Lady Of Fire (13 page)

She opened her mouth to challenge him, closed it, shifted her sore jaw. He would do it. “You are the lowliest cur,” she muttered.

He snorted. “You do not know the half of it. Now behave.”

He guided the horses behind the covering of trees not far from a row of buildings that marked the farthest reaches of the city.

“We will leave our mounts here,” he said, then dismounted and lifted Alessandra down.

It was still too dark to see well, but she felt his regard and knew he questioned whether she could be trusted to stay put.

“I have given you warning,” he said, then turned his attention to the packs strapped to the horse and began searching their contents. He unfastened two of the four packs and dropped them to the ground, then crossed to the second horse.

Alessandra did not care what his reason was for choosing only those packs, but thinking it might cause him to lower his guard if she pretended interest, she asked, “What of these other ones?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “They were provisioned in the event of a land journey. If all goes as planned, we need only those required for a sea journey.”

The moment he returned his attention to the other packs, Alessandra unfastened her robe that would prove a hindrance and let it fall to her feet. Then she ran toward the buildings. The soft ground slowed her, but neither would it benefit the man who would soon be after her. Fortunately, she stood a good chance of escape, for the soles of his feet could not have fully healed from the bastinado.

She thought she heard him behind her, but told herself it was only imagined. His best chance of overtaking her was astride a horse, and that would be too great a risk for the amount of noise it would make.

Thus, she was unprepared when his body slammed her to the ground. Dirt tearing into her palms and grazing her face, breath emptying in a rush, she cried out.

“Little fool!” Lucien raised himself from her, flipped her over, and dragged her up onto her knees.

Breathing hard, she stared into his shadowed face. "Fool? Because I refuse to allow you to take me to a place I do not wish to go?”

“I made a bargain with your mother, and I intend to keep it. Fight me all the way, but you are going to England.”

“I am not!”

His own anger pulsed between them, but then he drew a deep breath and slowly released it. “Why are you so frightened of change for the better, Alessandra?”

“It is not change I fear,” she lied to herself and to him, though not entirely, for she was also driven by revenge. “I will not allow Leila to go unpunished.”

“Khalid will make certain she suffers like for like. Why can you not leave it to him?”

She was grateful he could not see her eyes turn to tears. “I will myself witness that evil woman drawing her last breath.”

“Then what? Will you wed Rashid and spend the remainder of your days in this godforsaken place? What of the children you will raise under the constant threat of intrigues such as that which killed your mother?”

She forced grief down. “It is none of your concern. If you want to escape, go, but leave me. I do not wish to ever set foot on English soil.”

Lucien caught her chin and raised it.

“Release me!” she hissed. “I loathe your touch.”

“You lie. You desire me as much as I desire you.”

“Desire?” Why did it pain her that he named her feelings for him something so lascivious? “Is that all you feel for me, Lucien? Lust of the flesh?”

His thumb brushed her lower lip. “What would you have me call it? Love?”

She closed her eyes, and in her struggle to not be moved by his touch, remembered her mother’s suggestion that it might be love Alessandra felt for him. Though he could not possibly feel such for her,
was
that what drew her to him? He was correct in believing she desired him, but it was more than that. Indeed, whatever it was, it made this yearn of the flesh seem more like a symptom.

“I would not believe you if you called it that,” she said.

He slid his thumb across her upper lip. “Then I will not. Desire it is, the same as you feel.”

“You conceited—”

“Surely you have not forgotten this?” He lowered his mouth to hers.

Alessandra commanded herself to remain unresponsive, to feel nothing, but her body moved to betray her. Battling the fluttering in her chest and stomach, she forced her thoughts back in time. And as she sifted through memories, she paused upon the first day Lucien had come to her in the harem.

She heard again her conversation with her mother regarding the new eunuch. Sabine had said allowances were to be made for him, then revealed his real name and that he was an enemy of the Brevilles.

Lucien lifted his head. “Deny it you may,” he said, “but Rashid will never make you feel what you do in my arms.”

