Seize the Fire (39 page)

"Be damned to you," he snarled, and shoved away from her.

Olympia's arms fell to her sides, empty. She stared at his taut back as he turned away. He buttoned himself, then stood with his white-knuckled hand on the brass doorknob, facing the blank wood. His shoulders rose and fell with deep, labored breaths.

Without turning, he said, "I have to talk with you. Would it please Your Royal Highness to put on your bloody dressing gown?"

"Sheridan—"

"
Put it on
."

She grabbed the rumpled flannel from the floor and dragged it over her head. "There. Satisfied? Shall I wrap myself up in the blanket as well?"

"It damned well wouldn't hurt."

Olympia plumped herself onto the berth. She drew the blanket around her, not because of him, but because the cabin that had seemed so hot a moment ago now held a chill. "There," she said stiffly. "You can turn around. I'm not going to accost you."

He pushed away from the door and sat down on her trunk. He didn't look at her; he seemed to find the deck more interesting. His breeches still showed the heavy burden of arousal, and Olympia gazed at them wistfully.

"I'm sorry," she said in a softer tone. "Don't be upset with me."

He propped his elbow on the bulkhead and shoved his hand into his hair, frowning into space. "I don't want to hurt you," he said in a hard voice. "I don't want you in trouble. But God—it's difficult enough—do you have to make it unbearable? I'm no saint, Olympia." He took a deep breath. "God knows I'm not."

A surge of guilt and love washed over her as she watched his tense profile. "Who wants a saint?" she asked softly. "I think I prefer my angels fallen."

He smiled sourly and gave her a sideways glance. "I never got high enough to fall. Virtue ain't my style. And it's not yours, either—that's coming clear enough."

She pressed her lips together, feeling her cheeks grow pink. "Well," she said defensively, "if we were married, it would be all right. It would even be virtuous. 'Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing.' Proverbs 18:22."

"Jesus—you ought to be struck by lightning, quoting the Bible to me after the kind of thing you were saying not five minutes past."

Her eyes widened. "You're a prude!"

"I'm not a prude. I'm trying to keep my head. We
aren't
married. For God's sake, everyone on this ship thinks we're brother and sister!" He rubbed his temple. "Let me tell you, it makes my blood run cold to imagine the consequences if you were to start increasing now."

"We could tell them the truth. It would be such a relief! And then the chaplain could marry us."

"You're not thinking," he said.

"There's no way my uncle could reach us now. Me
or
you. What do we have to fear? Everything's different from when we left England." She gazed at him earnestly, trying to put all of her feelings into her eyes. "Everything."

He held the look for a long moment, his expression strange and uninterpretable. He looked away from her. "Yeah. Everything."

She frowned, watching him. His strong fingers toyed with the latch of the trunk between his knees, marking an uneasy rhythm. He stared down at his hands, his face hidden.

For the first time, a worm of real fear coiled inside her. "You asked me to, marry you," she said. "On the island, you asked me. Did you not mean it?"

The latch made a metallic clunk. "I meant it," he said to the floor.

She drew a breath and waited.

The latch clunked again. He added caustically, "I don't recall that you ever answered me."

Olympia wanted to put her arms around him and hug him to her breast, but instead she only said, "You fell asleep."

He sat back, leaning his head against the wall, his eyes closed. "I think I've been asleep for the past five months." He shook his head. "Dreaming."

"Dreaming?" she whispered.

"Impossibilities."

Her throat would barely sound words. "You don't want to marry me now?"

"Looked at in the cold light of reason, it seems to me to be a stupid and dangerous idea. I can't think where I came by it."

The shock numbed her. She sat with her eyes closed, trying to breathe.

"Use your head," he said harshly. "We're both at the mercy of Fitzhugh. You tell him the truth, and what's he going to do? Our precious young captain's the hanging sort—you heard what he made certain they did with Buckhorse and his gang."

"They were murderers. They deserved it."

"Aye, those brutes deserved it, God knows, but the man's got a righteous gleam of retribution in his eye. I know his kind. I've lived with 'em all my life. He can't get any normal satisfaction because of his damned tight morals, but he'll be delighted to take his thrills out of somebody's hide if he thinks he's got justice on his side." Sheridan stood up, prowling the tiny cabin. "And on top of that, the little bastard fancies he's in love with you. He's beside himself with lily-white passion. Just how do you think he's going to take to the idea that I'm not your brother, but a conniving blackguard who's kidnapped his adored object and been living in carnal intimacy with her for months?"

"He's not like that. And you haven't kidnapped me."

