The Book of the Seven Delights (4 page)

She thanked him and realized as he gave her a backward glance and shook his head that he was probably reacting to the sad state of her appearance. She gave her nightdress a cautious sniff and grimaced. It was time for a quick foray into her cabin to wash and retrieve some fresh garments.

Once below in her cabin, her stomach began to knot with warning. She quickly washed her face, snatched up several garments and one of the professor's journals, and darted back out into the passage, where she ran smack into her one-eyed rescuer.

"What are you doing below deck?" he said gruffly, watching her pick up the journal she had dropped and back away under his searching gaze.

"Getting a few of my things." She fought a flush of embarrassment at being caught in her bare nightgown.

"If I have to spend the rest of the voyage on deck, then I intend to do so properly dressed."

He cocked his head, looking at the garments she was clutching against her.

"Surely not in those."

"I beg your pardon." She edged backward toward the steps.

"That cincher. You can't wear that," he said, gesturing to a daintily embroidered garment dangling from the stack.

"Really." She stuffed it out of sight, picked up the hem of her nightdress, and climbed the five steps to the deck. He followed and emerged onto the deck just as she dropped her garments onto her chair. "Need I remind you"—she inserted herself between him and the stays visible on top of the clothes—"that the captain has declared this part of the deck off-limits to all but me?"

"You'll suffocate."

"I have been dressing myself quite successfully since I was four years old."

"Not in Morocco, you haven't." He widened his stance and crossed his arms. "You have to wear loose, breatheable clothing. Strap yourself into one of those things and you'll be keeling over on an hourly basis."

"I appreciate the advice," she said irritably, realizing that this was a test of her recent resolve. "Now if you don't mind, I am
trying
to dress."

When he continued to stand and glower, she snatched up her combinations, gave them a shake that produced a snap. Still no movement toward the hatch.

"Fine." She hiked up the bottom of her gown. Modesty asserted itself, and she turned her back to him before raising her nightdress past her knees. Then, with the knickers at her waist, she realized she would have to make a tent of her nightgown in order to insert her arms into the straps of the attached camisole.

Grumbling silently, she withdrew her arms from the voluminous sleeves to continue dressing.

Apollo Smith stood with his legs braced apart and his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze was fixed on an expanse of rumpled white muslin and on the silhouette of a naked female outlined against it by the rising sun He closed his eye to clear his vision, but the brightness had scored her image into the back of his exposed eye: a glowing light-shadow against the dark wall of his mind.

Curved breast, waist, and hip… bared leg rising… He flipped up his leather patch and narrowed both eyes to filter the sunlight that was penetrating the fabric, skimming her bare flesh, and carrying stolen impressions to him.

His fingers twitched as he watched her draw garments over that outline, blurring it. The sound trapped in his throat was part protest and part relief. Then she wrapped something around her midsection that began to define the curve of her waist in a way that was both foreign and familiar. Pink, he recalled. A boned, embroidered rectangle edged in lace and trimmed with ribbon roses.

Until two months ago, he hadn't been close to a female in European dress for five long years. Corsets, petticoats, lacy knickers, silk stockings—the hallmarks of femininity imprinted in him during his formative years in England were utterly foreign to the rough and rugged world of Berber mountain tribes, desert Arabs, and French Legionnaires. The few women accessible to him and his comrades-at-arms were denizens of brothels or serving girls in taverns who, despite their adoption of European affectations, would never be mistaken for English women or ladies of any kind.

In his long, tumultuous years of service to the Legion, he had all but forgotten the tantalizing swish of petticoats, the temptation of a tautly drawn corset, and the fascination provoked by a deeply cut neckline. Then he arrived in London just more than a month ago, took rooms in a comfortable West End hotel, and found himself plunged into a flood of forgotten titillations. For a month he stalked the streets of London in a continuous, adolescent-like state of arousal. It was a damned relief to learn of a quiet little house in St. James where he could purge that sexual tension for an affordable sum.

