The Lion's Daughter

by Loretta Chase

  “No, it isn’t.” His voice was soft and thick as velvet. His hands gently threaded through her hair, and his gaze, warm smoke, drifted slowly from her mouth to her eyes and back again.

  “Enough to satisfy your curiosity,” Esme answered firmly, stiffening her posture. She ought to break free entirely, because his body was much too close, making her want, so weak she was, to lay her head upon his chest. Yet the tension she sensed in him made her cautious. She’d provoked him moments ago, and he’d found a devastating method of bringing her to heel.

  “I’m not at all curious,” he said. “I understand you well enough, and never has comprehension been more vexing. You don’t want me to look after you. You don’t want me to understand you. You don’t even want me to like you. You most especially don’t want me to like you as a woman. Well, I don’t want to worry about you, or understand you, or like you in any way.” His hands slid slowly to her shoulders. “But nothing goes as we want, does it? Gad, how long is it since we first collided, Esme? Less than a week? Does time pass so slowly here, or is it something in the air?”

  Esme did break away then. His words may not be entirely enlightening, for all the immense English vocabulary he possessed. Her intuition, however, filled in the gaps. She understood what he told her, though she could scarcely believe it. He felt what she did, or something like it. But it meant nothing, she told herself. A whim. A man’s need, perhaps. Nothing more.

  She moved several steps away and pushed her heavy hair back from her face. Her head wrap lay near his feet. She wanted its protection. She felt too exposed. Nonetheless, she was not inclined to retrieve it.

  “You and I have many troubles in our minds, efiendi.” She spoke in her most reasonable tones, her gaze upon the ground. “The way is difficult and slow, and these problems, as well as our differences, agitate us. Confined together with our troubles and differences, it is no wonder we feel so much…vexation. I think, at times, you will drive me mad. It is not surprising that you feel the same.”

  “Oh, indeed.” His voice was tight, and she felt the angry tension growing again. “I kissed you in a fit of temporary insanity, I suppose.”

  “Aye,” she said. “And I must have been in the same state to permit it.”

  “That’s a relief. At least you weren’t humoring me. My vanity is already in tatters. Thank you ever so much for sparing me a shred at least.”

  His vanity? His feelings? What of her? Did he think she was made of wood?

  “What do you want me to say, efendi? Tell me. I’m not practiced in such matters. Should I tell you I was swooning with desire?”

  “Yes, dammit! I was!”

  She caught her breath, and her gaze shot to his.

  “I was,” he repeated more quietly. Then he snatched up his cloak and turned away. “Disgusting, isn’t it? As though you hadn’t a low enough opinion of me already.”

  He thrust the tent flap aside and left.

  Chapter Eight

  After sending Petro to the tent to keep Esme company, Varian punished himself in the brutally frigid stream. Then, as an extra dose of self-chastisement, he ate with the men. This turned out to be a surprisingly light penance. They’d established something like rapport earlier, when he’d helped set up camp. Communication wasn’t completely impossible. One of the men—the youngest—knew a few words of English. Varian had picked up a word of Albanian here and there, and hand gestures helped. When at a loss, they resorted to drawing primitive pictures in the damp dirt with sticks.

  The labor of trying to comprehend and make oneself understood provided some distraction from his troubling thoughts. Yet when the meal ended and the men began to sing, Varian found his gaze turning repeatedly to his tent. Doubtless the men sang war songs, but the music sounded like longing to him.

  He rose. “NatSn e mirS,” he said.

  Agimi, the one who spoke a bit of English, held up the raki flask. “Take,” he said. “Warm. Good. You need.”

  Varian smiled. They’d warned him most politely and patiently against bathing in the rivers. Too cold. Bad for the chest, they insisted. Also, it made “Zigur” most angry. Agimi had clutched his head and shaken it from side to side, indicating that the child’s scolding made one’s head ache.

  Varian took the raki. “Thank you,” he said. Faleminderit.”

  Agimi shrugged. “S’ka gje. It’s nothing. You need.”

