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Her uneasy voice broke into his thoughts. “You wonder,” she said, “why such a man should go to the great trouble of killing my father and trying to abduct me.”
“I wonder about a great many things,” Varian said.
“I don’t understand, either. He might choose from hundreds of women for his harem. Women brought up to wear the veil. Beautiful women whose blood is not mixed. Still, if Ismal imagined he must have me, it would have been enough merely to steal me. Jason did not believe in blood payment, and he could not take me back to England once my virtue was gone. Here, the man is the guilty one, and must make amends. There, the woman is shamed.”
In her case, it would have been far worse, Varian thought. Even had Jason actually wed her mother, English law recognized no marriage rites but those of the Anglican Church. Esme would still be considered, technically, a bastard, and society would leap eagerly upon the technicality. Illegitimate and despoiled, she’d be a pariah.
“That, unfortunately, is accurate,” he answered. “In the circumstances, Jason would be obliged to consent to the marriage.”
“As Ismal knows. He’s been educated abroad. He’s well aware my father could do little against him. There was no need to kill Jason,” she said tightly. “I would have gone willingly, had I known his life was in jeopardy. Many women must endure worse husbands than Ismal, for smaller reasons. It would not be so terrible a sacrifice for me.”
It seemed terrible to Varian, to imagine this fiery young nymph stifled in a harem. Still, women endured worse, he knew, even in England. Among the upper orders, families formed alliances for land, money, political power. Sons as well as daughters were merely pawns.
Even when they chose for themselves, love rarely entered their calculations.
Yet Varian was certain this girl would have wed Satan himself to protect her father. What sort of man had Jason been, to have spawned such a daughter, to have merited such a love?
“I suppose you might do worse,” he said. “Besides, you’d be sure to have the mighty Ismal running at your beck and call in a matter of hours.”
She made a moue of distaste. “I have no wish for a slave. I meant only that I could contrive as other women do, and find happiness in my children. If God is generous, I may have many.”
Varian blinked. “You want to be a mother?”
“Yes. What is so shocking about that?”
“What’s so shocking?” he echoed. “Good grief, Esme, your entire existence is one ghastly shock after another. You’ve got men shooting at you, trying to abduct you, and English lords falling unconscious at your feet. You haul foreigners from shipwrecks and drag them, singlehanded, through a swamp the size of Australia. A few hours ago, I watched you challenge half a town to battle and saw your knife pointed at my own heart. Where in blazes do you expect to find time to bear children?” he demanded. “What poor devil is going to hold you still long enough to get one on you?”
“I didn’t mean now,” she said patiently.
“I’m vastly relieved to hear it,” he said. “Being the only poor devil in the immediate vicinity, I was, naturally, alarmed. Not that I shouldn’t like to oblige, my dear, but I’m afraid you’ve worn me out.”
Her face blazed crimson. “I did not mean you!”
“Oh.” Varian looked away. “Yes, that does ease my mind. Because if you had meant me, and you had meant now…well, we know how it is when you make your mind up to something, Esme. If twenty strong men couldn’t change your mind today, how is one weak-willed, exhausted fellow to gainsay you this night?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. The crimson subsided and her expression grew thoughtful. “You are provoked with me,” she said. “That is why you make immodest jokes.”
“There is that.”
“I made a great turmoil for you,” she went on contritely. “Now they know I’m not dead, you worry that Ismal will send his men after us again.”
“Among other concerns.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “But it is done, efendi.”
“I know.”
“You should not trouble yourself. Ismal will not dare attack us now.”
“No, certainly not. It won’t be anything I might reasonably expect. It will come from nowhere, some unimaginable horror.”
“You worry too much,” she said. “You make deep lines in your forehead.”
“My hair is turning gray,” he said. “I can feel it.”
“No, it is not.” She shifted her position, to make room for him, then patted the rough pillow beside her. “Hajde. Come.”
Varian stared at the small hand resting on the pillow. “I beg your pardon?”
“Put your head down,” she said. “I will make the lines go away, and your worries as well.”
Varian felt a halfhearted tremble of anticipation, but that was all. He was truly worn out, body and spirit. She may have done all the work, but being a helpless bystander had proved far more taxing. She was in no danger from him tonight, and knew it.
Varian lay down and closed his eyes. Only for a moment, he told himself. Then he must leave.
“I will tell you about the mountains,” she said softly. Her cool hands stroked his brow. “Beautiful, reaching to the heavens, where the eagles soar, our fathers.”
Her fingers began to knead, and tiny streams of pleasure sped through him.
“Cool and clear, the water rushes down, bathing the white mountain side, laughing as it goes.”
His mind cleared and cooled, too, though he was warm under her touch, and the warmth sank into his aching muscles.
“Your hands are beautiful,” he murmured.
He felt a pause—half a heartbeat—before she continued stroking, kneading, soothing.
“It rushes to meet the forest below,” she went on, “where the breeze laughs among the fir trees and wakes the songbirds.”
Her voice faded to murmuring pines, far away. It was her hands that made soft music, while Varian slipped deeper into a darkness like velvet, a darkness that enveloped him with a warm gladness, astonishingly like peace.
Esme watched him sleep, his finely sculptured features touched by ghostly shadows in the flickering light of the single oil lamp. S
he ought to put the light out. She ought to leave, make her bed elsewhere in the small room at least. She could not lie beside him this night. She dared not. With one act of generosity, he had shattered her defenses.
She’d needed him—though she’d have cut her own throat before admitting it—and he’d come. He’d stood by her, against half the town, though he owed her nothing, not even loyalty.
He’d stood and watched while she tended the ugly wound, though the sight must have sickened his sensitive nature, unused to hardship, violence, ugliness. But so it had been from the start. She’d shown him nothing else.
She should not have made him take this journey with her. He didn’t understand her people. To him, Albania was nothing but ugliness and brutality, and she had made him endure it.
Esme looked down at her hands, which were trembling. Beautiful, he’d said. Yet they were brown and hard. Good hands for work, for fighting, but not beautiful. Never.
What would he think if he ever learned why she was taking him to Tepelena, why she subjected him to so much trouble? What would he think if he guessed that the hands he called beautiful would soon be stained with a man’s blood?
Dear God, let him never learn the truth. Above all, let this man never guess how his generosity had gouged her heart and poisoned it with shameful wishes.
The oil lamp sputtered and smoked, and the air of the room seemed to grow heavy, an oppressive mass that throbbed with the pounding of her heart. Esme wanted to flee, far away, where she could breathe easily again, her spirit light, without burden.
That was impossible. Nevertheless, she could and must escape his lean body’s beckoning nearness. She had only to rise and cross the room. She reached to draw the blanket over him.
He stirred and breathed a sigh. His eyes opened, dark gleaming pools, and his mouth curved into a sleepy smile.
“Your hands are beautiful,” he said softly. Then he caught her trembling fingers and brought them to his lips.
His mouth brushed her knuckles, and her pulse raced in answer.
No. Her lips formed the words, but no sound came out.
No, again, as he turned her hand over, and once more, no sound. She must speak, or admit her shame, but she was shamed already, for she couldn’t utter the simple word.
