The Lion's Embrace Read online

  His eyes flickered with surprise when she walked up to him and pulled her veil down.

  ‘Miss Montague? I could have passed you in the street and not recognised you.’

  ‘That’s the idea, Monsieur Saintclair.’

  She smoothed her hair away from her face. ‘I’m so happy to see you’re safe. Who were these horrid men waiting for you in the Kasbah?’

  Saintclair looked down and held her in his crystal clear gaze.

  ‘Remember Rachid, the man whose life you had the bad idea to save last night? Well, he’s far too much of a coward to try and kill me himself, so he hired a few thugs to do the job for him.’

  She put her hand in front of her mouth.

  ‘He tried to have you killed?’

  What had she done? If Rachid’s thugs had succeeded, she would have been responsible for Saintclair’s death—and without a guide to rescue her father.

  He nodded. ‘I told you, the man’s a weasel. Now at least, you will know that in this country things aren’t always what they seem.’

  They stood close, too close. She felt the heat from his body, breathed in the manly scent of his sandalwood shaving soap mixed with cigar smoke and leather.

  He relaxed into a smile and stepped back.

  ‘I came to tell you that I decided to take up your offer, providing you agree to my conditions.’

  Harriet lowered her face to hide a smile of triumph. She had been right, the lure of the Barbarossa map was too strong to resist.

  ‘I am afraid Archie isn’t here. He had some errands in town.’

  Lucas saw her smile and felt suddenly very annoyed. This wasn’t a game. The rescue mission could cost them their lives. He crossed his arms on his chest and cast Harriet a cold glance. He might want the Barbarossa map, but he also wanted the silly woman to realize what she was embarking on.

  ‘Actually, it’s you I wanted to talk to,’ he said, shortly.

  ‘Really? What about?’

  ‘Our journey, of course, what else?’ She was indeed a silly woman. He didn’t have time for silly women, however attractive they were.

  ‘I take it you can sit on a horse without falling off?’

  Her eyes flashed in anger.

  ‘My father brought me up to take care of myself, Monsieur Saintclair. I can ride, read maps, and find my way out of a forest. And I can shoot all my targets at fifty feet…’

  ‘Well, almost all,’ she corrected with an impatient sigh. ‘I can light a fire and cook and I can—’

  He held his hand up. ‘All right, I get it. Your father taught you well. But you forgot something.’

  ‘And what is that?’ She tilted her face towards him.

  ‘You can bite.’ He rubbed his shoulder to make his point.

  She blushed crimson and twisted her fingers. ‘It was a mistake, I am sorry, I didn’t—’

  ‘Never mind,’ he interrupted and leaned towards her.

  He liked the way the colour on her cheeks deepened, the way her lips parted, showing her pearly white teeth. He recognized the faint rose perfume in her hair, wondered if she smelled that way all over. He came a little closer and forgot what he wanted to say. Annoyed, he took a deep breath and hardened his gaze. He should know better than to be distracted by a pretty woman.

  ‘There are a few things we need to get straight if you insist on coming along.’ He paused. ‘There will be no tantrums if you don’t have time to do your hair or if there’s no water for a bath. No hysterics because you’ve broken a nail or found a cockroach or a snake in your bed. No tears because I shot a cute-looking gazelle for supper and I ask you to skin it and cut it up. Is that clear?’

  She tilted her chin again, her cheeks bright red with anger, and stomped her foot on the marble floor.

  ‘Oh yes, it’s all perfectly clear, Monsieur Saintclair. I am aware of the dangers we will face. I am not some vain, silly girl just out of the nursery.’

  Then why did his hard, frosty stare made her feel like one? Why did her heart beat madly when he was close? Why did he manage to make her lose her temper?

  He arched his brows, his lips twitched. ‘I said no tantrums.’

  She clenched her fists, repressed a scream of frustration. ‘I am not having a tantrum. I never have tantrums. I am a responsible, resourceful scholar and archaeologist.’

  ‘Never mind being good with books and long words, what you’ll need is to be damned tough out there,’ he continued, impervious. ‘There is something else. Should you decide to give up part way through the journey, you’ll still owe me the Barbarossa map. Do we agree on that?’

