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He leaned over and kissed her temple. “Very shortly, cara, I shall have the opportunity of accusing you of an equal lack of modesty.” He took the hairbrush from her limp fingers and stroked it through her thick hair.
“Your shoulder has healed,” she said, her eyes upon his reflection in the mirror.
He flexed it unconsciously. “Yes. I’m pleased that you have done no permanent damage to my body.” He added with a wolfish grin, “I continue to enjoy, however, the temporary disability you force upon me.”
“No more of a disability, my lord, than your infamous party forced upon me.”
“Come, my love, you have admitted that you did enjoy yourself, at least for the most part.”
“Joseph,” she said suddenly, her voice heavy with accusation.
“Joseph, cara?” He laid the hairbrush on the table top and let his hands slip beneath her dressing gown to caress her shoulders.
She closed her eyes a moment, her body aching for his fingers to continue their movement, and leaned her head back against his belly. Long strands of golden hair weaved themselves into the thick black hair at his groin.
“Joseph?”
“Yes,” she said, and with great effort pulled herself away from him to rise.
“You are exquisite.”
She looked down and saw that her dressing gown had parted and her breasts were bare. She clutched the material together and turned her back to him, for her wretched eyes would not stay upon his face.
He laughed, walked to the huge bed, and stretched his full length upon his back. He patted a spot beside him. “Come here, Cassandra. I am not against a little conversation. Anticipation cannot but heighten pleasure.”
She sat down beside him for the simple reason that her traitorous eyes would be shielded from his body. She frowned a moment, remembering. “Joseph acted quite strangely the other day. I asked him why a Corsican would serve the Genoese, whom he hates. He told me that his loyalty was only to you. When I asked him why, he informed me that such a story was not for my innocent ears. As you know, my ears are not so innocent, my lord. I am now asking you.”
Her eyes were wide with sudden curiosity. The earl was silent for some moments as his fingers wrapped themselves around a thick tress of hair that fell upon his chest.
“Actually, Cassandra,” he said finally, “you are much too innocent. Joseph was right in not telling you.”
“I am not innocent. Do you not make love with me?”
“The fact that I have made you a woman, my dear, does not diminish your childlike innocence.”
She was on the point of hurling insults at him when it occurred to her that guile would serve her better. “Have you ever asked a child to assist you in your business dealings?”
He looked up at her through half-closed eyelids and shook his head.
“Ah. And would you have expected an innocent to suggest a solution that served so well?”
He held in a bubble of laughter. Since she was handling the reins so lightly, he did not want to discourage her. “Certainly not,” he agreed.
“Then, my lord, you yourself must conclude that I am no innocent, for you have agreed with my every point.”
“Very well, cara, you have convinced me. I will tell you.” He saw her gazing at him with suspicion, and hastened to say, having already censored the story in his mind, “ Actually, I saved Joseph from being castrated at the hands of the pirate, Khar El-Din.”
“What does castrated mean?”
“Castration, my dear, is the act of unmanning a man, the result being either death from bleeding or life as a eunuch.”
Cassie gazed at him open-mouthed, and swallowed convulsively. She was beginning to wonder if she indeed wanted to know the tale.
“Joseph made the incredibly stupid mistake of fancying himself in love with one of Khar El-Din’s harem girls. How he even got near enough to see her, I do not know. Although Joseph was high in the pirate’s favor, Khar El-Din was so furious when he discovered a note written by Joseph to the girl that he had him staked out on the palace floor, his intent to castrate Joseph himself. It just so happened that I myself was a guest at the time and had gotten to know Joseph somewhat. Although his offense was grave, I did not want him to meet such a gruesome fate, and interceded with Khar El-Din.” The earl paused a moment, at a loss as to how he would tell the rest of the story.
“Well?”
He saw no hope for it and continued in the most expressionless of voices, “Khar El-Din had purchased a young virgin from the Caucasus, captured by the Turks and sold at auction for an incredible sum. The pirate had such lust for her that he did not allow her time to forget her humiliation and accept him as her master, and as a result, she fought him like a tigress. He became obsessed with her, though each night he had to struggle with her to possess her. At the time I was visiting, she had been with him for some three months, and he confided to me that he was at his wits’ end. To Khar El-Din, a woman’s capitulation and pleasure at his hands was a point of honor, and he was so vexed he was considering having her throat slit. When I had the temerity to intercede for Joseph, Khar El-Din came up with a most ingenious wager.”
