"It depends."
"On what?"
"On when your fiancé comes for you."
Startled, bewildered, she fell silent.
"I expect by now the colonel is searching for you," Jafar said, his expression deliberately impassive.
"How could you possibly know what Gervase would or would not do?"
He shrugged. "I have spies in the French government. I pay them well to keep me informed of the colonel's movements."
Spies? That no doubt was how he had managed to arrange her capture so easily. A hollow, sinking feeling suddenly welled in the pit of Alysson's stomach. "Just . . . just what is it you want with me?"
"I told you. Merely your presence."
"But why? What ever good could my presence do you?"
He was silent for so long that at first she thought he didn't mean to answer. When finally he spoke, his tone was quiet and deadly. "It will afford our troops an engagement with the French army.''
His reply made Alysson shiver. Was that what he wanted? A battle with the French army? Then she remembered something Jafar had said just after he'd taken her captive. I sincerely hope the French army does come for you, the good colonel most of all. Did he mean to lure them into a trap of some kind? If so, then she was the bait. Dear God . . .
She opened her mouth to speak, but the words lodged in her suddenly dry throat. It was a long moment before she could force herself to reply. "You mean to use me to trick the French army into fighting you?"
"I mean to fight the French, yes."
But it doubtless would not be a fair fight. This ruthless Berber warlord would set the terms of the battle to his great advantage. Countless men would die, and it would be her fault.
The thought made her quake.
"What you've planned is despicable, vile," Alysson declared in a hoarse voice. "It's the act of a coward, using a woman to carry out your treacherous plot."
He didn't acknowledge her comment as he groomed the stallion's powerful hindquarters.
"What will you do with me when I've served my purpose? Kill me? Sell me as a slave?"
That made Jafar pause. Glancing over his shoulder, he met her gaze, his own eyes narrowed. "Afterward you will be free to return to your uncle. Unlike the French, we do not not make war on women and children."
"No?" She laughed, a scoffing, incredulous sound. "Then what do you call your abduction of me?"
"You have not been harmed. I've given you no cause to complain of your treatment," he replied, his voice nonchalant yet having a sharp thrust. "You haven't been raped or beaten or tortured."
She wanted to protest. She wanted to shout at him: You kissed me. You assaulted me with your caresses. You promised to take my virginity. You threatened to make me respond to you and want you. He might not have actually hurt her, but his promise of seduction had unnerved her more than any threat of physical torture could have done. And now that she knew what he planned, she was terrified that he would actually succeed in his aims.
Her voice shook when she demanded, "What about your sultan, Abdel Kader? Does he approve of your barbaric methods, using innocent prisoners as bait in your trap?"
"Abdel Kader shows every consideration for this Christian prisoners, especially women. It distresses him greatly that they should become victims of our Holy War."
"Holy War!" Alysson's voice throbbed with outrage and dread. "There is nothing in the least 'holy' about your war! How can you possibly commit countless atrocities and then claim you do so in the name of your god?"
"By Allah—" The soft curse rent the air as abruptly Jafar whirled. In four strides he reached Alysson's side, his fingers closing over her shoulders as he pulled her to her feet.
Alysson stood frozen, shocked by the swiftness of his assault, frightened by the fury she saw in his burning amber eyes. She had finally moved him to anger.
She flinched and tried to take a step backward, to break away, but his fingers gripped her like steel talons as his words struck her. "All you rich, pampered Europeans, living in your protected world . . . you know nothing of real atrocities! You should ask the boy who serves you about barbaric methods. Mahmoud was tortured by the French and barely escaped with his life."
Alysson quivered. Jafar's fierce gaze bored into her, giving no quarter, while his voice dropped to a savage murmur. "Shall I tell you about other atrocities committed by the French? About the custom your Legionnaires have adopted? They make tobacco pouches from the breasts of murdered Muslim women and then boast of how fine and soft the leather is."
To emphasize his point, his hand rose to cup her breast. There was nothing remotely sensual in his touch; it was a threatening gesture, purely hostile.
Her heart pounding, Alysson stared up at him, alarmed by his burning intensity. At the moment this fierce Berber chieftain seemed hard and unforgiving enough to retaliate in kind. When suddenly he released her, she exhaled in relief. Her knees sagging, she sank to the carpet. Jafar turned back to the stallion and picked up the cloth he had thrown to the ground.
Alysson watched him warily, afraid of what he might do. How had their discussion turned so violent so suddenly? She wished she had never begun this conversation. But he wasn't done chastising her by any means.
"You call us barbaric," Jafar muttered. "Surely even you don't condone the French army's method of 'pacifying' our tribesmen—asphyxiating hundreds of women and children in caves. You heard of that incident, didn't you, mademoiselle?"
