The Companion (3 page)

Then his shoulders sagged. “Mademoiselle Beth, I have sense of the honor you do me.” He did not use the familiar
ma petite
. “But you would regret this thing and so would I.”

“The difference in age cannot matter.” She could not keep desperation out of her voice.

“No. But I do not look for a wife, even one so talented as you are.” He cleared his throat. “I have no liking for . . . for the ladies.”

Oh. Well, that made no difference. It simply meant the marriage would be truly only convenient. She was about to protest, but he held up a hand. “Call halt, Mademoiselle Beth.” He patted her hand in a fatherly way. “It is for the best. You belong among your people.” He went on with determined cheerfulness. “You have your father’s share of the funerary pieces. They’ll bring enough to get you home. He left your portion in Drummond’s bank.”

Beth stared ahead, not at the crowded narrow streets of Bi’er Taghieri, but at the prospect of long dreary years in drawing rooms, clapping politely when the young misses played on the pianoforte. Her sentence was handed down by the falling pillar in that wretched tomb. She was for Tripoli and an England in which she could not possibly belong. Her father’s dream was dead, just as he was. All that was left was to walk through her days, missing him and longing for piercing sunshine and black nights and the smell of jasmine in the morning air.

It was late in the English compound. Ian sat with Major Ware in the courtyard under a pergola covered with vines of star jasmine. The red ends of their cigarillos glowed in the dark. It had been almost a month since Ian first waked to new life. The fever was gone, but so were his illusions. He had been eating like the starved man he was, but no amount of beef and bread could satisfy his cravings. The despair of knowing exactly what his body wanted beat at him until he couldn’t sleep in his darkened room during daylight hours. The hunger had been growing for weeks now, until tonight
as he sat at dinner with the ambassador, Lord Wembertin, and his staff, Ian could hear the thrumming of blood in veins, the pump of hearts around him. He’d startled everyone by knocking over a chair in his haste to be gone. But he might have done something they’d find far more horrible if he’d stayed.

He couldn’t go on like this. Even now he could feel the throb of Ware’s blood in the man’s throat. He could see it pulse, even in the dark. In the pocket of his coat he fingered the small knife they’d given him to pare his nails. The knife was his hope. He had a plan.

“You must have put on three stone, Rufford,” Ware remarked in the darkness. “Lord, but you were a scarecrow when you first got here! How long had you been out there?”

Ian wanted no questions. “I’m not sure,” he said in a damping tone.

“Well, perhaps not. That new coat fits snug enough, in spite of the foreign tailoring. Sorry none of us had one to accommodate those shoulders of yours.”

“You have been very kind.” And he had. Ware had seen to it that he was cared for until he was strong again. Only Ware’s constant vigilance had kept the Arabs at bay. Ian had to keep the Major from knowing just how strong he was. His fellow Englishmen would be frightened if they guessed Ian’s abilities. Ian was still guessing and they frightened him.

“Feeling fit enough to be off for England soon, I daresay. Catching a ship in Algiers?”

“I go through Tripoli.” He kept his voice flat. “You said there is an English doctor there.”

“Yes. But have you still a need of one?”

Ian changed the subject. “I was bound for Tripoli on the way out, you know.”

“In the diplomatic service?” The Major sat forward.

“Under Rockhampton.” It was the first information he had volunteered.

“Capital fellow. I would love to serve under him.” Ware’s cheroot glowed brighter.

“At one point I thought it just the thing for me. Younger
son, family estates mortgaged to the hilt, you know the way of it. I inherited the family instability.” Ware would understand he meant gambling and horses and women. “Don’t know how I made it through Cambridge. Ran through what my mother had provided for me raking about town.” He gave a bitter laugh.

“Don’t try to tip me the double, Rufford. Rockhampton only takes the best.”

Ian felt the Major’s blood pumping in his arteries. He achieved a shrug. He must keep talking to stave off the pain crawling along his veins. “M’father’s death stopped the rake’s progress. Henry was pretty well brought to a stand when he inherited. Hadn’t the sense to marry for money. I couldn’t be a charge on him. He managed to buy Charlie a commission. I convinced Rockhampton I’d settled down. I write a fair hand and my dancing is well enough. All you need to succeed in the diplomatic corps.”

Ware raised his brows. “Under Rockhampton? I hardly think . . .” But he apparently thought better of pressing Ian. After a moment he said, “But you never served.”

