On a Long Ago Night (20 page)

did not think she needed the glasses to see clearly: he had felt her

seeing into his soul since the moment they met. He knew he should

fear her for that, should be as wary of her as she was of him.

Instead he felt as giddy as the wild boy he had once been, the boy

he rushed to tell her about as he paced.

"You would have liked me in those days. I would have taken

you to the flower market, and we would have bought oranges and

eaten them on the long steps above the harbor and watched the

fishing boats. I didn't like fishing, but I love to sail. My mother

didn't want me to go to sea, but I was nearly a man. It was time I

started to take care of her." He sighed and gestured broadly. "But

there was a storm that blew the fishing fleet off course, too close to

the routes sailed by the corsairs."

He moved to perch on the table before Honoria's chair.

Everything he'd felt and feared and been through had been his

closely guarded secrets for years. He'd held his privacy tightly,

protected it when it was all he had in the world, yet now he handed

his life to Honoria Pyne with an eagerness that was almost

unthinking. She did not laugh, or repudiate him. She listened

gravely, her guard down. She was lost in his story, her bright blue

eyes full of innocent interest.

He did not know when he had taken her hands in his, but he

found he needed to be touching her when he told the rest. "I was

big for my age, and strong. Ibrahim Rais took me for a slave on his

galley. I pulled an oar and fought to survive, and tried to escape.

Ibrahim Rais does not take kindly to escape attempts. He flogged

me, and I tried to run again. Only to be flogged again. He said he

didn't intend to kill me if I escaped again
—
not until he tracked

down every member of my family and killed them first. He will have

complete loyalty, even in his galley slaves. I've seen him murder

innocents, Honoria—the relatives of those who thought they had

escaped him. He always finds the ones he calls traitors. He rules

through fear, and once you are his, you are his forever. I stopped

fighting him and started thinking. He found out I was smart, and

cunning." His laugh was soft, bitter and dangerous. "I learned

what battles to fight and when. I learned patience. I was more

cunning than I ever let show, but cautious. I've become rich and

trusted, but I have never given up trying to escape."

He was on his knees in front of Honoria's chair. He still held

one of her hands in his, but his other hand cupped her cheek. Her

soft, warm, supple cheek. Her eyes were large and bright as coins.

"I will never let Ibrahim Rais hurt you," he promised her. "I will

protect you with my life." He did not know why he spoke so; he had

not meant to offer her anything but a safe haven inside the walls of

his house. Instead he was making extravagant promises, and

meaning every word.

She didn't look like she believed it, and Diego was glad of

that. At least he told himself it was better for her not to trust him.

Despite the prick of hurt, he knew he could not afford to make

promises
—
not when the need for freedom was eating up his soul.

He had to think of himself first. He moved back and resumed his

perch on the edge of the table
.

"I never wanted to be a pirate."

"But you are one." The first words she'd spoken in some time

were no more than blunt truth.

"But I don't want to be one. Last year I thought I had found a

way out. Last year, I actually performed a good deed. You look

skeptical
, señorita,
but it is true. I saved the bey's life," he said,

drawing himself up proudly. "An assassination attempt while the

bey visited the harbor to inspect the fleet. I was rewarded grandly

at a ceremony in the bey's palace. The bey himself presented me

with a priceless sword made of solid silver." He stretched his hands

out before him, to show her the length. "A beautiful cutlass, though

of course, silver doesn't hold an edge. I was grateful for the honor,

but it was the several pounds of silver and the jewels in the hilt of

the sword that I wanted. That, and for the bey to give me safe

conduct from the city. I could have returned home a wealthy man.

But Ibrahim
Rais
interfered. He insisted the sword and my service

rightfully belonged to him. The bey needed Ibrahim Rais's ships

and the wealth he brought to the city, so he agreed. I was left with

nothing but his gratitude, and all I could do was smile and say that

his gratitude was more than enough
."

He could still taste the bitterness in his mouth, and dark

anger burned in him as though he'd swallowed hot coals. He took a

long swallow of the cool fruit drink and forced down the anger that

he had kept under control for so long. He had to be patient, to keep

his head. But he was so close! And she was so
—

What was she? He looked at the red-haired Englishwoman,

trying to be ruthlessly objective. She is your tool, he reminded

himself. You bought her for her talent with languages. She is

nothing more than a means to an end. Use her. That is what she is

here for. He studied the alert intelligence on her fine-skinned face,

and found himself counting the dust of freckles across her cheeks

and nose
—
not for the first time
.

He found himself wanting to trace the soft line of her lips. It

would be a sweet mouth to kiss. Her lushly curved body was hidden

by layers of loosely fitting robes, but he studied that as well as she

sat stiff and straight in the chair across from him. He wanted to do

more than to look, he wanted to touch and taste and explore. He

found that his hands had curled tightly around the inlaid edge of

the table, aching with the urge to draw her from the chair and strip

off layer after layer to finally look at all the woman that
—

Belonged to him.

