The Lion's Daughter (Scoundrels 1)

“No, it isn’t.” His voice was soft and thick as velvet. His hands gently threaded through her hair, and his gaze, warm smoke, drifted slowly from her mouth to her eyes and back again.

“Enough to satisfy your curiosity,” Esme answered firmly, stiffening her posture. She ought to break free entirely, because his body was much too close, making her want, so weak she was, to lay her head upon his chest. Yet the tension she sensed in him made her cautious. She’d provoked him moments ago, and he’d found a devastating method of bringing her to heel.

“I’m not at all curious,” he said. “I understand you well enough, and never has comprehension been more vexing. You don’t want me to look after you. You don’t want me to understand you. You don’t even want me to like you. You most especially don’t want me to like you as a woman. Well, I don’t want to worry about you, or understand you, or like you in any way.” His hands slid slowly to her shoulders. “But nothing goes as we want, does it? Gad, how long is it since we first collided, Esme? Less than a week? Does time pass so slowly here, or is it something in the air?”

Esme did break away then. His words may not be entirely enlightening, for all the immense English vocabulary he possessed. Her intuition, however, filled in the gaps. She understood what he told her, though she could scarcely believe it. He felt what she did, or something like it. But it meant nothing, she told herself. A whim. A man’s need, perhaps. Nothing more.

She moved several steps away and pushed her heavy hair back from her face. Her head wrap lay near his feet. She wanted its protection. She felt too exposed. Nonetheless, she was not inclined to retrieve it.

“You and I have many troubles in our minds, efiendi.” She spoke in her most reasonable tones, her gaze upon the ground. “The way is difficult and slow, and these problems, as well as our differences, agitate us. Confined together with our troubles and differences, it is no wonder we feel so much…vexation. I think, at times, you will drive me mad. It is not surprising that you feel the same.”

“Oh, indeed.” His voice was tight, and she felt the angry tension growing again. “I kissed you in a fit of temporary insanity, I suppose.”

“Aye,” she said. “And I must have been in the same state to permit it.”

“That’s a relief. At least you weren’t humoring me. My vanity is already in tatters. Thank you ever so much for sparing me a shred at least.”

His vanity? His feelings? What of her? Did he think she was made of wood?

“What do you want me to say, efendi? Tell me. I’m not practiced in such matters. Should I tell you I was swooning with desire?”

“Yes, dammit! I was!”

She caught her breath, and her gaze shot to his.

“I was,” he repeated more quietly. Then he snatched up his cloak and turned away. “Disgusting, isn’t it? As though you hadn’t a low enough opinion of me already.”

He thrust the tent flap aside and left.

Chapter Eight

After sending Petro to the tent to keep Esme company, Varian punished himself in the brutally frigid stream. Then, as an extra dose of self-chastisement, he ate with the men. This turned out to be a surprisingly light penance. They’d established something like rapport earlier, when he’d helped set up camp. Communication wasn’t completely impossible. One of the men—the youngest—knew a few words of English. Varian had picked up a word of Albanian here and there, and hand gestures helped. When at a loss, they resorted to drawing primitive pictures in the damp dirt with sticks.

The labor of trying to comprehend and make oneself understood provided some distraction from his troubling thoughts. Yet when the meal ended and the men began to sing, Varian found his gaze turning repeatedly to his tent. Doubtless the men sang war songs, but the music sounded like longing to him.

He rose. “NatSn e mirS,” he said.

Agimi, the one who spoke a bit of English, held up the raki flask. “Take,” he said. “Warm. Good. You need.”

Varian smiled. They’d warned him most politely and patiently against bathing in the rivers. Too cold. Bad for the chest, they insisted. Also, it made “Zigur” most angry. Agimi had clutched his head and shaken it from side to side, indicating that the child’s scolding made one’s head ache.

Varian took the raki. “Thank you,” he said. Faleminderit.”

Agimi shrugged. “S’ka gje. It’s nothing. You need.”