Now. it seemed that fleeting indulgence had only roused old memories and focused his interest all the more on accouterments of Western femininity. And the annoying bit of muslin he'd been forced to rescue was determined to upholster herself with a full complement of female garb.

He lowered his eye patch, intending to retreat in silence, when the chit abruptly lifted her nightdress and dragged it off over her head.

She stood fastening the sleeves of a starched white blouse while a gray tweed skirt hung open from her waist on one side and down along her hip on the other. The breeze blew her long hair such that it caught on her blouse and wrapped about her arms and shoulders. Chestnut brown hair. Lapping suggestively around her.

His mouth went dry.

"I'll tell Haffe to check on you in an hour," he managed gruffly. "You'll probably need reviving by then."

He headed for the door to the cabin passage, feeling suddenly too damned warm himself. "Oh, and if you know what's good for you, you'll get rid of those silk petticoats, too. Where you're going, you won't want to draw attention to what's under your skirts."

"I'll have you know, the quantity and quality of my petticoats is—" She stalked after him to the top of the stairs he was descending, determined to have the last word. "Proper ladies wear petticoats all over Arabia and Africa. I've read the accounts… Lillias Campbell Davidson… Mary Kingsley, too, in West Africa… Amelia Edwards in
A Thousand Miles Up The Nile
… Ella Sykes in
Through Persia on a
Side-Saddle
… Mabel Crawford in
Through Algeria
… they all wore plenty of petticoats!"

His cabin door was slamming behind him before he realized she was citing titles and authors.
Books
.

Good God. She was heading off to Morocco armed with the advice of a bunch of lunatic females who had gone gallivanting all over the globe and somehow survived to write about it. In glowing terms, no doubt. Making it sound like a tea party in paradise.

A raving innocent. With a boatload of pride.

Headed straight for disaster.

He groaned and ripped off his eye patch, rubbing the scars around the eye it had covered, purging the lingering silhouette of her cool, naked curves. Stubborn chit… sailing into a town like Casablanca with no idea who or what lay in wait for her… refusing to listen to the voice of reason and experience… just like he had years ago…

Somebody ought to save her from herself. Somebody who actually cared if she "corseted" and

"petticoated" herself into oblivion. Somebody who didn't mind simple-minded lies and high-handed manners. Somebody with a lot more patience than common sense.

Somebody
else
.

He had far more pressing matters to contend with… like how to win back some of his stake money from the crew, and how to get off the ship when they docked without getting spotted, captured, and very likely killed.

Life on deck wasn't really so bad, Abigail decided, except for her tendency to awaken at the slightest noise and the ship's penchant for making worrisome noises night and day. Over the next few days, she regained her strength and made increasingly longer visits to her cabin to bathe, wash her hair, and restore order to her belongings. It was a relief to find that none of her journals or maps were missing and that her cache of money remained undisturbed.

Haffe, the rotund little steward with the ever-present turban and horse-toothed grin, was diligent in his efforts to see to her needs. It was from him that she learned that the racket from "Smeeth's" cabin, meant that the gambling had resumed and that the crew were making nightly contributions to his "luck."

It was just like him—she fanned herself with the book she was reading—to spend his time drinking, gambling, and taking advantage of the poor crew. Thank heavens she didn't have to deal with him anymore. Her one regret was that he couldn't see just how well she was faring, corset and all. She fanned harder.

Two mornings later the horizon filled with a coastline of beaches and cliffs that gave way to glimpses of rolling hills and the fertile plains beyond. North Africa.
Morocco
. The place of spice markets, minarets, and men in turbans… of sand dunes and oases… of caravans of camels stretching off into the Sahara…

Past the vivid blue water and fringe of white surf, the sand of the beaches was a thousand shades of red and gray and tan. Dark rock jutted up through the uneven shoreline, ragged spires pocked with holes that provided roosts for seabirds. Here and there, ruddy stuccoed walls enclosing clusters of flat-topped buildings extended the tops of cliffs overlooking the sea. Below those villages, fleets of wooden fishing boats with patched sails plied the waters or were pulled up around fires on the beaches.

