The Elusive Bride (17 page)

Gareth blinked, then looked at Emily—read her surprise, and her curiosity, in her eyes. He looked back at the bey, formally inclined his head. “We will be delighted to oblige, Your Excellency.”

The bey was taking no chances. He sent the captain with three others to escort them through the narrow streets to the palace. Given that both Emily and Gareth had dressed for dinner—she in a pale green silk gown Dorcas had unearthed from her luggage, and Gareth in his red dress uniform—and they were therefore very recognizable, it was a wise precaution.

As they left the guesthouse, scanning their surroundings Gareth murmured, “Just as well it’s already dark.”

Emily nodded, and held her cloak tightly closed as they followed on the captain’s heels.

He led them to a different part of the palace complex. Seeing no reason not to, she openly stared about her, noting the intricate carving, the jewel-hued mosaics, the very Arabic beauty everywhere she looked.

Halting at one especially ornate archway, the captain formally handed them into the care of a garishly dressed individual who appeared to fill a position equivalent to butler-cum-major domo. He spoke passable English, and after bowing low, welcoming them and taking their cloaks, he preceded them down a succession of long corridors, past uncountable doors and galleries, to a large, airy colonnaded room one side of which stood open to a treed courtyard.

The room itself was stylishly magnificent, but as they paused in the doorway, it was the people Emily focused on. They were rather magnificent, too, although to her eyes rather less stylish. Indeed, their liking for gold and jewels and ostentatious ornamentation verged on the garish.

The butler caught the bey’s eye, then in stentorian tones proclaimed, “Major Hamilton and the Majoress Hamilton.”

All heads turned their way. Emily kept her smile easy and relaxed. Clearly, they did think she and Gareth were married. Just as well they’d come prepared.

Smiling expansively, the bey came forward to greet them. He offered his hand to Gareth, and shook hands heartily. Then smiling delightedly, he turned to Emily, and paused.

Sensing he was at a loss as to the acceptable manner in which to greet her, still smiling, she held out her hand. “Take my fingers in your right hand, and nod,” she murmured.

The bey’s smile deepened as he smoothly complied, and she sank into a curtsy. As she rose, he patted her hand. “Thank you.” He released her. “It has been a long time and I wasn’t sure.”

He turned and waved to the room at large. “Now come and let me introduce you to the others. All here will be accompanying me on my travels.” He glanced at the women gathered in a group at one end of the room. “Well, all the men. Of the women, only the begum will be with us.”

As the bey led them across the marble floor, her hand tucked in Gareth’s arm, Emily tried to imagine what it would be like to be a woman alone in a different culture…then realized that for all intents and purposes she was exactly that at that moment.

The bey slowed and, frowning slightly, glanced at her. “I do not recall—is it customary to introduce a wife to other male guests?”

Gareth nodded. Emily stated definitively, “Yes, it is.” The group before them was all male. She glanced at the women. “In fact, it’s usually the case that men and women intermingle and converse from now—the pre-dinner gathering in the drawing room—and through the dinner itself. At the end of the meal, the ladies leave the men at the table to drink port or spirits, and talk among themselves, but only for so long. Then the gentlemen rejoin the ladies in the drawing room, and all remain together until the end of the evening.”

Still frowning, the bey nodded decisively. “We must practice all this.”

Thus it was that Emily found herself cast as social directress for the evening. Under her guidance and instruction, backed by the bey’s authority and example, the men—at first rather stiffly—mingled with their wives. Luckily, the women were more amenable to indulging in broader conversation.

Getting the party to go in to dinner in the correct order of precedence was both an education and a challenge. The begum in particular, a sultry, black-haired, sloe-eyed beauty of lush and bounteous curves, many of which were barely decently screened by the gauzy draperies the bey’s female court favored, proved difficult. She seemed to have taken it into her head that as the senior lady, it was her place to choose who sat beside her, namely Gareth. Emily had to be quite stern—and invoke the bey’s authority—in disabusing her of that notion, stressing that, as hostess, she had least say in the matter. She had to have the most senior visiting male—in this case, the vizier—on her right, and the second most powerful, one of the bey’s ministers, on her left.

The begum sulked through much of the meal, but as, being visitors of no real power, Emily and Gareth ended facing each other across the middle of the table, Emily found it easy to ignore the woman’s pouts.

Although at first stilted, around the table conversation
gradually bloomed, then blossomed as the men found that the women they normally ignored were, if given the chance, engaging interlocutors.

The reverse, Emily strongly suspected, was also true. These women had barely exchanged two words with most of the men in their respective husband’s circles.

She felt reasonably proud of her achievement. And indeed, from his position at the head of the table, the bey was beaming in contented delight.

Directly opposite her, Gareth caught her eye, and with a slight inclination of his head, raised his glass to her.

She smiled and inclined her head back, happiness and that sense of achievement welling and melding.

A little later, when the last dishes were being removed, she caught the begum’s disgruntled eye, and using hand signals, instructed her hostess in how to call the ladies to order and lead them back to the drawing room. The begum bestirred herself enough to be interested, and under her husband’s benevolent gaze, performed the task with aplomb.

Following her from the room, Emily decided that, strange though it was, with any luck at all, they would weather the evening well.

At the end of the evening, the bey insisted the captain see them back to the guesthouse. When they reached the gate in the wall, Gareth turned to find the captain bowing respectfully.

