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Alexandra's Albanian was not very fluent, but then, it was a difficult language. Papa theorised that it was traceable to the ancient Illyrian tongue, preserved, despite repeated foreign conquests, out of sheer obstinacy. For instance, while the Turks had held the country in an undependable state of submission since the death of the great Albanian patriot Skanderbeg, in the fifteenth century, only a handful of Turkish words had been absorbed. Albanian was Albanian still, and its inflexions were Alexandra's despair. Nonetheless, though her speech could send her woman-servant, the jovial Lefka, into fits of laughter, Alexandra's understanding was quite good. Certainly she comprehended enough to follow the arguments going on in the room above.
The debate had continued all day, and their voices carried easily down to the shed where she waited, because they hadn't troubled to lower them. The father demanded that the English girl be returned to her father. The brothers shouted about shame and disgrace. Even the mother pleaded with her favourite, her youngest son, while the other women of the household complained that the English girl was a witch. Had she not been forced to leave Tepelena because she made the young men crazy?
So the battle had raged while the English witch sat on the dirt floor of a shed that smelted strongly of goats, and tried to understand why men were so pig-headed. There was her normally logical Papa forcing two incompatible and unenthusiastic persons into marriage. Here was Dhimitri trying to force her to marry him. How on earth had she imagined Aunt Clem could help her out of such a pickle?
Morning heated up into afternoon, and afternoon darkened into dusk while the family battled on. The odds were against Dhimitri, but he was spoiled and headstrong. A while ago, he'd raved that if his family would not accept Skandara as his wife, he'd go away with her to live among strangers. He'd go, he shouted, to Pogradec, and make his living by fishing in the lake. His mother shrieked. His father screamed at him to go and be damned, and the others made a deafening chorus. Then, suddenly, everything was still. She heard new voices break the silence. Her spirits rose, only to sink again. They were not familiar voices.
What if Papa and Randolph had been hurt...or killed, all because of a young man she'd thought was content to gaze adoringly at her as he sang his mournful little love songs? Who'd have guessed he'd dare abduct the daughter of Ali Pasha's honoured guest?
Evidently he respected the great Pasha as little as he did the mourning Alexandra still wore. Lefka had promised that would keep the men at a respectful distance, but it hadn't.
Now nothing short of a miracle could save Alexandra from marrying the hot-headed youth. She'd be treated as a servant, a pack animal. She'd have to submit to his hot, eager embraces—and have his children! God help her, she'd kill herself first. She'd throw herself from a ledge. In Ojirokastra, after all, there were ledges aplenty.
A more delicate female than Alexandra Ashmore might have given way to tears. Certainly she had reason enough, but she refused to cry despite the horrible ache in her throat. She was wishing for her pistol—shooting herself was preferable to hurtling down from a precipice—when the door creaked open.
It was one of Dhimitri's brothers. She didn't know which, there being seven plus innumerable sisters, all of whom looked alike. Dhimitri stood out mainly because he was the giant of the family and understood a little English.
This brother was ordering her to follow him.
He led her up into the house proper and on to the large, sparsely furnished room where the family was accustomed to gather and were all gathered now: parents, siblings, spouses, and diverse aunts and uncles. There was, moreover, another Albanian she didn't know, speaking in the dialect of the north, and another man whose hair was sun-bleached gold. He must also come from the north, where so much of the population was fair, though his costume resembled nothing she'd seen before, north or south. For a moment, in the room's dim light, he seemed a golden Macedonian, like those who centuries ago had swept down from the mountains. As he turned his tanned, beautifully sculpted face towards her, she noted that his eyes were very unusual. Amber, with a slight upward slant, they reminded her of the eyes of a cat.
They were watchful, too, like a cat's eyes. As they lit upon her, the expression turned to one of joyful recognition, and she was astonished to hear him cry in cultured British accents, "Alexandra, my love, you are safe."
Before she had time to think how to react, he crossed the room, threw his arms around her, and crushed her to him. The suddenness of the onslaught made her gasp, but sensing quickly the role she was to play, she took her lead from him and returned his hug with feigned enthusiasm. His ironic smile made her blush as he drew away from her to gesture towards their suspicious audience.
"My darling, I have been trying to explain to these good people that I am your own Basil, your betrothed, come at last to take you home to be my wife. The trouble is Gregor cannot make himself understood, and that angry young man over there"—he indicated an enraged Dhimitri, now being held back by three brothers—"seems to think that you are his intended bride. Would you, my sweet, be kind enough to explain to them how it is with us?"
