Seductive Wager (45 page)

“That is what you say now, but I wonder would your story be the same if you were to find yourself deposed?”

“We dine in an hour,” Wiggins intervened smoothly. “Allow me to suggest that everyone retire to his room to change. I was sure you would wish to join us, Mr. Ibrahin, so I have had a room prepared. I also have a room and attendants ready to serve you,” Wiggins said, turning back to the dey. “Additionally, I have caused a message to be sent to the palace requesting your guard to come for you at midnight. Until then you are my guest. You have only to ask, and my staff and I will do everything we can to see that your every wish is gratified.”

The dey gave Wiggins a look almost as hate-filled as the one he directed to Ibrahin before turning to follow the servant waiting to take him to his chamber.

“You must not delay any longer,” Wiggins said, turning to Brett. “I am not at all sure the message I sent will prevent the dey’s personal guard from coming here as soon as they realize he is not in the palace. If you are gone, he will have nothing to gain by exposing the ruse which brought him here. Mr. Ibrahin’s presence is a kind of guarantee that he will pretend this was his idea. However, your presence, and that of your wife, would probably be too much of a temptation, and he might decide that embarrassment would be a small price to pay for your capture.”

“Where can we go?” Kate asked, fear of recapture doubly bitter after the brief moments of freedom.

“We’re leaving Algeria tonight,” Brett told her. “There’s a ship waiting for us in the harbor right now. If we leave immediately, we can be on board before the dey comes down to dinner. Thank you for your help,” Brett said, turning to Ibrahin. “I wasn’t very nice to you at first, but I admit I might never have found my wife without your help.”

“It is a pleasure to serve one of such supreme loveliness,” Ibrahin said, shifting his gaze to Kate. “To have an opportunity to gaze on such beauty is not a thing which happens often in a man’s lifetime. In my country, we would keep such a treasure far from the sight of other men’s eyes. Her beauty would cause great jealousy.”

“It has already been the source of quite enough difficulties,” Wiggins observed as he herded Brett and Kate toward the door. “Be gone before you cause any more.”

“Thank you both,” Kate said. “Please come visit us when you’re in London, Mr. Wiggins. And Mr. Ibrahin, if you ever decide to come to England, we would love for you to be our guest.”

“I would be honored,” Ibrahin said, “but now I feel I should add my pleas to those of Wiggins and urge you to make haste. The time is shorter than you think.”

Brett and Kate ran from the building and climbed into the waiting carriage. It started forward without waiting for a command from Brett. It was the time of evening when everyone was home eating; the streets were empty, and the carriage made the trip in only a few minutes.

They sat in silence, their arms around each other, their hearts so full neither knew how to put their feelings into words. No beginning would have been able to tell what it meant to be together again, and no conclusion could have more than hinted at the joy with which they faced the future. So they sat quietly, Kate within the circle of Brett’s arms, and let the concreteness of their physical touching speak for them in those all-too-brief minutes before they reached the bay.

Brett and Kate climbed down and hurried to where Charles was already waiting with a boat to take them out to the ship.

“Which one is ours?” Kate asked, looking around at the harbor full of vessels.

“That one, the one with its sails up,” Brett pointed out. “It’s already moving. We’re going to have to row like hell to catch it.”

The four rowers dipped their oars into the water and the boat leapt forward. The breeze was coming in from the sea, and Kate turned her face full into it. A bubble of laughter escaped her and she self-consciously clamped down on it. But it would not be quieted. The bubble grew and grew until it erupted from her in a cascade of mirth.

“What are you laughing about?” Brett asked, smiling in spite of himself. “We’ve had a very close escape. In fact, we’re not entirely clear yet, and you’re laughing like it was all a game.”

“How can you
not
laugh at this absurd situation?” Kate said, struggling to control her hilarity sufficiently to be able to talk. “Do you realize if I were to go about regaling people with the story of these last incredible days, there probably isn’t a single person in England who would believe a word of it? I’d either be locked up for a madwoman or accused of being queer in the head and avoided by everyone except very small children and mental deficients for the rest of my life.” Another peal of laughter soared into the night. “And to think I used to sit at Ryehill longing for adventure, complaining that nothing ever happened to me. After this, I’ll be more than content to manage the house, look after my babies, and never set foot beyond my own front gate. And the first person to mention ships, harems, deys, or Algeria will be treated to a good bout of hysterics.”

“You know you’ll do nothing of the sort,” Brett said, settling down next to Kate and putting his arms around her once again. “You’ve handled every crisis like a born vagabond. I never knew anyone who could get a grip on unfamiliar situations as fast as you. In a few weeks, I bet you’ll be bored to death and straining at the bit to see what Ibrahin’s country is like.”

“Then I’ll write and ask him to send me a painting,” Kate insisted stubbornly. “I am quite serious when I say I never want to leave England again.”

“Not even to go to Paris?”

“No, not even to go to Paris, especially if I have to cross the Channel in a storm. I was never so sick, or scared, in my life. You can invite Valentine to visit us, and we can go shopping in London. She complained the whole time that nothing exciting ever happened to her anymore.”

“Can you imagine what people would say if they came to see us and encountered Valentine?”

Kate’s expression changed to one of unholy glee. “Do you think we could? It would be a marvelous joke. I can hardly wait to see their faces.”

“It’s tempting, but we’d be ostracized by the ton for the rest of our lives.” They were nearing the ship and suddenly Kate’s mood turned serious.

“I don’t know anything about the ton or London or running a big house. I don’t know anything about anything. If that horrid woman on Gibraltar looked down her nose at me because of my ignorance, what will your friends do?”