  Perhaps he did. What Varian needed most, though, was an apology, and he’d not yet composed a satisfactory one.

  Esme was playing vingt-et-un with Petro when Varian entered. She did not look up.

  “Ah, master, at last you come!” Petro cried, throwing down his cards. “May I go now?”

  “I should think you’d want to play the game through,” Varian said. “Don’t you care whether you win?”

  Petro scrambled to his feet. “With this one, there is no winning. She gives me the evil eye and all my luck goes away.” He scowled at Esme.

  She gazed coolly back at him. “Then go out and kill a snake,” she said, “and cut off its head with silver. When the head is dry, wrap it up with a medal of Shenjt Gjergj, and take it to a priest to be blessed.”

  Petro pulled out the cord he wore about his neck. On it dangled a rock of some sort. “I have a charm against evil,” Petro said. “A piece of the heavens, from a falling star. But your witchcraft is too strong.”

  “Everyone knows meteorites are good only against gunshot, you superstitious old woman,” she said. “But you make do because you are afraid to kill a snake.” She shrugged. “It is no great matter. Tomorrow I will kill one for you.”

  “And one for me as well?” Varian inquired.

  “I did not give you the evil eye, efendi,” she muttered as she gathered up the cards. “There is no such thing.”

  Petro gasped. “Do not say so. The eye will fall upon you.”

  “If I believed in such foolishness,” she returned angrily, “I would declare that it fell upon me a week ago— when you crept out upon the Durres shore with my cousin.”

  “Ungrateful child! Had we not come, they would have taken you, and then—”

  Varian clamped a heavy hand upon Petro’s shoulder. “Go away,” he said, “until I call you back.”

  “Back, master? You will not leave me with her again?” Petro pressed his hands together in supplication. “I beg you, lord, not again. I am cut in a thousand places from her tongue.”

  “If you didn’t irritate her, that wouldn’t happen,” Varian said. “Go join the men for a while. But don’t get drunk, or I’ll cut you in another thousand places with my horsewhip.”

  The dragoman left, muttering resentfully in what sounded like Turkish.

  Varian set down the raki, hesitated a moment, then sat down opposite her, Indian style, as she did. His trousers, he thought wryly, would never recover.

  “I’ve come to apologize,” he said. “I’ve not been a gentleman.”

  Esme shuffled the cards, tapped them into perfect alignment, then set them down before her. “That is true.” She placed her hands on her knees. “Still, the apology is welcome.”

  “Besa?”

  She glanced up, her enormous green eyes lit with surprise.

  “Besa,” he repeated. “Truce, is it not?”

  “Yes,” she said. “No...no, I must say my part as well, or I do not truly pledge truce.” Her gaze dropped to the rug. “You said before that I made it impossible for you to be a gentleman.”

  “That was—”

  “No, let me finish.” Her hands tightened on her knees. “You find it so difficult because I am not a lady. I know. Jason told me so often. I can never be a lady by your people’s standards. I am not one by my own people’s, either. Other Albanian girls are not like me. They have better manners, much better. I am not always pleased with myself. I do and say many things I later wish I had not. Only later, too late, when it’s done. I have great will, yet I cannot will my temper. Never. Also, many times, I cannot will my patience…an
d sometimes, other feelings. My grandmother said I have a demon inside me. I do not believe in demons, yet that is truly how it feels.”

  She clenched her fist and pressed it to her heart. “Here. A fiery demon. That is how I am. It cannot be helped,” she concluded sadly as she took her hand away.

  It was a confidence, and the confession had not been easy for her. From the start, when she’d refused to show any emotion regarding her father’s murder, Varian had understood that the Red Lion’s daughter locked her feelings securely inside her. Now, when he’d offered only the smallest of apologies, she’d opened up a corner of her heart to him. His own twisted guiltily.

  Varian wished he could shelter this girl in his arms while he assured her she was not to blame, not at all. He realized he was leaning toward her.

  “I see.” He unfolded his legs and leaned back on one elbow, to widen the distance between them. “That explains everything.”

  She shot him a wary glance. “Does it?”

