Miranda Jarrett - Regency High Society Vol 2 - Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

“For his insolence, I should send him as a slave to the quarries. A man his size would be useful there, and the sun and the lash would go far to curing his temper.” His smile chilled her more than his words. “In a year ye would not recognize him.”

She could not imagine a man as proud as Jeremiah a slave, toiling in a quarry like a pack animal. “It would kill him.”

“Aye, perhaps it will,” said Hamil as casually as if they were discussing the likelihood of rain. “But ye best think no more of him, m’lady.”

“But I love him,” she cried with anguish, “and I cannot forget him simply because you order it!”

“Ye can, and ye must.” His face was stern, his voice disconcertingly quiet despite the threat it carried. If she had been a man, realized Caro, he would have killed her, too, without another thought. “Ye are in Tripoli now, m’lady, and I am your master. Ye have no others. Ye will do well not to forget it.”

The city was enclosed by a high, thick, white wall, flanked by two fortresses, bristling with cannon to protect the harbor from invasion. Caro, Hamil and a small party of his men entered by the northwest gate that led to the harbor, riding on horses that had been waiting at the waterfront for them. As they rode slowly through the crowded, narrow streets, people were quick to run from Hamil’s path, some men bowing respectfully low and others merely staring with open awe at their country’s most notorious corsair.

For Caro, there were only stares. At first she wondered why there were no women in the streets, until she realized that they were the shapeless, scurrying figures wrapped so completely in black that only one eye showed. Caro, sitting sidesaddle in her European clothes, her face uncovered and her pale hair loose to her shoulders, was a sight few Tripolitans could resist. She kept her eyes straight ahead, ignoring the leering men as best she could, but by the time they reached Hamil’s house, she was too hot and exhausted from the strain to notice much except the tall marble pillars that they passed between.

With more gallantry than Caro either expected or wished, Hamil himself came to help her from her horse, his large, freckled hands familiarly taking her by the waist and lifting her from the ground. He was a large man, nearly as big as Jeremiah, and equally accustomed to the power his size granted. As soon as her feet touched the ground she swiftly eased herself away from his hands.

He noticed her skittishness, his eyes narrowing, but said nothing, merely beckoning for her to follow him through a short passageway. To her surprise they entered an elegant courtyard, two stories high with open piazzas that faced onto the courtyard. More columns of polished Egyptian marble supported the piazzas, and the floor of the courtyard was inlaid with elaborate porphyry.

In the center was a carved marble cistern and a bench beside it, shaded by the nodding fronds of a small date palm. On the bench were plump red cushions, a pitcher and a goblet, a small book left open, and discarded on the floor lay a pair of green open-backed lady’s slippers, but no sign of the reader who’d left them. Yet Caro’s hopes rose. If there was already a lady in Hamil’s house—a lady frivolous enough to wear embroidered green slippers with red heels—then perhaps his interest in Caro would be only as a hostage.

Two servants, a thin man in a turban and an older woman, rushed to Hamil, bowing low enough to touch their foreheads to the floor before him. He waved his hand impatiently for them to rise and gave them orders in a language Caro didn’t understand. The woman turned to her and bowed, though not so low as she had to her master, and nodded vigorously.

“Abidzu will take ye to your room,” explained Hamil. “She will bathe ye, and see that ye are dressed more befitting your station. Ye may go wherever ye please in my house, but if ye try to leave without my permission, ye shall be punished.”

“So I am in fact your prisoner?” asked Caro tartly, and immediately regretted it. What was she doing, baiting him like that?

But to her surprise, Hamil looked disconcerted, not angry, as he glanced away, running his thumb through the thicket of his beard. “In my home ye shall want for nothing, m’lady,” he repeated. “Ye shall have every comfort.”

“Except my freedom?”

He ignored her question. “Tonight, when ye have bathed and rested, ye will dine with me. Abidzu will bring ye to my rooms.”

He turned swiftly, his boot heels echoing across the stone floor as he left with his men. Caro sighed, rubbing her fingers into her temples. She didn’t want to dine with Hamil tonight, especially not in his rooms, but there was probably no way she could refuse without earning that promised punishment, whatever it might be. Could it be so much worse than being alone with the man in his bedchamber?

Wearily she followed Abidzu up the stairs to a room that overlooked the courtyard, a room that was clearly intended for favored guests, not prisoners. Rich carpets were laid across the marble floor, and the walls were inlaid with painted porcelain tiles. For sleeping, there was a kind of raised platform with a mattress, coverlet, and cushions in the center of the room. Besides a large mirror on the wall and two low chests, the room’s only other furnishings were two old-fashioned English armchairs that looked as out of place as Caro herself felt. She went to the single arched window, its shutters thrown back to catch the breezes from the water.

She leaned outward, looking to the fortress at the southern corner of the city’s wall. As a warning, Hamil had pointed it out to her as the prison for infidels. If Frederick still lived, if Jeremiah’s friend David Kerr were still a captive, then they would both be kept there. Whenever she thought of Frederick, he was always in one of the comfortable, elegant rooms at Blackstone House, and she could not imagine him surviving two years in that bleak, windowless fortress. Perhaps all the warnings from others had been right. Perhaps he was already long beyond her help, and this entire disastrous voyage had been nothing more than a pointless chase to rescue a dead man.

She looked to the harbor for the xebec, Jeremiah’s prison. She had done that to him, just as she’d been the cause of Frederick’s capture, and overwhelmed by the odds against the men she loved, her eyes filled with tears.

Yet tears would solve nothing, help no one, and she forced herself to try to think instead. Three men, three prisoners. She, too, was a prisoner, but one bound only by threats, not shackles. If any of them were ever to return to a Christian world, it was up to her to find a way. Neither Frederick nor Jeremiah would like having their fates decided by a woman, but she had no choice. There was, quite simply, no one else.

Jeremiah had promised her everything would be all right, and Jeremiah would never lie to her. He loved her too much. Somehow they would be reunited. Of course everything would be all right.

Somehow…

Caro closed her eyes as Abidzu drew the comb through her wet hair to help dry it. She had been bathed in perfumed water by Abidzu, all the salt from the sea scrubbed away, and in place of the rough clothing of the Neapolitan serving girl, she now wore a loose robe of blue striped silk banded with gold braid.

Yet instead of relaxing her, Abidzu’s attentions had only reminded Caro of what Hamil would expect from her in return. No matter what he’d said, she couldn’t believe that all of his guests were treated so indulgently, and as Abidzu finished braiding her hair, her apprehension grew.

This could be her first step toward freedom, the first time she must depend on her own resources to defend herself. Though Hamil’s men had taken the pistol Jeremiah had given her, there was sure to be a knife at dinner that she could hide away in her skirts for later, when she might need it. Her fingers tightened on the carved arms of the chair as she remembered the hungry way Hamil had looked at her on the xebec.