"How's he to know?" Sheridan shook his dark head. "We've lied, my dear. We've lied well and thoroughly. If we change the story now, we've got no credibility left at all. What's more fantastic—the truth or the tale as it stands? He's not going to believe you're a princess, and he sure ain't going to swallow the idea that I've been chaperoning you on the way to the revolution." His fine mouth curled. "Fitzhugh may be a self-righteous choirboy, but he's not as stupid as you'd think to look at him. It's only his rosy view of
you
that's made him miss the inconsistencies so far. Even Buckhorse could see we were lying till our tongues turned blue."

"And he believed us in the end."

"No, he didn't." Sheridan turned on her with a savage scowl, bracing his hand on the brass trimwork near her ear. "He just finally figured he wasn't going to beat it out of me. Besides, he had another use for me alive. Fitzhugh doesn't. I'm nothing to him, once I'm not the hero of his damned midshipman's fantasies." He thrust himself away. "And Fitzhugh's king aboard this ship, madam. He's God. If he gets some notion in a jealous fit, nobody here is going to say him nay. You can kill a man with a cat-o'-nine, Princess." His voice took on a mocking note. "Accidentally, of course. 'So sorry, the poor bastard looked tougher than that—who'd've thought he couldn't take two hundred lashes? Unfortunate business, but he was a pretty rum case, after all. Been pulling the wool over all our eyes for years.'"

She frowned, watching him pace the confinement as if it were a cage. "I don't believe Captain Fitzhugh's at all the kind of person you think. And I know him much better than you do. I've never once seen him lose his temper. He's always been good and kind and considerate."

Sheridan looked swiftly at her. His gray eyes glittered. "Marry
him
, then," he said angrily, "if he's such a damned paragon. Because I'm spiteful and selfish and I've got the devil's own temper, which I make sure to lose twice a day." He turned away, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "He's already applied to me for permission. I only hope he doesn't fall into an ecstatic swoon at my feet when I give him the glad news."

Huddled in the blanket, she stared at him in miserable disbelief. "Why are you saying these things? What's happened?"

"Reality." He shot her a sidelong glance, one eyebrow raised in derision. "Not one of your favorite subjects, I know."

She hugged her knees. Watching him, she remembered his face in the firelight, patient and sympathetic as he whittled a comb from whalebone to replace the one she'd broken in a fit of pique at the impossible snarls in her hair. She remembered his gentle hands working through the mass of tangles himself after she wept with impatience because she could not. She saw him now, with that sarcastic twist to his mouth, and thought that reality was more tangled and frustrating than any mop of windblown curls.

"All right," she said at last. "We'll just go on as we are."

She thought he would say something cutting; she was braced for it. But her agreement met silence. He leaned against the wall, his profile reflected in the polished wood.

She looked down, picking at the blanket. "It was only an idea, anyway."

He straightened. He came to her and took her by the shoulders. His fingers slipped up the sides of her throat; he cupped her chin between his hands and held her, looking down into her eyes.

His own were smoke, intense and impenetrable, like a wildfire smoldering.

"Trust me," he said.

She stared up at him. "How could I not?" Her voice had a husky break in it. "I love you."

Something queer passed in his face, an instant and then gone, and she could not tell if it was shock or fear or exultation or a fusion of all of them.

He bent and touched his forehead to hers with a silent, negative shake of his head.

"I do," she repeated.

"Foolish princess; I've just informed you that I'd rather shab off than risk my precious hide to marry you. What do you want to love a scaly chap like me for?"

She arched her eyebrows. "Fishing for compliments?"

"God help me—I ain't that optimistic. Just checking, in case you might have turned up sensible on me. Pleased to see you're as half-witted as ever." He drew back, shook his head again and went to the door. He paused with it open and gave her a wry smile. "I won't be slow to take advantage of it, you have my word."

"
Emiriyyiti!
" Mustafa scratched on her door a few minutes later.

She opened it and found him in red fez and white galabiyya, standing with a roll of blankets in his thin brown arms.

"O my princess, where would you have me to sleep? Sheridan Pasha has said it may be outside your door or inside, as you prefer."

Olympia protested, but the manservant, with orders from his pasha, only informed her that he thought it best that he lie down just inside her cabin door.

"Inside? That would be exceedingly improper."

"Of course you are right, my princess, in your infinite beauty of mind and form. My own comfort is less than nothing, and I shall be privileged to sleep in the corridor. I welcome the cold drafts and the kicks of these English sailors and their heavy feet, O Beloved; I would suffer a thousand bruises and broken fingers if you would only look kindly on me, a—"

"Oh, very well." She grabbed his elbow and pulled him inside. "But I don't know what everyone will think!"

