“Bloody hell.” Varian pulled on his coat. Poor Agimi. How old was he? Little more than a boy—eighteen, nineteen, perhaps. But these things happened. How many young men had lost limbs fighting Napoleon’s armies? “I hope to God he’s not conscious. Where is he?”
“In the next house. The little witch has gone there, and she howls like a dying cat and will not let anyone near him.”
Varian rushed from the room.
Esme was not howling when Varian entered the tiny house, though her voice sliced like a whip as she berated the men, a score of them, who shouted back, furious as she. Yet she stood defiantly by Agimi’s cot, knife in hand, and the men, incredibly, hung back.
Varian swiftly threaded his way through the crowd. As he neared the cot, the room quieted to a low rumbling.
Esme looked up at him, her eyes twin green flames. “They shall not,” she said, “no matter what you say. The first one who comes near, I will kill. And the others I will kill after, one by one.”
“Will you murder me, too?” Varian asked, stepping nearer.
“You, too, if you let them commit this outrage.” She nodded at Agimi, who gazed dully back. “The wound is not so bad as it appears. I have had two such. I can take out the bullet and heal his arm, but they have no faith in me. They will not help me. They heed only that babbling old man there,” she said, gesturing with her knife at a small, gnarled Methuselah who trembled in a corner, mumbling to herself.
Varian turned his gaze back to Agimi and to the filthy, oozing hole in his muscular arm. “The old man may be senile,” he said gently, “but the wound is ugly. I had friends at Waterloo, tended by surgeons, and it was often so. Better to lose part of a limb than to die.”
“I am alive,” she snapped, stamping her foot. “I showed you the scar on my arm, where I was shot. Do you think I lied? That it was merely boasting? Twice,” she said. “The arm that held a bullet now holds a knife. I stand on the leg where another bullet stung. Where should I be now, if others had made a cripple of me, as they mean to do with him?”
The vision her words conjured up triggered a chilling wave of nausea that made the room whirl giddily about him. Varian inhaled slowly, and the room swung back into focus. “Very well,” he said. “What do you require?”
Her shoulders sagged slightly in relief. “I need a great, blazing fire, so I may clean my knives and tools in the flames. I need raki to cleanse the wound. Send someone for my bag. The tools I require are in it, as well as the medicines: pine resin, green bark from elder twigs, and white beeswax. I shall need some good olive oil as well, and clean sheep wool.”
“A salve?” he asked, surprised.
“Yes, it is very good. An old man in Shkodra taught me—he who took the bullet from my arm. It weakens the poison and aids the flesh to heal. That is why my scars are so small.”
“How do I tell them to listen to you?”
“Dggjoni,” she murmured.
Varian turned to the group. “Degjoni!” he said sharply.
Esme looked about her at the uneasy faces, then, her voice clear and sure, rattled off her commands in Albanian.
The men looked from her to Varian.
Varian was about to nod when he remembered. He shook his head in the Albanian affirmative. “Yes,” he said. “Po. As Zigur says.”
The tall Englishman stood by her while Esme tended her patient. She wished she’d not insisted on Lord Edenmont’s remaining, for it was plain that of the two, his lordship suffered most. When she gently slid her thin knife into the wound, his face went white as ashes. Still, he held onto Agimi, his smooth aristocratic hands firm on the young man’s shoulder. Agimi endured it all silently. He had refused the laudanum she’d offered, preferring raki instead. She hoped the liquor numbed him sufficiently. She couldn’t tell. He kept his blue gaze pinned to the ceiling and his lips pressed tightly together.
“Dammit,” the baron muttered. “I’m ready to cast up my accounts, and he doesn’t even groan.”
“He is Shqiptar,” Esme said softly. “Son of the eagles. Strong and brave.” She murmured soothingly in her own tongue while she probed, then smiled when she located the bullet. “Ah, as I thought. It will come out easily.”
The room was quiet. His lordship had managed to persuade the others to leave. Only Mati remained, to help keep Agimi still.
