The Pleasure of Your Kiss

  “Do you even know how to iron?”

  Her smooth brow puckered in a scowl. “No, but if I can play Bach’s Fantasia in A minor on the clavichord and conjugate Latin verbs in the first-person singular of the perfect indicative active, I’m certain I could learn. We shall sup on bread and cheese every night and read Byron and Molière together by candlelight.” Her voice deepened a husky octave, granting him an enticing glimpse of the woman she would soon become, the woman she believed she already was. “And after the candles burn down, you can make mad, passionate love to me until dawn.”

  During her ardent declaration, she had clutched his arm and risen up on tiptoe until her lips were only a fragrant breath away from his. Their parted pink petals were so tempting, so tantalizing, so utterly unwavering in their idyllic—if naïve—vision of the life they could never share, that he was tempted to make mad, passionate love to her at that very moment. But if he succumbed to the temptation, if he lowered her to the damp grass and took her in the folds of her ermine-trimmed cloak, he knew he would never find the strength to tear himself away from her arms. He would spend the rest of his days despising himself for being the selfish bastard who had ruined her life.

  He seized her by the shoulders, causing hope to flare in her eyes. But his next words dimmed it. “How long would it be before you would hate me? For taking you away”—he swept a hand toward the beautifully manicured grounds of her father’s estate, the graceful columns and chimneys of the Greek Revival mansion peeping over the top of the hill behind her in the distance—“from all this?”

  She captured his hand and pressed her warm lips fervently to the back of it. “I could never hate you. I shall always adore you!”

  Gently tugging his hand from her grasp, he took her by the shoulders once again, this time to firmly set her away from him. “I’m afraid it’s too late anyway. I’ve already enlisted in the army of the East India Company. The Burke titles may not be worth much more than the paper they’re printed on at the moment, but they still have enough influence to purchase me a commission. I’m to sail from Greenwich to Bombay on the morrow. Unless you want to make a deserter of me and see me hanged, you have to let me go.”

  Clarinda stood gazing up at him as if he’d struck her, at a loss for words for the first time in their long acquaintance.

  Ash forced himself to take up his horse’s lead, turn his back, and walk away from her.

  He had never seen her shed a tear over anything, not even when she was nine and he was twelve and she had tumbled off her pony when trying to follow him over a difficult jump. Muttering an oath he wasn’t supposed to know, Ash had scooped her up in his arms and carried her all the way back to her father’s house. She had bitten her bottom lip bloody but had never uttered so much as a whimper. It had been Ash who had been forced to watch through stinging eyes as her distraught father ordered two footmen to sit on her so the doctor could set her broken arm.

  She was crying in earnest now—great, gulping sobs that made Ash feel as if his own heart were being ripped from his chest. But when her voice finally rang out behind him, it wasn’t sadness that reverberated through it, but fury. “If you go, Ashton Burke, don’t bother coming back! I won’t have you! I’ll take your precious fortune and throw every coin of it right back in your proud, insufferable face!”

  Ash hesitated, tempted to march right back and try to shake some sense into her. Or at least to kiss her more insensible than she was already being. But he squared his shoulders and forced himself to keep moving.

  “I won’t wait for you, either, you know. I’ll marry the first man who’ll have me,” she vowed. “Why, I might marry the local curate or the village blacksmith or even an American,” she added with audible relish, not wasting any time in sinking to the direst of threats. “Or maybe I’ll just wed that strapping young viscount who was making calf’s eyes at me last week at Marjorie Drummond’s soiree.”

  “Dewey Darby is as dull as dishwater and you know it,” Ash tossed over his shoulder. “You’d perish from boredom in a week.”

  When he showed no sign of slowing, her voice broke on a fresh sob. “I hope you don’t even make it out of the harbor before your ship sinks! I hope you’re set upon by pirates and forced to become the cabin boy of the most corpulent sodomite to ever sail the high seas! I hope you contract cholera in India or maybe even the French pox and your manhood withers and falls right off!”

