“I don’t understand,” Arabella said. “What have I done to displease you?”
He stepped back as she reached out her hands to him. “You have done nothing.”
“Then why are you behaving like this? I thought that you would be pleased. Hamil is returned; you are free. You are free to be with me.”
“No,” he said. “I am not free.”
“You speak in riddles, Kamal. Please, tell me what troubles you.”
He drew a deep breath, knowing that she would continue to argue with him if he told her the truth. She could not understand his shame, his dishonor. In a very calm, emotionless voice he said, “I much enjoyed my time with you, my lady. But it is over.”
Arabella stared at him. “You cannot mean it,” she said at last. “You make it sound as though I was naught but a diversion to relieve your boredom.”
“What else?” He turned away from her to look out over the Mediterranean, shimmering under the white moon.
“No.”
“I enjoyed taking your virginity, but your skills do not compare with those of my other women.”
“Why are you saying these things? I love you.”
“It will pass,” he said.
“But you told me you loved me.”
“A man will say many things when he desires a woman in his bed. But remember what those words gave me. A willing, yielding woman. I vowed I would break you to my hand, and I succeeded. You are now no different from my other women, spiritless and docile, and utterly submissive.”
She slapped him with all her strength. His head snapped back with the force of her blow, but his arms remained rigidly at his sides.
Arabella whirled about and raced back up the road to the palace.
Kamal watched her fleeing from him, fleeing from his life. Slowly, as if in a dream, he turned and continued to walk stiffly toward the fort.
Chapter 29
Villa Parese, Genoa, 1803
Arabella hiked up her skirts and stepped from her sailboat onto the dock. The day was warm and the old muslin dress, more gray than blue from many washings, clung damply to her back. She felt tendrils of hair curling haphazardly about her face, and impatiently tucked them behind her ears. Her mother would tease her about catching no trout for their dinner, but she hadn’t so much as lowered her fishing pole into the waters. Why wouldn’t the pain go away? Is this what she had to look forward to? The crushing emptiness that gave her no peace?
Two months. Two months since she had returned to Genoa, to the Villa Parese. It seemed more like a decade. At least she no longer had to smile and play the role of the happy sister. Adam and Rayna had been married a month before and were now sailing in the Aegean on their wedding trip. Rayna’s parents had shortly thereafter returned to England. How odd it had felt to watch Viscount Delford with her mother, knowing now what had really happened. To believe that if her own father had not stolen her mother away, she could have been the viscount’s daughter. What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man love you so much that he would abduct you from under your fiancé’s nose?
She turned and stared down at her reflection in the placid water. She looked thin and drawn, her mouth a straight line with no laughter in her eyes. She felt drawn to the water for a long moment, until she realized the direction of her thoughts and drew up sharply.
“Do not be a damned spineless coward,” she said aloud. She hurled her fishing pole into the water and watched her face dim into rippling waves.
She and her parents would be returning to England in the early fall. Hundreds of miles away from Kamal. Alessandro. Were he in England with her, he would be Alexander. She pressed her fists to her temples, wanting to blot his face from her mind, but his Viking’s blue eyes saw into her, understanding her as no man had ever understood her. Yet he had not wanted her.
She felt suddenly small and defeated, empty as a husk tossed aside by a careless hand. Surprisingly, Arabella felt tears sting her eyes. She had shed no tears since that awful night in Oran. Indeed, she had felt numb, mouthing good-byes to Hamil and Lella, numb as the Cassandra sailed from Oran’s harbor. Oddly enough, upon their return to the Villa Parese, her home had felt alien to her; it was Oran that seemed real.
She shook herself, forcing herself to think of Kamal’s harem. That had certainly been real. And Elena, far more experienced and skilled than she was. Did Kamal still take her to his bed? Did he take a different woman to his bed each night?
“You savage. You barbarian.” She shook her fist over the silent lake.
“I am pleased that I am still in your thoughts, Arabella, even though you insult me.”
Dear God. She wanted him so badly that she even dreamed of him speaking to her.
“How long will you ignore me, Arabella?”