The Lion's Daughter (Scoundrels 1)

He broke off, apparently transfixed by the same grim sight that had just caught her attention: a litter, borne by sailors, its human burden covered by a bloody cloak.

“No!” she cried. She ran toward the litter, thrusting aside those in her way until someone caught her arm. Esme looked up into the countenance of one of the naval officers she’d seen earlier. “Please,” she said weakly.

“My lady, there’s nothing you can do for your uncle. The wound was mortal. I’m sorry.”

Her uncle. A wave of sick giddiness washed through her, and she swayed. The officer caught her. “You’d better sit down, my lady.”

Esme nodded sharply. “No. No.” She pulled herself free. “I must…”

Then she saw him. Blood and dirt caked his face, and at this distance she couldn’t make out the color of his eyes. His hair, too, was thick with the filth of recent battle, and the dull copper gleam could well have been blood. His head bowed, he was wiping his face with a dirty kerchief. She knew him, all the same.

Tears stung her eyes. Angrily rubbing them away, she moved on unsteady legs toward him. The officer was saying something, but it was only noise to her.

Esme saw the kerchief pause, then drop from her father’s hand. He didn’t move, only watched her approach, his mouth creasing slowly into a smile. The smile made her hurt inside.

Pausing several feet from where he stood, she set her clenched fists upon her hips. “I hate you.” Her voice came out high and reedy. “I shall never forgive you.”

Jason’s smile broadened into a grin. “Ah, now, there’s my little girl.” He opened his arms and with a strangled sob, Esme shot into them.

Her father hugged her briefly, then broke away, cursing and staring at his hands. “Deuce take you, Esme, you’re bleeding!”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Unmoving, unnoticed, Varian stood by the Olympias. He’d started toward Esme, then checked himself when he saw where she was heading. An involuntary smile curved his bruised mouth as he watched her stop, take up an indignant pose, and hurl some epithet at her father. But when she flung herself at Jason, the smile cracked, and something within as well.

Avenge Jason, she’d cried. She’d been ready to die to avenge him, just as she’d have sacrificed herself in Tepelena for the same cause. Now the father she loved so fiercely was alive…

Varian tried to strangle the unworthy thought, but it gnawed at him. He’d lost her…she was never his to lose. He’d loved her and wed her against her will. She’d gone with him only because she’d no choice, no one else. She’d said so on their wedding night. I have no one but you. Now, though…

She was his wife, Varian told himself. No one—not even her father—could take her away. Yet he hung back, because her face would tell him the truth, and he doubted he could bear it.

Then he heard Jason’s angry cry and saw Esme sag in her father’s arms.

Panic surged, swamping all else, to drive Varian across the wharf in the space of a heartbeat. He wrenched Esme’s dead weight from her staggering father and lifted her in his arms. Her shirt was sticky with blood, and Jason was bellowing for a doctor. Varian cradled his wife closer and hurried toward the village.

In minutes a crowd was swarming about him, everyone talking at once, advising, warning. He paid them no heed.

As they neared the buildings, Esme’s eyes fluttered open, and she mumbled in Albanian.

“It’s all right, love,” Varian said thickly. “You’ll be all right. Don’t try to talk. I’ll take care of you.”

“Put me down,” she said.

Relief tightened his chest. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Shut up,” he said. “You’re bleeding.”

He made direct for the nearest respectable-looking establishment, which belonged to a shipping agent. Varian kicked open the door. “Get a doctor,” he told the startled man at the desk. “My wife’s hurt.”

Esme closed her eyes and muttered under her breath. The man hastily opened the door to his private parlor, and Varian carried Esme inside.

As the shipping agent was hustling out, Jason stormed in, dragging a doctor with him.

Varian very tenderly placed his swooning wife on the sofa. When the physician entered, however, she became sharply alert and ordered him away.

It took both Jason and Varian to keep her still while Mr. Fern examined her. She swore while he cleaned the mercifully shallow path Risto’s bullet had torn at the back of her shoulder, and cursed the doctor in acutely personal terms while he wrapped her in bandages.

Mr. Fern stoically endured her abuse, merely remarking that her ladyship was wonderfully high-spirited. “I’d simply suggest one watch for signs of concussion. The wound is minor, as you quite rightly point out, my lady,” he said soothingly. “Still, you have two nasty lumps—”

“Three,” she corrected. “Three stupid men fussing like old women.”

Mr. Fern made her a polite bow. With equal courtesy he described the symptoms to watch for and what to do about them. He then courteously accepted the coins Jason pressed into his hand and bowed himself out.

“I certainly feel old at this moment,” Jason told his daughter. “Altogether too ancient for these highjinks.”

“You are also dirty and disgusting.” Esme’s glance flicked uneasily over Varian. “Both of you. And do not tell me it is all my fault. I know well enough.”

&n

bsp; “Of course it’s not your fault,” Varian said hastily.

“Certainly not,” said Jason. “She’d not have been here in the first place if she hadn’t wed a selfish reprobate who can’t be bothered to look after his own wife properly.”

Varian’s face heated. “In the first place, if you’d bothered to look after your daughter properly, she’d never have met me.”

“Don’t tell me my duty, you insolent degenerate!”

“I, at least, did not leave her to a pack of murderous sodomites and pederasts!”

Esme scrambled up from the sofa and planted herself between them. “Aman, have we not shed blood enough, but you must make blood feud between you? You will not call my husband names,” she told her father. “Again and again he has saved my life, and all he gets is trouble. You will make no more for him, Jason. I am trouble enough.”

When she turned to Varian, the fire went out of her eyes. “I am sorry, Varian. I am not a good wife.” Her voice broke, and she buried her face in his battered coat.

His arms went around her. He forgot his mortified rage, forgot the father-in-law who despised him. All that mattered was that Esme was alive. All he wanted at this moment was to hold her.

Jason cleared his throat. “I think I’ll have a wash,” he said.

Leaving his son-in-law and daughter to their maudlin reunion, Jason headed for the Bridge Inn. After washing and changing, he dispatched a message to his mother, then arranged with the innkeeper for rooms and a change of clothing for Varian and Esme. Immediately thereafter, Jason met again with Captain Nolcott.

Sir Gerald Brentmor had expressed a wish to be buried at sea, Jason told the captain. His remains would travel on the same ship with Ismal.

“Two corpses then,” said the captain. “That boy won’t live out the day.”

So Mr. Fern confirmed a short while later, when he exited the room in which Ismal lay. The physician had removed the bullet and set the broken hand, though he was convinced both operations were futile.

Sick at heart, Jason entered the chamber.

Bruises made garish welts of color upon Ismal’s ashen face, and his eyes shone with a feverish brightness. Though he’d scarcely the strength to breathe, he, as Gerald had, insisted on talking—but to Captain Nolcott.