Mustafa bowed deeply, gesturing as if to lift her hem and kiss it. "They will know that your charity extends to the ends of the earth, that the poor multitude kneels down in thanks at your mercy, and that I, made weaponless and fit to serve in the Great Sultan's hareem, will protect your honor with my life."

"Nonsense. Really, Mustafa, you say the most outrageous things. I ought to scold you to an inch for telling me lies about Sir Sheridan. And stealing my jewels, too—when we both were beside ourselves thinking he'd been killed. That was taking most venal advantage." She frowned at him and sighed. "But I suppose you hardly know better, do you? You have no more moral sense than a monkey."

His brown eyes widened. "
Emiriyyiti
," he said in a grieved tone. "I obey my pasha's orders. I have told you no lies except at his bidding, may Allah bless him."

"No lies?" She made a huff of exasperation. "How you can be so brazen, I don't know." With a resigned shake of her head, she regarded him. "I suppose it's no use being vexed. You hardly comprehend if you're lying or not, I don't expect. But you should understand that taking my jewels and placing the blame on your master was very, very wrong."

Mustafa looked horrified. "No, no! Forgive me, but it is you who misunderstand, my princess. I did not steal your jewels,
Emiriyyiti
. I would not dare! Sheridan Pasha took them, but now we say that it was I, so that this silly camel of a captain will not be so foolish as to detain my pasha as if he were a common criminal." The gold tassel on his fez bobbed anxiously. "You must say so, too. He has so ordered, has he not?"

"Certainly not. Mustafa, you mustn't be afraid of me and lie on that account. I especially asked Sir Sheridan not to punish you over this, but do please stop making up stories!" She opened her arms. "When I think of all that nonsense you told me about how he had been a slave of some sultan—it really is too much."

He looked at her, his head tilted to one side as if she were a fascinating puzzle. Then he blinked, and said without expression, "Thank you,
Emiriyyiti
, thank you for your kindness in speaking on my humble behalf."

With another deep bow, he shuffled backward and began to spread his blankets on the floor. As he bent over, the lamplight caught the glint of the crescent and star that swung free of the folds of his garment.

Olympia frowned. She sat down on her bed. Something uncomfortable tickled in the back of her mind, not quite clear enough to be a thought. "Mustafa—what is it on that chain you're wearing?" she asked.

Mustafa went stiff. He turned back to her and bobbed briefly. "It is called a
teskeri hilaal
, my princess."

"Oh." She watched him arrange a pillow. "Forgive me. I don't mean to pry, but—" She bit her lip. "Forgive me, but it doesn't mean your master's not a Christian or anything, does it?"

For a long time Mustafa made no answer, smoothing and tucking at his bedding. Finally he looked up at her. In a dignified, faintly accusing tone, he said, "Perhaps you will say it is another story."

She tucked in her chin and tried to appear stern. "Will it be?"

He hesitated. Then a considering look came into his alien eyes. "No,
Emiriyyiti
. I understand that I am not to tell you lies again."

She nodded encouragement. "Good."

"I tell you the truth, sworn upon my mother's milk. The
teskeri
is—" He frowned, searching for words. "It is a talisman. A badge of the Great Sultan's favor. It is my task to see that my Sheridan Pasha wears it so that he is honored and protected from lesser men's slights. I am very zealous for my master, you know that,
Emiriyyiti
. I try to be strict with him and persuade him to wear it. When I shave him, I always place it on his neck. Sometimes he allows it to stay there. For a day, perhaps. Or a week. He wore it for a whole month, once, when we had just left the navy. But mostly"—he shrugged—"mostly a devil is in his head and he cannot bear to touch it or see it or have others know it belongs to him, and so I keep it safe." He lifted the gleaming crescent over his head and handed it to her. "Can you see the writing? It says that the man possessing this
hilaal
is a beloved and trusted sla—" He stopped suddenly, and with a lift of his eyes toward heaven, muttered something in his own language. Then he added fervently, "Forgive me, my princess, I was about to tell a lie, but I will not. What it truly says is that this man of the
hilaal
—and it describes him, so that no one else may have the advantage of it—is beloved of Allah, who is the One God, and of Sultan Mahmoud, who is His Shadow on Earth, and that any who dares harm the least hair of this man's head will be tracked down to the ends of the earth and destroyed by Their terrible might."