As the
Star
drew nearer to the coast, the sea grew calmer and a land breeze reached the ship, bringing with it a faint but tantalizing scent of sand and spice. A reassuring sense of completion settled over her.

She had survived the voyage to Casablanca and had learned a few things in the process. Her confidence in her ability to carry on Professor Chilton's search for the great library was renewed.

As the city walls came into view, Haffe appeared with a cup of tea and a mixed linguistic pot of descriptions of the city. He pointed out the minarets of the great mosque, the
Bab el-Marsa
or "sea gate"

in the great city wall, and below that, the area of makeshift warehouses and taverns and enterprises catering to just-paid sailors. Between that area and the ships waiting to unload cargo stretched a number of stone quays and wooden docks that swarmed with activity. Off to the south sat a separate walled complex the little steward called a
sqala
… a bastion built a century ago and now occupied by an uneasy alliance of Moroccan forces and a regiment of the French Foreign Legion.

With butterflies in her stomach, she retired to her cabin and began to repack her garments, books, and papers.

Emily Lowe, in
Unprotected Females in Norway
, was emphatic that a single woman traveling alone should never attempt to travel with more luggage than one portable carpetbag, in the event she might have to serve as her own porter. Since she would be traveling with a guide and porters of her own, Abigail favored Mariana Starke's better-equipped approach. She had dutifully acquired the items suggested in
Travellers on the Continent
, but—conceding to Emily that horse and camelback travel might require some flexibility—had secured three capacious carpetbags and had them reinforced with leather and fitted with interior pockets. Her trunk would be stored at her hotel in Casablanca until she returned.

Yes, she was well prepared, she told herself as she transferred the last of her personal items from her trunk to a carpetbag. All that remained was asking the captain to have someone summon a carriage to take her to the British Consulate. The British Foreign Office had assured her the consulate would be more than happy to recommend comfortable lodgings and a trustworthy guide.

The water around the docks was dark with slime, bilge oil, fish offal, and rotting God-knew-what.

Apollo Smith fought both to breathe and to keep from breathing as he swam toward the dock, towing his leather valise behind him. It was a foul end to a long journey, but it was either this or risk arrest by the retrieval squad he had seen prowling the dock as the
Star
approached its berth.

He had expected no less. The Legion was fiercely protective of its enlistees… especially those whose enlistments were less than voluntary. And his own enlistment five years ago had been about as involuntary as they came. After a night of drinking and carousing, he'd awakened in a metal box in a prison yard…

arrested for killing a man in a fight. He was given the choice of remaining in that stifling cell until he was roasted to a turn or joining the Legion.

He resisted at first, demanding to sec the British Consul, demanding a trial, and demanding to at least send a message to his uncle… all of which amused his jailors. After two weeks of searing heat, starvation, and the occasional beating, he finally surrendered and signed an enlistment that placed his life and limb at the disposal of the French Foreign Legion for a stated period of five years.

He might be mad for coming back here, but at least he wasn't mad and
stupid
. He knew what to expect in Morocco this time. He had scanned the dock as the ship approached and spotted Legionnaires prowling the area. They had fight-scarred faces and bellies that hung over their belts from too much time drinking beer in dockside taverns. A retrieval squad if he'd ever seen one.

He had taken off his shirt and boots, stowed them in his valise, and then slipped overboard to swim down the dock to a place where the cargo being unloaded from another ship would provide cover for him to climb ashore. Once on the dock, he shook off as much water as he could, dressed, and climbed to the top of the stacks of crates to watch the Legionnaires.

Raising his patch and squinting away the glare that plagued the vision in his left eye, he recognized one of the men… a fellow named Banane… a wiry little weasel with a nasty temper and a nose flattened into a half crescent against his face. Apollo snarled silently. Just the sort the Legion would assign to do their dirtiest, most disgusting work. A human dung beetle. With apologies to upstanding insect dung beetles everywhere.