The Book of the Seven Delights (9 page)

The sound of movement and men's voices came from all directions now; they were searching the consulate. How long would it take for them to reach such an obvious hiding place as a pantry? She peered out through the curtain into the adjoining kitchen. On the far side was yet another door. Its size and the heavy wooden bar across it suggested it led to the street.

Her only thought was to escape the consulate and find a place to hide until the Legionnaires left and it was safe to go back for her horse. Smith's face and voice rose in her mind proclaiming the Consulate useless as she listened to the search drawing closer to her. She would be well on her way to Marrakech by now, if she hadn't stopped to seek sanctuary where there was none.

The sound of something being overturned in the room behind her caused her to bolt from the pantry and race across the kitchen. The bar was heavy and tightly fitted into its metal brackets. She pounded upward on it with the heels of her palms and the dull thuds drew the attention of a nearby Legionnaire.

When he appeared in the doorway—rifle forward—she had just begun to move the bar. With one last panicky blow from her hand, the bar was free. He shouted what had to be an order for her to stop and she whirled to face him and shrank back against the door… where she felt a lump in the back of her belt.

"Stay back," she called, reaching behind her for her pistol… the one Smith had jammed into the back of her belt… mildly surprised that she hadn't remembered it until now. "I'm warning you—I'm armed—"

The soldier advanced on her and in desperation she raised the pistol up and out from her with both hands. He halted immediately, assessing both her and her weapon.

It was loaded, but she was trying to recall what she had to do to fire it. The soldier sensed her uncertainty and started forward again.

"Stop, I said! Halt!" She jabbed the gun at him to show she meant business and he stopped again, scowling.

It had something to do with pulling that lever back. As he decided she wasn't a serious threat, she reached up with both thumbs and pulled the hammer back. It clicked once, then a second time, and the soldier froze. She realized from his reaction and the fact that she couldn't pull back any farther that she must be ready to fire.

"Back away! I'm warning you—"

She shifted control of the heavy pistol to her right hand and edged sideways to dislodge the bar from the door with her left. When the bar fell to the floor she glanced down… and everything happened at once.

The soldier lunged for her, his comrades burst into the kitchen, and her fingers reached the metal door handle. In the space of a heartbeat, she yanked the street door open, braced, and squeezed the trigger.

The blast from the gun sent the soldier diving to the floor and caused his comrades to lurch for cover.

Jarred by the violence of the explosion, she whirled and charged out the rear door at a run.

Outside was a dark and narrow alley—just wide enough for a man on horseback or a small cart to pass.

Instinctively, she headed for the light coming from one end, sensing it would be a broader street that might offer a means of escape or a place to hide. It was indeed a wider street, with a number of people on foot, donkey carts, and a number of stalls visible down the way.

Behind her, the soldiers had recovered enough to charge after her and once in the alley, they made the same decision she did. The minute they reached the street, one began shouting orders and they split up to search for her in both directions. She could hear them coming through the pounding of blood in her head and the shouts of the people escaping their path.

Every door was shut, every stall was too open and visible, there was no place to hide. Her lungs were burning… her legs wouldn't move fast enough…

At the edge of her vision she glimpsed a horse charging her way, and sensed it was determined to intercept her. She tried to dodge and plowed into a stall filled with hanging scarves and kaftans that clutched at and slowed her. By the time she fought her way free, the horse was on top of her and as she tried to dart away the animal blocked her way and a hand reached for one of her arms and dragged her against the side of the horse.

"Come on, dammit!" came a command that penetrated the chaos in the marketplace and in her own reeling wits. She looked up into Smith's furious face. "Climb—put your foot in the stirrup!" She managed to help him drag her across his lap—just as the whine of the first bullets reached them. "Hang on!"

Sprawled across his legs, with the wooden pommel of the saddle pounding into her stomach, she had neither breath nor inclination to question his orders. He spurred the horse and raced through the streets at a breakneck pace. Everything careened past, tilted and disjointed. There were more shots, but the winding streets made sighting impossible and the firing quickly stopped.