  Ash kept walking, knowing that at any other time the imaginative fates she was wishing upon him would have sent them both into hearty gales of laughter.

  “I might decide not to wed at all,” she called after him with a haughty sniff that warned him she had decided to change tactics. “If I’m to be denied the one man I want, then why should I settle for just one man? What better way to nurse the pain of my broken heart than to devote myself to pleasure?”

  Ash stopped in his tracks, his eyes narrowing.

  She sighed with such dramatic gusto that Ash didn’t have to turn around to see the back of her hand pressed to her creamy brow. Too late he remembered that as a small child, one of her favorite pursuits had been staging amateur theatricals to the delighted applause of her adoring parents. Even then, she had been a clever mimic, and he had been forced to suffer through more than one of her precocious performances himself. “Perhaps I shall succumb to my tragic fate by becoming one of the most practiced courtesans in London. My heart will be empty but my bed most certainly will not. Men will line up around the block and shoot one another dead in the streets just for a chance to sample the irresistible carnal delights of my—”

  Dropping the horse’s lead, Ash spun around on his heel and went stalking back toward her.

  His approach was fraught with such lethal intent that Clarinda took a few stumbling steps backward, her eyes widening. “W-w-what are you doing?” she demanded, the question ending on an alarmed squeak.

  “Giving you a reason to wait for me,” he said grimly before snatching her up in his arms and sweeping his tongue through her mouth in a kiss that left little doubt as to who would be the first and only man to sample her carnal delights.

  Her heel caught in the ermine-trimmed hem of her cloak, and then there was nothing to stop either of them from tumbling into its welcoming folds.

  Ash regretted that moment the most. If he had walked away from her then, if he hadn’t gone striding back into her arms, he might have been able to dismiss his obsession with her as infatuation—a young man’s fancy for a pretty face. But that moment—and those that had followed—had made his feelings for her impossible to dismiss or deny.

  “Captain? Ashton? Ash?”

  Ash was jerked out of that misty dawn and back into the scorching sun to find his companion eyeing him with growing alarm.

  “Perhaps you are suffering from the heat,” Luca said, reaching over to gauge the temperature of Ash’s brow with the backs of his own fingers. “I fear you might be taking a brain fever.”

  Ash knew it was a fever of another kind that possessed him. But he no longer had the right to moon over that memory. No matter how much it galled him, Clarinda belonged to his brother now. He had promised to return her to Max, and that was exactly what he was going to do. With any luck, Max would never find out what had transpired between Ash and Max’s bride-to-be in the meadow that morning.

  He impatiently brushed away Luca’s hand. “There’s only one cure for what ails me. And that’s to finish this job and get the bloody hell out of this godforsaken country.”

  He was rising to retrieve their horses when Luca grabbed him by the sleeve and jerked him back down. “Look!”

  Following Luca’s gaze, Ash trained the spyglass on the opposite bluff. Five riders in black, flowing robes had just melted out of the desert. The men were watching the sultan canter back and forth across the valley below with the predatory patience of a flock of vultures.

  Ash swore beneath his breath. “Apparently we’re not the only ones waiting to have a private word with the sultan
today.”

  He shifted the spyglass back to their prey. Even with his bulging muscles and the sunlight glinting off the wicked curve of the scimitar tucked into his belt, the sultan was still no match for five heavily armed men.

  “What are we going to do?” Luca whispered.

  “Well, we can’t very well let them cut the fellow down in cold blood, can we? If he dies, my brother’s fiancée may be lost to him forever.”

  Just as she had been lost to him.

  He narrowed his eyes much as he had that long-ago day in the meadow when Clarinda had finally pushed him one step too far. Having fought under his command and by his side for the better part of a decade, Luca knew exactly what that look meant.

  Luca sighed. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to point out that there are five of them and only two of us.”

  “What do you want me to do? Tell them to go back to wherever they came from and get two more men to even out the odds?”

