AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lucinda’s gaze wandered the place. Travel. She’d so looked for this trip to visit her former school mate in a refined school for highborn ladies in England. The first big adventure of her life. Of course, the Earl and Countess of Lancefield had hesitated before they hired a chaperone and allowed their daughter to step into the ship that’d bring her here. Until this trip, she’d only devoured books and more books written by professional travellers, who strode the confines of the planet. Just to come back and write their accounts on the exotic lands beyond imagination. She’d also gobbled novels which placed the heroes in those far away countries. And dreamed of being able to go on such adventures herself. Now she stood here, in the middle of this cacophony of the street-market. She smiled inward. Said smile vanished as her gaze zeroed on a man along the narrow mediaeval street, not eight feet from her.
He was tall, so tall. Six four at least. His back half turned to her, as he talked to a vendor, midnight sleek hair shining bluish streaks in the sun. He wore a white long-sleeved tunic over loose trousers, which made his hair even blacker. The silky fabric fell smooth over large shoulders and the breeze made it cling to muscled chest and arms, highlighting his stubbed olive strong chin. Lucinda caught her breath. She’d never seen such an attractive powerful man in her life. Clearly not a Sicilian though from where he might be was a mystery. Egypt? Tunis? Morocco? Turkey? Adriana said merchants from every Mediterranean shore were common view in the island. Her father being a wealthy merchant himself, dealing with several other such tradesmen. Barbarians, the arrogant epithet the ton would call them.
The man turned and their eyes clashed. Under the sun, his were of a rich cognac colour, as if someone lifted the cognac against the fire. Dizziness assailed her. The feline quality of him meshed her senses and rational thought fled her poor person. He stared fixed at her, with an expression conveying that she was too undignified to be ogling him. Lucinda’s rebellious nature surfaced. She lifted her chin and stared down her upturned nose at him, heart pumping hot blood through her veins. Whether the high temperature of her insides was due to his arrogance or to her reaction to him, she’d never understand. Her cheeks flushed, but her gaze kept on his cognac-against-fire one. A glint of amusement surged in those magnificent almond-shaped irises. And then one side of his dark-olive, sensuous lips lifted in a disdaining grin. She hadn’t intended to break the eye contact, but instinctively, her attention clawed to his lips. And she suddenly wanted to know how they’d feel at the tips of her fingers.
Tariq Al-Fadih registered a rush of fire had assailed him when his eyes fell on hers. A franj no less. She was dressed in all those pitiful layers of fabric, so inappropriate for such climate. Her unhealthily pale skin protected by a bonnet, but the chignon rolled on the nape of her neck hinted of a hair the colour of dried dates, glossy and silky. Even the squeezing, useless layers of tasteless fabric wouldn’t disguise her full breasts, narrow waist and pert hips. The fire zinged down to the one place he wasn’t supposed to acknowledge. This was when he stared at her eyes. Perdition. Utter perdition. Green. Green as pepper-mint leaves. Big, expre
ssive and haughty. Unwelcome spears of desire hit him when her pepper-mint eyes fell on his mouth. Because then his attention found her full rosy lips and vivid images of what those lips might do to him sprouted in his mind. His lopsided grin was at the absurdity of such ideas. The most probable was they’d never see each other again.
Tariq found himself under pressing commitments, he had a Caravan to lead and he must conclude the business which brought him to Sicily, to begin with, he mused. No time to waste on a franj. He learned the term while being taught about the Crusades by his Scottish tutor and got used to label Europeans thus.
European women were not for him, he kept on musing as he forced himself to detach from her allure and walk down the market. When the time came, he’d choose a good girl from his own country to marry. He might even choose two or three, or more. But he thought one would be ideal after all. A girl who would feel at home in the desert and would praise him for his sumptuous villa in
Tunis. Not a petulant woman, who looked like a delicate flower and acted defiant as a djin, a genius.
“Oh, sorry, Lucinda!” Adriana came frolicking toward the English rose. “The dates’ vendor proved hard to haggle with!” Adriana was about the same height as her friend, five two. Unlike her friend from the north, she displayed a glowing olive skin and smiling dark eyes.
Even though her friend’s father, Pietro, made his way as a rich merchant, his family came from landed gentry, being he the youngest sibling in this family. If that hadn’t been the case, Adriana would’ve never been accepted in the school where Lucinda, a member of the ton, received her polished education.
“Never mind, Adriana.” Lucinda couldn’t help the absent smile, the stranger in the market still blurring her mind. “You’ve told me that haggling is the only way of getting around in a street-market in Sicily and I believe you.”
“I hope Mrs Croft won’t mind our long absence.” Her friend said light-hearted, referring to Lucinda’s chaperone, who’d pleaded an indisposition and had stayed at the villa.
They walked side by side in friendly silence. Lucinda enjoyed the surrounding scenery, but a certain rich cognac eyes wouldn’t leave her mind’s eye.