  ‘Hmm…Yes. I think so,’ she hesitated. Something didn’t sound quite right, but there was no time to mull it over.

  Saintclair pulled several pieces of paper out of his pocket, handed them over.

  ‘Good. These are my estimates for supplies and the like. Please give them to your fiancé. We’re leaving on Wednesday at dawn.’

  ‘So soon? How long before we reach Tamanrasset?’

  ‘I give you my word that we’ll be there at the end of May.’

  In just a few weeks she would be reunited with her father. Resolutely, she pushed any doubt aside. She didn’t want to think about the things which could go wrong on the way to Tamanrasset, or about what they would find once there, in the ancient tribal grounds of the Tuaregs.

  She turned to Lucas Saintclair and offered her hand.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur Saintclair. You don’t know what this means to me.’

  He seemed surprised but took her hand. It looked very pale and very small in his. His fingers closed tightly around hers, so strong they could crush them without effort if he chose to. The thought made her shiver.

  ‘I hope you’ll have something to thank me for, Miss Montague, but I very much doubt it.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Look at the orange blossom, Archie. Don’t the white flowers look pretty? And what wonderful scent…’

  Harriet pulled on the reins until her horse slowed to a gentle trot. She breathed in the heady fragrance of the orange grove. In front of her the Atlas mountain range stood, their rugged tips shrouded in a pale pink and blue haze as the afternoon drew to a close.

  ‘Blida is over there,’ Saintclair announced. He turned round to her and pointed to a town nestled against the mountain slopes in the distance.

  After uttering orders in Arabic, he spurred his black thoroughbred forward on the sandy track, followed by the six men he had hired to escort them to Tamanrasset. Two of them were Tuareg warriors who kept their faces hidden behind blue scarves at all times, only showing their eyes, as tradition demanded.

  Some said Tuareg men were afraid of demons snatching their souls; others, more pragmatic, maintained that by hiding their faces Tuaregs could raid and steal without fear of being identified.

  The other members of the expedition were native tribesmen, lean and wiry, dark-eyed and fierce-looking. Saintclair said he had travelled with his men across the country many times before and he trusted them with his life. He seemed particularly close to a tall man called Ahmoud who followed him like a shadow.

  Harriet watched them disappear in a cloud of dust.

  ‘Why are they in such a rush?’

  Archie shrugged, tightened his lips. ‘I don’t know, but we’d better follow them.’

  They spurred their horses into a gallop.

  They had to wait at the town gates while a French sentinel scrutinised their travel documents. Saintclair exchanged greetings with the soldiers while his companions remained silent and stared ahead, their eyes hard and giving nothing away.

  ‘Blida was pacified only recently,’ Archie explained in a low voice. ‘The mountains still harbour hostile tribes who regularly attack the French.’

  At last the soldiers gave them their papers back and they were allowed in.

  They rode through the main street and dismounted in front of a tavern with white-washed walls. After unbuckling their saddlebags, they handed over the hors
es to a couple of stable boys. Saintclair pushed the door of the tavern open. Heady scents of spicy vegetable and mutton stew, of coffee and warm bread, welcomed them. A man greeted them, a wide grin on his face, wiped his hands on a towel hanging from his belt and launched into a litany in Arabic punctuated with slaps on his round belly. Saintclair laughed good-heartedly, clapped the innkeeper on the back and gestured towards a couple of tables.

  ‘Let’s sit over there,’ he said. Turning to the innkeeper, he asked in French for some wine for himself and Archie, tea for Harriet, and coffee for the men. ‘We’ll have some of your soup too. Hurry, we don’t have long.’

  ‘Hurry, hurry, that’s all you ever say when you come here,’ the man grumbled as he walked towards the kitchen.

  ‘What was he talking about earlier?’ Archie enquired.

  Saintclair smiled. ‘Woman trouble, what else? Poor Slimane has been hen-pecked by his wife for the best part of twenty years. I always wondered how a good man like Slimane could tolerate such a harpy.’

  ‘Maybe he loves her,’ Harriet ventured.

  ‘Love? What’s that?’ Sainclair shrugged. Darting his blue gaze straight at Harriet, he added in a low voice, ‘Isn’t it just a fancy word for lust?’