“Be too stunned by your beauty to say a word.”

“Be sensible,” she said irritably. “Women don’t react the same way as men to another woman. They’re more likely to become jealous and start looking for faults.”

“You’ll do just fine. I’ve never known anyone like you for landing on their feet.”

“I know I can learn eventually, but I may have made too many mistakes by then, and I do want you to be proud of me.” Kate stopped, her expression one of sudden realization. “That’s not true. I always meant to leave you when we got back to London. I never thought about what it would be like to be your wife.”

“What do you mean, leave me?” Brett demanded.

“You didn’t marry me because you wanted to, and anyway that was before you decided you loved me. I never
wanted
to leave, only I couldn’t live with you, loving you as I did, and knowing all the while you didn’t love me.”

“You don’t ever have to doubt that again,” Brett assured her. “I’ve known you for only a short time and yet I can’t imagine how I ever lived without you. It seems like you’ve always been part of my life.” They had reached the ship and Brett and Charles helped Kate up the ropes as the men in the boat held on to the ladder so they could keep up with the moving ship. When they were on board at last, they turned back to look at the lights of Algiers against the night sky.

“You know, it would be easy, standing here like this, to believe I imagined the whole thing,” Kate said. Brett wrapped his arms around her to keep her warm.

“Holding you in my arms reminds me it was all so very real,” Brett whispered, and Kate snuggled deeper into his embrace.

“That’s almost harder to believe. It seems like just yesterday I was sure I would die at Ryehill, still an old maid.”

“It was only last week I was still thinking I would spend the rest of my life going from one woman to another, never finding real love, never thinking I even wanted to find it.”

“Promise me it won’t change when we get back to London?”

“What won’t change?”

“Us. That we won’t let people and houses and the Foreign Office and I don’t know what else come between us. I felt it coming when we approached Algiers, and I’m sure it will come again when we reach London.”

“Kate, nothing is going to change my love for you. It’s a part of my thinking. It’s the way I
am.
Nothing can alter that, but in the course of everyday life, things will get in our way. We won’t ever have a time like we do now where we have nothing to do but love each other. But that’s as it should be. Love is a part of life, not life itself.”

“But I don’t want our love to ever be any less than it is right now. I couldn’t bear it if you started acting like Martin and your guests and horses and gambling came before anything else.”

“I’ll never be like Martin, and our love will never be less than it is now. It will grow to become a part of everything we do. We can share every part of our lives, our children, our work, our pleasure,
especially
our pleasure,” he whispered provocatively as he nibbled her ear. “And it will grow for the giving.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Kate leaned back against Brett once again, lost in thought. Abruptly she turned and looked up at Brett. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m hungry for you.”

“I’m talking about food?”

“You’re the only food I need.”

“That’s really quite romantic, but it’s an extremely silly thing to say. A few days of that diet and you’d be as weak as a woman.”

“I’d still be strong enough to handle you,” Brett said, sweeping Kate off her feet and heading toward their cabin.

“That’s just like a man, always assuming a woman wants something just because
he
wants it.”

“Don’t you want to make love to me?” Brett asked, pausing uncertainly as he closed the door.

“Of course I do. But I wouldn’t have taken half as long to get around to it.”

Brett attacked Kate with a ferocious growl that made her giggle with delight.

“You know, you’re not too bad once you get started, but I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed with the dey a little longer. Then I would have had someone to compare you to.”

“You shameless hussy,” Brett growled, and attacked her again. “You’ve been talking to Valentine too much.”

“You can’t pretend you’ve never made love to another woman. It’s not fair for men to have all the fun.”

“I’ve made love to only one woman in my whole life—you.” Kate saw the changed look in Brett’s eyes and swallowed her protest. “What I did with those other women has nothing to do with what I’ve come to know in your arms. I would never have believed it could be so different, but it was as though I, too, was making love for the first time. Before, I was only concerned with satisfying my physical needs, whereas now, all of me yearns for fulfillment. And it’s you, too. It’s both of us bound up in something bigger than we could ever be by ourselves. Do you remember when I said love was only a part of life?” Kate nodded. “Well, making love to you is only part of loving you. Love just
is
all the time. That’s something I never knew. It’s something no one but you could have taught me.”

Kate buried herself in his embrace, too shaken to speak. Maybe tomorrow she could put into words some of what she had learned from him, share some of the secrets of her heart, but for now, being in his arms was all she could stand. Her heart would burst if she were given any more.

Author’s Note

In 1827, the dey of Algeria slapped the French consul at Algiers in the face with a fly whisk. After the dey had ignored repeated demands for satisfaction, the French sent an expeditionary force to Algiers in 1830 and took the city after a short campaign. They deposed the dey and occupied a few of the towns, but they were unsure of their ultimate objectives in Algeria and did not immediately penetrate into the interior of the country.

Beginning in 1832, Abd el-Kader of Mascara, proclaimed dey of Algeria by the native chiefs, began a series of wars against the French which lasted until 1847 when he was finally captured and sent to France. He was released in 1852 by Napoleon III and died at Damascus in 1883. It was during these wars that France extended her control into the interior and established a government which lasted until Algeria won her independence in 1962.

Mohammed Ali, a tobacco merchant from the town of Kavalla in present-day Greece, went to Egypt in 1799 and rose to become governor of that country in 1805. His descendants through his son Ibrahin ruled Egypt until King Farouk I was deposed in 1952.

Though I have woven the story around facts and have used the actual names of three historical characters, their words, actions, descriptions, and motivations are purely the product of my imagination.

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