“The bey is pleased.” Straightening, the captain pointed to two figures lounging in the shadows, one at each end of the street. “Throughout the rest of your stay, we will keep watch.”

Gareth met his eyes, nodded. “Thank you—and our thanks to His Excellency.”

The captain almost smiled.

Opening the gate, Gareth followed Emily in, then turned. The captain saluted and walked off. Closing the gate, Gareth heard his footsteps march up the silent street.

Following Emily across the shadow-strewn courtyard,
Gareth searched, and found Mullins keeping watch in one corner. Given the late hour, everyone else would long be asleep. The old soldier snapped off a salute. Raising a hand in reply, Gareth continued on into the house.

He would see Emily safely upstairs, and then, as he didn’t feel the least sleepy, perhaps spell Mullins. But first…

Halting in the gloom, he focused on Emily. “You did very well this evening.”

Of necessity he’d been forced to let her take point. He hadn’t liked it, hadn’t liked sitting back and watching her walk such a potentially dangerous diplomatic line, but she’d kept her balance, her poise, throughout.

When she turned and, wide-eyed, looked at him through the pervasive dark, he added, “You gave the bey exactly what he wanted without revealing anything he didn’t need to know.”

He saw her lips curve, caught the flash of white teeth as she smiled. “I enjoyed the challenge.” Slowly, she came toward him. “It helped that they all thought we were man and wife.”

True, but it hadn’t helped him, not when he’d had to listen to the other men comment appreciatively, and then compliment him on having secured such a prize.

She was a prize on many levels—just not his.

The recollection had distracted him. He refocused, to find her much closer—too close. His blood beat just a little harder through his veins; his attention locked on her, captured, captive. Unwilling to break free, even less willing to let go.

Halting a mere inch away, she raised a hand, closed her fingers in his lapel, then tipped her face up to his.

Her eyes caught, trapped, his. For an instant silence stretched, then she murmured, voice siren-low, lips gently curved, “Your reading of my attraction to you as being danger-induced desire…” Her gaze lowered to his lips. Her tongue came out, the tip sweeping her lower lip, then she lifted her gaze to his eyes. “Did it occur to you that you might be wrong?”

Wrong? It took a moment for his mind, distracted by other things, to make sense of what she was suggesting. Trying to see where she was heading, and why, he started to frown.

Emily mentally threw her hands in the air and gave up trying to find the words—the right words to explain just how inaccurate his reading of her motives had been. Was. She’d always believed actions spoke much louder than words. Sliding her hand from his chest over his shoulder to his nape, she stretched up as she drew his head down, and kissed him.

Pressed her lips to his, not in persuasion but in confident expectation. They’d just spent the evening playing husband and wife—effortlessly, seamlessly, convincingly. Surely, he must now see there was only one way that could be, only one reason she had performed the charade so consummately.

She kissed him, moved her lips on his, and let all she knew, all she believed, all she felt well and pour through her. To lead her, free her, and free him.

Lure him.

She parted her lips and welcomed him in, thrilled when he came, when his hands tightened about her waist and he took—took over the kiss, sank into her mouth, and gave her all she asked for. All she wanted.

Him.

In the unfettered dark, in the silence of the night.

The kiss spun out, deepening, broadening, their senses reaching, spreading, searching.

Wanting.

She tipped her head back on a gasp. Her cloak slid from her shoulders as she wound her arms about his neck. As his hands closed about her breasts. Possessively. Passionately.

He kneaded and she moaned, then struggled to mute the sounds he drew from her as he bent his head and set his lips to her throat as his hands worked their magic and she melted.

He shifted, moved, steered her back, guided her until her back met the wall beside the door. He pinned her there and let his hands roam, and she grew hotter, needier, more wanton.

She reveled in the sensations, then he murmured something dark, tugged her suddenly loosened bodice down, exposing one breast, then he bent his head and set his mouth to her flesh and she cried out.

Breathlessly.

Achingly desperately.

The evocative sound shivered through the night. It sank like so many daggers into his psyche, each tipped with need and longing.

Gareth longed. Through all the heat, the welling urgency, above all else he longed to have her. But that have was no longer a simple verb. A possessive one, yes, but it encompassed so much more.

There was so much more he wanted of her. With her.

For her, and for him.

With her supple body in his arms, her soft skin beneath his lips, the taste of her wreathing through his mind, he could think of nothing more, knew nothing beyond that want, that need, that longing.

The soft mounds of her breasts, firm and swollen under his hands, the aureolas tight and puckered, drew him. He bent his head and feasted. Devoured.

She clung, the soft sounds that fell from her lips urging him on, stirring him deeply, ever more provocatively, on a primal level only she had ever breached.

His mouth on her breast, he reached down, caught one of her knees and raised her leg, crooked it around his thigh. Lifting his head, he found her lips, covered them with his as he traced her leg upward, then through the layers of her skirts cupped her bottom.

She gasped as he gripped, then eased his hold and traced. The kiss turned greedy, hungry, then incendiary as he caressed, then kneaded.

The potent mix of hunger, desire, and passion, of escalating need, wouldn’t be denied. She clung and pressed it all upon him, until it filled him as it did her.

Releasing her bottom, he reached around and back, and
found her ankle. Slid his hand upward from there, skating beneath her skirts and petticoats, skimming her stockinged calf, slipping higher still to pause and trace the frilly lace garter circling her thigh above her knee, then he reached higher.