  Muttering something under his breath in Italian that included the words folle and insano, Luca drew a dagger from the sheath at his waist and tucked it between his teeth in preparation for battle.

  When the black-robed assassins came charging down the bluff to ambush the sultan, the last thing they expected to encounter were two riders thundering down upon them at full gallop from the opposite rise. For a moment all was chaos, punctuated by pistol fire, the clash of steel, and a guttural grunt as one of Luca’s deadly daggers easily found its target.

  As that man fell, one of his companions wheeled his mount around and took off into the desert at a desperate gallop. While a skinny fellow with a pockmarked face and blackened teeth grappled with Luca, the two remaining men launched themselves off their horses and onto the sultan, plainly determined to complete their mission. The three men went crashing to the sand, locked in mortal combat.

  The sultan put up a valiant struggle but he was no match for two men with murder on their minds. The largest of the two had straddled him and was preparing to draw the blade of a wicked-looking dagger across his throat when two shots rang out nearly simultaneously.

  Both attackers collapsed like puppets whose strings had been cut. Shaking his head to clear it, the sultan slowly ratcheted himself up on both elbows to find Ash standing at his feet, his boots planted firmly apart, his eyes narrowed to deadly slits and a smoking pistol gripped in each hand.

  The sultan’s handsome face broke into a grin, his short, dark beard parting to reveal a mouthful of dazzling white teeth. “Jolly good shot!” he exclaimed, his English more clipped and precise than Ash’s own.

  Ash squinted at him. Even with his kaffiyeh slightly askew, his lower lip swollen, and a bruise rapidly darkening one of his broad cheekbones, there was something oddly familiar about the man. Ash would have almost sworn he had seen that winning grin and those sparkling obsidian eyes before.

  Throwing off one of his attacker’s lifeless arms with a grimace of distaste, the man climbed to his feet, brushing sand from his voluminous black trousers. That was when Ash realized he had seen him before, rising from the flagstones of the courtyard at Eton, dusting himself off just so after a thorough drubbing by a rambunctious pack of his upperclassmen.

  Ash’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “Frankie?”

  The sultan jerked up his head, his eyes going wide with alarm, then glanced around them and touched a finger to his lips as if the desert might be rife with eavesdroppers as well as assassins. “Frankie does not exist in this place. I am always to be known as Farouk among my people. Even though they have taken to the language I have commanded them to learn, there are those in my household who still do not approve of my father’s decision to send me to England to have me educated among the infidels.”

  Frankie/Farouk hadn’t been a well-muscled, broad-shouldered man during their years at Eton, but a plump, bespectacled lad more likely to be caught sneaking into the kitchens to pilfer a pastry than into the stables. With his swarthy skin and thick Arabic accent, he had been an easy target for anyone looking for someone weaker to torment. Ash arched one brow as he eyed the impressive span of the man’s chest beneath the black silk vest. The upperclassmen might not find it so easy to best him now.

  He strode forward to capture Ash’s hand in his grasp, giving it a hearty pump. “I thought you looked familiar to my eyes as well. You are Burke the Younger, are you not? I remember your brother from school.”

  “Yes,” Ash murmured, gently disengaging his hand from Farouk’s grip. “Most people do.”

  “He was a bit of a stiff-necked ass, was he not?”

  Ash felt his own lips curve into a smile as he suddenly remembered exactly why he had found Farouk’s grin so winning.

  A strangled cough rang out behind them. They both turned to find Luca still rolling around in the sand, locked in a life-and-death struggle with his wiry attacker.

  “Hate to interrupt … your touching … reunion,” he choked out, trying to pry the man’s grimy hands from his throat. “But if you’re … not too busy … I could use … a … ” His attacker squeezed harder, reducing his last word to a gurgle.

  Ash raised his pistol but Farouk stayed him with a polite “Allow me” before strolling over and applying his boot to the side of the man’s head with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary.

  The man collapsed to the sand, his eyes rolling back in his head. Luca sat up, rubbing his throat and giving Ash a reproachful look.

