“Shot?” Varian repeated. A chill trickled down his neck.
“Oh, yes.” She pushed up her sleeve to show the scar. Her slim arm was smooth and delicate, much whiter than her strong, sun-bronzed hands.
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “I believe you.” Lord, what sort of swine would put a bullet into that fragile wisp of a body? He felt ill.
“Does your head trouble you, efendi?” she asked, concerned. “Your face has gone white. Perhaps you should lie down.”
Dizzy with the effort to make sense of her, of everything, Varian lay down willingly. No use trying to reason with her tonight. Her mind was disordered by distress. Even her solicitousness bordered on panic.
Still, it was touching the way the girl tucked him in, as though he were a feeble child. She must have decided he was about as dangerous as one, too, for she resumed her place beside him and ordered Petro to move to the other side, that his lordship might share their warmth.
She continued solicitous the following morning until, seeing her packing to travel, Varian gently pointed out that they weren’t going anywhere.
Her face hardened to stone. “Because you do not trust a female to guide you?”
“A young girl,” he corrected. “It’s not you I mistrust, but—”
She didn’t wait to hear more, simply took up her bags and marched from the hut. Despite Petro’s shrieks of panic, Varian was tempted to let her go. The alternative, he was certain, was to tie her down.
The trouble was, letting her go off alone was tantamount to murder—after she and her friends had saved his life. Plague take her. Varian gritted his teeth and stormed out after her.
Chapter Four
Ali’s mouth would probably water when he saw this one, Esme reflected as they neared Rrogozhina two days later. Though the Vizier’s court boasted some of the most beautiful youths in the Ottoman Empire, the English lord would make them look like trolls. Tall and well-formed, he carried himself with all the arrogant assurance of a sultan, even while they trudged through slimy marshland, the torrents beating relentlessly at them. His insolence was bound to win respect, for in these realms the meek inherited only abuse. His looks, furthermore, would surely make more than one courtier weep.
His skin was as fair and smooth as a pampered concubine’s, yet his beauty was purely masculine—an irresistible combination to many men. But they’d yearn in vain.
The English lord, Petro had told her, was addicted to women. Though the man’s licentiousness was common knowledge, the Italian women had flocked to him like flies to manure. Of course, the gossiping Petro had boasted, the lord selected only the most beautiful and sophisticated of those who so shamelessly offered themselves to him.
The dragoman had shared this information while his master slept. If Esme meant to travel with them, she must help keep an eye on the master, Petro warned, lest he make advances to virtuous Albanian women and get them all embroiled in a blood feud.
“He’ll hardly find the other sort on the way to Tepelena,” Esme had answered. “We’re not likely to meet up with courtesans in these parts. Just tell him he must wait. Ali will give him as many as he likes.”
“No, you must tell him, for he never listens to me. He says he cannot understand my English. You will tell him, and explain so cleverly, as you did the other night. Never have I seen him so angry. I thought he would beat you. But you scold and he only smiles and listens.”
The Englishman was not smiling now. His gray eyes were fixed on the humble village ahead, and his face had set into taut lines.
“Rrogozhina,” she said. “I told you we would reach it well before dark.”
“You said it was an important town. I count six houses—or hovels. It’s hard to tell where the mud leaves off and architecture begins.”
“I told you the site marked an important crossroads,” she said. “Two branches of the ancient Romans’ Via Egnatia meet here, one from Apollonia and one from Durres.”
“Then the Romans have fallen sadly behind in upkeep. Even had Caesar Augustus possessed the visionary powers of the god he claimed to be, I would defy him to discern so much as a path, let alone two great roads in this godforsaken sea of mud. For two days we’ve crawled through it. Two days to cover twenty miles—to reach a cluster of muddy little huts which, as far as I can see, were abandoned by all human inhabitants about six centuries ago.”
“You were expecting Paris, perhaps, efendi?”
“I was hoping for something connected, however distantly, to civilization.”
Esme experienced a powerful desire to connect her boot with his backside, but told herself he was like a spoiled child and didn’t know any better. Also, being childish, he was relatively easily managed. If he were not, they’d yet be huddled in the cramped shelter by the mouth of the Shkumbi.
Fortunately, he needed her far more than she needed him. In England he may have been a powerful lord; in Albania he was helpless as a baby.
Efendi, she’d called him, as a joke, from the first. It was a title of respect, yes, but for a learned man, a scholar or cleric. She might have called him a pile of offal, for all he understood or cared to understand. Y’Al-lah, but these Englis
h lords were ignorant provincials—and proud to be so, evidently.
“I shall not tell you,” she said now, “not to make such remarks to the villagers, for you are an English gentleman, and Jason told me a true gentleman is courteous.”
“I am not a gentleman. I am an animate piece of mud, crawling with fleas.”
“Yet I will warn you not to flirt with the women.”
His head turned slowly toward her. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are not deaf. Don’t flirt with the women, if you wish to depart Rrogozhina in one piece. If we come across a whore, I shall tell you so, but it’s most unlikely we will. Albania has many more men than women, and the women are guarded jealously. A Moslem, for instance, may pay as much as a thousand piastres for his bride. An important investment. Please keep this in mind.”
He glanced ahead at the mass of structures, lumpen forms in the gray rain, then back at her. “Certainly I will. Thank you for the warning. How dreadful if I should run amok among Rrogozhina’s hordes of fair maidens.”
“There is no need to be sarcastic,” she said.
“I should like to know,” he said, “what put it into your head that I’d flirt with every female who crossed my path.”
Petro, at present, trailed miserably many yards behind them. Even though he couldn’t possibly hear, Esme was reluctant to reveal her source. She didn’t want the master to know she’d gossiped with his servant.
“Because you look as though you do,” she said. “I should be interested to watch you flirt sometime, for surely it would be amusing, but I must wait until we reach Tepelena, I expect.”
“Watch me?”
“Flirt,” she clarified. “I am certainly not curious about the rest. That is a private matter.”
“Esme,” he said, “do you have any idea what you’re talking about?”
“Yes. Jason told me, because I had no family to shelter me. He felt it was best I understood these matters, lest my ignorance be used against me.”