Desire's Sirocco (14 page)

“I wish it had been you who…”

“He will be along shortly,” Dagan said, halting the admission she had been about to make. “He wanted to speak with the two of us before you and he retired for the evening.” For the first time, he looked away but not before she glimpsed the infinite sorrow in his amber eyes.

“He loves you,” she told him.

Dagan snorted but it wasn’t a sound of disbelief. Rather it seemed to her it was a noise of exasperation. “So he has always told me but there have been times when I questioned the validity of his statement.”

“Such as when he sent you to the dungeon this morn?” she asked.

An amused smiled lit the Master Trainer’s handsome face. “You have to admit it is a supreme way in which to garner one’s attention, eh?”

“You do not fear him?” she asked lightly but the concern on her face belied the easy way in which she asked.

“Fear is not the correct word, I think,” he admitted. “Irritated, frustrated, even annoyed would better describe how I feel when he asserts his power on me.”

“I hear your affection for him in your tone, Milord,” she said.

He shrugged and looked away.

The air was charged with silence then he asked once more if the quarters were to her liking.

“They are dazzling,” she replied. “Far more than I ever thought to have.”

“If there is something you wish, something you need, let Qutaybah know,” he told her. He narrowed his eyes. “He is treating you better, is he not?”

“Oh, yes!” she answered. “He might not like being nice to me but he is far more polite than before this day.” She giggled. “Lord Hagan made sure he would be.”

Dagan’s lips twitched but he made no comment to her words. Instead, he walked to the lone window and looked out over the enclosed courtyard beyond. “A lovely cage,” he said quietly. “No escape from this place, Milady.”

“Why would she want to escape, brother?”

Dagan and Jameela turned toward the door. His steward who pushed the chair to the center of the room was rolling the Grand Master into the room. After making sure his master wished nothing further, the steward bowed and then backed out of the room, closing the portal quietly behind him.

“Well, Dagan? Why would our lovely Lady-wife wish to escape?”

Dagan frowned. “When have you taken to using the royal
our
, Your Grace?”

The Grand Master grinned. “Was I doing that, brother?”

This time Dagan’s snort gave no doubt of his disbelief and he looked away from the humor on his twin’s face.

“You haven’t told her, have you?”

Dagan snapped his head around. “Told her what?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.

“That she is as much your Lady-wife as she is mine,” Hagan replied.

Dagan’s lips parted in shock and he was about to speak but his brother held up a hand.

“I have no intention of starting my wedded life with the lovely Jameela on a lie, Dagan. She has a right to know the truth.”

“Don’t,” Dagan said so softly his voice was but a breath of sound.

“What?” the Grand Master asked, putting his hand up to cup his right ear. “Is that the dungeon master I hear calling your name, Dagan? Do you miss the embrace of your shackles?”

Despite the thudding of her heart, Jameela stepped forward, garnering her new husband’s attention.

“Your Grace, please do not threaten him with torment you know you do not wish to inflict upon him,” she begged.

Hagan laughed until tears formed in his eyes. “Ah, Wench, you are fast becoming his champion.” He wiped his eyes. “Dagan, tell her I always make good on my threats.”

“He gets great delight out of seeing me strung up to that foul wall,” Dagan said with gritted teeth. “He doesn’t think I know about the peephole in the ceiling but I do.”

“Aw,” the Grand Master said on a long breath. “And I thought I was being so clever lying on the floor and watching you fidget.”

“What is this truth you believe I should know, Your Grace?” Jameela asked quickly, feeling a chill enter the men’s words.

“Ah, yes, the truth.” Her new husband arched a brow at his twin. “Shall I tell her or will you?”

“Hagan, don’t do this,” Dagan pleaded. “What purpose will it serve?”

“To put her mind at rest?” his brother countered.

Jameela looked from one man to the other. Dagan’s face was hard, his eyes bleak, his mouth tight. Hagan was grinning, his eyes twinkling, his lips quivering with amusement. Whatever secret the Grand Master wished to impart seemed to make Dagan ill at ease.

