The Lion's Daughter (Scoundrels 1)

“Xhaxha?” Esme repeated, stunned. Jason—this child’s uncle? Incredulous, she stepped closer, all else forgotten as she stared at him. Her father’s hair, her father’s eyes…hers, as well.

Beside her, Bajo lowered his rifle. “He looks like your brother,” he said.

The boy was staring at Esme with equal astonishment.

“Who are you?” she demanded in English.

He stepped nearer, his gaze fixed on her face. “You speak English. Good heavens, you look—but Uncle Jason said she—you are a ‘she,’ aren’t you?” His face reddened. “Oh, dear. How rude of me. I am Percival Brentmor, Jason’s nephew.”

“Jason’s nephew,” Esme repeated numbly.

“Yes. How do you do?”

Esme felt an insane urge to giggle. Or cry. She didn’t know which. She was aware of a rumble, far away. But perhaps she was merely dizzy. Her ears seemed to be ringing.

“Percival,” she said, her mouth dry. “Jason’s nephew.”

“Yes. Are you—are you Esme?”

The rumbling grew louder. Bajo had turned away. He must have heard it, too.

Esme glanced from him to the lad who called himself Percival, Jason’s nephew. The boy was speaking rapidly, but she scarcely heard him. Her concentration was fixed on the building thunder. Not a storm. Riders.

Bajo raised his rifle.

“Go back,” she commanded harshly in English, pushing the boy away. “Go back to your ship—quickly, child. Now!”

“What is it? Bandits?”

“Go back!” she shouted. “Run, damn you!” She gave him another, harder push. This time he got the message and backed away. His alarmed companion was already running for the ship. The boy gave Esme one bewildered glance, then followed.

The pounding hoofbeats raced toward them, and Bajo was screaming at her to run. But the riders, coming from the east, were heading straight for the boy, who was still far from his own ship. If she and Bajo ran for their boat, her cousin would be caught in the crossfire.

She had barely thought it when the dull thunder broke into a roar and a dense, black cloud swept down from the road onto the beach. In the thick fog, they were a whirling mass of dark shapes—a score of horsemen at least. Ignoring Bajo’s frantic commands, Esme raised her rifle and fired, drawing their attention to her. Answering shots flew over her head.

She raced toward an overturned boat on the beach, and saw other forms approaching. Bajo’s comrades. A bullet whizzed past her. She dove for the shelter of the boat and hurriedly reloaded.

The explosions outside jolted Varian from a sound sleep and brought him almost instantly to his feet. A glance about the cabin showed no sign of Percival. Varian yanked his shirt over his head, jerked on his trousers and boots, snatched up his pistols, and raced to the deck.

On the shore, the light-streaked fog shrouded a writhing mass of horses and men and a cacophony of war cries and rifle fire. He scrambled onto the pier and dashed toward the battleground.

“Percival!” he bellowed.

As he leapt from the pier to the sand, he heard a high-pitched cry and turned toward it. A half dozen riders were bearing down upon one slight figure running clumsily across the sand. A feeble ray of early sun broke for a fleeting instant through the haze and lit a crown of dark red hair.

His heart thundering as loudly as the deadly hooves closing in on the boy, Varian aimed and fired. He saw a horse crumple to the ground, even as he aimed and fired his other pistol. With shaking fingers, he began to reload. There was a deafening noise close by then something crashed. A lightning bolt of pain shot through him…then darkness.

***

Gently, Esme wiped away the sand from the unconscious man’s face. It would be more efficient simply to empty the bucket over his head, but that might wake him too suddenly, and the blow he’d suffered would cause sufficient pain as it was.

The ship rocked, and the water sloshed in the bucket beside her, splashing her trousers. They were soaked already, though, scratchy with sand and salt. Still, that was a negligible discomfort, her only physical one. Some of the others had not fared so well; two of Bajo’s cousins were dead, and several friends wounded. Townsfolk had quickly taken up the latter and would care for them.

They’d not yet collected the six marauders’ corpses when Bajo had ordered her to the pielago. He’d thrown the Englishman over his shoulder and, deaf to her arguments, had seen them both safely aboard and ordered the captain to sail south, to Corfu. Then Bajo had set off to rescue the boy…her cousin.

Esme glared down at the haughty face beside her knees. What fiend had led the man here, of all places, with a young boy—unguarded, unarmed?

Actually, the Englishman’s face was that of a fiend, albeit a coldly beautiful one, she thought, gazing at the dark, curling tendrils that straggled over his high forehead. Her wary scrutiny traveled slowly over black, high-arched eyebrows and black lashes, down the long, imperious nose, and past the full, sculptured mouth to the clean, angular jaw. An arrogant face. Petro, the dragoman who’d been with the boy, had said this man was an English lord.

Esme’s glance moved to the hand that lay over his flat belly. Long fingers, the nails manicured and clean but for a few grains of Durres beach imbedded there. Not a callous, scar, or scratch marred their elegant perfection. She looked at her own tanned hands, hard and strong, then at her stained, gritty trousers. Her belly tightened with anxiety. It was the way she always felt when she encountered her father’s countrymen: the same sense of inadequacy, the same tense anticipation of their barely masked distaste and scorn. Some looked right through her, as though she were invisible, and sometimes that was worse than the more open condescension. She knew they viewed her as little better than an animal.

Those she had met before were only soldiers. This man was a lord. Even now he seemed to sneer at her.

His eyes, she decided as she returned her gaze to his face, would be cold and hard as stone.

It didn’t matter, she told herself. His opinion was of no consequence. She threw the rag into the bucket, angrily wrung it out…then paused, her hand inches from his face as his mouth worked soundlessly and his eyes slowly opened.

Her heart skittered like a frightened mare. Gray eyes, but not like stone. Gray smoke. As they focused with painful slowness, the rigid countenance softened into life, and she drew the cloth away, her hand trembling.

It was the face of a dark angel. For one giddy moment, she thought it was Lucifer himself, just hurled down by a wrathful Almighty.

“Percival,” he murmured. “Thank G—” He blinked. “Who are you?”

The low, hoarse voice was smoke, too, enervating as opium. Esme drew a sharp breath and told herself to wake up.

“I’m called Zigur,” she said.

Chapter Three

The boy’s resemblance to Percival was startling: the same feline cast to vividly green eyes, the same small, straight nose and assertive little chin. He even related the dawn’s events in the same patiently logical way, though more succinctly than Percival would have done. Had Varian been his usual self, Zigur’s cool self-possession would have amused him, for the boy could only be a year or two Percival’s senior—fifteen at most. But Varian’s head was pounding, his muscles shrieking, and the tale, in any case, held no humor.

“My father, Jason, is the uncle of the boy, Percival,” Zigur was explaining. “This morning, I learned my father had been killed and that men were sent to take me for their master’s pleasure. In the confusion at the harbor, these men took my cousin by mistake.”