A Touch of Sin (29 page)

He delicately touched the curve of her ankle, his calloused finger sliding over her silken skin, and she murmured, eyes closed, "Where have you been?"

"Did you miss me?"

"I missed your warm body," she softly breathed, languidly stretching, her lashes lifting. "And your gifted talents…"

"You'll have to miss them both for a few days," he playfully retorted. "Duty calls."

Her mouth formed into a moue. "For how long?"

"Three or four days." He delicately ran his finger up the length of her body, leaving a heated path in his wake and reaching her chin, he lifted it a fraction.

Leaning over, he gently kissed her pouty mouth. "Then I'm taking you up into the mountains."

"For a holiday?" She knew better but preferred to ignore reality.

In the light of day neither mentioned their talk of babies and baby names, the irrevocable timetable of war once more in control of their lives.

"A holiday from the Turks," he replied, glancing at the clock on the bedside table as he straightened. "They don't venture off the main roads."

"Are you late?"

"Soon I will be. But first I have to see you and Chris to the monastery. Pappas Gregorios and his well-armed brotherhood will watch over you."

"Nauplia seems so beautiful and bustling, the sense of danger eludes one." The sun was just rising, bathing the room in lemony light, the morning air wafting through the open windows fresh, scented, the summer day fresh and new.

"Unfortunately, the Turks have their spies everywhere. You're safe only with an army at your back. Now get up, darling," he gently charged, offering her his hands. "Jules is packing for you."

A short time later, the small party reached the picturesque monastery on the hill overlooking the bay, and after being vetted by the armed monks at the gates, solid-looking, studded oak doors swung open and they rode into a paved court. As Jules led Chris to the fish in the courtyard pool, the Archbishop Gregorios came out to greet them, his long beard and flowing robe, his sandaled feet an image from the Old Testament—with the exception of the pistol and dagger thrust into the roped tie at his waist.

"Welcome, welcome," he boomed, his warmth obvious. "We're pleased to offer you sanctuary, Pasha Bey.
Would that the infidel Turk were driven from our land and we could live in peace."

"Ibrahim hasn't won yet, Pappas," Pasha replied, dismounting, handing his reins to a monk.

"And he'll never win this spot of ground as long as we've ammunition." The prelate patted the pistol at his waist. "Your lady will be safe with us."

Moving to Trixi's mount, Pasha lifted his hands to her and she slid from her saddle into his arms. Setting her on her feet, he introduced her to the archbishop. "Pappas Gregorios, I'd like you to meet Lady Grosvenor. Lady Grosvenor, our militant Pappas, the first prelate in Greece to take arms against the Turks."

"Our Lord spoke to me, Lady Grosvenor, and I couldn't deny him. Welcome to our order."

"Thank you for having us. Pasha tells me despite Nauplia's idyllic charm, danger lurks everywhere."

"I'm afraid so, my lady." A gravity entered his voice. "I wish I could say it was only the Turks we need guard ourselves against. But our country has divided loyalties and dozens of warlords, each greedy for power. One never knows from day to day whom to trust. But we trust in our Lord and these," he added, his hand on his sword hilt.

"Their daily target practice never hurts either," Pasha noted, grinning. "Along with the ammunition cache in the monastery cellars."

"The Lord helps those who help themselves, Pasha Bey. He can't be everywhere at once."

"As long as He's keeping Lady Grosvenor safe, I'll be more than willing to build Him a new chapel after the war."

"Your generosity to our order has always found favor in His eyes, my friend," the archbishop cordially declared. "He'll view your jaded soul with kindness when your time comes to meet Him. I light candles for you, too."

"I'm depending on that, Pappas. Especially with Ibrahim bringing up more troops from Crete. Put extra guards on at night now, if you will," he warned. "Word has it, Hussein Djeritl is looking to take his harem back."

"
My
spies tell me he's taking this personally. Beware of strangers in your midst, my friend. The ransom on your head has reached enticing proportions."

"I sleep with my eyes open, Pappas, and have since this war began. A few more groschen one way or another doesn't concern me."

"Take Brother Zaimes with you. He can smell a traitor in a slaughterhouse."

Trixi had been listening to the conversation with growing alarm. A ransom, she nervously thought. As if there weren't peril enough, "Please, Pasha," she urged, "do as he suggests. Take the brother with you."

"Don't worry, darling," Pasha soothed, not overly concerned with nuances of risk in the constant battlefield of his existence. "I've survived so far regardless of Hussein's enmity." Pasha had outbid Hussein at a slave auction in Constantinople some years ago and taken a woman away from him—as an act of kindness—and sent her back to her home in Georgia. Their bad blood wasn't exclusively of recent origin.

"Did I say Brother Zaimes has two new Berenger rifles?" Pappas murmured.

Pasha grinned. "No, you didn't. Send him along by all means. Those Berengers are like having an extra trooper." He turned back to Trixi then, because time was at a premium and he should have ridden out of Nauplia half an hour ago. "Now listen to Pappas and do as he says, even if it seems ridiculous in this sanctuary." He took her hands in his and squeezed them gently. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Be careful, please… please." How awful it was to see him go.