  Resting his hands on his hips, Farouk gazed down at the unconscious man. “I will have my guard deal with this mongrel.” A dangerous smile curved his full lips, confirming Ash’s suspicion that he was no longer an opponent with whom a man would want to trifle. “Perhaps they can use their charms to persuade him to expose the villain who sent him and his fellow jackals to attack me in the very shadow of my own stronghold.”

  While Luca staggered to his feet, still nursing his throat, Farouk turned back to Ash. “You are a long way from England, Burke the Younger. What is it that brings you here at such a fortuitous moment?”

  Before Ash could waste either his time or his breath formulating some implausible explanation, Farouk raised a hand to silence him. “Forgive my rudeness. We shall discuss your business here later. I prefer to trust Allah’s will in these matters. It would accomplish nothing to question his wisdom in sending you here to do his work. You have given me back my life on this day. Now you must allow me to offer you something in return. It is my sincere wish that the two of you would accompany me back to my humble home as my honored guests.”

  “We would be honored indeed to accept such a gracious invitation,” Ash said smoothly, hoping his formal bow would hide the frantic working of his mind.

  He had never dreamed such an opportunity would literally tumble into his lap. If he and Luca could infiltrate Farouk’s palace, they might be able to find a way to rescue Clarinda without going to all the trouble of abducting the sultan.

  Luca appeared at his shoulder. “But I thought we were planning to—” He grunted in pain as Ash jabbed an elbow into his sternum, informing him that their plans had changed.

  “Excellent!” Farouk gave Luca a hearty clap on the back that nearly knocked him off his feet. “From this day forward, we will no longer be strangers or even friends, but brothers! We shall now proceed to my stronghold, where you may partake of my hospitality and the many pleasures it can provide.”

  As Farouk moved to retrieve his horse from where it had bolted during the attack, Ash adjusted the brim of his hat so that it would shadow his eyes.

  There was only one pleasure the sultan possessed that was of any interest to him whatsoever.

  The sultan’s humble home was not a crude fortress or a motley collection of tents but a genuine palace nestled within a copse of swaying palm trees and topped by graceful minarets. Its walls were constructed from large rectangular stones baked to a golden hue by the sun’s rays. The roof was crowned by overlapping terra-cotta tiles the color of burnished rust. Beyond the sprawlin
g compound, wavering like a mirage in the distance, lay the cobalt waters of the Atlantic.

  As they rode into the outer courtyard, Luca shot Ash a wary look. Farouk had spent the entirety of their ride pointing out the natural beauties of his native land and regaling them with tales of its rich and violent history. There had been no opportunity for so much as a whispered warning between the two of them. Luca was just going to have to trust that Ash knew what he was doing.

  Ash could only pray that trust was not misplaced.

  Two towering, bare-chested guards in voluminous trousers and jeweled turbans appeared to relieve them of their mounts. Luca handed over the reins of his horse with visible reluctance. He knew, just as Ash did, that they were surrendering not only their horses, but their freedom. Without some kind of mount beneath him—be it camel or horse—a man wouldn’t survive the rigors of the desert for more than an afternoon.

  Farouk had insisted on leading his captive’s horse behind his own stallion with the man’s limp form still draped over the beast’s back. He dismounted and gave the man a contemptuous shove, sending him sliding to the flagstones in an unceremonious heap. As Farouk barked out a command in Arabic, two more guards materialized to drag the man away between them, ignoring his piteous groans.

  There was no mistaking the look Ash gave Luca in that moment. It was imperative they tread with care in this place lest they also end up in the sultan’s dungeons, being persuaded by his guards to reveal their original intentions and all of their deepest, darkest secrets.

  They were halfway across the courtyard when a bearded man of middling years, bald except for the fringe of salt-and-pepper hair circling the crown of his head, came hurrying toward them, his long robes rustling with each step and a steady stream of Arabic pouring from his lips. Ash cultivated a blandly curious expression, pretending he couldn’t understand every syllable of what the man was saying.