“You know I am going to tell her,” the Grand Master stated.

“You always do what you want,” Dagan said. “And that has not been either prudent or safe on occasion.”

The smile slipped from the Grand Master’s face. “True, but the consequences have been mine to bear, haven’t they, Dagan?”

Dagan flinched and turned his back, staring once more out the window.

Jameela could sense the disquiet between the brothers but was at a loss to know what to say or how to react. When her new husband bid her sit on the settee beside his rolling chair, she did so without comment.

“I really had no desire to wed,” the Grand Master said, causing Jameela to blink. “It was something necessitated by decree of my position.” He held his hand out to his Lady-wife and threaded his fingers between hers. “Dagan, on the other hand would never have married because of his condition.”

The snort that pushed from Dagan this time was full of bitterness.

“He deserves a helpmate, don’t you agree, Wench?”

Jameela tore her attention from her husband to the man standing so stiffly at the window, his back to her. She looked back at the Grand Master, her gaze full of pleading.

“Well?” the Grand Master prompted. “Don’t you think he deserves happiness with a woman he can call his own?”

Hurt drove through Jameela’s breast and she felt the prickle of tears starting. As much as she wished Dagan happiness, it would not be with anyone other than herself. “He is a good man,” was all she could say.

“Indeed, he is,” her husband agreed. “He did not deserve what our father did to him anymore than I deserved to be a cripple.” He glanced over at his brother. “Between us, we are a whole man. Wouldn’t you agree, Dagan?”

Dagan did not answer.

The Grand Master sighed audibly. “Now, he’s pissed at me,” he said. “I may well have to call the dungeon master yet.”

“His scourge or hot pinchers couldn’t hurt me any more than what you mean to do,” Dagan said though he didn’t turn around. “Spin your evil, Your Grace, and get it over!”

“Evil?” the Grand Master queried in a disbelieving voice. “Dagan, why do you think me such a demon?”

“Because if you tell her the truth, that is exactly what you will be!” Dagan said, turning to face his twin. “Don’t do this!”

“Tell me what it is you have to, Your Grace,” Jameela interrupted. She tensed her fingers around her husband’s. “Please don’t put Lord Dagan through the ordeal of having to hear your words. Allow him to leave and…”

“It was he who spoke the words of Joining with you this eve,” the Grand Master told her and as her eyes widened, her lips parted, he nodded emphatically. “By proxy, aye, but still it was he who made the vows. In essence, though you are my legal Lady-wife, so, too, are you his.”

Jameela sat back, too shocked to speak. She could not look at Dagan and found it hard to look at the man who was legally her husband.

“I can fulfill the marriage consummation,” the Grand Master was saying, his face pleasant, his eyes full of good humor. “I don’t believe there will be any problem with getting you with child. The equipment works if not the legs.”

Slowly Jameela turned her head to the window. Dagan was standing with his hands to either side of the frame, his forehead resting on the glass. The bars on the windows made it appear as though he were incarcerated in a jail cell.

“I see no reason why we can not share you,” the Grand Master continued. “He can sleep here with you.” His forehead creased. “I am told he can pleasure a woman with that wicked mouth and those strong hands of his so you should be able to enjoy your nights with him.”

Disbelief made the blood pound in Jameela’s temple as she listened to her husband’s words. They seem to be coming from a great distance, muted by the rush of her heart, but every syllable registered in her brain.

“Of course, on those nights when you are at your most fertile, I will expect you to sleep with me.”

Dagan turned around, his hands clenched at his sides. “And what happens when the Tribunal finds out she is committing adultery, Hagan?”

“I don’t believe it is adultery if it is mandated by her husband, is it, Dagan? If I give her permission, what harm is there?”

“Harm?” Dagan questioned, striding forward with his shoulders hunched like a man in great pain. “You call the Tribunal relieving her of her head being a harmless situation?”