"Y-yes," Alysson replied. She had heard of it. Like many, she had been appalled by the actions of one French colonel who had lighted fires at the mouth of a cave in which some five hundred native men, women, and children had taken refuge. The scandal had shocked even the staunchest supporters of French colonization, and had been denounced in France as an abomination.
"The next time fifteen hundred Muslims died," Jafar said almost absently.
"The . . . next time?"
"Two months later another of your French colonels repeated the tactic. You never learned of it because it was kept out of the French newspapers." Jafar shook his head in disgust. "Don't talk to me of barbaric methods."
Irritated by his accusing tone, Alysson lifted her chin, mustering her courage. "That still doesn't excuse the abominable acts carried out by your side. Only a few years ago your Arab troops massacred the French garrison at Biskra."
The look Jafar gave her was hard and angry. "Those were soldiers, men who chose to fight and die in a war the rapacious French government began. Soldiers who never quailed at murdering entire villages of civilians, I might add."
“What then of all the innocent French settlers who have been slaughtered?"
"Innocent settlers who stole our land over the bloody corpses of our people? This is wartime, Miss Vickery. What did you expect us to do, welcome them with open arms?"
Alysson fell silent, thinking of all the senseless carnage that had resulted from the war. No one had been spared, not the innocent, not the women and children. And even they had been guilty of atrocities. Indeed, the women of Barbary were said to be even more fierce and savage than the men.
With a shudder, she remembered a Legion officer discussing with apparent relish the horrible mutilation of captured French soldiers after a particularly bloody battle, how the Arab women enacted unspeakable tortures upon wounded Frenchmen before finally allowing them mercy in death. That was why, the Legionnaire claimed, it was better to die in the first assault than to survive to become hostage to their cruelty.
Alysson might have mentioned that to Jafar, but she saw no point in debating the issue of which side had been more vicious. The humane conventions of war had been ignored on both sides. And, thankfully, at least now the war had ended. If only her Berber captor would come to accept it.
"The war is over," Alysson said finally. "Don't you realize that? You can never win."
Jafar's fingers fisted around the cloth in his hand. "Perhaps. But we will never cease trying to drive back the invaders who conqu
ered our shores."
"But more killing won't solve a thing. Don't you see? It is so pointless!"
Hearing the note of anguish in her voice, he turned and met her troubled gray eyes. "Fighting tyranny is never pointless, mademoiselle.''
She stared at him, her expression one of frustrated incomprehension. Seeing her despair, Jafar suddenly wanted her to understand. He wanted her to know what drove him to defy the conquering French against impossible odds, what made him hate this particular enemy so much that it was a festering wound within him.
"Consider for a moment, if you will," he said in a rough whisper, "why we have such a hatred of the French. They swarmed over our country, burning with a love of conquest, and wrought destruction on everything they touched. They polluted our wells, burned our crops, raped and killed our women, orphaned our children, profaned our mosques and graves . . . They surpassed in barbarity the barbarians they came to civilize."
He paused, his burning gaze holding hers. "Not satisfied with the pace of acquisition, then, they violated their own treaties of peace and seized private properties without compensation. Then they taxed and exploited our impoverished population to the point of starvation, and forced the weakest of us into servitude. The despoilment is unending. The French are filled with an insatiable greed. They want our
plains, our mountains, our inland cities. They covet our horses, tents, camels, women. At the same time they hold in disdain our laws and customs, our religion, and expect us to endure the contempt of their white race, their arrogant sentiments of racial superiority."
Jafar muttered a word in his language that Alysson knew was a curse, but his gaze never left her. "Do you honestly expect me and my people to bow our necks to a foreign yoke without a struggle? To surrender to French domination without a fight?"
The question, soft and savage, echoed in the silence.
"You say the war is over," Jafar declared softly. "I say it will never be over. Not as long there is a single Frenchman residing on African soil. The French will be our enemy, always and forever."
Alysson slowly shook her head, understanding his bitter hostility for the French, but not his particular hatred for Gervase. The French might be his enemy, but it was Gervase he had singled out. "But . . . you don't just plan to make war on the French army, do you? There is more to it. You've planned some sort of revenge against Gervase. That's why you've abducted me."
His golden eyes locked with hers without flinching. "Yes."
The single word was curt, adamant, unrelenting.
The sick dread in Alysson stomach intensified. "And when Gervase does come for me?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "What do you intend to do to him then?"
Abruptly Jafar's features became impassive, his gaze unfathomable. Breaking the contact of their gazes, he turned away. "The colonel will get precisely what he deserves."
Alysson felt herself shaking. He meant to kill Gervase, she was certain. And that thought frightened her more than anything that had happened to her since her capture.
Trembling, she rose to her feet. "I hope you burn in hell."
Jafar's tone, when he replied, was cold. "The prospect of your Christian hell holds no terror for me, mademoiselle."
Alysson clenched her fists. She hated him at that mo-
ment, with a fierceness she hadn't thought possible. Yet she hated her helplessness even more. ,
With a sound that was nearly a sob, she turned and fled into the relative safety of the tent.