She could just make out the sparkle of his eyes. “I doubt you even desire me. Every word, every look, every touch was but a means of gaining my trust to lure me into accompanying you to England.”

He drew the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I do not think there is anything I would not have done to gain my freedom, but desire is not something one can force, Alessandra. It is there, or it is not.”

“You expect me to believe you?”

“I do.”

She did not. Determined to remain in Algiers, she embraced the only thing that might convince him to leave her behind. Disregarding her mother’s warning, she said, “Then it must pain you to feel anything but hate, even if only desire, for a Breville.”

He jerked so violently, it was as if she had slapped him. “What game do you play, Alessandra?”

“No game. I but reveal what my mother feared to disclose. Before she was stolen from her home and sold into slavery, Sabine was Lady Catherine Breville of Corburry—wife of Lord James Breville. I am their daughter.”

In the silence, she felt his struggle. Hoping to push him nearer the edge of leaving her, she said, “We are enemies. Thus, as it would not be unseemly for the bargain struck with my mother to go unfulfilled, I release you from it.”

He loosed her, thrust to his feet. “Blind,” he growled. “It was there all along—her reaction to my papers, her secretiveness, your lack of resemblance to Jabbar. Almighty! I could have been on my way to England long before now. Instead, I risked all to help a stinking Breville.”

Now it was Alessandra who felt slapped. But this was what she wanted, his contempt the key to gaining her freedom.

He shoved a hand through his hair. “Though I was still a boy, well I remember when Lady Catherine disappeared. How could I forget? It was the De Gautiers who were accused of taking her. Do you know our people nearly starved the following winter?”

“How could I know anything of what transpired after my mother’s abduction?”

Bitter laughter sounded from him. “Then I will tell you of that dark time.”

“I do not wish to—”

“James Breville set fire to half our harvest. And he would have burned all had the other half not been gathered in. Then he led raids against our villages and took what little the people had, leaving them hungrier than before.”

Alessandra shuddered, told herself her father had surely believed the De Gautiers had taken her mother, for Sabine had said James was a good man. “Was it not your family who abducted my mother?” she asked.

“Upon my word,” he barked, “we had naught to do with her disappearance.”

Curiously, she believed him. She stood and touched Lucien’s arm. “Then it is just as well I will not be accompanying you. God speed your journey.”

He grabbed her wrist. “
Our
journey.”

He still intended to force her to England? “But I am a Breville. Why would you wish to help me?”

“I assure you, help no longer has anything to do with it.” His tone was chill. “Your mother was wise to keep your identity hidden. And you are a fool to divulge it.” He began pulling her toward the horses.

“What do you intend?” she asked, suddenly fearful of this man who had become a stranger in the space of minutes, and whose ominous emotions were more than a match for her anger and indignation. Gone was the one who had moved her so deeply with his caring when she had been injured, later with his mouth and hands…

Lucien halted, rifled through a pack on the ground, and thrust garments at her. “Don these.”

Alessandra did not require the light of day to know he held the traditional costume Arab women wore in public—a heavy caftan, a cloak, a concealing veil.

She gripped his arm. “Lucien, please, do not—”

He thrust her hand aside. “I will gag, bind, and carry you over my shoulder if need be. Now put these on, or I will do it for you.”

She accepted the garments, murmured, “You know not what you do.”

“In that you are wrong.” He retrieved a length of cloth from a pack and began to fashion a turban around his head.

How was she to escape him? Alessandra wondered as she pulled on the caftan. Only when its warmth settled over her did she realize how chill she had become. Grateful, she positioned the veil and draped the cloak from the crown of her head.

With the packs secured beneath his robes, Lucien took her arm and steered her in the direction of the buildings.

“Not a word,” he said as they neared. “Do you understand?”

“Lucien, can you not see how foolish—?”

He halted and pulled her in front of him. “I have no more patience. All I ask for is a yes or a no. Which is it?”