The Grand Master waved his hand as though to negate such a ridiculous query. “I had the Joining papers written so that both our names—mine and yours—are listed as her rightful spouses. Since I…”

“You did what?” Dagan roared, his eyes bulging.

“It will be no secret that we are both married to her, Dagan,” his twin said, his tone exasperated. “Not among the Tribunal, at any rate.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I can and I have,” the Grand Master insisted. “They didn’t particularly like it but I gave them no choice in the matter.”

“Do you remember what happened the last time the Tribunal didn’t like the Grand Master’s plans?” Dagan snapped. “The war cost this land hundreds of thousands of warriors’ lives. It…”

“Won’t happen again, because this is a situation unlike the other. Then, two brothers were fighting for control. Here, two brothers are in agreement.”

“Speak for yourself!” Dagan said with a snarl.

“You don’t want her?”

Jameela was looking at Dagan’s enraged face. She could see the blood pounding in his temple. He was quivering with anger, his breathing fast and shallow. She feared for his health and spoke quietly to him.

“I do not mind being shared, Milord.”

“Well, I mind!” Dagan shouted. “Think you I want the woman I love oozing from my brother’s bed to mine? His stink still on her?”

“She can always bathe before sliding between your sheets, Dagan,” the Grand Master said in a dry tone. “My juices aren’t all that foul, you know, that water can not cleanse them.”

“Go to hell, Hagan!” Dagan bellowed and stalked to the door, throwing it wide. The portal crashed against the wall then slammed shut behind the Master Trainer’s departure.

Jameela made to stand up to follow him, but her husband’s hand tightened on hers and she was forced to remain seated.

“He’ll stomp and curse, pout and moan but he’ll realize I have provided us with a solution that will benefit each of us.” He shrugged. “He will never admit it to either us, of course, but once the shock of my suggestion wears off, he will see the wisdom in it.”

“Do you not realize that you have hurt him deeply, Your Grace?” she asked.

“His pride? Aye, perhaps, but he could never have had you in any other way, Wench. I am doing the pigheaded fool a great favor though he refuses to see it at the moment.”

“And you have no fear your Tribunal will harm him?” she questioned, that being her greatest concern.

Hagan Kiel’s handsome face tightened. “They had better not try. Let even one of them voice opposition to this arrangement and I will have him hanged, drawn and quartered!”

Jameela hung her head, the events of the day having finally pressed her so far down she felt she would never rise again.

“Do you dread sharing my bed with me?” the Grand Master asked softly.

She looked up at him. “You have been nothing but gentle with me, Your Grace. You have given me great pleasure.” She blushed. “You are a very skilled lover.”

“As is my brother even if he can’t do what I can,” her husband reminded her. “Am I not correct when I say that?”

She nodded slowly. “Aye, Your Grace. He has pleasured me exceedingly well.”

“Then what’s the problem?” the Grand Master asked. “It is not as though you and I have never lain together. I am not demanding the exclusive use of your very lovely body. I am granting Dagan his heart’s desire in being with you. What
is
the problem?”

Jameela thought about it for a moment then realized the answer lay in her. “He fears for my safety, I think, Your Grace,” she replied, thinking of the orders Dagan had given the Conclave at their Joining. She wondered how many of the men knew—if any—who had really been sitting in the rolling chair that eve.

“A fear without basis,” the Grand Master stated. “I will repeat Dagan’s warning tomorrow when I break my fast with the Brothers. No man will dare show you disrespect nor will he think twice about the arrangement I will share with them.”

“You will tell them you intend to share me with Lord Dagan?” she gasped.

“The sooner they are privy to the situation, the sooner I will know which ones will have no problem with the arrangement and which ones I will need to eliminate. Either way, after much thought, it is best the dual marriage be out in the open. I had meant to keep it secret but since there is no chance that Dagan will get you with child and has no desire to run the Conclave, I believe the Brothers will accept the arrangement without too much argument.”