“Barbary pirates off Algiers. Took the ship.” Ian’s voice was tight.

Ware nodded, his expression full of surmise. “How did you escape?”

“A story for another time.” Ian’s voice was harsher than he intended.

Ware stubbed out his cigar. “Well, money won’t be a problem, not with the contents of that little leather bag. You need not serve Whitehall and the diplomats if you dislike it.”

“No.” He would know better what to do after he put the knife to use tonight.

“I’ll leave you. It grows late. Or early. The night has become your time.”

Ian’s brows drew together. “Not by choice.”

“Oh, you’ll be riding to hounds with the Quorn before you know it. A touch of sun poisoning, that’s all.” Ware rose. “By the by, you’d best travel with a well-armed party. Nasty
doings in the desert. A whole caravan was left for the vultures a hundred miles to the northwest.”

Ian stopped breathing for a moment. “A whole caravan?” he asked stupidly.

“And there’s worse. The animals were dead, sure, but not desecrated. The men . . .”

“The men what?” Ian found himself almost whispering.

“Well . . .” Ware hesitated. “No blood in their bodies. White as your shirt.”

“The sand. It could have sunk into the sand.”

“Not without it left some stain. Natives say they were killed by a demon.”

Ian knew who had done it. No stopping her now. “When is your term of service here up?”

“Mere months.” Ware grinned in deprecation. “They’re closing El Golea, sending Wembertin home.”

Wembertin was a fool. Who else would be assigned a delegation in so remote a desert outpost in the Sahara? Ian nodded. “Good.”

“Why?” Ware asked.

“Just stay out of the desert, man, until you can get home to England.”

Ware looked at him strangely and nodded. Touching his forehead in salute, he ducked out under the jasmine-laden pergola toward his room.

Ian sat without moving. The hunger gnawed at him, whispering what was needed to assuage it. At last shutters around the courtyard no longer seeped light. The compound would seem silent to another. Ian heard snoring and rats scurrying in the storeroom, the cat stalking them, the drip of precious water somewhere. The night was alive and only he could hear it.

He rose, aware of the supple grace his new strength gave him. Time to try assuaging his dreadful hunger with a substitute Major Ware would find distasteful but not a certain sign of evil. It was a slim hope but possible. He shed his very English coat and returned to a burnoose. Then he slipped out of the compound into the night, clutching the little knife.
The need surged inside him, bringing a sound from his throat that might be a growl. He had not much time.

Ian sat in his room with every crack sealed against the desert light. The feeling of life coursing through his veins had driven him to drink the blood in the water sack and kept him alive across the burning deserts of the Sahara even as fever raged in his body. Now it surged inside him with unbelievable strength.

His plan had failed. He thought that drinking the blood of a cow would appease his hunger. He’d cut its artery with the little knife, sucked the blood. When the cow had fallen on him he’d thrust its two thousand pounds off with no more concern than if it had been a lapdog.

But it was not his new strength that tore at his mind. He’d vomited up the cow’s blood. And the hunger had surged up in seeming revenge, engulfing him, until he had done a thing unthinkable. He had sucked the blood of the young cowherd. Worse, he had not needed the little knife to open the artery in the young man’s throat. Ian almost wailed his guilt, his dread of what he had become. He clapped a hand over his mouth to prevent the sound, grimacing his revulsion. He had not killed the boy, it was true. But he might have.

Was he mad? No. That was the worst of all. This was who he was now. This drive to life was part of the beast
she
had made him. He would drink blood to satisfy it. When the hunger was on him, he would do anything to keep alive. Dear God! He had inherited her evil!

There was only one answer. His resolve warred with the singing life in his veins.

So he sat in the dark while he battled the urge to life and gathered his strength. It was afternoon before he could place the chair. Every fiber of his body fought what he wanted to do. He had to rest before he could cut the rope net that supported the mattress on his cot. What he was about to do was wrong. But it was without doubt the lesser of two evils. He hoped that once he had done it God would forgive him, since he sought only to redeem the greater sin.

Now, in the heat of the afternoon when all were resting—now was the time to do it.

He climbed the chair.

“He’s dead, poor bastard.” Ian heard the Major’s voice dimly. Someone held his wrist. He opened his eyes. Several gasps were quite distinguishable. The room was at an angle. He straightened his head. Jenks and Evans jerked back. Even in the dim room he saw them go pale.