At night, Lucinda’s imagination wove the most far-fetching reveries about a tall, dark, with a perfect aquiline nose stranger. Relief flooded her at the fact she wouldn’t need to face him again to drawn in a bottomless sea of emotions coming from she did not know where.
Tariq woke up early the next morning. He’d deliver the goods he’d brought from Tunis to the buyers and load back in his ship those he purchased to sell in his country. It’d be a long hard-working day. And he welcomed it. Physical strain would be useful. Maybe he’d sleep without being pursued by the image of the franj woman from the market.
Besides, he had a… retribution to deliver. Pietro Graziani. The man who’d cheated him in business for years and stolen not only money, but dignity and reliability. Tariq prided himself in building a reputation of transparency and honesty among the people with whom he had dealings. Pietro Graziani strove to damage this reputation to cover his own fraudulent practices. It’d taken Tariq a long time to rebuild his reputation and clean up the effects of Graziani on his dealings. Now he made himself safe again and well-established enough to travel here and cross a few T’s.
After breakfast, they found Mrs Croft sitting under the shade of a centenary tree in the garden reading. She lifted her eyes and offered a distracted smile. “So you girls are up at last.” Harriet Croft, a widow in her fifties, a little too austere now and then, but good-natured. Her recommendation letters were spotless, being this the reason the Lancefields hired the older woman. She stood from the chaise she sat on, her grey dress wrapping her plump figure.
Dressed to go about his business, Adriana’s father, a short, rounded belly man with piercing small dark eyes in his sixties, came out of the house. He smiled and kissed Adriana in the cheek. “So, what are the ladies planning for today?
Lucinda smiled back at him when he encompassed her in the conversation, a trifle tight about the old man. It was as if a lot more went behind his small black stare. She shook it away though. No clear reason for her conceiving so. He was a warm father to her daughter, compensating for Adriana’s loss of her mother five years ago.
“We are going to the ancient Greek ruins in Ortagia, papa!”
It was a short ride from the villa and the pleasant weather seemed perfect for such explorations. Lucinda was excited to visit the remnants of the magnificent amphitheatre.
***
Mrs Croft, Adriana and Lucinda rode back from Ortagia and they’d agreed to stop by at the city Centre for a stroll along the sea shore. The housekeeper at the villa provided them with delicious paninis, sandwiches, which they’d sat and ate at the amphitheatre.
This morning at the ruin gave Lucinda a sense of fulfilment. The elaborate Greek architecture, the dazzling and so different scenery around her made her happy to be able to travel so far from England.
They got back in the carriage and it rolled away, she watched avid as the ruins passed by the window. She loved home, of course. But since her coming out three years ago, in London, a growing disappointment broached in her. Society and the ton felt frivolous and superficial. The talks and goings at tea parties, soirees and balls pointless and hollow. She held herself when the carriage bumped. All she observed were those irrationally vain ladies, playing their looks to catch husbands who weren’t appealing in the least. Those self-important noblemen stood light-years away from attracting her. In every occasion, frustration and a gilded-cage sense invaded her. She’d grown up in the country, where life uncurled more authentic. A dreadful cold came inside her at the possibility she would have to choose a husband when she returned.
The carriage driver shouted something in Italian to the horses and they caught on speed. She’d received a few offers and her parents in constant press for her to decide. She bought time with this trip to Sicily, but when she sailed back, there’d be no postponing it anymore. Blast it! She cursed, rebellious, her heart compressed in a tiny tea tin box. To realise she’d have to keep her heart cramped in it her whole life took her to near desperation. It did not matter, as a daughter of the peerage, she must fulfil her duties.
The ruins stood far back now, erecting against the blue sky, as Adriana and Mrs Croft chatted in cheerful amusement. Most marriages she heard of were cold and indifferent, she sighed. No husband, bad as he might be, would risk ruin by abusing a high society lady. A man who managed to marry into the peerage must consider himself lucky, for he’d be socially elevated. No man in his right mind would cast away the privileges and advantages of such a match. So Lucinda had nothing to fear, but a wintry grey life of a married lady stretching endless ahead of her. And it was the exact passionless life that gave her the shrills.
The carriage stopped and the nudge of it brought her back from her musings. The three of them alighted and began strolling along the paved sea shore, a pleasant wind blowing from the sea refreshed the warmness of the afternoon sun.
Distracted, Lucinda undid the ribbon that held her bonnet to readjust it. A few yards away a tall man drew her attention. The man from the market. Unmistakable, as she spotted his glossy dark hair, his aquiline nose and his muscled body. Her heart skipped a beat and a cold wave of emotion wiggled in her.
He didn’t wear his tunic today, but a shirt, breeches and boots. The open-necked shirt with its sleeves rolled up exhibited olive strong forearms. She froze to the spot and never realised her mouth slacked agape. He looked magnificent carrying a medium wooden box to a shop. Why must this man draw her in such inevitable manner? He placed the box on the floor and gyrated his head; oh dear, his absolute, incredible, glorious cognac eyes, flashed on her. And the cold waves inside her transformed in a furnace washing over her face and bosom. These legs of hers wouldn’t move for the life of her.