  Her heart skipped a beat and she looked away, annoyed to feel she was blushing.

  ‘Are we stopping here tonight?’ Archie asked. ‘This looks like a nice, comfortable place and it will be dark soon.’

  ‘No, we’re going up to the mountain, and into the Chiffa gorges.’

  ‘I don’t think Harriet can cope with hiking up a mountain at dusk,’ Archie objected. ‘She didn’t sleep at all last night, the camp was terribly uncomfortable.’

  Saintclair looked at Harriet and arched his brows. ‘What a shame… Was the ground too hard for you?’

  ‘No, of course it wasn’t,’ she lied. ‘It was perfectly fine, I slept like a log.’ In truth, it had been horrid, with the ground too cold and rocky for her to get comfortable, even with three blankets under her.

  Saintclair smiled as if he could read her thoughts.

  ‘Can you carry on tonight, or would you rather stop here? The last thing I want is for you to fall off your horse and roll down the mountain slope.’

  It took all her strength to straighten up in her chair. ‘I said I wasn’t tired.’

  ‘There you have it, Drake. Your fiancée wants to carry on.’

  From the amused glint in his eyes, she realized she had played right into his hands. She pulled off her kid gloves and put them on the table.

  ‘And yet she doesn’t look well,’ Archie remarked. ‘I am sure she could do with sleeping in a proper bed.’

  ‘I wish you’d stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here,’ Harriet blurted out. Her fingers were shaking so much she hid them in her lap under the table. She would never admit she was exhausted.

  ‘I was only trying to help, dear,’ Archie muttered.

  The innkeeper came back with a pot of steaming soup he placed on the table. He was followed by a woman carrying bowls and cutlery, and a loaf of bread.

  ‘Enjoy, my friends.’ He turned to Sainctlair and winked. ‘Then you can tell me what you are planning to do about your lovely bayadere.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Djamila, of course. The poor girl has been sighing after you ever since you left. She even stopped singing, claiming she lost her voice when you broke her heart.’

  ‘I’ll pay her a visit later. I’m sure I will make her sing again,’ Saintclair promised before dipping his spoon into the thick, fragrant soup.

  How crude, how vain he was! Harriet repressed a sneer. The man was really full of himself… Then she remembered the eyes full of longing of the serving girl at the Seventh Star, her own racing pulse when he held her hand in his at Lord Callaghan’s palace, and the unnerving way her heart tightened every time he looked at her.

  ‘Are you all right, dear? You look a little flushed,’ Archie remarked, full of concern. ‘I don’t think you should eat the soup. You won’t like it, it’s very spicy.’

  ‘Drake is right, it’s rather fiery. I’ll ask Slimane to bring you something else.’ Saintclair gestured to the inn keeper.

  Harriet she picked up her spoon.

  ‘There is no need. If you can eat it, so can I.’

  She ate one spoonful, spat it out, and started coughing violently.

  ‘Tea, please,’ she whispered when she was able to talk.

  Archie filled a glass of sweet mint tea and held it out for her.

  ‘There, there, dear, this will help. I did tell you it was spicy, you should have listened.’

  Her fingers tightened around the small, hot glass. She gulped the tea down, tears running down her face, her mouth on fire. She was painfully aware of Saintclair’s mocking grin.

  In the end, she had to be content with a piece of bread and some cheese for supper.

  They rode into the mountains at dusk and climbed the rocky slope as the shadows of the night closed in. They dismounted halfway up and carried on by foot, leading their horses on a narrow path. To the left was a steep ravine covered with a carpet of fragrant bushes and small, twisted trees. To the right stood rugged and fast disappearing summits. As the trail got steeper, Harriet focused all her efforts on putting one foot in front of the other without stumbling. She could hardly see Archie’s tall silhouette at the front now.

  ‘How are you holding on?’ Saintclair appeared noiselessly beside her.

  She gritted her teeth. ‘Fine.’

  ‘We’re in the Chiffa gorges now—that’s Mouzaia territory.’

  ‘Mouzaia?’

  ‘A tribe under the allegiance of the bey of Constantine, one of the last rebel chiefs.’