Esme eased the bullet free, then, with the precious tweezers Jason had bought for her, caught it and dropped it into the bowl in her lap.
She heard Lord Edenmont’s muffled oath.
“We shall pierce it,” she told Agimi, “and you shall wear it about your neck and laugh when you tell them your story: how here in Poshnja, they wanted to cut off your arm just to get this little bullet.”
Agimi smiled wanly.
She poured more raki into his wound. His mouth tightened, but he made no sound. “Your arm is very drunk, indeed, Agimi. You had better let it sleep.” He shook his head weakly. Then she applied the salve and covered it with the wool, which she fastened with strips of cloth. “Let it sleep,” she repeated. “Close your eyes, and be patient with your drunken arm.”
“It is done,” she said, looking up at Lord Edenmont.
His face was gray. He looked far worse than Agimi. She handed him the raki.
He took one quick swallow, then passed the flask to Mati.
“You need not remain,” she told his lordship. “I’ll stay and look after him. The dressing must be changed in a few hours.”
“You most certainly will not. You’re exhausted. Tell Mati or one of the others what to do. They can summon you if there are any problems. You’re coming back with me,” he said huskily.
He gathered up her tools and medicines, and placed them carefully in the leather pouch. “You’re going to have a long, hot bath, and something to eat and drink. And then you’re going to tell me where the devil you learned to perform surgery.”
Chapter Nine
“These are not my clothes.” Clutching the blankets to her chest, Esme frowned at the garments Varian had heaped upon the woven straw pallet where she sat. At the moment, she wore only an over-large shirt. Varian’s shirt. His last clean shirt.
“They’re donations,” he said. “Trousers, shirt, vest. Oh, yes, and a frock,” he added, tossing a red woolen gown onto the pile. “While you were yelling at them, they figured out you were a girl. That partially explains why the men were so reluctant to let you operate on Agimi. After I sent them away, they had a good, long discussion about you. Someone must have noticed the color of your eyes. You were glaring at them, recall. The concluding evidence was this,” he said, lightly touching her hair. “When our hostess collected the coffee cups, she found a strand of red hair on the tray.”
He sat down on the edge of the pallet. “I didn’t realize you were molting, Esme.”
“I knew I should have shaved my head,” she muttered. “But there was no time.”
“Well, it’s too late now,” he said quickly. If Esme decided she must shave her head, then Esme would do it, and he might as well protest to the stone wall, for all the good it would do him. And they said the English were obstinate.
“In any case, the revelation seems to work to my advantage,” he went on. “As soon as they deduced you were the Red Lion’s daughter, they were filled with sympathy for my plight. What does kokSndezur mean?”
She flushed. “It means rash. A hothead.”
“They seemed proud of you, nonetheless. They said, you’re fearless, a lion like your father. They said you’re highly intelligent as well.” Varian paused. “They said that’s why Ismal wants you as his wife.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Rumor has it he wept at the news of your death,” Varian continued. “I was unaware this man was in love with you.”
“Is that what they say?”
“Oh, yes. Petro couldn’t believe his ears. He made them repeat their remarks several times, to be sure he hadn’t misunderstood. He told me Ismal is very rich, very powerful.
A most desirable spouse. Wed to him, you would live in the greatest luxury.” Varian looked at her. “I take it this Ismal is rather elderly, however?”
“He is young,” she said. “Two and twenty, I think.”
A young man, closer to her own age. Much closer, Varian thought with a twinge of irritation.
“But an ugly brute, no doubt,” he said.
“He’s considered very handsome. His hair is fair, pale gold, and his eyes are like blue jewels.”
Nonetheless, Varian assured himself, the man must be a brute. A great, hulking creature, with a neck like the trunk of an oak. And huge, clumsy hands.
