Laura Kinsale (5 page)

The next she knew, there was rocky ground against her aching cheek, her musket tangled awkwardly beneath her, and Lord Winter’s cool voice telling her not to be a cocklehead.

“A djinni,” she whimpered, clutching at his robe. “There was a djinni!”

“Nonsense.” There was a firm arm beneath her shoulder. “On your feet.”

Zenia was shaking, unable to let go of him. She struggled to stand, but her ankle kept failing beneath her weight. The pain made her vision hazy and wayward. “A demon—”

“You’re all right, little wolf,” he said tersely. “I’m here.”

Looking up at his harsh face in the moonlight, his solid height and the breadth of his shoulders, Zenia experienced a conversion of mind as precipitate as it was complete. She no longer saw Viscount Winter of the acerbic remarks and black disdain. She did not see another of her mother’s mysterious friends; she did not see a man whose dark temperament had always made her feel apprehensive even behind the screens.

She saw her savior.

Lord Winter had come to Dar Joon. And whatever else he might be, he was not afraid of demons.

CHAPTER THREE

“But we are in the mountains!” the thin youth cried, working to sit upright and clear of Lord Winter in the saddle. The viscount merely pulled him back, holding the slender, shivering body against his chest with little effort. The boy’s slight frame was shaking like a leaf, so delicate that it had surprised Arden when he’d first taken the youth up before him in the dark.

“You are a wretched specimen,” he remarked. “I shall have to see that you dine more regularly, or else lose you in a high wind.”
      
‘

“We are in the
mountains!”
the boy gasped again.

“So you have informed me.” Lord Winter surveyed the looming peaks and ridges in the cold dawn light, having always an eye on the surroundings for more reason than the spectacular scenery. His mule was toiling up a narrow terrace beside the ruin of a burned-out farm, dragging an unwilling baggage donkey past sprigs of vegetation that swelled through the cinders. “Do you have some further disclosure to make on the topic?”

“We must turn back!” the boy exclaimed. “You cannot go this way!”

“This is the way I wish to go,” he said calmly.
 

“Then you are a madman!” His passenger made a sudden and determined snatch at the reins. “We’ll be killed here!”

The mule jibbed and swerved as Lord Winter yanked the boy’s interfering hands back, holding them in a hard grip. The viscount steadied the confused animal while pebbles skittered down the steep terrace edge beside them.

“Turn around!” the boy cried, struggling against his imprisonment. “You can’t know; you don’t understand— this country is death!”

“You are cross this morning, aren’t you?” Arden released his captive, halted the mule and swung down in a tiny patch of charred barley stems. “Hungry, I expect. And I suppose your ankle pains you, though you haven’t taken much real hurt, by the look of it.”

The Bedouin boy grabbed the reins. Wind blew his long tangled hair across his face as he kicked wildly at the mule’s ribs, attempting to haul the animal about on the terrace ledge.

“There is an unfortunate circumstance—” Lord Winter stood back from the struggle. “If you are considering flight—I feel I should perhaps point out that you have a loaded donkey affixed in your rear.”

The boy looked over his shoulder, where the little ass stood with all four legs planted, browsing determinedly on the nearest bush.

“I fear you won’t be galloping away at any great rate with that in tow,” the viscount observed, giving the mule’s rump an affectionate slap. “Provided this animal could be persuaded to gallop at all, which is an unsettled question. I’ve not been so far privileged to see her attain more than a competent trot.”

Forced to the same conclusion, and worse, Zenia let the reins fall from fingers that were clumsy with terror and cold. She felt distraught, waking from an exhausted nightmare to discover herself high up on the steep paths into the Jabal Lebanon, the mountains proper, in rebellious Druze country where she would not dare to slide from the animal’s back and set out alone even if she ventured to brave the consul and Dar Joon. Her sprained ankle throbbed. The mountains were infested with renegades from the Egyptian armies, the farms abandoned, pillaged and destroyed by marauding Druzes and Metouleys bent on vengeance against their own emir.

Lord Winter seemed entirely careless of their danger, though she found it improbable that he was as unaware of the peril as he affected to be. He was dressed as an Arab in a flowing white burnous, a kuffiyah bound upon his head by a simple gold cording. His eyes, of a clear deep blue, held an aspect of hardened competence that was no product of inexperience. On his shoulder he carried a rifle, a weapon such as Zenia had never seen, its satin wood beautifully chased with gold and silver, its firing mechanism strange and foreign: a gun that would rivet the attention of any Arab who beheld it. A pair of pistols, similarly fashioned, and a flintlock musket were holstered on the saddle, all finely made; all clean and wicked.

Plainly Lord Winter knew where he was going and what he intended to do. As she looked at him, the significance of his costume and gear struck Zenia with profound effect.

“Wellah!”
she exclaimed in Arabic. “Why do you wear this clothing?”

“Ah—have I not made myself known?” he answered fluently, sweeping a bow. “You behold Abu Haj Hasan, the
Moghreby
of Seville, a Spanish Moor returned to the religion of his forefathers. I’ve made the pilgrimage to Mecca and now wander into the desert as Allah and my fancy take me.” He smiled up at her with disarming mockery. “By God’s grace my mother was a white princess of Andaluz. You may have noticed that I have her eyes.”

“My lord!” Zenia wailed. “You will not!”

“I think I will, wolf cub.”

“You’re a Christian! They will slay you in an instant if you’re discovered masquerading so!”

“That,” he said imperturbably, “is of course a mishap I shall strive to avoid.”

