She cringed at the way he believed her lies without question.

He frowned as she scrambled for an explanation. She needed some reason for Major Prestwood to be seeking her company and kissing her. “I mean, maybe. We have to see if we will suit first.”

Esad sighed. “You English. Beria and I have been married forty years and we never even laid eyes on each other before our wedding.”

But hope danced in his expression. He and Beria had been after her to marry for years despite her steadfast resistance.

She hated that she’d have to crush his expectations, but it was unavoidable. If she had her way, Prestwood wouldn’t last the week.