He felt edgy and ill, and very, very weary. It was not enough that she must drag him through the most godforsaken wasteland this side of Siberia. It was not enough to spend all his days and half his nights tense with anxiety for Percival and sick with longing for her. It was not enough that she lept into battle against twenty men, insulting and humiliating each and every one of them—including her own escort—then leave Lord Edenmont to restore peace. He’d stood by her side while she worked on Agimi, because she’d asked him to, and he didn’t want her to think he’d no confidence in her skill. He’d wanted to avert his gaze from the ugly wound, but hadn’t dared, because she would think him weak.
None of these purgatories was enough. Now the whole town must know who she was, and within hours—thanks to their accursedly swift communication methods—her enemy would have the news. An enemy, it turned out, who was young, rich, handsome, powerful, and surprisingly well-liked. That should not amaze him. These baffling people even admired that monster, Ali Pasha.
Her uneasy voice broke into his thoughts. “You wonder,” she said, “why such a man should go to the great trouble of killing my father and trying to abduct me.”
“I wonder about a great many things,” Varian said.
“I don’t understand, either. He might choose from hundreds of women for his harem. Women brought up to wear the veil. Beautiful women whose blood is not mixed. Still, if Ismal imagined he must have me, it would have been enough merely to steal me. Jason did not believe in blood payment, and he could not take me back to England once my virtue was gone. Here, the man is the guilty one, and must make amends. There, the woman is shamed.”
In her case, it would have been far worse, Varian thought. Even had Jason actually wed her mother, English law recognized no marriage rites but those of the Anglican Church. Esme would still be considered, technically, a bastard, and society would leap eagerly upon the technicality. Illegitimate and despoiled, she’d be a pariah.
“That, unfortunately, is accurate,” he answered. “In the circumstances, Jason would be obliged to consent to the marriage.”
“As Ismal knows. He’s been educated abroad. He’s well aware my father could do little against him. There was no need to kill Jason,” she said tightly. “I would have gone willingly, had I known his life was in jeopardy. Many women must endure worse husbands than Ismal, for smaller reasons. It would not be so terrible a sacrifice for me.”
It seemed terrible to Varian, to imagine this fiery young nymph stifled in a harem. Still, women endured worse, he knew, even in England. Among the upper orders, families formed alliances for land, money, political power. Sons as well as daughters were merely pawns.
Even when they chose for themselves, love rarely entered their calculations.
Yet Varian was certain this girl would have wed Satan himself to protect her father. What sort of man had Jason been, to have spawned such a daughter, to have merited such a love?
“I suppose you might do worse,” he said. “Besides, you’d be sure to have the mighty Ismal running at your beck and call in a matter of hours.”
She made a moue of distaste. “I have no wish for a slave. I meant only that I could contrive as other women do, and find happiness in my children. If God is generous, I may have many.”
Varian blinked. “You want to be a mother?”
“Yes. What is so shocking about that?”
“What’s so shocking?” he echoed. “Good grief, Esme, your entire existence is one ghastly shock after another. You’ve got men shooting at you, trying to abduct you, and English lords falling unconscious at your feet. You haul foreigners from shipwrecks and drag them, singlehanded, through a swamp the size of Australia. A few hours ago, I watched you challenge half a town to battle and saw your knife pointed at my own heart. Where in blazes do you expect to find time to bear children?” he demanded. “What poor devil is going to hold you still long enough to get one on you?”
“I didn’t mean now,” she said patiently.
“I’m vastly relieved to hear it,” he said. “Being the only poor devil in the immediate vicinity, I was, naturally, alarmed. Not that I shouldn’t like to oblige, my dear, but I’m afraid you’ve worn me out.”
Her face blazed crimson. “I did not mean you!”
“Oh.” Varian looked away. “Yes, that does ease my mind. Because if you had meant me, and you had meant now…well, we know how it is when you make your mind up to something, Esme. If twenty strong men couldn’t change your mind today, how is one weak-willed, exhausted fellow to gainsay you this night?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. The crimson subsided and her expression grew thoughtful. “You are provoked with me,” she said. “That is why you make immodest jokes.”
“There is that.”