“My lord, I beg you, I plead with you to listen to me. It is madness. Any Moslemin will know you for a
Nasrany
the first time you must pray!”

“Come, do you take me for a fool?” he asked with sudden impatience. “I know the proper prayers as well as any Bedouin—better than you know them yourself, if the lack of pious observance I’ve seen from you so far is any sign. Have you even yet endured the
muzayyin,
boy?”

Zenia well knew of what he spoke. As the daughter of the Queen of the Englezys, Zenia had been considered lucky among the black tents, and often invited by an anxious mother to witness the circumcision rites. She felt herself flush hotly. “Of course!” she lied in haste. “Allah be praised.”

He nodded, with a flicker of new respect in his eyes, and then grinned suddenly, “I’ll admit I resorted to chloroform,” he said in English.

She gave a faint moan, horrified at the idea of an adult man and a Christian willfully enduring such a thing. “You are a madman! None will believe it. You are Lord Winter.”

“Ay billah,
it saddens me to inform you that Lord Winter has been murdered,” he answered. “Those villains we left behind last night are already arrested, if Moore has the enterprise to act speedily on the information I laid for him. One should not, however, put much faith in the promptness of consuls.”

“But you are not murdered, my lord!” Distractedly, she held the windblown hair back from her face.

“Am I not?” Lord Winter glanced up, his mocking blue eyes full of amusement, but his expression altered as he regarded her. His brows rose. Zenia instantly lowered her hand, turning away in fear he might see that her skin also was pale beneath the sun’s browning, like his; that her eyes were dark blue, not truly black; that she resembled her mother even though Lady Hester had always denied the likeness.

He caught her arm, pulling her back around toward him. She let him see her profile, her heart pounding, her mouth turned down sullenly.

“But you are Adonis himself, child!” he murmured. “You weren’t such a beauty when your face was sopped in tears.” He gave her a shake, his jaw tightening. “Take care that you don’t find yourself sold to the Turks, my cub. You’re rash to wander alone.”

“Oh,
ma’alem!”
she said, with a compulsive closing of her fingers, “it is my greatest fear.”

She immediately wished she had not said so much, but he did not seem inclined to sneer at her. “Stay within earshot, then,” he said shortly. “Don’t wander off without me.”

This brusque instruction threw Zenia into a welter of conflicting emotions. He was the first person who had ever offered her any protection at all, but he had stranded her here, nowhere, made it impossible to get to Beyrout and from there to England. In her alarm and despair, an agitated idea took possession of her mind.

She watched him as he cuffed the mule’s nose away and stepped back to the donkey. She did not know how to use the strange pistols, but as soon as his attention and his hands were occupied with the baggage thongs, she dragged the musket from its saddle scabbard.

He turned. Zenia raised the gun, aiming point-blank at his head. She pulled back the cock.

Lord Winter looked steadily into her sights, unmoving. He made no shift to use his rifle or even let go of the baggage cord. She sought for words in her dry throat, words to force him to her will, but his complete lack of fear made it painfully obvious that the musket she held was not loaded and primed. They stared at one another over the dull gleam of steel. Her hands were shaking. Slowly, she let the barrel decline, pointing it at the ground.

“Uncock it, if you would be so kind,” he said gently. “That is, if you have determined not to shoot me.”

Zenia realized she had been wrong; it was loaded indeed. But she admitted with bitterness, “I will not shoot you.”

“I rather hoped not.” He nudged the muzzle aside with a brush of his hand and held it there. “In that case, let us aim this well to the outside, if you please.”

She released the musket to half-cock. “I have not an ounce of spirit.”

He laughed. “It’s no matter—I have enough for both of us.”

“I want none of yours,” she said darkly. “You are mad.”

‘Too severe, wolf cub. My father merely holds that I’m a changeling. Or a malicious prank played upon him by Fate.” As he took the musket from her and rested the stock on the ground, his grin faded to a smile, an expression of surprising sweetness on his sunburned face. “Reckon me as you like, but I’m a fair shot, and not the worst companion to have by you in a tight corner.” He hefted the musket, cradling it in one arm as he looked down at the firing pin.

“Companion!” she exclaimed. “Do you know what is said of you here? You are driven from your home by an evil demon, who goads you into the most terrible deserts, so that you must suffer agonies for whatever dreadful sin you have committed. That is what they say of you!”

His hands stilled for a moment, his face hidden from her. Then he flipped the safety catch into place, running his thumb lightly over the hammer. “Now there’s a useful premise. My own personal demon. Makes people rather nervous of crossing me, I expect. I wonder no one’s ever mentioned it.”

‘They would not like to say so to your face.”

“Ah, Turkish manners! But you are Bedu, and have no such scruples, I perceive.” He lifted his head, handing up the gun to her. “That’s yours. I gave the antique an honorable retirement some way back, in a little contretemps with a djinni.”

She held the excellent weapon, its metal bleeding the warmth of his body into her palm. “Why do you give it to me?” she asked suspiciously.

“It’ll serve you better than a demon, where we’re going.”

“Where,” she asked in a fading voice, “are you going?”

“Oh, the worst of deserts, naturally,” he answered with outrageous cheerfulness. “Across the red sands to the Nejd.”

Zenia instantly held the musket out. “You must take it back. I’m going to Beyrout.”

“Are you?” He gave her a dark and charming smile. “I wonder how?”

She wet her lips. “Please, my lord,” she said. “You cannot have meant to bring me with you.”