Unconquered (56 page)

“Come, Perky,” she said brightly, and the two women left the room. The harem women were waiting in the salon. The little English maid stood back shyly, her eyes wide at the sight of the beautiful women in lavish, colorful costumes. Perky did not understand any language other than English, and could not understand what was said, but she knew that the women were sad to see her mistress leave.

Having bid a warm good-bye to the women of the harem, Miranda turned back to Guzel and Safiye, and asked, “Will you show my maidservant the way to the quay?”

Miranda then spoke to Perkins. “I will be with you shortly. These ladies will show you to the barge.”

Perky curtseyed. “Very good, m’lady,” she said, and followed Safiye and Guzel from the room.

“He awaits you in the main salon,” said Turkhan. Giving Miranda a farewell kiss on the cheek, she finished, “I will take good care of him.”

“I know you will. I only hope he knows how fortunate he is to have you,” said Miranda sincerely. “Men can sometimes be such damned fools!”

“In his own way he appreciates me,” was the contended reply. “Go now, Miranda. May you find true happiness again with your husband.”

Miranda walked to the main salon in the public rooms of the small palace. He was waiting, dressed as he had been the first time she had seen him in St. Petersburg, in white trousers, a white Persian coat, and a small white turban.

“We end as we began,” he said quietly, taking her hand and kissing it in the Western fashion. “How beautiful you look, Lady Dunham, the picture of the fashionable European woman!”

“I love you,” she said softly. “Not in the way in which I love Jared, but I do love you, Mirza. I didn’t know a woman could care so deeply, in such different ways, for two men at the same time.”

“I wondered if you would ever understand that,” he smiled, holding out his arms to her.

With a little cry she buried herself in his embrace. “Mirza, I am so confused!”

“No, Miranda, you are not really confused, you are simply reluctant to exchange my love for the uncertainty of what awaits you. I will not deny my love for you or my need for you, but neither will I accept second best, for I am a proud man. Your love for Jared Dunham is far greater than your love for me could ever be. Return to him, little puritan, and fight for him!

“I don’t give a damn what polite society in England says. When a woman is forced, the shame is
not
on her but on the man who forces her. Your Jared has had more than his share of ladies, I will wager, and if he is the man you claim then he will not hold you responsible for something you could not help. Remember what I have told you.
Never
apologize!”

“And what shall I tell him of you, Mirza Eddin Khan? You did not force me.”

“What do you want to tell him, Miranda?”

She moved out of his embrace just enough to look up into his handsome face. His deep-blue eyes challenged her. “I think, Mirza Khan, that there are certain things in this world a wife must keep to herself,” she answered, and her sea-green eyes were laughing.

“I have taught you well, oh daughter of Eve,” he said softly.

“I have been an apt pupil, my dearest friend,”

He smiled his oddly roguish smile, and then pulling her back
into his embrace, he kissed her deeply and tenderly. She melted back against him, tasting him one last time, enjoying the tickly softness of his mustache one last time, feeling so loved that when he finally released her she lay in his arms for a moment or two more, her eyes closed. Finally she sighed deeply, regretfully, and, opening her eyes, stepped away from him. Neither of them said anything, the time for words being long past. He took her hand in his, and they walked from the salon across the portico, across the green lawn, and down to the marble quay.

Perky, who was on the barge approaching
Dream Witch
, saw them and caught her breath in surprise. When she had been told her mistress was staying at the palace of a cousin of the sultan, she had envisioned a kindly, white-haired patriarch, and she assumed that Lord Dunham had, too. This very tall, handsome gentleman was not at all what she had expected. “Coo,” she whispered to herself, “ain’t he gorgeous!” They held hands, too. Well, it wasn’t her business, and heaven only knew Lord Dunham has chased every lightskirt in London, and lifted them, too! These last months hadn’t been easy on any of them.

The couple walked out onto the quay. The barge would return for Miranda in a very few minutes.

“Allah go with you, my darling. I shall think of you each day for the rest of my life and count the time well spent.”

“I will not forget you, Mirza. I only wish I were as deserving of your love as I should be. Turkhan loves you, you know. She would make you a very good wife.”

