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“A faun,” she supplied. “Or a satyr. Or perhaps like Eros. But no, you are too old for that—”
“Eros will do nicely. At least you attribute to me some sort of godlike quality—”
“He was blind.”
Varian gave up and, laughing to himself, put out the candles. When he came, still smiling, to the last—the one nearest the bed—he paused to look at her. She lay curled on her side, snuggled deep beneath the blankets. The candlelight drew fiery threads in her hair. A part of him wanted to stroke her hair. Another part wanted, absurdly, to tuck her in. He did neither.
“Good night, madam,” he said.
“Naten e mirs, Varian Shenjt Gjergj,” she answered.
The Albanian words fell upon his ears soft as a caress. Varian hesitated a moment, then resolutely turned, put out the candle, and headed for his lonely pallet on the floor.
Chapter Six
Though Lushnja was supposedly a mere ten or so miles south, Varian’s party was unable to reach it by sunset. The nearest bridge across the Shkumbi was some miles west of Rrogozhina. They crossed minutes before the ramshackle structure was swept into the river.
Once that horror was behind them, they faced a pathless wasteland. The rains having obliterated the road, they had to detour farther east, close to the low hills. Trapped on the fringes of this marshy coastal plain, the small group progressed by inches. In the downpour, even with horses, they advanced no more rapidly than they had done previously on foot.
At present, however, Varian barely noticed his physical surroundings. His mind was fixed on other matters, such as the men who formed his escort. A less reassuring lot was difficult to imagine.
Esme had insisted they were good, reliable fighters. Certainly they appeared fierce enough: tall and sinewy, their mustachioed countenances dark and leathery under the hoods of filthy cloaks. Their rough manner and low, terse speech was scarcely calculated to win an Englishman’s trust, however.
In their midst, Esme seemed smaller and more vulnerable than ever, terribly in need of protection. That they didn’t seem to suspect she was a female was in no way comforting, given the practices common in these parts. Varian thought the men watched her too closely. He had a strong suspicion what was in their minds, though she clearly didn’t.
It was in his thoughts too much for comfort. Admittedly, she was a lovely child. He’d recognized that even before he’d discerned the alluring subtlety of her nymph’s body. Her sun-burnished complexion was smooth and soft, her full, ripe mouth softer yet, begging to be kissed. But that was the whole trouble. She was a child, and Varian St. George had no taste for children, and therefore no business thinking about her mouth or any part of her.
Only he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Repeatedly his mind thrust before him the disquieting moment when he’d caressed her foot and gazed into the beguiling green depths of her eyes, and felt the first treacherous stirrings of desire.
Alarming as it was, Varian assured himself, the attraction was easily explained. He’d not touched a woman in weeks. This, coupled with a miserable journey in filthy weather through a hellish terrain, had disordered his mind. He perceived Esme as a woman because he wanted one, and she was the only female at hand.
Nonetheless, a temporary celibacy would not kill him. He was a gentleman and, while admittedly dissolute, certainly possessed sufficient honor to keep his hands to himself. Unfortunately, he much doubted the same could be said of the men escorting them.
When at last they stopped for the night and the Albanian men began to set up camp, Varian took her aside.
“I think it will be best if you continue sharing my tent,” he said.
Seeing rebellion smolder in her eyes and the stubborn jut of her chin, Varian added, “Arguing with me is a waste of breath. You’ll only tell me how illogical and foolish I am. But being so, I’m not likely to heed a word, am I?”
“If you are foolish,” she said with exaggerated patience, “how can you know what is best?”
“I said I thought, not that I knew,” he answered even more patiently. “Perhaps what I think is idiotic, but my dear girl, it’s the best I can do.”
She considered this, her meditative expression a comical replica of Percival’s when puzzled by a geological specimen.
“I see,” she said after a moment. “It is much like last night. You have some deranged belief that you must guard and protect me. You see danger here, where it is not, just as you saw no danger in Durres, where it was. Y’Allah, you are so confused. I begin to think your mother dropped you on your head when you were a babe.”
Varian kept his face straight. “One ought to be patient with the mentally unbalanced.”
“For my patience with you, I should be made a saint,” she retorted. “All while we travel, it is either complaint or sarcasm. As though your disapproval will change the weather, or magically rebuild the roads the rain has washed away.”
He had been grumpy, Varian realized. Being displeased with himself, he’d expressed displeasure with everything else.
“I’m dreadfully spoiled,” he said. “I’ve lived a sheltered life, I’m afraid, and an idle one. Traveling in your country is hard work, and I’ve never even done a day’s easy work in my life.”
“Aye, and such a man thinks he can protect me. Never have I heard anything so crazy.” She began to move away.
Varian lightly caught her arm to stop her. “Crazy or not, I want you to stay away from the others,” he said. “If they observe you closely, they’ll surely discover you’re not what you seem. We’ll eat together in my tent, and there you’ll spend the night. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”
She shook her head.
“Esme,” he whispered harshly, “while I may be spoiled, I am larger than you, and I am quite serious about this.”
“I understand, efendi.”
“Yet you refuse?”
She hesitated, then nodded and clicked her tongue.
What in blazes was the problem? As he was trying to devise a more convincing approach, he caught the glint of amusement in her eyes.
“May I ask what you find so humorous?” he asked. “Is a flea crawling up my nose?”
She nodded. Though he’d felt nothing, he instantly let go of her to brush at his nose.
“Four days in my country and you never noticed this simple thing,” she said. “When we shake our
heads, that is ‘Yes.’ When we nod, that is ‘No.’ Did you not say yourself we were backward? So it is.” She laughed, mightily amused at her wit.
“I see you mean to make me the butt of your jokes the whole long way to Tepelena,” he said. “I must resign myself to playing the fool—and I a great English bej of tiie pashalik of Buckinghamshire. I can only hope a bej is some sort of nobleman, and not the Albanian word for jackass.”
This, too, tickled her, and as she dashed away to collect her belongings, she was still laughing.
Their supper was the most amiable they’d shared so far. Evidently still amused by the earlier exchange, she wasn’t so quick as usual to take offense at every word. This night they dined on fowl, rice, olives, bread, and a malodorous cheese, but Varian made no complaint. He knew he’d behaved disagreeably during the day and had best not try her patience further. She might throw a temper fit and storm off to her countrymen.
Fortunately, a few swallows of the poisonous grape whiskey they called raki made the rest go down more easily. Brewed, apparently, in the infernos of Hades, it was a demonic liquid fire, more potent even than Italian grappa. The men gulped it down with their meals as though it were spring water. At present, the raucous song and laughter outside told Varian they were drunk, and Petro drunkest of all, no doubt. All the more reason to keep her away from them, Varian told himself righteously.
“What are they singing? “he asked.
Esme had cleared away the remains of their meal. She stood now by the tent opening, the flap in her hand as she gazed out. The rain had dwindled to a drizzle.
“It is the tale of Ali Pasha’s conquest of Prevesa,” she said. “He’s crazy sometimes, but a good general.”
The tenor voices seemed to wail a funeral chant. That must be the Eastern influence, he thought, with its preference for the minor key.
She let the flap fall back into place and moved toward the center of the tent, to the rug where he reclined against a low stack of blankets. “Do you want me to translate it?” she asked as she dropped gracefully into a cross-legged position opposite him.