Her whole world having turned upside down—anger, grief, and fear tearing up her insides—she wanted to cry. “I understand,” she choked.

“Good.” He guided her forward again.

The steep, narrow streets they negotiated were nearly deserted, and when they chanced to cross another’s path, they were afforded no more than a cursory glance.

Alessandra had never seen Algiers at night. For a few minutes, she arose from her misery and allowed the silhouetted city to fill her senses. It was almost beautiful. Unlike during the day when it was a dirty, teeming, exciting place begging to be explored, it radiated magic beneath the stars.

Shortly, she was forced back to her present circumstances by the smell of the sea and the clamor of a lit harbor that merely rested while the city slept. Here there were people about, mostly drunken seamen in search of another drink or a woman. They were loud and coarse, staggering and spouting vulgarities.

Slipping in and out of shadows, Lucien pulled Alessandra after him. “Where is she?” he muttered as he searched the calm waters of the harbor.

She? Was it a ship he spoke of?

“There,” he said. “
The Sea Scourge
.”

Alessandra followed his gaze. Unlike the others ships anchored nearby,
The Sea Scourge
was not wide of beam or long of reach, but it appeared solid.

“It is the one that will take you to England?” she whispered.

“Do not exclude yourself, Alessandra. You will accompany me.”

She had not meant to provoke him. It was simply that she had not accepted she would, indeed, leave Algiers. And still she would not abandon her hope of escape.

Thinking it best to change the subject, she looked up at him. “How are we to—?”

She gasped. With the harbor light upon Lucien’s face, she clearly saw the damage Rashid had inflicted upon it. Though it had clearly healed these past days, bruises and lacerations were yet evident.

“Oh, Lucien.” She reached up.

He pulled his head back. “Do not.”

Guilt deepening, she was grateful for the veil that hid her face. “It is my fault,” she mumbled.

“Which is no less than I expect from a Breville.”

His words cut, but she could not blame him for bitterness that was his due.

“Come.” He pulled her into the street. “There should be a boat waiting to take us to the ship.”

An old seaman, a bottle of spirits dangling from his fingers, staggered to a halt and stared at them.

Lucien continued past him, and they were nearly across the street when the pound of hooves brought him up short.

“What is it?” Alessandra asked.

He spun her around and dragged her back into the alley where he pressed himself and her against the wall of a building.

“Lucien—”

“Do you speak another word, I will be forced to strike you again!”

Alessandra closed her mouth and waited to discover the identity of the horsemen who descended upon the harbor. Had Jabbar discovered her missing and sent men in search of her? Although it seemed implausible her absence would be noted before daylight, there was a chance.

Shouted orders and the increasingly loud clatter of hooves preceded the riders’ appearance.

Peering around Lucien, Alessandra saw the first of them. Though the man’s profile was difficult to discern in the single moment it was visible to her, the horse identified him.

“Rashid,” she gasped.

As the thought to call out to him surfaced, she was propelled farther down the alley. At the opposite end, Lucien turned her to face him.

“One of two things will happen if you alert him. You will be returned to the harem, and I will be put to death, or you will simply make my task more difficult.”

He spoke true. For the offense he had committed, death was the only course. As evidenced by the damage done his face and the one hundred bastinado strokes Rashid had ordered, only a slow, torturous death would satisfy her betrothed. But perhaps this was what she needed to convince him to leave her behind. “Think you I care what happens to you?”

Lucien clenched his teeth. He did not have time to engage in verbal sparring. Provided the old seaman was coherent, he would not be long in pointing out the direction the pursued had gone. Still, he needed Alessandra’s cooperation.

He tipped her chin up. “Unlike your father, you do have a conscience. You will not be responsible for my death. And though we are now enemies, you cannot deny what you feel when I touch you.”

She thrust his hand away. “You do not know my mind.”

“I know enough of it, and I know your body.” Holding firm to her, he hurried her across the street and down another alley. Fortunately, it was a large city, and there were many darkened corners in which to conceal themselves as they traversed it.