Panther's Prey

by Doreen Owens Malek

  Amy threw the remainder of her pemmican to the ground disgustedly and stood.

  “I’ll just run away again, the first chance I get,” she said to his back.

  “No, you won’t,” he replied.

  “Really?”

  “Really. If I have to keep you chained to my belt twenty-four hours a day, you won’t get away again.”

  The certainty in his voice gave her a chill.

  “I guess I forgot how valuable I am,” she said spitefully. “Why don’t you raise money for your sacred revolt by working for a living like any other decent person? But selling kidnapped women is just a lot easier, isn’t it?”

  “I worked for a living on my father’s farm for ten years,” he replied equably. “Then the Sultan executed my father and brothers, gave my mother and sister to his janissaries to be used before they were killed and confiscated all of our property. Since then I’ve worked to execute him.”

  Amy sank to the ground slowly, silenced. “Why?” she finally said.

  “My oldest brother Osman eloped with the Sultan’s daughter, Princess Roxalena. Osman sent us a message and money to follow him but he was betrayed and the message was intercepted. The Sultan took out his anger on the remaining members of the family. I was away at the time and so escaped the axe. I went on the run when I heard what had happened and I’ve been on the run ever since.”

  “You had done nothing at all to make you a fugitive,” she whispered.

  “Exactly. But I’m doing something now. I won’t rest until Abdul Hammid is dead and his government deposed.”

  Amy stared at the back of his head, wrapping her arms around her torso.

  He turned to look at her, then sighed and sat up, pulling his heavy woolen tunic over his head.

  “Put this on,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “Do as I say,” he barked, rising and settling the tunic over her shoulders. It was warm from his body and she couldn’t resist snuggling into it.

  “And come closer to the fire.”

  She shook her head again.

  “You’re in a desert climate, it’s boiling during the day and freezing once the sun sets. You’ve been sleeping a few feet away from me every night in my tent, why does it bother you now?”

  “It bothered me then,” she whispered, and he stared at her, his eyes lambent in the firelight. The moment hung between them, the silence filled with things unspoken.

  “I’ll move away,” he finally said in a low tone, and did so immediately.

  Amy took her blanket and dropped it next to the fire, then lay full length on it, not looking at him.

  In three minutes she was asleep.

  * * *

  Malik looked up at the night sky, picking out the constellations he had learned to identify from his tutor when he was a boy. He was exhausted but could not sleep, the proximity of the woman he had kidnapped keeping him awake.

  He smiled to himself as he thought of the stories she had told him. She would have said that her father was President Cleveland and her mother Queen Victoria if she thought that would take her one step closer to freedom. He knew from her appearance that her family was well to do, and she would not have been able to travel so far from home if they weren’t, but only a handful of American families could match what he would be able to get for her in the slave trade. Unless her name was Carnegie or Astor, his best bet was to sell her to a broker, and a Carnegie or an Astor would not have been traveling in a shared passenger coach with a weepy companion. But he had to admire her for trying, just as he admired her escape attempts, even though they left him footsore and mind weary.

  She was brave, if not exactly a meticulous planner.

  A hyena barked loudly from a safe distance and was answered by a low growl somewhere nearby.

  His companion sat up, her eyes huge, and whispered, “What was that?”

  Malik rose to his feet, drawing his pistol from his belt. He fired one shot into the air. They both listened to the scrambling sound begin and then diminish as a large animal took off quickly through the brush.

  Malik gathered more sticks for the fire, then sat again. Amy picked up her blanket and moved next to him.

  He looked at her. “Feeling lonely?” he said, arching one dark brow.

  She muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  “Do you think that...whatever it was...will come back?” she asked anxiously.

  “If it does, I will be here,” he said calmly.

  Amy was surprised at how much his capable tone reassured her. No wonder so many people followed him and obeyed his orders without question. He inspired confidence.

  “What time is it?” she asked, pulling his tunic closer about her.

  He looked up at the sky. “About three. It will be light in a few hours.”

  “Do those animals prowl only at night?” she asked, looking around them.

  He stared at her. “Now you are afraid? You run off from the camp armed with nothing but a pair of shoes and it doesn’t occur to you to worry until a leopard is standing a few feet away from your campfire?”

  “Was that a leopard?” she murmured, aghast.

  “Maybe an Anatolian wolf, but most likely a panther, a leopard in the black phase before the coat turns color. It’s the season for them.”

  She swallowed. He probably had saved her life by coming after her, it was true, but she couldn’t forget his venal reason for doing it.

  She shivered, as much from her bleak thoughts as the night chill.

  He got up and gave her his blanket.

  “I can’t take this, you’ll have none...” she began.

  He held up his hand. “I am accustomed to the climate, you are not. Take it and go back to sleep.”

  Amy subsided, looking over at him as he sat with his back to a tree. The firelight played over his high cheekbones and arched nose, giving him a fierce aspect that daylight softened and transformed into a dark beauty.