“I made a great turmoil for you,” she went on contritely. “Now they know I’m not dead, you worry that Ismal will send his men after us again.”
“Among other concerns.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “But it is done, efendi.”
“I know.”
“You should not trouble yourself. Ismal will not dare attack us now.”
“No, certainly not. It won’t be anything I might reasonably expect. It will come from nowhere, some unimaginable horror.”
“You worry too much,” she said. “You make deep lines in your forehead.”
“My hair is turning gray,” he said. “I can feel it.”
“No, it is not.” She shifted her position, to make room for him, then patted the rough pillow beside her. “Hajde. Come.”
Varian stared at the small hand resting on the pillow. “I beg your pardon?”
“Put your head down,” she said. “I will make the lines go away, and your worries as well.”
Varian felt a halfhearted tremble of anticipation, but that was all. He was truly worn out, body and spirit. She may have done all the work, but being a helpless bystander had proved far more taxing. She was in no danger from him tonight, and knew it.
Varian lay down and closed his eyes. Only for a moment, he told himself. Then he must leave.
“I will tell you about the mountains,” she said softly. Her cool hands stroked his brow. “Beautiful, reaching to the heavens, where the eagles soar, our fathers.”
Her fingers began to knead, and tiny streams of pleasure sped through him.
“Cool and clear, the water rushes down, bathing the white mountain side, laughing as it goes.”
His mind cleared and cooled, too, though he was warm under her touch, and the warmth sank into his aching muscles.
“Your hands are beautiful,” he murmured.
He felt a pause—half a heartbeat—before she continued stroking, kneading, soothing.
“It rushes to meet the forest below,” she went on, “where the breeze laughs among the fir trees and wakes the songbirds.”
Her voice faded to murmuring pines, far away. It was her hands that made soft music, while Varian slipped deeper into a darkness like velvet, a darkness that enveloped him with a warm gladness, astonishingly like peace.
Esme watched him sleep, his finely sculptured features touched by ghostly shadows in the flickering light of the single oil lamp. She ought to put the light out. She ought to leave, make her bed elsewhere in the small room at least. She could not lie beside him this night. She dared not. With one act of generosity,
he had shattered her defenses.
She’d needed him—though she’d have cut her own throat before admitting it—and he’d come. He’d stood by her, against half the town, though he owed her nothing, not even loyalty.
He’d stood and watched while she tended the ugly wound, though the sight must have sickened his sensitive nature, unused to hardship, violence, ugliness. But so it had been from the start. She’d shown him nothing else.
She should not have made him take this journey with her. He didn’t understand her people. To him, Albania was nothing but ugliness and brutality, and she had made him endure it.
Esme looked down at her hands, which were trembling. Beautiful, he’d said. Yet they were brown and hard. Good hands for work, for fighting, but not beautiful. Never.
What would he think if he ever learned why she was taking him to Tepelena, why she subjected him to so much trouble? What would he think if he guessed that the hands he called beautiful would soon be stained with a man’s blood?
Dear God, let him never learn the truth. Above all, let this man never guess how his generosity had gouged her heart and poisoned it with shameful wishes.
The oil lamp sputtered and smoked, and the air of the room seemed to grow heavy, an oppressive mass that throbbed with the pounding of her heart. Esme wanted to flee, far away, where she could breathe easily again, her spirit light, without burden.
That was impossible. Nevertheless, she could and must escape his lean body’s beckoning nearness. She had only to rise and cross the room. She reached to draw the blanket over him.
He stirred and breathed a sigh. His eyes opened, dark gleaming pools, and his mouth curved into a sleepy smile.
“Your hands are beautiful,” he said softly. Then he caught her trembling fingers and brought them to his lips.
His mouth brushed her knuckles, and her pulse raced in answer.
No. Her lips formed the words, but no sound came out.
No, again, as he turned her hand over, and once more, no sound. She must speak, or admit her shame, but she was shamed already, for she couldn’t utter the simple word.
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