Though it was a tad daunting to have what seemed like a hundred pairs of suspicious eyes fixed upon her, she began, in Albanian even more halting than usual. She was not quite sure what she said—nor were the members of the clan, as they tried to puzzle out her bizarre grammatical constructions—but it was something about being promised to each other for years.
Though the others appeared satisfied with this incoherent babble, a red-faced Dhimitri demanded to know why her father claimed she was promised to that other one. He meant, of course, Mr. Burnham. In response, Alexandra promptly invented some nonsense about Basil's early poverty, and how he'd gone to seek his fortune. Basil smiled as his dragoman translated this with some difficulty, for she told the truth, all unwittingly. She went on to explain how she'd promised to wait for him. Her Papa wanted her to marry Mr. Burnham, but she didn't want Mr. Burnham. Now, she told them, as she gazed up at Basil with what she hoped was a look of adoration, her own true love had come for her as he'd promised. There was more murmuring, as the assembled audience struggled with her garbled prose, and then there were sounds of agreement.
Her would-be fiancé now turned to her with a look of such passionate longing that she was momentarily breathless.
"I think, my love," he said softly, "that the parents are happy to believe in our star-crossed love. But Dhimitri wants convincing." As though unable to contain his feelings another moment, Basil wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.
It was not the make-believe kiss Alexandra was expecting, but a long, deep, dizzyingly thorough kiss that, when he'd finally done, left her stunned, overwarm, and breathing very hard.
Basil, meanwhile, was persuading himself that Dhimitri was still skeptical. Miss Ashmore was an uncommonly attractive young woman, surprisingly curvaceous under that shapeless black rag she wore. Though her chestnut curls were matted and her face was smudged with dirt and she did smell faintly of goats, he tightened his arms around her, preparatory to supplying more conclusive evidence.
Dhimitri's anguished cry stopped him. “Mjaft!” the young man wailed. “Mjaft! Mem dhe largoju prefmeje!”
Basil looked at Alexandra questioningly.
"He says, 'Enough,' and tells you to take me and go."
"That's a mercy," was the muttered reply.
With one arm still about Miss Ashmore's lovely shoulders, Basil hurried her out of the house.
Chapter Two
"I'm sorry I could not procure another horse on such short notice, Miss Ashmore. You'll have to ride with me. But I promise I won't fling you across the saddle."
Too emotionally drained to reply, she let him lift her onto the mount. They rode for some minutes with Gregor behind them, before she recovered sufficiently to ask where they were going.
"To meet up with your father. This business called for cool heads, and Gregor persuaded him to await us in the next village. I'm afraid that means we've
a night's ride ahead of us. At any rate, they're all safe—including your horse. Not that I'd have any objections to continuing our present mode of travel the whole way to Prevesa."
His breath was warm at her neck, and his low, coaxing tone made her feel a little anxious. It was dark, and both these men were strangers. But she was too tired to be truly frightened.
"At this point, sir, I shouldn't care whether I was flung across the saddle or trudging behind. So long as I can get free of this horrid town." She turned to look at him. "Who are you, anyway?"
"Your fiancé, silly girl."
"Yes." She brushed this away. "That was very clever of you, but who are you really—and what brings you to Gjirokastra? The English rarely go beyond the coastal cities."
"Ah, yes. The country, according to Gibbon, ‘within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America.’”
"You've read Gibbon?" she asked, in some surprise.
"Yes, but I got my quote from Childe Harold. If it wasn't what Gibbon said or Gibbon who said it, we must blame Byron for yet something else. But that is neither here nor there. My name—in answer to one question—is Basil Trevelyan. I am here—in answer to the other question—because Aunt Clem told me I must come and get you. And Aunt Clem, as you must know, is always to be obeyed."
"Aunt Clem? You mean Lady Bertram?"
"Yes."
"Good heavens! She sent you all the way here—but I never meant—" She bit her lip. She had meant—or hoped—after all, that Lady Bertram would perform a miracle. And here it—or he—was.
"It was not so great a distance, Miss Ashmore. I happened to be in Greece—or what one assumes is Greece, though you can hardly tell nowadays."
"So Lady Bertram wrote to you. Then you must know something of my story."
"Oh, yes." He didn't think it worth mentioning that her letter now reposed in the pocket of his worn cloak. "Of course, I was puzzled concerning what I could do to help you. My skills do not lie in coaxing parents out of marital arrangements for their offspring. But I have, as Aunt Clem knows, a weakness for intrigue, and the challenge appealed to me. So, here I am."
Though it was rather embarrassing that he knew of her plight, her sense of humour soon came to the fore. It was a ridiculous plight, was it not? With a rueful smile she said, "Still, you did not expect, I think, to have to rescue me from abductors."
