The Lion's Daughter (Scoundrels 1)

“Don’t be cross, love. The sun has condescended to shine today, and your scowl will frighten it away.”

Esme hastily subsided, though not for fear of driving away the sun. It was the careless endearment that stopped her tongue. When he said her name, the whispery sound seemed to call to her very being. This was worse.

Love. It called back the touch of his mouth upon hers and the hot pressure of his body against her back. Those recollections brought a tremble of sensations within her that left her disoriented and wistful, like one waking from a bittersweet dream.

Esme was not given to self-delusion. She suspected what her trouble was, and could not be altogether amazed. Petro had said his master had a way with women. Moreover, she doubted any female could spend so much time in the company of such godlike beauty and remain unaffected, worthless and dissolute as this particular deity might be. His face and form, unfortunately, betrayed nothing of his weak character, nor did the smoky sound of his persuasive voice. When one admired a handsome palace and longed to live there, Esme reflected, one did not think of the rats scurrying about in its bowels.

She was no saint and, being female, must have some feminine susceptibilities. This she understood. Yet it didn’t mean she approved, or wished to encourage her frailties. There was no place in her life for such foolishness.

Besides, it was mortifying. How he’d laugh if he guessed what his ugly, scrawny little interpreter felt. Had she been a beauty, tall and voluptuous…but she was not and never would be. For that, she should be thankful. Since he’d never find her desirable, her virtue would never be tested. She’d enough cause to blame herself, enough reason for sorrow. She certainly didn’t need to heap shame upon grief.

They rode on in silence for an hour or more, and Esme felt his gaze upon her several times. She resolutely kept her own eyes upon the treacherous path ahead.

“Are you angry with me?” he said at last.

“Yes,” she answered. “I should not be, because you cannot help being what you are. All the same, it is most trying. You have a gift for making difficulties for yourself.”

“Good grief, you’re not still upset about my swim in the river?”

“I do not know what is to be done with you,” she said. “You are like those little children who seem to spend all their time devising new ways to hurt themselves. Since I cannot swaddle you up or tie a leash about your waist, I am convinced you will be dead by the time we reach Tepelena, no matter what I do. Then Ali will blame me. If he’s in an amiable mood, he might merely have me shot from a cannon. Otherwise, I shall probably be roasted upon a spit, or torn limb from limb. Whatever he chooses, it is bound to be humiliating. One rarely dies with dignity at his hands.”

“I see. It’s not my survival that worries you, but your own.”

“Of course your survival concerns me,” she answered coldly. “You are a guest in my country. I am obliged to see to your safety and comfort.”

“But except for that, you don’t give a damn about me.”

“What is the use, when you do not give a damn about yourself? I do not pursue hopeless causes.”

His sharp intake of breath was clearly audible above the hoofbeats.”

“Well, that wasn’t pleasant,” he said. “The truth rarely is, I understand. Not that I’m much acquainted with truth, personally, but…Drat it, Esme, you don’t even know me.”

She almost felt sorry for him. She’d never imagined anything she said would penetrate his arrogance. “This is true enough,” she said after an uncomfortable moment. “I know only what I observe. Perhaps there are extenuating circumstances.”

He considered. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s just that— oh, never mind. Extenuating,” he went on more lightly. “Your English vocabulary is remarkable.”

“My own language is more beautiful,” she said, “but sometimes yours offers a greater choice of words.”

“I should think that the case always. You can choose among several words to convey exactly the nuance you wish.”

She nodded and clicked her tongue. “You don’t know my language, and so you don’t understand. In Albanian, one conveys the nuances, as you say, in tone, expression. It is more subtle. It has more feeling.”

“That may be so. Regrettably, I have found its speakers remarkably unfeeling.”

Esme felt a nasty prick of conscience. She ignored it. Her conscience was an idiot to respond to the plaints of a spoiled, selfish libertine. “That is not reasonable. In Rrogozhina, my countrymen treated you like a prince. What more do you want?”

“Your countrymen have been unremittingly kind and gracious,” he said. “Perhaps I should have been more precise. I meant you.”

“You find me unfeeling?”

He shifted uneasily in the saddle, and his mount snorted in annoyance. “That’s not quite what I meant. You’ve looked after me very kindly, indeed, and I do appreciate—that is, you did save my life...”

Esme waited, but his lordship produced no further enlightenment. “Then I do not understand what you are complaining about,” she said haughtily. “When you discover what it is, I shall be honored to hear.”

They reached Lushnja at midday, and it was there Varian first encountered the harsh reality of Albanian tribal justice. Two men had recently quarreled, and one had murdered the other. The murderer had fled, and the chiefs of his tribe had set fire to his house and land. Another blood feud had begun.

Though Esme had assured him guests were safe from attack, Varian refused to linger in the town. Even the promise of a hot bath could not tempt him.

“It’s barbaric,” he told her as they passed the charred field. “A man must be punished for murder, I suppose, but why punish his wife and children as well by burning their property?”

“Others will look after his family,” she said stiffly. “They at least will not be thrown into dungeons for their poverty. My father told me that in England a man and his whole family may be imprisoned merely because they are penniless.”

That struck too close to home. Lord Edenmont himself belonged in debtors’ prison. As to his own lands, he’d needed no torch to devastate them.

All the same, he’d rather quarrel with her than endure more hours of cold silence. Varian was unused to coldness, unused, certainly, to such open contempt, and it upset him far more than he could have guessed.

He didn’t know how to fight it. All his attempts to defend himself sounded querulous…and only made him appear more childish than ever. It was mortifying that Edenmont, who could coax warmth from the stoniest ogre of a dowager, could not elicit a glimmer of softness from this adolescent girl.

This was how low he’d sunk: wanting to make her berate him, mock him—anything but that chilly disregard.

“True,” he said. “But we English place a high value on money. This is what distinguishes us from less civilized nations,” he added provokingly.

“You English recognize only one civilization—your own,” she returned. “Albania built fine temples and created great art while your ancestors lived like animals in mud hovels and caves. The Romans sent their noble sons here, to Apollonia, to be trained as warriors, and these men sailed across the seas to conquer the savages of your little island. Time after time nations have come and tried to rule us, yet they could not mold us to their will. They could not even mold our language—not the Greeks, nor the Romans, nor even the Turks. Four centuries they’ve ruled us, and still the only ones who speak Turkish here are the Turks themselves. How long did the Normans need to convert your people to French? A week?” she concluded scornfully.

“That’s simply because we’re so enormously hospitable. And not nearly so obstinate. Of course, your people may have retained the one language simply because they were incapable of learning another.”

“How can you be so ignorant? I speak four languages excellently, and even in Turkish I can communicate.”

“But you’re half English.”

She threw him a murderous glance.

“Is that the evil eye Petro speaks of?” Varian asked. “It’s quite good, I must say. If I weren’t so hardened in wickedness, it should stop my tongue for a fortnight.”

“You have been provoking me deliberately,” she accused. “Why? Do you like to hear me scold?”

“Yes. You make such wonderful speeches. I wish I could let you take my place in the House of Lords. You’d enliven the proceedings considerably.”

Esme in England. The prospect boggled Varian’s mind. What would they make of her, this ferocious nymph? Add a few years—Esme at eighteen, perhaps—and place her at Almack’s among the glittering, bored lights of society. What then?

Then, Varian had small doubt, at least a few perceptive men would discern what he did. Though she was unlike anything they knew, and possessed virtually every quality most disapproved of in females, they’d glance once into her passionate green eyes and forget utterly everything they’d ever believed about women.

She was looking away from him, her high-boned cheeks tinged with pink.