Why not do what he wanted with her?

Because that was not why he had schemed to bring her

secretly into his house.

Wasn't it? the insidious voice in his head questioned. He

ignored the voice that told him he could do whatever he wanted. He

had never taken a woman, slave or free, against her wishes. He

was not Ibrahim Rais, he reminded himself harshly, to do what he

wanted with whomever he wished. But Diego knew he was no better

than Ibrahim Rais; that his master had taught him well how to be

cruel and indulge every man's natural selfishness. If he had a

conscience or any kindness left in him, this innocent young woman

would be safely waiting to be ransomed back to her home and

family. What was to become of her, once he'd used her for his own

purposes?

She'll be safe, he told himself as he moved to the other side of

the table. It was necessary to put distance between himself and the

woman he wanted. He doubted she'd ever been alone in a room

with a man before. He wondered if she had the slightest notion of

what happened when a man and woman came together when they

were alone. To teach her was so tempting.

He fought the temptation, and took up the letter to show her.

His hands shook a little. He stared at them, telling himself that, yes,

desire ran hot through him, but that it was desire for freedom,

desire for the treasure that was rightfully his. Honoria was not the

cause of this weakness, or the heat that flared inside him. He was

not going to lay a hand on her. She was safe, from his needs, and

Ibrahim Rais's vengeance. All she had to do was translate the

letter. Ibrahim Rais would never know Diego had stolen his

precious letter, or that Honoria Pyne had translated it for him.

There was no way any harm could come to her over this.

St. Ambrose Rectory

London, 1838

"I am convinced that I know the very girl who is the key to your

happiness, my son."

The Reverend Joshua Menzies read the words aloud slowly,

trying once more to make sense of them before he was called to his

duties as pastor of St. Ambrose's.

Someone had died in a brawl—no surprise there. Not a night

went by in this parish in the slums of London without someone

dying in a fight, or from cholera, or in a house fire, or from being

attacked by thieving ruffians, or from drinking bad spirits. People

died all the time, and were no great loss. That his flock expected

him to hold a funeral service in the rain was damned inconvenient.

He wanted to wait until he was good and drunk before joining the

mourners out in the downpour. If he joined them at all—he might

just let the sexton read through the service. The message from his

long-lost father made a good excuse to spend the day indoors and

alone.

The letter that had arrived at the parsonage just an hour

before, delivered by the hand of a grimy, furtive gypsy vagabond,

had been written at least a year before. The paper was soiled and

torn, the ink faded. The words, from a man he thought dead, were

strange. Instructive. Morally uplifting. Full of repentance for the

days the old man had spent as a renegade corsair calling himself

Ibrahim Rais. The hoary platitudes were even worse than the

sniffling breast-beating. This was not the man Joshua remembered,

but certainly the handwriting was his father's.

"Abraham Menzies, back from the dead," Joshua mused.

"Lucifer probably wouldn't have him." He'd thought the old man

dead, or that he'd forgotten his English family completely when he

disappeared into hiding in the Ottoman Empire. His wealth and

power and cunning hadn't saved him from capture when the pirate

city was taken back in 1830. The wonder was that the fierce and

feared Ibrahim Rais hadn't met the fate he so richly deserved.

Perhaps all his wealth had gone into buying a prison cell rather than

a hangman's rope. What really mattered was not that Abraham

Menzies was still alive, but that none of his wealth had made its

way home to the son he'd left behind.

Joshua Menzies remembered the days when he'd wanted to

be a pirate himself, how he'd longed to sail off to Barbary to join

his father in raiding and plundering. But his father wanted

respectability for his family. Abraham Menzies had deserted the

British Navy to find his fortune, but he wanted his family tucked

safely away, far from the dangers in the heathen land where he'd

found wealth and power. Little Joshua remained with his mother in

a sleepy Cotswolds village, living on the money and letters that

always arrived by mysterious means, until one day word came that

Algiers had fallen. He was well into his studies at Oxford by

then—reluctantly, but it had been what his father wanted of him. It

was just as well that he'd struggled on and taken a divinity degree,

as there was no future in pirating anymore. But not much future in

being a vicar with no rich patron or relatives to help him get on in

the Church, either. His hope had been to secure a place as secretary

to one of the wealthy friends he'd caroused with at Oxford, but no

young lord had taken him into their service. And the money from

his father had long ago run out, so it was a poor London parish for

Joshua Menzies.

Menzies stretched his long legs out under his desk, smoothed

the wrinkled paper once more, and continued reading.

The more I think upon the past, if my mind does not betray me, if

my reason has not been stolen, if my hunger for gold and gems has

not driven me mad, you will listen to me now. I was wicked then—

as vain as the young Spanish captain I loved as a son. He stole my