As they rounded yet another corner, she spotted what appeared to be an opening, a huge, stone arch in the city walls. A caravan of heavily laden camels was entering the city, and traders, hawkers, and food vendors were greeting it. The accompanying confusion was their salvation. Smith crouched over her, bending to his horse, and headed for that opening. She instinctively tucked her head and held on for all she was worth.

As they reached the arch, the shouts of sentries on the ramparts above blended strangely with the call to prayer being issued around the city. She took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and answered that call.

Ferdineaux LaCroix stepped over the debris that was once a door and entered Abigail Merchant's vacant hotel room… careful not to snag the silk of his pristine white suit. The portly Frenchman took his time looking over the toppled washstand and displaced bed, then the flat-faced sergeant who stood by the open window grinding an anxious fist into a meaty palm.

"So, you let them get away," LaCroix observed with an air of deadly calm, using his silver-headed walking stick to rake the edge of the naked mattress.

"They had help," the sergeant said with a sullen glance at the bedclothes still tied to the balcony railing.

"They had horses waiting."

"He was prepared." LaCroix stepped out onto the balcony, peered down into the shadowed alley, and then turned back to spear the sergeant with a look. "Enterprising, don't you think?
For a dead man.
"

"We give chase." The sergeant reddened furiously, casting the numerous scars on his face into pale relief.

"They go to the British house. And you say to take them
alive
." When LaCroix was silent for another moment he grew impatient. "We know where they go,
non
?" He put a hand to the pistol he wore at his waist and started for the door. "We overtake them on the road to—"

"
No
." LaCroix brought up his walking stick across the sergeant's path, halting him. "You will let them complete their journey… reach Marrakech. You will let them search for and find whatever it is the American woman seeks. Why deprive them of the pleasure of finding this 'treasure' of hers? Especially when we intend to deprive them of the pleasure of keeping it." He glanced again at the knotted sheets on the railing and began to turn the fat gold ring he wore on his little finger… thinking.

"Sooner or later they will have to return to Casablanca to seek transport back to London." He straightened, having decided on a course. "All you have to do, Gaston, is keep track of them and bring me word when they've located the treasure. Then you will see that Apollo Smith dies. Permanently, this time. And I will see that the very independent Miss Merchant learns a woman's proper place in the world."

The shadows of the great walls and the constriction of the enclosed city fell away as they raced through the city gate and into the countryside. Groves of date palms and cultivated green fields produced a disjointed patchwork of landscape in her head. When she managed to raise her head, she spotted tents, stalls, and corrals lining the mostly empty road. It was dawn, and there were few people about; only a few men facing east on prayer rugs.

As soon as they were past the encampments that surrounded the city Smith abandoned the road and struck off across country.

They rode for what seemed like forever… until they reached a spot sheltered by a large outcropping of rock and he finally stopped and lowered her to the ground. She staggered, dizzy, and hung on to the horse's blanket to stay upright. Every bone in her body had been shaken loose at the joints, and from shoulders to knees she felt like she'd been tenderized.

"What the hell were you doing back there?" he demanded, swinging down. She sensed that only the exertion of the ride kept him from roaring full force at her. "Where in blazes did you go?"

She looked up at him, seeing spots of dark and light as blood drained from her air-starved brain. "I saw the Consulate and thought they could help. Then the Legionnaires came and bashed their way in—they just
invaded
a foreign mission—a
consulate*
. How dare they?"

He reached for her right hand and pulled it up between them. Her wrist hung limply, but there was nothing halfhearted about her grip on the handle of the pistol she had fired at the soldier in the kitchen.

"Good God." Apollo looked from the gun to her flushed face. "Did you shoot this thing?" She winced at the sight of the gun, and he raised it to take a sniff at the barrel. "You
shot
at them? Dammit all—it's a wonder they didn't haul out the mobile artillery on us." He pried her taut, bloodless fingers from the pistol grip and dangled the gun between them. "Legionnaires don't like being shot at, Boston. They take it personally. And they make it a point of pride to return fire at a ratio of
four-to-one
."