He laughed. Catching her hand, he kissed the palm in a teasing gesture. “Farewell, my little puritan! When you write me that you have made your own happy ending, then I will consider your advice!” He helped her down into the barge.

“Consider my advice well, my proud prince,” she teased. “Have you not taught me that true love is a rare thing, to be prized above all else?”

“I bow before your wisdom, Miranda,” he answered. Though he laughed, his eyes were sad, so sad she almost cried with his pain.

“Farewell, Mirza Eddin Khan,” she said softly, “and thank you, my love.”

For the briefest moment he gazed raptly at her. Then speaking curtly to his boatman, he gave orders and the barge bobbed out
onto the gentle evening seas. She watched the shore recede, looking for a last time at the lovely little palace where she had been so happy, so safe.

From the building on the hill emerged a regal female figure in flowing ruby-red robes. The woman made her way to Mirza Khan’s side and stood silently next to him. Wordlessly he put his arm about her, and Miranda smiled, pleased. Turkhan will surely win him over, she thought.

Jared Dunham stood on the deck of
Dream Witch
, watching as the barge moved slowly across the water toward him. Thoughtfully he lowered his spyglass and stared at the man in white who was standing on the quay. The prince was certainly not what he’d expected. Jared had seen clearly the way Miranda had looked at him and also the way the prince had looked at Miranda. Jared felt extremely uncomfortable, as if he’d been spying on a private meeting. Cold anger welled up in him. She was his
wife!
Why should he feel like an outsider? Jared had been advised by many people in England that Miranda would need him desperately, that she would need all the love and understanding he could give her. But the elegant woman walking hand in hand with the handsome prince did not look in need of anything at all.

Suddenly Jared felt that he was being watched, and he put the spyglass to his eye once more. Prince Mirza stood staring directly at him and his look carried this message:
Take care of her, for I want her too!
Jared was astounded. It was as if the man had spoken clearly in his ear. With an angry oath, he slammed the spyglass shut and stormed from the deck.

Perky had arrived some time before, with the jewel case, and was below. Ephraim Snow, alone on deck, awaited Miranda. As she was hoisted up in the bosun’s chair, the old captain was suddenly overcome. Helping her from the chair with trembling fingers, he sobbed, “Oh, my lady!”

Miranda reached over and touched his cheek, knowing that to kiss him would be wrong.

“Hello, Eph,” she said softly. “I’m so glad to see you again.”

The sound of Miranda’s voice made her presence a firm reality, and helped the old man to recover. Wiping his eyes, he said gruffly, “Worst time of my whole life was telling Master Jared that you’d been killed.”

“I didn’t do it deliberately,” she sighed. Damn! Was it going to be like this with all of them? Was she to be held accountable for her abduction?
Never apologize!
She heard Mirza Khan’s voice as clearly as if he were standing beside her. Miranda turned away from Eph and walked swiftly to the stern of the ship. She raised her hand in a farewell gesture. The gesture was quickly answered by a red arm and a white arm waving back from the quay.

The anchor was raised, and the
Dream Witch
slipped down the Bosphorus into the Sea of Marmara. The evening sky had darkened to a deep lavender, and on the far western horizon was the thinnest slash of scarlet. Miranda gazed intently at the disappearing coastline. It was over. The nightmare was over, and she was going home. Home!

Wait, said a small voice. You may not have won yet. You have yet to see Jared.

Ephraim Snow’s voice cut into her thoughts. “You gonna stay out here all night, Mistress Miranda?”

She turned to face him. “Where is my husband, Eph? I was told that he came to Istanbul. He was not on deck to greet me when I came aboard.”

Je-sus! Something sure as hell was eating at her. “He was up on deck, with his spyglass, watchin’ as you said your good-byes. Somethin’ sure as hell riled him cause when you were halfway between us and the shore, he went below lookin’ madder than a boiled owl.”

“Where is he now?”

“In his cabin.”

“Tell my husband I am in the main salon, Eph,” she said, and she left him.

Lord, she’d changed. He’d understood the enthusiastic girl-woman he’d brought to Russia those long months ago. But she was as gone as if she really had been murdered. The woman who had given him that cool, sharp order looked at him with eyes that never wavered. In fact it had been he who had looked away first. Praise the Lord she wasn’t his problem! Let Jared Dunham handle her … if he could! The Captain went to fetch the gentleman.