Major Ware hung over him. “Rufford?” he whispered. His voice was uncertain.

Ian’s neck felt . . . odd. He turned his head. No, that was better.

Around the circle, the whispering grew frantic. At the door Arabs made the sign against evil and scurried away, gabbling.

Ian swallowed twice. “Why do you look like that?” he asked the circle. His voice came out a croak.

“You . . . you had a near thing,” the Major said. He looked as though he’d seen a ghost.

Ian’s gaze darted about the room. He was lying on a mattress on the floor. There was the chair, overturned. A shred of rope still hung from the beam where they must have cut him down. “I remember.” His voice was clearer now. The soreness in his throat dissolved. Sadness pushed on his chest and made breathing difficult. “Even the last solace is denied me.”

Sadness boiled over into rage without notice. He sat bolt upright. The men leaped back as though he had attacked them. “Go!” he yelled. “Get out of here! What are you looking at?”

They disappeared as fog evaporates under the blast of the sun. Only Ware stayed. Ian could see the questions burning inside him, questions so outrageous they could not be asked. “You, too, Ware,” he growled, sinking back onto the mattress. “You can do no good here.”

Ware rose, uncertainty mirrored clearly in his face. He was considering whether he should leave a man who had just
tried to commit suicide to his own devices or whether he was a fool for not running from the room screaming. Personally, Ian recommended the latter.

“What happened to you out there, man?” Ware asked hoarsely.

Rufford stared at him for a long moment. He had never asked about the slavery, about the marks on Ian’s body, even about what was in the water skin, though speculation on all those topics was rampant throughout the delegation. Ian could always hear the whispers. As payment for that forbearance, the man deserved an answer. “I became my worst enemy, friend, my very own nightmare.” He closed his eyes. “Now go, for your own good, go.”

Ware turned to the door. “The men will tell Wembertin,” he said, not looking back.

“He won’t believe them. And he won’t want the scandal. I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

Ware nodded. “I’ll tell him,” he said as he closed the door.

Two

TRIPOLI, OCTOBER
1818

The late-afternoon sun was sinking behind the black spiky forest of masts in the harbor of Tripoli as Beth and Mrs. Pargutter and Mrs. Pargutter’s maid, Jenny Fellows, rocked in a small boat pulling for the merchantman frigate
Beltrane
, bound for Port Mahon, Gibraltar, Brest, and Portsmouth. Their convoy was to be escorted by one of His Majesty’s sloops as far as Lisbon, to protect them from being taken by Barbary pirates or illicit privateers.

The boat pulled up to the rocking ship and the scruffy man who stood in the prow called up to the deck in Arabic for a bo’sun’s chair. Beth hoped someone on board the English ship spoke the native tongue. Soon a kind of a swing was lowered over the side from a boom and Beth helped strap a protesting Mrs. Pargutter into it. That good lady was somewhat stout, with rouged cheeks that contrasted sharply with the overly brassy color of her hair. She swung up over the ship’s side, wailing, to the deck above. Beth took her place and soared aloft herself, pressing her skirts around her. Callused hands helped her onto the gently rocking deck, and as she looked around, the boom swung out again for their trunks.

Sailors scurried everywhere both on the deck and in the
rigging above. Orders Beth found incomprehensible echoed and were answered. The slight roll of the deck beneath them, even though the
Beltrane
stood at anchor, whispered of less conformable seas to come. The scents of the ocean and tar and hemp made a heady combination announcing some new world as she left behind forever Lady Metherton’s drawing rooms at the British delegation in Tripoli. Her small single trunk and the valise that contained her scrolls, Mrs. Pargutter’s two huge trunks, and Jenny’s carpetbag were deposited on the deck inside a net of rope. The sailors dressed in red-striped shirts and nankeens, most sporting hair greased back into long braids and earrings, largely ignored them.

“Well,” Mrs. Pargutter declared, her vast breasts heaving in her widow’s weeds. “None of these rude men seems to know the least about how to treat a lady.” Mrs. Pargutter had been left in much the same situation as Beth by the most inconsiderate passing of her late husband, a trader of olives and oils between the ports of the Mediterranean, before the couple could get home to Nottingham. Lady Metherton had most kindly paired the two ladies, ill sorted as they might be, to make the journey back to Portsmouth together.