  ‘What about Abd-el-Kader? I read all about him in the papers. He has managed to hold the French back, hasn’t he?’

  Saintclair cast a surprised glance in her direction, as if he hadn’t expected her to know anything about the emir who had for the past ten years headed the resistance against the French colonial army and tried to rally the beys to his cause.

  ‘That’s right, but he’s in hiding now.’

  A sharp, opalescent crescent of moon and hundreds of stars lit the evening sky even if it was still pale towards the west where the last of the daylight lingered. Harriet’s breath steamed in front of her. She shivered, draped her wool burnous more closely around her. Her legs felt like lead. She lost her footing a couple of times and slipped on loose rocks. Saintclair held her elbow to steady her but she shook him off.

  ‘I said I was fine.’

  It was becoming hard to see. The tip of her boot caught on a rock. Off-balance, she tripped and would have stumbled into the ravine had Saintclair not wrapped his arm around her waist to hold her back. For a brief moment she was against him, close enough to feel the hard line of his thighs, hips and stomach against her body, his heat seeping through her layers of clothing.

  He looked down, his arm a band of steel around her. ‘Watch your step.’

  She swallowed hard, nodded. Her heart thundered in her chest. Fear, relief coursed through her veins, together with something else she didn’t recognize—a hot, uncomfortable sensation at the centre of her body that was almost a pain.

  Saintclair let her go and looked up to the mountain slope.

  ‘Here they are.’

  A man’s voice called from the darkness, and soon a dozen men appeared on the path in front of them. Dressed in black, with long curvy daggers hanging from their sides and their eyes reflecting the moonlight, they looked more like mountain demons than men of flesh and blood.

  Saintclair spoke to them and turned to Archie and Harriet.

  ‘They’ll escort us to the caravansérail.’ He gestured towards the ravine. ‘It’s down by the torrent. Will you be all right?’

  Although her body screamed with aches and pains and the skin of her feet rubbed in her boots, Harriet forced a smile.

  ‘Of course.’

  They reached
a one-storey house half an hour later. In the golden light of a lantern hanging from the front porch, an old man sat on a rickety old chair, sucking on a long pipe. As soon as he saw them he stood up, muttered something and disappeared inside.

  ‘Old Chehani is bringing hot water to the washroom,’ Saintclair explained. ‘Don’t expect too much. It’s only a shelter for shepherds and travellers.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why we didn’t stop at Blida.’ Archie took his hat off and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

  ‘Too risky,’ Saintclair replied. ‘Word travels fast. People know we’re carrying a large amount of gold. Blida is full of men who wouldn’t hesitate to slit our throat for the ransom money. We’re much safer here. The Mouzaias will keep guard for us. Trust them, they won’t let anybody through.’

  ‘How can we trust them? They are rebels, blood-thirsty thugs who massacred a whole French garrison less than two years ago,’ Archie protested.

  ‘Some might consider the French to be the blood-thirsty thugs and the Mouzaias to do nothing more than protect their land and their people.’

  Archie snorted. ‘I see where your loyalties lie, Saintclair.’

  ‘Loyalties? What loyalties?’ Saintclair shrugged. ‘The only loyalty I have is to myself and to whoever’s paying my fee—for now, that would be you. And the only thing I care about is spending my money on a jug of good wine and a beautiful woman.’

  He walked away, leading the horses to the stable block.

  Archie sneered. ‘At least we know what kind of man he is,’ he said before striding into the house.

  Harriet let out a long breath to smooth out the odd pang of disappointment caused by Saintclair’s answer. How could a man live like that—ruthless, without honour, indifferent to others and preoccupied only by his own pleasure?

  She followed Archie inside. The first room was a large common room with scattered chairs and tables and a fire burning low in a fireplace. She wrinkled her nose at the sickly smell of burnt fat that lingered in the room. The bedrooms were located on either side of a long corridor. Instead of doors, there were only curtains for privacy.

  ‘Where are you, Archie?’

  ‘In here.’

  She pulled the grey curtain aside and walked into a tiny room with a couple of straw pallets on either side. It was more than sparse—it wasn’t much better than a hovel.