  “Oh, yes. Very simple. A cliche, actually, though I’m mortified to admit it. I am a stupid, lazy moth, fluttering about aimlessly. You are a little firebrand, constantly bursting into flame. The stupid moth catches sight of the bright, lovely flame, and without a thought for consequences—though he’s old enough to know better—rushes right at it. Then he gets his wings singed and, like the mindless imbecile he is, berates the flame.”

  Esme mulled this over, taking up the cards, shuffling them, putting them down again. Watching her deft hands, Varian recalled her tentative touch upon his sleeve. No, he mustn’t think of that, or his mind would turn again to the rest. He wanted peace, the truce he’d sought, because he wanted to remain with her this night, honorably.

  “I’m not a good man,” he said. “My character is odiously weak. If there’s a wrong done, it’s more than likely I’ve done it quite on my own. I’m selfish and thoughtless. I’ve always been. If not, I should never have brought Percival here.”

  “Why did you bring him, efendi?”

  Varian stared at the cards. He still hadn’t told her. He’d neatly avoided it, unwilling to face her withering ridicule. For a chess piece, a toy? He could hear her say it, hear the contempt in her low voice.

  “We came to get a chess piece,” he said. Instantly heat flooded his face. He—Edenmont—was blushing. Well, he ought to. As he forced himself to meet her gaze, he saw her eyes widen. Then, of all things, a smile.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I am very sorry, Varian Shenjt Gjergj, that your mother dropped you upon your head so many times.”

  “It wasn’t entirely my doing,” he said. “Your cousin has a fiendish knack for making the most outrageous matters seem perfectly reasonable.”

  “He is twelve years old.” She shuffled the cards.

  “He is not. He’s fifty if he’s a day.”

  She placed the cards before him. “Cut.”

  “Do you mean to tell my fortune?”

  “No. I mean to beat you at vingt-et-un, my lord, while you tell me of this chess piece.”

  Though Esme beat his lordship only once, they passed the night peaceably enough, and it was very late when he summoned Petro at last. Despite the earlier threat of horsewhipping, the dragoman entered none too steadily.

  His master, however, only uttered a few sharp words before giving up. “He’s no better than I at tolerating hardship,” he muttered. “Liquor is the only comfort he has at present. Why shouldn’t he get drunk? I wish I could.”

  Esme noticed that he made his bed as far from hers as the tent’s confines would permit. That was best, she told herself. If his lordship felt a man’s need, he might well wish to ease it with whatever was at hand, even herself. This was one of the ways men differed from women, Jason had said, even those of otherwise good character. It was a demon many men seemed to possess.

  This man may have compared her to a lovely flame and himself to a helpless moth, Esme reflected, but that was his need speaking.

  “When lust takes hold of a man,” Jason had warned, “he’ll say anything, do anything, and there are men who can seduce with words only. Sometimes guile can be as dangerous as force. Properly armed and prepared, you’ve a chance of eluding an attacker. Even you, small as you are, might fight him off successfully, as I’ve taught you. But what will you do, little warrior, when a man sighs and tells you you’re breaking his heart?”

  That was too ludicrous to contemplate.

  “I shall laugh,” she had answered confidently.

  “That may anger him.”

  “Then he will attack, and I shall be prepared.”

  Naive. Abominably so. This man had kissed her, and she hadn’t raised a hand against him. In his man’s heat, he’d spoken of desire, and in the pit of her belly, a woman’s heat had throbbed in answer.

  It was best he slept far from her.

  Besides, Esme needed to think about what the baron had revealed. The business of the black queen baffled her. If her cousin had given Jason the chess piece, why hadn’t her father mentioned it? Jason had shown her his mother’s curt note and the kinder one to Esme from his sister-in-law. Why should he keep the chess piece a secret? That made no sense. Percival must be mistaken, and the English lord had made a grave error of judgment, to travel to Albania on a boy’s mere say-so.

  Still, Lord Edenmont did have an understandable motive. He was penniless, he’d reminded her, and in Italy he could live on a thousand pounds for many months.