  “Your English is very good,” she murmured, trying to get him to talk. She was still skittish about their four legged visitor and the sound of his deep voice had a soothing effect, reminding her that she was not alone. She studied him in the firelight, wondering how he would appear in Western clothing. With his exotic looks he would definitely liven up a tea dance in Boston dressed in a herringbone sack coat and pipestem trousers.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “How did you learn to speak it?”

  “Before my brother Osman took off with Hammid’s daughter he was the Sultan’s favorite soldier for many years, the captain of his guard and very well paid. When Hammid first came into power he wanted to learn European warfare in order to train his own troops. He sent Osman to England to study with the British for two years and Osman learned to speak English there. He was very impressed with the language and the way of life and when he returned here he hired a British tutor for us at home.”

  It was the longest speech she had heard him make, and his admiration for his brother came through in it. “He sounds like an extraordinary person,” Amy said.

  “He is,” Malik said shortly.

  “Does he know what you are doing now?”

  “He does,” Malik replied flatly.

  Amy dropped the subject. “How do you keep up with your English?” she asked him.

  “I have books, and I read the English language newspapers from Damascus and Constantinople.”

  “It must be important to you,” she said.

  “It’s important to my future plans that I speak and read English competently. I have to be able to talk to the Western powers if I expect their help for my new country.”

  “How do you practice conversation?”

  “I talk to people like you whenever I get the chance,” he replied.

  “While you’re abducting them? Short conversations, no doubt,” she said, yawning.

  “Yes. None of the others have run off and given me the
opportunity for such a stimulating and extended exchange. Go back to sleep.”

  She sighed, her eyelids getting heavy. “Did you really come after me just for the money you can make when you sell me?” she muttered, her lips barely moving.

  He didn’t answer, and then to his relief he realized she had fallen asleep. He put his head back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes.

  He did not want to sell her, and that was a fact. To anybody. But the opportunity to obtain so much money for her had him more confused than he had ever been in his life.

  When he thought of what he could buy for his men with that fortune his mouth watered. But when he thought of his captive being sold to some fabulously wealthy brute who would consume her as he did his dinner Malik almost went wild with rage and pain.

  Anwar was right. He knew his friend, and he had known from the first that the American woman would be trouble.

  Malik opened his eyes again and looked at the slight figure of the girl sleeping on the ground. She was certainly beautiful, but it was more than that which drew him to her. He believed in kismet, fate, and as he accepted that it was his fate to lose his family and fight the Sultan, it was also apparently his fate to desire this woman. What mattered was how he managed his fate. He had never had trouble doing that before, but this situation presented him with a new and different challenge.

  She stirred and began to mutter in her sleep, becoming more agitated as he moved closer to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and she started, almost waking. He spoke soothingly and she settled down, turning toward him when he sat next to her. When he slipped his arm around her she murmured, sighed, and let her head fall to his shoulder. He held her in his arms, inhaling the fragrance of her hair, her skin, absorbing the warmth of her body into his own. He drew both blankets over them, wondering how long he could keep her safe before the reason he had kidnapped her became more important than the feelings she now aroused in him.

  Finally, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, he slept.

  * * *

  When Amy awoke the next morning the sun was high and she was horrified to discover herself in Malik Bey’s arms. She sat up abruptly and he started, then settled back down again, still asleep. She realized that he had tracked her all day yesterday and then had been awake most of the night; even a man with his obviously strong constitution would be tired.

  This was her chance to get away.

  It was clear he had planned to be awake before she was, that’s why he had left her untied. If she went now she could get a good head start.

  She grabbed his food bag, looking around for his horse, but when her mind caught up with her actions she sank to the ground next to him, distraught. She couldn’t ride his horse, she had seen it throw another man who had attempted to do so, to the vast amusement of the camp. The food bag was almost empty and her slippers were ruined. She couldn’t get far. He would just track her again, and find her again. She was no better prepared now to elude him than when she had first left the camp. And the thought of another night in the woods with the local wildlife was more than daunting.

  The thing to do was go back with him and then get organized: hoard supplies, steal a pliant horse and a weapon, learn the escape route. It could be done but it would take time and ingenuity. And if she was sold before she succeeded, then she would just plot again and run from her purchaser.

  She would get away eventually, but bolting without a plan was foolhardy. Her most recent adventure had taught her that.

  Malik coughed in his sleep and she looked at him. The morning light made his black hair gleam like jet, and the lashes that lay against his dusky cheeks were as thick and curling as a child’s. She could see a faint pulse beating in his bare throat, exposed by the deep v of his thin cotton shirt. Her hand went to the woolen tunic he had given her; she realized that he must have been cold without it.

  What kind of person would abduct a woman to sell her into slavery and then strip the shirt off his back to keep her warm? Was he really just looking to maintain her health so he could make a profit? Or could there be some chivalry, some compassion, in the character of a man who would do such a thing in the first place? She had never in her life encountered a contradiction like him.