Perhaps he did. What Varian needed most, though, was an apology, and he’d not yet composed a satisfactory one.

Esme was playing vingt-et-un with Petro when Varian entered. She did not look up.

“Ah, master, at last you come!” Petro cried, throwing down his cards. “May I go now?”

“I should think you’d want to play the game through,” Varian said. “Don’t you care whether you win?”

Petro scrambled to his feet. “With this one, there is no winning. She gives me the evil eye and all my luck goes away.” He scowled at Esme.

She gazed coolly back at him. “Then go out and kill a snake,” she said, “and cut off its head with silver. When the head is dry, wrap it up with a medal of Shenjt Gjergj, and take it to a priest to be blessed.”

Petro pulled out the cord he wore about his neck. On it dangled a rock of some sort. “I have a charm against evil,” Petro said. “A piece of the heavens, from a falling star. But your witchcraft is too strong.”

“Everyone knows meteorites are good only against gunshot, you superstitious old woman,” she said. “But you make do because you are afraid to kill a snake.” She shrugged. “It is no great matter. Tomorrow I will kill one for you.”

“And one for me as well?” Varian inquired.

“I did not give you the evil eye, efendi,” she muttered as she gathered up the cards. “There is no such thing.”

Petro gasped. “Do not say so. The eye will fall upon you.”

“If I believed in such foolishness,” she returned angrily, “I would declare that it fell upon me a week ago— when you crept out upon the Durres shore with my cousin.”

“Ungrateful child! Had we not come, they would have taken you, and then—”

Varian clamped a heavy hand upon Petro’s shoulder. “Go away,” he said, “until I call you back.”

“Back, master? You will not leave me with her again?” Petro pressed his hands together in supplication. “I beg you, lord, not again. I am cut in a thousand places from her tongue.”

“If you didn’t irritate her, that wouldn’t happen,” Varian said. “Go join the men for a while. But don’t get drunk, or I’ll cut you in another thousand places with my horsewhip.”

The dragoman left, muttering resentfully in what sounded like Turkish.

Varian set down the raki, hesitated a moment, then sat down opposite her, Indian style, as she did. His trousers, he thought wryly, would never recover.

“I’ve come to apologize,” he said. “I’ve not been a gentleman.”

Esme shuffled the cards, tapped them into perfect alignment, then set them down before her. “That is true.” She placed her hands on her knees. “Still, the apology is welcome.”

“Besa?”

She glanced up, her enormous green eyes lit with surprise.

“Besa,” he repeated. “Truce, is it not?”

“Yes,” she said. “No...no, I must say my part as well, or I do not truly pledge truce.” Her gaze dropped to the rug. “You said before that I made it impossible for you to be a gentleman.”

“That was—”

“No, let me finish.” Her hands tightened on her knees. “You find it so difficult because I am not a lady. I know. Jason told me so often. I can never be a lady by your people’s standards. I am not one by my own people’s, either. Other Albanian girls are not like me. They have better manners, much better. I am not always pleased with myself. I do and say many things I later wish I had not. Only later, too late, when it’s done. I have great will, yet I cannot will my temper. Never. Also, many times, I cannot will my patience…an

d sometimes, other feelings. My grandmother said I have a demon inside me. I do not believe in demons, yet that is truly how it feels.”

She clenched her fist and pressed it to her heart. “Here. A fiery demon. That is how I am. It cannot be helped,” she concluded sadly as she took her hand away.

It was a confidence, and the confession had not been easy for her. From the start, when she’d refused to show any emotion regarding her father’s murder, Varian had understood that the Red Lion’s daughter locked her feelings securely inside her. Now, when he’d offered only the smallest of apologies, she’d opened up a corner of her heart to him. His own twisted guiltily.

Varian wished he could shelter this girl in his arms while he assured her she was not to blame, not at all. He realized he was leaning toward her.

“I see.” He unfolded his legs and leaned back on one elbow, to widen the distance between them. “That explains everything.”

She shot him a wary glance. “Does it?”