Page 13 of Silver Angel

“Of course.” Derek settled into a grin, adding, “All right, Marsh, you’ve found the means to sway me.”

Marshall sat up, his expression incredulous. “You’re joking! You’ll really go, put off the wedding, break your word to your grandfather?”

“Well, if you’re going to remind me of all that…”

“No, no, wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Then I’ll leave tomorrow.”

The Earl retired that night well satisfied with the day. He had managed to glean what information Marshall had without revealing his own, he and his grandfather were both in accord about his going to Barikah, and he had parted from Caroline without tears or recriminations. He now had no regrets about leaving. Certainly he would miss England and all it held dear, but he wouldn’t be gone that long. When he returned, the wedding would take place as planned, he would start a family, and his grandfather would be satisfied.

But right now he was looking at his last night on land before weeks at sea and nothing but male companionship. At the top of the stairs, Derek turned to crook his finger at a passing maid below. It didn’t matter which maid she happened to be. He knew them all intimately.

He smiled to hear her giggle, and waited while she rushed up the stairs to join him. She turned out to be Clair, a lovely little brunette with an insatiable appetite. A good choice.

“We heard you was leaving, milord,” she said as he slipped an arm about her. “Margie and I was planning to come and bid you good-bye later tonight.”

“Were you?” he replied lazily, his fingers casually brushing against her breast. “Then we can say our good-byes now, and I’ll see Margie later—if you don’t wear me out.”

She giggled again as he led her toward his room. It was a sound he didn’t mind, a sound he had grown up with, having been raised in a harem. That he loved women in general was natural after such an upbringing. He had been afraid that his one regret in coming to England would be that he would never have his own harem. It hadn’t exactly become a regret, not with a bevy of housemaids at his disposal, servants accustomed to pleasing a master. Yet he did miss the sensuality of the East, where a man rarely devoted his affections to only one woman. The ladies of quality here demanded eternal devotion for themselves exclusively. It was unthinkable, and yet he accepted this Western idiosyncrasy.

He expected it in Caroline. In fact, he knew she now thought him faithful to her. That he wasn’t was not cause for guilt, however. Not that he didn’t adore her. He did. If they had been in the East, she would be known as hisikbal, his favorite. But she was more than that. She was also his dearest friend, an occurrence that could never have come about in the East, where women were not thought of as companions. So he fully intended to make himself a good husband to her by English standards, to give her no cause for grief. He would just have to practice discretion.

But that was for later. He hadn’t taken his one and only wife yet. Right now he was facing the long journey to Barikah, and a long time coming before he found anyone as accommodating as Clair.

Chapter Eight

“Come,lalla, you must eat something.”

“Why?”

Hakeem stared worriedly at the girl curled up on the low bed. Her eyes were bruised from lack of sleep. Her hair was a tangled skein of silver knots that she wouldn’t brush herself and wouldn’t let him touch. She wore the same dress she had put on four days ago, when her own bundle of clothes had been given to her—a tight-waisted lilac gown that added to her paleness. She wouldn’t change it. She slept in it. The only thing about her that wasn’t lackluster was her tone of voice, occasionally peevish, more often coldly hostile.

She didn’t appreciate the changes he had wrought in the small cabin. Swaths of brightly colored silk had been hung from the walls. Rugs of soft fur covered the entire floor now. A thick mattress had been found and draped in silk, then adorned with wide pillows. A copper hip bath sat in a corner behind a latticed screen. A small chest of sweet-smelling soaps and oils rested beside it. She hadn’t touched it. The water he heated for her each day went unused.

And she wasn’t eating, not a morsel since her capture. The captain had even opened his own store of delicacies to tempt her, but nothing did. Hakeem was at his wit’s end. He had told her she had nothing to fear. He had told her she had a life of riches and wondrous pleasures awaiting her, that she would probably be bought by some high official wanting a wife, that wives had much more freedom than concubines. He insisted she would be happy beyond her wildest dreams. She seemed not to care, or she simply didn’t believe him. He didn’t know what to say to her anymore.

“You are wasting away to nothing,lalla. If you die, what purpose is served?”

“A good one,” Chantelle retorted. “I keep a Burke from becoming a slave.”

Hakeem sighed. “For men, it isn’t desirable. But for women, it is different. I have told you—”

“Nothing that matters!” she cut in heatedly. “I’d still be a slave!”

Hakeem stared at the uneaten food on the silver tray and stiffened his resolve. There was no help for it now. She had to be made to eat.

“Your strength is dwindling to nothing,lalla. Soon it will be too late to save you.”

“So?”

“So when it becomes apparent to Rais Mehmed that you will not live to reach Barikah, you will no longer be of value to him. He will give you to his crew for what use they can make of you until you die.”

She smothered a gasp at such barbarity and glared furiously at the little Turk. “I’ve already been raped once aboard this ship! A few more times isn’t going to matter.”

“Raped? Are you mad, woman? Your virginity doubles your value. Rais Mehmed would skin alive—”

“Your bloody captain helped to hold me down!”