Jonathan laughed. He might have adventurer written all over him but only because he was a serious man of business. He’d wanted to be a member of the Free Fellows League since Griffin, Colin, and Jarrod had formed it while they were all schoolboys at the Knightsguild School for Gentlemen. He believed in the Free Fellows League. And he was proud to be a member. He took the work they did very seriously, perhaps more than any other member, for Jonathan had been too young and too small to be a founding member. He’d had to wait over twenty years to be invited to join.
“I hate to disappoint you, my lady, but my life has been anything but adventurous. Compared to yours, it’s been quite mundane.”
“I’m not at all disappointed,” she said softly. “I knew you were the one the moment I saw the key.” She glanced up at him from beneath her eyelashes. The look was coy, but her words were anything but. “I may have been unfortunate in other areas of my adventurous life, Lord Barclay, but I think I’ve been most fortunate to have you as my rescuer.”
“Anyone could have produced a key.”
India shook her head. “The captain of the ship that brought me here assured Mustafa and me that the house was private and safe. When he relinquished the key, he swore that there were only two, both marked with a tiny brass plum. Lord Davies had given one key to Captain Marks to give to me and kept the other. When you produced the key, I knew that you were Lord Davies or that Lord Davies had sent you.”
“Except that Lord Davies didn’t send me,” Jonathan replied. “His son-in-law, Colin, gave me a key to the cottage.”
“Then it’s fate that you should rescue me.”
“I thought I’d be collecting a shipment of merchandise, and I’ll wager Colin thought the same, or he would never have allowed me to do him this favor.” Still, Colin hadn’t put up much of an argument. Jonathan thought it was because he’d wanted to stay with Gillian and her parents, but now he wasn’t so sure. Because Colin had worn an oddly pained expression on his face when he’d given him the key—almost as if he’d wanted to reveal a secret, but couldn’t.
“No matter.” She shrugged her shoulders in an unconsciously elegant gesture. “Your being here isn’t an accident or a coincidence.”
No, it wasn’t. His stop to retrieve the parcel from Plum Cottage had been planned. The only part of this mission that hadn’t been planned was the lost horseshoe and the nature of the parcel he was supposed to collect. What concerned Jonathan most was that there were at least two people outside the Free Fellows League involved in the planning.
India continued. “The fact that you are the emissary, even if you were unaware of it, saved your life. If you had been anything else—a thief, an assassin, or an innocent traveler whose horse went lame on his way home—Mustafa would have been duty bound to kill you.”
“Because I’ve seen your face?”
She shook her head. “Because you are a man, and your presence in my quarters is an insult to Mustafa and to the sultan. He only spared you because you possess a key to this house, because he realizes that even though your presence here is an insult to him and to the sultan, you’re the instrument of his return to the Topkapi.” She sighed. “Otherwise, he would have assumed that you were a robber or an assassin or that you had come to my quarters to . . .” She blushed and glanced down at her feet. “Share my bed.”
India expected him to take offense at being accused of the intent to rape, murder, and pillage, but Lord Barclay surprised her.
“I can’t fault the man’s reasoning.”
“I can,” India said. “For Mustafa could kill us to defend the sultan’s honor—”
“Hang the sultan’s honor!” Jonathan exclaimed. “What about yours?”
“I am a woman,” she said simply. “In Mustafa’s world, women have no honor, and until I’m safely delivered into my grandfather’s or his emissary’s keeping, Mustafa is duty bound to remain by my side and to treat me as if I were still the sultan’s property. Once my grandfather or his emissary takes possession of me, Mustafa will be free to return to Istanbul.”
“Where is your grandfather?” Jonathan asked. “Why isn’t he here to meet you?”
“My grandfather is a vice admiral in His Majesty’s Navy. According to Captain Marks, Grandfather arranged for me to travel on Lord Davies’s ship to avoid conflict with the Admiralty and the Foreign Office because the sultan, allied with Bonaparte, refused to allow a British naval vessel to dock in Istanbul. My grandfather planned to rendezvous with my ship en route and accompany me here, but his vessel was badly damaged in a storm around the Cape, and he was forced to put into port for repairs. Captain Marks brought me here and gave me the key to Plum Cottage. We assumed Mustafa would return to Istanbul on the next tide and that I’d be here alone until Grandfather arrived, but Mustafa received his instructions from the sultan, and he refuses to leave until my grandfather or his emissary relieves him of his duty.”
“Captain Marks had a key to the cottage,” Jonathan pointed out. “Why didn’t he relieve Mustafa of his duty?”
“He tried,” India told him. “But Mustafa refused to accept it. There was nothing Captain Marks could do except report to Lord Davies and sail back to collect Grandfather.”
“He co
uld have sailed up the Thames and taken you to London.”
“Not like this.” India glanced down at her Turkish garments and shook her head. “I refused to return to London dressed in clothing I’ve been forced to wear since I entered the seraglio or with Mustafa trailing in my wake.” She fixed her gaze on Jonathan, pleading with him to understand. “I left London as an English lady,” she said. “And I intend to return the same way, not shrouded in heavy black veils and watched by the sultan’s minion.”
Jonathan heard the note of steely determination in her voice and recognized it for what it was, but he was compelled to challenge it, to test the iron will that had enabled her to survive an ordeal that should have destroyed her. “What difference does it make how you return to London, so long as you return alive?”
India glared at him, and Jonathan felt the heat of her gaze all the way to his toes. “It makes a difference to me, Lord Barclay,” she said fiercely. “I did not lose everything and everyone I’ve ever loved and endure years as a slave in a harem in order to return home in the same manner. I know my presence here has come as something of a surprise to you, Lord Barclay, but I hope it hasn’t been an entirely unpleasant one. . . .”
“Not entirely,” he admitted.
“Then won’t you please relieve Mustafa of his duty so that he might return to his home and so that I might return to mine?”
“I’ve responsibilities of my own,” Jonathan explained. “And people depending upon me.”