Madeleine Ker - The Sicilian Duke's Demand

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

COMING NEXT MONTH

ISOBEL was trying to remember that line of poetry. Something about a glassy, cool, translucent wave. So appropriate for this beautiful, hot Sicilian day. Cobalt sky, flat sea, ripples of lacy foam around her pale skin.

From the indigo horizon, a cone rose up against the sky: Etna, just tipped with snow now that it was summer, and with the customary feather of white smoke drifting from the peak. A well-behaved volcano, doing its best not to frighten away the tourists. But she was not a tourist; she was here to work.

Yesterday’s storm had stirred up the sand on the bottom, making the water opaque, but it had settled overnight, and today the turquoise water was wonderfully translucent again. She could go back to the team and tell them to get ready to dive again this morning, with excellent visibility and calm seas.

She was floating past the rocks, right over what they had dubbed ‘Vector Alpha’, the line they believed corresponded to the keel of the wrecked ancient Greek galley, when the movement caught her eye.

Despite the blazing sun on her back, her heart seemed to freeze for a moment.

There it was. Or rather, there he was. About twelve feet below her. A powerfully built male body. Golden-skinned, with thick black hair floating around his muscular shoulders. Naked but for black Neoprene shorts that hugged his sleek thighs from waist to knee. He was wearing only a mask, like her: no scuba tanks. A free-diver.

He was drifting right along Vector Alpha, propelled by easy sweeps of his long legs, intent on the seabed below him. Hunting. Her stopped heart exploded into life, fuelled by anger. This intruder knew exactly where he was going. Like a shark cruising after the scent of fresh blood in the water!

She floated motionless, watching the predator tour the line of the wreck, oblivious to her presence above him. This was exactly why she and the others had travelled from New York to Sicily—to protect this archaeological treasure from marauders like this one. To defend the past from such plunderers as this.

Isobel waited for him to run out of air. She needed surprise on her side. He looked formidably powerful, muscles rippling from that taut waist to the wide sweep of his shoulders. Nor did her sharp eyes miss the hefty-looking knife strapped to one sinewy thigh.

Damn. What if this visitor turned out to be a real bad boy? And the others were still breakfasting on shore. She had come down to the site early, alone, to assess the chances for the day’s diving. She could race back to them, come back with the cavalry, but by then the pirate would be long gone—carrying with him whatever booty he had been able to steal.

Besides, Isobel Roche was not known to be afraid of anything. Character flaws she might have aplenty—she had been accused of arrogance, stubbornness and pride, and had even recently been called an imperious, sarcastic iceberg by her ex-boyfriend, who ought to know—but she had never been accused of cowardice.

She caught sight of a tattoo on the powerful right shoulder. An octopus, done in black, tentacles writhing against the tanned skin. Oh, yes. A real bad boy. Damn, again!

And he just wasn’t running out of air, either. Those big lungs were full of oxygen. He had almost reached the end of the wreck, swimming with lazy ease, the long hair spinning black swirls around his shoulders.

It was time to act.

Isobel drew a deep—and rather shaky—breath. Then, kicking hard, she dived down through the clear water towards the dark figure. He still seemed to be oblivious to her as she snaked through the water towards him like an avenging angel.

At the last moment, he seemed to glimpse her from the corner of his eye, and twisted away from her like a big fish. As he did so she saw the glint of gold in his clenched fist. Damn a third time. He had found something important and had seized it! Without thinking, she grasped at the swirling clouds of his long hair, black as ink in the clear water. Her fingers closed tight around the thick tresses. Pulling as hard as she could, she kicked for the surface, dragging him after her.

It did not occur to her until she burst through the surface that he could have drawn that big knife and stuck it into her liver. By then she was whooping for breath and trying to hold onto what had turned out to be a very big man indeed. A large hand closed on her arm and broke her grip of his hair. She braced herself for his counter-attack. But when she looked into his face, he was laughing at her; laughing with dazzling white teeth through a curling black beard, his bright eyes bluer than the sky above.

‘Give it to me!’ she demanded fiercely in Italian.

‘Give you what?’ he replied, still laughing.

‘What you found down there!’

‘I found nothing down there.’

‘Liar!’ They were floating face to face, his muscular shoulders and throat breaking the water. She grabbed for his hair again but this time succeeded only in getting a handful of that curly black beard. ‘Give it to me!’

‘That hurts!’ he protested, still laughing.

She clenched her fingers so that her knuckles dug into his warm skin. ‘Then give it to me!’

‘All right,’ he capitulated. ‘Let’s swim to the rocks and I will give it to you.’

‘Don’t try any funny stuff,’ she warned grimly, releasing him. But she was thinking of the knife strapped to his thigh as she spoke so bravely.

They hauled themselves onto the rocks. The sandstone shelf was slippery so they hunkered down, facing each other as if they were about to wrestle. Her captive was certainly a splendid specimen of the adult male. Built like a demigod, with that long black hair and beard, he was like an ancient hero sprung to life.

As if echoing her thought, he grinned and said in fluent, but accented, English, ‘Odysseus captured by a siren. That puts a new twist in the myth.’

‘You speak English?’

His voice was deep and husky. ‘And I walk upright, too. But sirens didn’t wear lime-green bikinis in Odysseus’s time, I believe.’ His appreciative eyes were roaming over her body, exactly the way he must have assessed the wreck. Her bikini was indeed lime-green, and none too big. She had not been expecting company so early in the morning. The skin of her breasts had tightened with the adrenaline coursing through her system and her nipples were making rigid exclamation points against the wet Lycra. She shook her long auburn hair forward, hoping it would provide some sort of curtain of modesty.

‘Give it to me,’ she panted, holding out her hand—which, she could not help but notice, was about half the size of his.

His deep blue eyes were mocking. ‘They say, ‘‘Finders, keepers’’.’

‘The police don’t say that,’ she snapped. ‘You have ten seconds to give it to me!’

Eyes dancing, he slowly opened his brown fingers. Isobel gasped. Gleaming in the broad palm of his hand was a heavy gold coin. It was ancient beyond a doubt. She could see—appropriately—the bearded head of a god gleaming on the heavy yellow disc.

She snatched at it but he was far too quick. His fingers closed around it and his smile mocked her. She grabbed his fist in both of her hands and tried to prise his fingers open.