Jared looked somewhat chagrined by the message Ephraim Snow brought. He had a question:

“Has she changed?”

“Aye.”

He had known it! “Very much?” he asked.

“You’ll judge for yourself, Master Jared.”

He nodded, swallowing hard, and, brushing past the captain, walked to the main salon. Opening the door, he entered it. Her back was to him. He couldn’t fathom the set of it and that annoyed him. She didn’t appear the broken reed he had been told she would be. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “So, madam, you are back at long last!”

She turned. Her new beauty stunned him. “Indeed, m’lord, I am most certainly back.” The mouth mocked him, as did the knowing sea-green eyes.

He didn’t remember her mouth so lush, and the last time he had looked into those eyes they had been innocent. He stared angrily back at her. The dress had too low a neckline, and her breasts swelled far too provocatively above it. “I trust, madam,” he said coldly, “that you have a good explanation for your conduct.”

“I merely sought my husband,” she said in a syrupy sweet voice that was belied by the stormy look in her eyes, “my husband, who left me to play at a game of intrigue while I carried and bore our first child alone.”

“A child you cared so little about that you left him when he was barely two months old!” he retorted.

“I love little Tom!” she shouted furiously at him. “I expected to find you, and bring you home immediately. My son was safer in England with Amanda. Would you rather I had exposed him to the rigors of the journey to Russia?

“I could bear it no longer without you! Your beastly friend, Palmerston, would tell me nothing!
Nothing!
He behaved as if you did not even exist.”

“Touching, madam, but tell me, how did you attract Prince Cherkessky’s attention?”

“
What?
”

“Alexei Cherkessky, the man who abducted you. Ephraim Snow told me you attended a party at the English Embassy the night before you disappeared. Did you meet the prince there? Did you flirt with him and bring the situation on yourself, Miranda?”

She threw the nearest thing at hand, a heavy crystal inkwell. It
dented the door behind his head, the black ink running down the paneling onto the deck, where it sank slowly into the wide boards. “So, m’lord, I am to be held accountable for this situation, am I? Oh God, how little you know me to believe such a thing! When did I, in the few short months of our marriage,
ever
give you cause for doubt?
Never!
But you, m’lord! First there was Gillian Abbott, then who knows how many women in St. Petersburg, and you mourned me but a few months before you were back in the social swing. So now there is Lady de Winter.”

She turned away furiously, hiding her face from his angry gaze, blinking back the tears fast filling her eyes. She would not let him see her weakness. He would only use it against her.

“
Did Cherkessky rape you?
” His voice was ragged.

She turned back to face him, and he thought he had never seen her so angry. “No,” came the short, sharp reply, and then she swept past him and left the room.

Tears nearly blinding her, she made her way to her spacious cabin by memory, ordering a startled Perky from the room as she flung herself on the bed.

He had looked so handsome! But they were at odds, and her heart was breaking again. She had noticed just the faintest touch of silver at his temples, and wondered if her disappearance was responsible for it. At least
her
scars didn’t show. What a terrible beginning it had been!

He came into the room now and, kneeling by the bed, said quietly, “We did not make a good new beginning, did we, Miranda? I am glad to have you back.” He cautiously placed his arm around her.

“I have been coming back to you ever since Prince Cherkessky had me abducted,” she said. “I attempted to escape his villa within a month of my arrival.”

“
You did?!
” This was the Miranda he knew. “How?”

“By sea. I thought if I could sail to Istanbul I could go to the English Embassy. But I was caught, and until the Tatars came I was too closely watched.” She shrugged off his arm, not seeing the spasm of pain that crossed his face. “I walked practically all the way to ’Stanbul,” she said proudly. “Oh, sometimes I’d ride a few miles on one of their booty carts, but mostly I walked. The prince’s servants told the Tatars that I was a rich Englishwoman
who could be ransomed in ’Stanbul, but they also warned me to beware the savages, and how right they were. The bastards intended to sell me right along with the rest of the poor souls they’d captured, but I overheard them plotting the night before we entered the city.