"I ask the same of you," he gravely said.

"Can you kiss me one last time?" she whispered. "I mean here…" She cast a glance at the archbishop.

"I'll kiss you in front of the pope if you want." He drew her near and, dipping his head, he lightly brushed her lips with his. His mouth lifted and he looked at her, wondering how he could go off and risk his life when she was waiting for him. When he might have responsibility for a child, when his world had altered in a thousand ways since last night. Pulling her closer, he kissed her again, a different kiss this time, a long, deep, necessitous kiss, feverish, fierce, touched with despair. She clung to him as if she could keep him with her by sheer force, tears sliding down her cheeks.

He felt the wetness and, raising his head, gently brushed her tears away with his gloved knuckles. "Don't cry, darling. I'll be back."

"Don't get hurt—for me," she whispered, her heart in her eyes.

"I can't," he replied, teasing her. "Brother Zaimes is guarding me." It pleased him to see the fear leave her eyes.

"And I'll have Pappas." She was trying to put on a brave front.

"God is on our side," he murmured, a mischievous light in his eyes. "Now, listen to Jules, listen to Pappas, don't take any chances." He spoke briskly, a new level of detachment in his voice. "I'll be back in three or four days."

"Do you have to go?" A last rash plea.

"You know better," he quietly said, motioning for Pappas. "Take Lady Grosvenor inside," he told the prelate, unwrapping her arms from around his waist. He turned without another word and walked toward Jules and Chris. His good-byes to them were brief, a few words, no more. Mounting quickly, he rode through the guarded gate.

Jerome Clouard was no longer completely rational. His need to assure himself of the Gericault millions had become an obsession. Never before thwarted in an enterprise of this magnitude, he intended to triumph at all costs. Greed drove him, and an irrational need for mastery. He had to win.

He set his affairs in order, instructing Phillipe with a vast array of orders for the weeks he'd be gone. Phillipe had given up trying to dissuade him and calmly listened to his brother's commands, exempt from the avarice that drove his brother, content to be left peacefully in Paris.

Jerome brought along an arsenal on his journey south and hired an assassin at Marseille, the docks of the port city home to criminals of every persuasion. Marcel spoke all the languages of the Mediterranean, a requirement for a man in his line of work. The necessary money changed hands and a week after Trixi set sail, Jerome embarked from Marseille. Immune to the beauty of the summer seas, he spent the entire journey grumbling, irritated at the tedium and slowness of the voyage. Driven, impatient, he wished only to set foot in Greece and begin stalking his prey.

Another man with a similar mission sat in his silk tent under a hot sun on a hill near Navarino, his lieutenants silent before his wrath. Hussein Djeritl had been haranguing his officers without mercy since their defeat at the hands of Makriyannis and Pasha Bey. And while he would be able to explain the lost battle to the
Porte with a suitable aggrandizement of the forces against him, the loss of his harem was a personal scourge. Worse, it had been inflicted by his old enemy Pasha Bey.

"You have two days to remedy this affront to my honor," he raged, his fingers white as they clenched the arms of his ivory-inlaid camp chair. "I want my harem back, and Pasha Bey's head on a pike outside my tent." A cold light gleamed in his eyes and he shifted forward in his chair, his hard, trim soldier's body taut as a wire. Unlike his brother-in-law, Ibrahim, a coarse, corpulent sybarite who had his position by the vagaries of birth, Hussein had earned his rank by dint of military successes before his marriage to Mehmet Ali's daughter. "If," he softly said, his voice trembling with the violence of his feelings, "you fail to accomplish this task, each of you will be sent back to the Porte in chains."

Everyone understood what was left unsaid. At the Porte, they would be found guilty of cowardice and impaled. With that form of torture, it took agonizing days to die, and Hussein's officers visibly paled under the threat.

"Do we understand each other?" He leaned back marginally, his chill gaze surveying his subordinates.

A moment of silence ensued before one of the men had the courage to reply.

"Very well," Hussein growled. "I'll expect my revenge will be complete in two days."

Cautious of Hussein's spies and informers, his officers conferred on their plan of action in an olive grove well out of sight of the camp—open in all directions so no one could approach without being seen. Even within their ranks, the possibility of betrayal existed, but in their present circumstances they had to work together—or die together.

Such vital, common cause transiently obliterated individual agendas.

"The harem had to have been taken to Nauplia," one of them said.

"The question is where in Nauplia?" another declared.

"I have an uncle who still lives there," a third man noted. "Let me go and talk to him." Hadji's family had fled to Constantinople when the rebellion began, but he'd lived in Nauplia most of his life. And even within the Greek community there were those still loyal to the Porte. Lavish fortunes had been made by the Greek primates and Fanariots collecting taxes for the sultan. A time-Honoréd association, the rebellion had at times disrupted the efficiency of that partnership but not severed it. So a Greek was not always a Greek.