  But then again, she had never met anyone who had been so wronged. If the story he had told her about the Sultan was true, she could understand why everything in his life was secondary to his pursuit of revenge. If she had seen her family tortured and killed at the whim of a mercurial dictator, maybe she too would be willing to do anything, even trade in slaves, to effect that dictator’s fall.

  It was a notion that upset her conventional ideas of right and wrong, and her first encounter with the blinding stranglehold of a vendetta.

  A breeze whipped through the trees and she clutched at the neck of her gown, glancing down at her hand. It was filthy, the knuckles gray, which was not surprising when she considered how she had spent the previous day. Where was the brook Malik had mentioned? She looked in the direction he had indicated, remembering the lump of soap she had seen in his bag.

  She would have a bath while he slept. She retrieved the soap and set off through the trees.

  It was only minutes after Amy left the clearing that Malik sighed and opened his eyes. When he saw that the girl was gone again he felt like an imbecile for the second time.

  Would she never stop? Was he destined to spend the rest of his life stalking her? And why hadn’t he tied her up when he knew that dawn would come and he was physically spent? Was she causing him to lose his mind? Irritated with himself and the situation, he charged to his feet and grabbed the water bottle lying on the ground, intending to refill it for the chase.

  When he was a few feet from the spring he stopped short. She was already there, stripped to the waist, washing.

  He looked away, feeling like a voyeur, but then looked back, compelled by a force stronger than gallantry to watch her.

  What he saw caused his mouth to go dry and his pulse to quicken. She had tied up her hair with the neckline ribbon from the gown, which was now pushed down to her waist, leaving her torso bare.

  She knelt on the bank and soaped her arms, and as she raised each one her breasts rose, the nipples puckering in the cool morning air.

  Malik closed his eyes, his hands clenching into fists. He wanted to taste that silken skin, take those pebble hard nipples into his mouth, run his tongue into the valley between those creamy breasts.

  When she bent to rinse the white, vulnerable curve of her back exposed the cleft at the base of her spine, and he imagined caressing it, then pulling the gown from her slender limbs and taking her on the dewy grass.

  She turned to dry herself on his tunic and he stepped back, his heart pounding. He could not be found spying on her, he was too proud to endure even the thought of it, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the alluring scene. To his disappointment she loosened her hair and pulled up the gown, retying it at the neck. When he saw she was finished he retraced his steps, crashing through the underbrush loudly as he approached to alert her to his presence.

  She was waiting for him when he arrived, shaking out her damp hair.

  “Surprise,” she said. “I’m still here.”

  He said nothing, kneeling where she had lately been and filling the water bottle.

  “Didn’t you think I had run away?” she persisted, watching him immerse his head in the water and then come up, pushing back his wet hair.

  “I thought your memory of last night would keep you with me,” he lied, rubbing the stubble on his face.

  “Why don’t you grow a beard?” she suggested. “Wouldn’t that be a good disguise in your chosen profession?”

  He shot her a look and said darkly, “The Sultan’s men wear beards.”

  “But growing a beard would change your appearance,” she said logically.

  “So would shaving it off,” he replied, pulling his shirt over his head.

  “I think you’re arrogant,” Am
y said, looking away uncomfortably as he splashed his torso. “I think when you rob a train or sabotage one of the Sultan’s outposts you want people to know it’s you. You see yourself as Robin Hood.”

  “It’s the British papers who say that, not me,” he answered, rubbing his hair with the tunic she had discarded.

  “But I’ll bet you love reading about it,” she said dryly. “You’ve had a price on your head for years and no one has turned you in for the reward.”

  He stood and she watched the play of muscles in his arms and back as he donned the shirt again. “The Sultan is not popular,” he said. “Even those who are not actively working to throw off his yoke won’t betray someone who is.” He picked up his tunic and said, “Come on. It will take us most of the day to reach the camp, the horse will be slower with two on his back.”

  As she came closer to him he took the rope belt from his waist and said, “Hold out your hands.”

  “Oh, please don’t tie me up again,” she moaned.

  “I don’t want the sunlight to make you ambitious.” He drew the knot tight and asked, as if he had just thought of it, “What is your name?”

  “Amelia,” she said defeatedly, as he led her forward by a dangling piece of the rope. “Amelia Ryder.”

  “What does it mean?”

  She glanced at him. “Amelia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Beloved.”

  He murmured something under his breath.

  “What?” she said.

  “There is a word for that idea in Turkish.”

  “How do you say it?”

  “Nakshedil,” he replied.

  “Does it mean the same?”

  “Almost. In Turkish it is more poetic.”

  “In what way?”

  “The literal translation is ‘ornament of the heart.’”

  “How lovely,” she whispered.

  “There was a great Sultana by that name, a Westerner like you. She was French and her given name was Aimee de Rivery.”

  “Aimee means beloved in French,” Amelia said. “That is my name, you’re right.”

  He nodded. “Nakshedil was from Martinique, she was a cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife. She was captured by pirates on her way to a convent school in France and sold into the harem at Topkapi. She spent the rest of her life there.”