"What was I supposed to do? Let them arrest me and send me to prison for the rest of my life so they wouldn't be offended?" She punched a finger at him. "This is all your fault. They broke down my door in the middle of the night and ran me out of my hotel room, my consulate, and finally Casablanca itself because of
you
! You're a
deserter]"

He jerked his chin back at the charge and glared at her.

"Well, at least I'm not a damned
lunatic
—charging off to Morocco by myself, nearly dying of seasickness, getting robbed before I even set foot on shore, and then taking on the French Foreign Legion singlehanded." He leaned steadily closer to her. "No, you're worse than a lunatic—you're a
menace
! You're going to get somebody killed. But it's
not
going to be me."

They faced each other, hands on hips, chests heaving, eyes hot… fear-fueled tempers roiling… pride burning. She had never been so exercised and overwrought, never vibrated physically with fury and leashed emotion before. She was desperate to do something and was terrified of what that something might be. He was so big and hot and angry and… and she was a hair's breadth away from grabbing him and… and…

It was the uncertainty of
and what
! that kept her from freeing that furious and utterly unprecedented impulse. She had no idea what she would do to him. Or with him. Her gaze fastened of its own will on his mouth. Her own lips began to feel hot, sensitive, and alarmingly conspicuous.

"Get on the damned horse," he said with a growl, withdrawing and jamming the gun into his saddlebag and his foot into the stirrup. When he swung up and was settled in the saddle, he assessed both her and the situation. Looking as if it cost him a few years off his life, he stuck out his hand to her.

"You ride with me or you walk to the nearest village. Which will it be?"

It was a minute before she could bring herself to take his hand and use the stirrup he vacated for her.

She struggled up behind him, and then found herself confronted with his big, overheated back. The only handhold seemed to be the rear of the saddle, but they hadn't gone a hundred yards before she was losing her grip and struggling just to stay aboard. He halted the horse and spoke through gritted teeth as he reached for her arms and drew them around his middle.

"Hang on to me." He made a low, growling noise. "Just—keep your hands where I put them."

That was how she came to be trekking through the equatorial noonday sun with her arms full of hostile, sun-maddened male and her own overheated body aching and burning strangely in some very alarming places.

Heatstroke induced delusions… Medicine… the 600's.

His back seemed as broad as the Sahara and she could feel the hard ridges of his ribs beneath her wrists. Every sway and shift of his body created a fresh awareness of the columns of sinew running up his spine and of the broad, smooth fans of muscles that stretched out to his shoulders.

After a while she decided that even monosyllabic conversation was preferable to dwelling on the intimate details of how his muscular male body differed from her own.

Comparative anatomy… Zoology… Mammalia… 599.

"Where the devil are we?" she asked, squinting first at one side of the landscape and then at the other.

Rocks. Hardpacked red and brown earth with the snowcapped Atlas Mountains in the background. The occasional stand of scruffy palms and parched grasses, and a sky as blue as polished turquoise.

"Taking an alternate route."

"To where? The back of 'beyond?'"

"Marrakech."

She absorbed that for a moment.

"Well, where is Haffe? He has my bags."

"He'll catch up."

"How will he know where we are?"

He nodded to the open landscape. "We're the only thing out here."

After a while, he headed for one of the larger stands of palm trees, and as they stopped in the meager shade, he peeled her hands from his waist.

"Climb down and stretch your legs."

She swayed first one direction, then another, trying to decide how to dismount. That mixed effort merely sent her sliding down one side.

"Whoa!" Before he could reach out a hand to help, she landed flat on her rear on the hardpacked dirt.

"Oh—ow—ohhh.
Blessit
!" She sat for a minute biting her lip and letting the pain wash through her. Her legs defied all orders. She finally propped them up manually and made two tries before successfully rolling onto her hands and knees. He swung down from the horse and hauled her onto her feet.