Talk of the Ton (Free Fellows League 5)

“I knew of him,” Jonathan told her. “His success with the East India Company was legendary. My deepest condolences, Lady India,” he offered. “I heard a distant cousin inherited the title.” He stared at her clothes as a glimmer of a memory surfaced. “India Burton.” He breathed her name. There couldn’t be two Lady India Burtons. She had to be the one who had been abducted from the ill-fated HMS Portsmouth by Barbary pirates and—

“Yes.” She knew the moment he recognized her name and realized what had happened to her. “I am that India Burton.” She drew herself up to her full height, straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin a notch higher, and met his gaze without flinching. “And you are?”

“Jonathan Manners, eleventh Earl of Barclay. At your service,” he drawled. “I’d bow and kiss your fingers, but I prefer to keep my throat intact.”

India laughed in spite of herself. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lord Barclay.”

Jonathan glanced skyward. “I wish I could say the same, but under the circumstances . . .”

Mustafa snapped an order at her in the language Jonathan assumed was Turkish, and to Jonathan’s surprise, India retaliated in kind.

“Is this where he slices my throat? Or shall I simply bleed to death from the collection of cuts I garner each time you anger him?”

He spoke in a conversational tone of voice, and India was more impressed by Lord Barclay’s courage than she wanted to admit. Lord Barclay might not realize the danger, but India knew that Mustafa was perfectly capable of slitting his throat or of strangling him without so much as a hint of remorse. She had seen him do both to wayward concubines and the lovers they’d met in the gardens or paid to have smuggled into the harem. The fact that she no longer belonged to the sultan and was no longer bound by the laws of the seraglio meant nothing to Mustafa. And the fact that the man who had breached the threshold of Plum Cottage was English and ignorant of the laws that governed the sultan’s concubines and his chief eunuchs or the fact that he had broken most of them meant even less.

Mustafa was notoriously short-tempered, and India had spent the sennight since her arrival at Plum Cottage living in fear. The captain of The Bengal Princess had told her her grandfather had been delayed, but Lord Davies or someone else would come in his stead. Thank goodness he had. And thank goodness the man had arrived before the sultan’s most trusted eunuch tired of waiting for someone to relieve him of the responsibility of the sultan’s most troublesome concubine. India was acutely aware that Mustafa could have very easily disposed of her long before her grandfather or Lord Davies’s emissary arrived.

“Mustafa ordered me to cover my face,” India said. “He reminded me that to look upon my unveiled face carries a sentence of death for any man other than my lord and master.”

“Am I now under Mustafa’s sentence of death for looking upon your face as well as for being a suspected assassin?”

“You would be,” India told him. “Except that I reminded Mustafa that we are in England because Sultan Hamid accepted my grandfather’s gold in exchange for my return. I explained that Englishwomen are not required to cover their faces, and an ignorant English infidel could not be expected to know the sultan’s customs or laws or recognize him as my lord and master.”

“I can tell how well that explanation sat with Mustafa by the length and depth of the fresh cut upon my neck,” Jonathan replied. “Do you think that for the sake of my neck and our newfound friendship, you might refrain from arguing with the man at least until he releases his hold on me?”

“I can try,” she agreed, “but I can’t promise.”

In that case, Jonathan decided, it was better for him to take care of the ill-tempered giant himself. “Prick me once more with that blade,” Jonathan warned, “and you will live to regret it.”

“He doesn’t speak English,” India reminded Jonathan, gesturing for Mustafa to release him.

“He understands,” Jonathan said, knowing instinctively that the Saracen giant understood exactly what he meant; he had simply chosen not to heed the warning.

Lady India gestured once again for Mustafa to release him, but the Saracen balked. He released a tirade of Turkish and French in a high-pitched voice that grated on Jonathan’s nerves, pressing the knife blade into Jonathan’s neck once again, turning it so the tip nicked his earlobe.

Jonathan exploded in a flurry of action. Realizing the Saracen’s brocade slippers were no match for his boots, Jonathan lifted his right foot and stomped down as hard as he could on the other man’s right instep. The Saracen gave a high-pitched yelp and abruptly released his hold on Jonathan. Jonathan ducked beneath his massive arm and repeated the maneuver on the opposite instep, then shifted his weight and put the full force of his thirteen stone into the blow as he elbowed the Turkish giant in the chest hard enough to cut off his wind. The curved blade clattered to the floor as the huge man bent double in a futile effort to replace the air that Jonathan had forced out of his lungs.

India scrambled to retrieve the knife while Jonathan waited patiently for the giant to lift his head before rudely greeting him with a combination of left cross and right up percut to the jaw.

Mustafa fell back, hitting the stone floor with the force of a boulder, rapping his head against the door frame as he fell.

“How?” India’s eyes were as big as saucers as she stood looking up at Jonathan.

“Three mornings a week at Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Academy on Bond Street,” Jonathan announced triumphantly. “Like most bullies, your Saracen friend relies on his bulk instead of his brain. And he’s soft,” he added. “All flab. No muscle.”

Strangling concubines a quarter of his size with a silk cord didn’t require muscles or brains, India thought. The only requirements for that were unlimited power of life and death over the women in the harem and a complete lack of compassion, and Mustafa qualified on both accounts. She moved closer. “Is he dead?” she asked with a tremor in her voice.

Jonathan shook his head. “No.”

“A pity,” India replied.

“My sentiment exactly,” Jonathan agreed, reaching up to swipe at the rivulet of blood running down his neck. “But I didn’t want to take the chance of ha

ving the sultan lodge a complaint with His Majesty’s government if I killed him. That would require an explanation, and an explanation might do irreparable damage your reputation.”

India almost smiled at the irony of Lord Barclay worrying about her reputation, when he had to know that nearly five years in a sultan’s seraglio had already damaged it beyond repair. “I suppose it’s just as well,” she said with a touch of wry humor. “For he must weigh a ton. I doubt that we could drag his body out of the cottage, and leaving it here would be a terrible abuse of Lord Davies’s hospitality.”

“Then the least we can do is bind his arms and legs so we won’t have to worry about him for the rest of the night.”