Adam realized the last thing he wanted was to trade insults with her. Without thinking, he clasped her shoulders in his hands and pulled her toward him. To his besotted surprise, she did not try to fight him. She seemed to melt against him, her arms inching around his neck. He kissed her gently, and she parted her lips to him naturally.
When the marchese’s lips caressed her mouth, Rayna felt as if a door had opened and she had sailed through it. He suddenly released her, pulling her arms from his neck, and she stared up at him, her expression stunned.
“I don’t understand,” Rayna whispered, unable to look away from him. “Please, Pietro, I want—”
He dropped his arms to his sides and took a quick step back. “You don’t know what you want,” he said. “And stop looking at me like that. Is that how you looked at the comte?” He could have cut out his tongue when he saw the bewildered look in her eyes.
“For God’s sake, go back to your parents,” he shouted at her.
Rayna picked up her skirts and raced from the room, not looking back.
Adam stood still, staring after her. He turned around slowly, his head slightly bowed, and walked to the fireplace.
“We both failed, it would appear, mon ami.”
The comte’s voice made Adam stiffen with anger. But when he turned to face the comte, there was a small smile on his lips. “Oh?” he said carefully.
“I saw the little English bitch fly out of here like a rabbit from a trap. The girl needs a lesson.”
It was all Adam could do to stay where he stood. “I misjudged her,” he said coolly, negligently flicking a speck of lint from his black velvet evening coat. “She is an innocent.”
The frown suddenly left the comte’s face, and he smiled widely. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I believe you’re right. A cold virgin.”
“It is probably best that we both keep our distance,” Adam said, trying to repress a feeling of dread at the comte’s smile. “There are other fish to be caught, after all. I don’t intend to waste any more of my time with that one.”
“True,” the comte said obliquely.
“I suggest that you do the same,” Adam said more sharply.
Gervaise tilted his head to one side, his full lips in a grin. “Methinks you still want the little fool,” he said. He turned and said over his shoulder, “We shall see, my friend.”
Chapter 9
Mediterranean Sea
The xebec skimmed the calm surface of the sea, its speed steady in the southerly wind. Kamal pulled his white full-sleeved linen shirt over his head and tossed it to his grinning servant, Ali.
“You have grown too pale in your palace, highness,” Ali said. “Now the sun will bake your back.”
Kamal grunted and flung back his head, closing his eyes against the bright afternoon sun. He felt his muscles relax in its soothing heat. He had been too long ashore, he thought, too tied up with all his administrative duties as a Bey. He opened his eyes when his xebec veered to port, and saw its sister ship pull closer to starboard. A third xebec lay in an inlet a mile or so to the north, waiting.
“A sighting?” he shouted to Droso, his captain.
“Not yet, highness,” Droso called back. He was a mammoth man, who looked the part of a savage corsair with his black beard and shaggy long black hair. But despite his looks, Droso was one of the gentlest captains of an Algerian privateering ship Kamal had ever known, and it was for that reason Kamal had selected him.
They were not privateering, Kamal corrected himself silently. Not this time. What they were doing was sheer piracy. He remembered his anger at reading his mother’s letter from Naples. He had left his bed to think, clothed only in his white wool trousers, his bare feet making no sound on the marble floor of the great reception hall, and walked into the walled garden. He had breathed in the sweet scent of hyacinths, jasmine, and roses, and stared up at the quarter-moon that cast silvery shadows on the stone walls. He had sensed Hassan’s presence without hearing a sound. “Who is there?” he asked softly.
“An old man, highness, merely an old man. But you are young, and should be abed.”
“You c
ould not sleep, Hassan?” He turned to face his minister, whose white hair was as silvery as the moonlight.
“If an old man sleeps, he but shortens the time left to him. I prefer to savor every hour, highness, knowing that I breathe and think, even when the moon is high.”
“Ever the philosopher.”
“You are thinking of your mother’s letter,” Hassan said.