Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ a pitcher and a goblet, a small book left open, and discarded on the floor lay a pair of green open-backed lady’s slippers, but no sign of the reader who’d left them. Yet Caro’s hopes rose. If there was already a lady in Hamil’s house—a lady frivolous enough to wear embroidered green slippers with red heels—then perhaps his interest in Caro would be only as a hostage.

      Two servants, a thin man in a turban and an older woman, rushed to Hamil, bowing low enough to touch their foreheads to the floor before him. He waved his hand impatiently for them to rise and gave them orders in a language Caro didn’t understand. The woman turned to her and bowed, though not so low as she had to her master, and nodded vigorously.

      “Abidzu will take ye to your room,” explained Hamil. “She will bathe ye, and see that ye are dressed more befitting your station. Ye may go wherever ye please in my house, but if ye try to leave without my permission, ye shall be punished.”

      “So I am in fact your prisoner?” asked Caro tartly, and immediately regretted it. What was she doing, baiting him like that?

      But to her surprise, Hamil looked disconcerted, not angry, as he glanced away, running his thumb through the thicket of his beard. “In my home ye shall want for nothing, m’lady,” he repeated. “Ye shall have every comfort.”

      “Except my freedom?”

      He ignored her question. “Tonight, when ye have bathed and rested, ye will dine with me. Abidzu will bring ye to my rooms.”

      He turned swiftly, his boot heels echoing across the stone floor as he left with his men. Caro sighed, rubbing her fingers into her temples. She didn’t want to dine with Hamil tonight, especially not in his rooms, but there was probably no way she could refuse without earning that promised punishment, whatever it might be. Could it be so much worse than being alone with the man in his bedchamber?

      Wearily she followed Abidzu up the stairs to a room that overlooked the courtyard, a room that was clearly intended for favored guests, not prisoners. Rich carpets were laid across the marble floor, and the walls were inlaid with painted porcelain tiles. For sleeping, there was a kind of raised platform with a mattress, coverlet, and cushions in the center of the room. Besides a large mirror on the wall and two low chests, the room’s only other furnishings were two old-fashioned English armchairs that looked as out of place as Caro herself felt. She went to the single arched window, its shutters thrown back to catch the breezes from the water.

      She leaned outward, looking to the fortress at the southern corner of the city’s wall. As a warning, Hamil had pointed it out to her as the prison for infidels. If Frederick still lived, if Jeremiah’s friend David Kerr were still a captive, then they would both be kept there. Whenever she thought of Frederick, he was always in one of the comfortable, elegant rooms at Blackstone House, and she could not imagine him surviving two years in that bleak, windowless fortress. Perhaps all the warnings from others had been right. Perhaps he was already long beyond her help, and this entire disastrous voyage had been nothing more than a pointless chase to rescue a dead man.

      She looked to the harbor for the xebec, Jeremiah’s prison. She had done that to him, just as she’d been the cause of Frederick’s capture, and overwhelmed by the odds against the men she loved, her eyes filled with tears.

      Yet tears would solve nothing, help no one, and she forced herself to try to think instead. Three men, three prisoners. She, too, was a prisoner, but one bound only by threats, not shackles. If any of them were ever to return to a Christian world, it was up to her to find a way. Neither Frederick nor Jeremiah would like having their fates decided by a woman, but she had no choice. There was, quite simply, no one else.

      Jeremiah had promised her everything would be all right, and Jeremiah would never lie to her. He loved her too much. Somehow they would be reunited. Of course everything would be all right.

      Somehow…

      Caro closed her eyes as Abidzu drew the comb through her wet hair to help dry it. She had been bathed in perfumed water by Abidzu, all the salt from the sea scrubbed away, and in place of the rough clothing of the Neapolitan serving girl, she now wore a loose robe of blue striped silk banded with gold braid.

      Yet instead of relaxing her, Abidzu’s attentions had only reminded Caro of what Hamil would expect from her in return. No matter what he’d said, she couldn’t believe that all of his guests were treated so indulgently, and as Abidzu finished braiding her hair, her apprehension grew.

      This could be her first step toward freedom, the first time she must depend on her own resources to defend herself. Though Hamil’s men had taken the pistol Jeremiah had given her, there was sure to be a knife at dinner that she could hide away in her skirts for later, when she might need it. Her fingers tightened on the carved arms of the chair as she remembered the hungry way Hamil had looked at her on the xebec.

      “Abidzu,” said a woman’s voice curtly in accented English. “Leave us at once.”

      Caro’s eyes flew open, and she turned about in her chair as Abidzu hurried from the room, bowing low to the two beautiful young women who stood in the doorway. The taller one was nearly as fair as Caro herself, with dark eyes in startling contrast to her blond hair, and a full, ripe figure beneath a silk robe identical to the one Caro was wearing. The other had hair as black and shining as a raven’s wing, drawn up under a silver fillet to show the hoops she wore in her ears. She stood with her hands clasped over her belly, rounded with the first months of pregnancy, and watched Caro with shy, heavy-lidded eyes.

      Her gaze intent on Caro, the blond woman lifted her hand to smooth back her hair, and a score of silver bangles clattered down her forearm. “Are you the English noblewoman that came this day with Hamil Al-Ameer?”

      “Of course she is, Bella,” whispered the smaller woman, still loudly enough for Caro to hear. “Who else could she be? But look at her! What could Hamil be thinking of? She must be as old as my mother!”

      Slowly Caro rose to her feet and walked around the chair to face them. She bit back a retort to the comment about her age. They were scarcely more than girls, and to them she probably did seem like an ancient old crone.

      “I am the Countess of Byfield, yes,” she said. “Who are you?”

      The smaller woman sighed wistfully. “Hamil didn’t tell you?”

      “Hamil is a busy man, Leilah,” said Bella impatiently. “He can’t do everything.”

      “But Bella—”

      “Hush!” Visibly straightening her shoulders like a soldier before a battle, Bella looked back to Caro. “We are the wives of Hamil Al-Ameer,” she said, “and if you wish to become his concubine, you must now speak to us.”

       Chapter Sixteen

      “His concubine?” Caro shook her head in disbelief as she looked from one girl to the other, and very nearly laughed from the sheer preposterousness of the situation. “Is it the custom here for a wife—or wives—to interview a husband’s mistress?”

      Leilah flushed and stared down at the floor, but Bella’s brown eyes met Caro’s without flinching. “It is not an interview, Countess of Byfield. If Hamil chooses to keep you, that is his decision.”

      “Believe me,” said Caro dryly, “it will be as much my decision as Hamil’s. СКАЧАТЬ