  “And then?” she’d asked.

  “Oh, I would worry about ‘then’ when it became ‘now.’ “

  Esme looked into his future, and worried for him now.

  They might have passed the next day peaceably as well, had Lord Edenmont not made another trip to the river in the morning. When he returned, his hair in shiny damp waves, Esme was so furious that for perhaps the first time in her life she was beyond speech. She simply glared at him and stalked away. They rode toward Poshnja in rigid silence.

  They reached the town just after noon. They planned to stay the evening, so that his lordship might manage a hot—or at least warm—bath to soothe his fastidious soul, while they replenished their supplies.

  Only a small party greeted them this time, which was odd. Equally intriguing was the agitation Esme sensed in the village. She quickly dismounted, and collared a boy who was gawking at Lord Edenmont as though he’d ridden direct from the moon.

  “What’s happened?” she asked. “Where are all the men?”

  The boy came out of his daze long enough to explain that Poshnja was battling bandits. In broad day, just before the English lord’s party arrived, a band of men had swept down and relieved the villagers of some livestock and a great deal of grain. They’d even stolen some loaves of bread which had been left upon a ledge to cool.

  Esme released the boy and glanced about her. Agimi and some others of the escort were talking excitedly with an old man. His lordship, though, didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy glaring at Petro, whose interpretive skills were evidently failing to please. Esme perceived how the muscles of his chiseled aristocratic countenance tightened and hardened with vexation as he turned his head, looking for her.

  When he located her at last, he looked at her for a long moment, then smiled and raised his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. Her mouth wanted to return the smile. Her pride wouldn’t let it. Chin aloft, Esme went to him, to translate their host’s welcoming speech and Lord Edenmont’s gracious response.

  All this time, their Albanian guards were conducting business of their own. While Hasan, the village elder, led his lordship indoors for the obligatory pampering and cosseting, half of Lord Edenmont’s men were leaping back upon their mounts.

  Well, one could hardly expect them to sit idly about, drinking kafe and smoking their pipes, while thieves took the food from their countrymen’s mouths. So Esme explained when she gave Lord Edenmont the news…half an hour later, when she felt certain the men were well away.

  “You saw them go an
d didn’t tell me?” he demanded in a harsh whisper. “I know you’re not speaking to me, but you might have informed me of that, at least.”

  “I could hardly tell you in the midst of Hasan’s greetings,” Esme answered as their hostess set down a tray before him. “Besides, you could not have stopped them.”

  “If they were doing what they believed was their duty, I wouldn’t wish to stop them,” he said. “I only wish I might be informed—that someone might make at least a pretense of consulting me.”

  “What sort of sense would they expect from a man who bathes in a freezing river, not once but twice in six hours?”

  “I saw Petro pick a louse from his head. What would you have done?”

  “I should have thrown Petro into the river.”

  He glared at her, then laughed. When Hasan looked inquiringly at her, Esme explained that the English lord laughed with pleasure to see so many kind faces and so much good food.

  The men returned several hours later, while Varian was shaving—with blessedly hot water. It was Petro, not Esme, who brought the news. Esme had not yet forgiven him for this morning’s ice bath. Well, she didn’t understand, thank heaven. Otherwise, she’d probably drown him herself.

  Varian squinted into his small shaving glass. What he wouldn’t give for a proper mirror, that he might discern more than a square inch of skin at a time. He tried to recall whether there had been any looking glasses in the houses he’d visited. Perhaps these were rare in the villages. He wondered if Esme had ever seen her own countenance, or merely murky reflections in a pond or a bucket.

  “Did they capture the thieves?” he asked.

  “One they killed,” Petro answered. “Two others were shot, but escaped. They have brought back the animals and the grain. But the bread is gone, and Agimi’s arm must be cut off.”

  “What?” Varian turned so quickly, he nearly sliced off his ear.

  “The bullet went deep, and at a strange angle, and did not come out the other side.”

  “He was shot?” Varian threw down his razor. “Damn. I knew this would happen. Where is he? Have they summoned a doctor?”