Watching her go, Jafar gritted his teeth, while the knuckles of his hand turned white from gripping the cloth. Within him, the cold rage of vengeance faded, to be replaced by hollow fury at her despair. It galled him that she cared so deeply for that French jackal, Gervase de Bourmont. Galled and sickened him. Yet even in his fury, Jafar found himself struggling against the urge to follow her and comfort her.
What solace could he offer her, though, when he intended to kill the man she planned to marry?
With a violent curse, Jafar set his jaw and forced himself to return to the task of grooming the Barb.
Chapter 9
The noonday dust swirled ripe and hot as Alysson watched the mounted Berber warriors at play. Their activities looked like sport, yet knowing now what she did about their lord's plans, their games took on an ominous significance.
They were practicing for war and death.
From the shelter of Jafar's tent, she watched numbly, with a kind of horrified fascination, unable to look away. The moment Jafar directed his prancing steed toward his tent, though, Alysson retreated inside. She hadn't spoken a word to him for two days, not since the evening he had told her of his plan to lure Gervase and the French army into battle.
For two days the turmoil had eaten away at her. She couldn't sleep and had little appetite; the churning in her stomach wouldn't go away. Her tension, her fear, her feeling of helplessness, had increased tenfold. For now she knew it wasn't only her life at stake. She had heard it said that the Berbers were unconquerable in war. If Jafar succeeded in carrying out his plan, then scores of French soldiers might perish. And Gervase as well, the man who loved her. And her Uncle Honoré.
With brutal clarity she'd suddenly realized what would happen when her uncle learned where she was being held. Honoré would never allow Gervase to search for her alone. Though ill-suited to withstand the rigors of a desert campaign, he would accompany Gervase into the desert to find her. And he might very well die.
"I won't let it happen!" Alysson murmured defiantly, yet the tight ache in her throat belied her determination.
It would be her fault if they were killed; their blood would be on her hands. She was responsible for this situation. If she'd never insisted on accompanying her uncle, she never would have been taken captive, to be used as bait in Jafar's snare.
If only she could send Honoré a message that she was unharmed, that she was relatively safe and well, that he wasn't to come for her, she might rest more easily. At least Gervase was a soldier, a brave and skilled officer who stood a fighting chance against a warlord of Barbary. Just possibly he could avoid whatever terrible fate her demon captor had planned for him.
Exactly what that fate might be she had lain awake contemplating for two nights now. What manner of revenge did Jafar mean to exact? And what had Gervase done to deserve such enmity? Why had Jafar called him "a man with the tainted blood of a murderer in his veins"?
Revenge implied prior acquaintance, so the two men must know each other; indeed, Jafar had implied as much. And he'd done more than imply that her abduction was only a means to an end. He had told her so.
She was his means for revenge.
She should have suspected as much, given the fact that Jafar had yet to harm her. He hadn't raped her, and that in itself should have been portentous.
She could almost wish he had. If Jafar had simply ruined her in order to shame her fiancé, she could have dealt with that. Her reputation had never concerned her overmuch, for she refused to allow society to dictate her actions. She would gladly have sacrificed her good name if it meant sparing Gervase's life. She would even have surrendered her body to her barbaric captor, as he seemed to want. But she realized now that her surrender alone would not satisfy him.
He wanted Gervase's death. That was crystal clear to her now. And she knew instinctively that nothing she could do or say would change his mind. Jafar was not a man who would be swayed by pleas or tears. Nor could she appeal to his moral conscience or his sense of honor. This was not England. This was the desert, where civilized rules didn't apply, where standards of honor were far different than in her country. Here in Barbary, women were possessions to be bought and sold and used. Here men took what they wanted. Here men like Jafar el-Saleh made their own laws.
"Good afternoon, ma belle."
Alysson tensed at Jafar's greeting as he entered the tent. Deliberately, she turned and gave him her back.
Behind her, Jafar swore silently. For the past two days, his lovely young p
risoner had treated him as if he were a viper she had found hidden under a rock. Her disdain annoyed him fiercely. Her smoldering silence, too, irritated him. And this from a woman! Only to his English grandfather had he ever owed deference; only to his sultan did he owe allegiance now—and that only because he chose to. And yet he believed Alysson Vickery deserved an explanation for why he'd involved her in his personal vendettas. He had tried to make her understand his reasons for opposing the French invaders, but she was obviously too stubborn to try and comprehend.
Worse than annoyance, though, was the way his heart wrenched every time he saw the torment in her expressive eyes. Her distress at his revelations was palpable.
It was all he could do to remain unaffected. He hadn't expected to be this moved by her anguish. He wanted to go to her and take her in his arms. He wanted to kiss away the misery on her face. He wanted to drive away her hatred and fill her with passion . . . passion for himself and not his blood enemy.
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