Night of a Thousand Stars (15 page)

And I slipped my hands out of his and crossed my fingers behind my back. “No one,” I said brightly. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

I wasn’t cruel enough to leave Masterman dangling. I scrawled a note to her as well and slipped it into my pocket, determined to find an opportunity to send it to her.

When I had finished writing my notes, Sebastian disappeared for a moment back down the darkened stairs. I heard the faint murmur of voices and then he returned, this time with a tray full of food. I fell on it, as ravenously as if I hadn’t just eaten a splendid dinner at the
comtesse
’s villa. It seemed a hundred years ago, and I said as much to Sebastian.

He nodded. “This sort of work takes some people that way.”

It seemed as good a time as any to ask. “So this is your work, then.”

His gaze was level and calm. “It is.”

“Are you even a priest?”

He looked affronted. “Of course I am. I’d never lie about taking Holy Orders. But I don’t have a parish and I’m not a curate.”

I looked him over again from bearded jaw to broad chest, scarcely able to believe my eyes.

“You look so different.”

He gave my evening frock an appreciative glance. “As do you. I must say I like this better than the wedding gown. Now, we haven’t much time, so let’s clear the air, shall we. You go first. Why did you come after me?”

“I thought you might be in trouble of some sort. You see, I went to thank you for rescuing me from my wedding, only the curate at the church had never heard of you. And then I got curious, wildly so. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would lie about such a thing, so I began to trace your whereabouts.”

“How?” he asked, quirking up one heavy brow. The gesture was surprisingly effective.

“I remembered the name of your garage from the ticket I found in your glovebox. I went there and the garage man told me where you lodged.”

“Impressive,” he told me. “But Mrs. Webb didn’t know exactly where I was bound. How did you trace my route to Damascus?”

“Sheer hard graft. I searched the passenger lists of all the liners bound for the Holy Land. At length I found your name.”

“My real name?” He cocked his head. “And how did you discover that?”

“It was the garage man actually,” I told him. I didn’t bother to mention that Masterman had stolen his copy of
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
from his lodging as confirmation of his name. It seemed like an intrusion somehow that I had the book, and I only hoped I could recover it eventually and restore it to him.

He’d fallen silent, his expression pensive. “This isn’t just about an old myth of Crusader gold, is it? What are you doing here, Sebastian?”

His jaw hardened. “For me to know and you to find out, dear child.”

“That’s not a proper answer!”

“It’s the only one you’ll get for now.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Fine. You go first. You had a choice back there—Talbot or me. He was making tepid love to you under the jasmine blossoms and feeding you a ripping yarn about what horrors I’d got up to. You had no reason to choose me over him. Why did you?”

I struggled to put it clearly into words. “Because when I was with Hugh, none of it felt real. He was playing a part with me. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. There was more genuine emotion in riding in your car with you than any kiss he ever gave me.”

Sebastian’s eyes gleamed, but he said nothing for a long moment. Then he swallowed hard.

“Thank you for that.”

“Your turn,” I prodded. “Why are you here?”

“Later.”

I opened my mouth, but he held up a commanding finger. “No more. At least not yet.”

“When, then?”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Persistent, aren’t you?”

“It’s my best quality,” I told him modestly.

He sighed. “Like water on a stone. But it’s too dangerous yet. People have disappeared—people have died because of this gold. If I tell you everything now, it will put you at risk. Now, I’ve got you safely out of Talbot’s clutches, but that’s as far as I’m prepared to take you. You simply have to get out of Damascus, but I’m damned if I can figure out how to make it happen. My connections aren’t what they used to be.”

Masterman’s name was on the tip of my tongue. But the moment I told him the truth about her, he would pack me off on the first ship out of Beirut and that would be the end of it—my wonderful adventure, finished before it really began. I wondered what my Aunt Julia would have done under the circumstances, and I knew what I had to do.

I smiled apologetically, giving him an angelic look. “I’m dreadfully sorry, Sebastian. Is it so terrible being stuck with me? Perhaps I could help? This hoard sounds intriguing.”

“It’s more than intriguing. I’m beginning to think the damned thing is cursed,” he said slowly. “I’d take you home myself, but I’m so damned close....” He trailed off.

“If you’re close, you mustn’t give up,” I insisted. “And I might be of assistance,” I pressed. “I have lots of skills that might come in handy.”

“Oh, really?” He was clearly amused. “Of what sort? Cryptography? Cartography? Forgery?”

“Well, perhaps not those,” I admitted. “But surely I can be useful in some capacity. If nothing else, I could provide you with a bit of cover.”

“Cover?”

“Yes, it’s what spies call the story they use to keep their disguise,” I told him.

“Is that right?” He was amused again, but before I could push further, there was a noise, so slight I almost didn’t hear it.

But Sebastian did. He dived for the lamp and blew it out. He was like a cat in the dark, moving swiftly and silently so that when the secret door opened, he was ready. There was the sound of an almighty scuffle, and several blows being struck. I heard a groan and a thud, and then, unmistakably, an outraged English voice that wasn’t Sebastian’s.

“For God’s sake, Slightly, don’t be such an ass!” followed by a string of rich profanity.

I struck a match and it flared to life, illuminating a scene I would never forget. Sebastian and his assailant were heaped together in a tangle of muscled limbs and Eastern robes, both streaming blood and detaining each other in holds that looked excruciatingly painful. As they took stock of each other, recognition dawned. The newcomer released Sebastian, who promptly rolled to his feet and vomited in the corner. When he was done, he took a long draft from a wineskin and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, wincing as he put a hand to his ribs.

“Goddammit, you might have warned me you were coming,” he said brutally. He waved towards me. “This is Poppy. March,” he said with emphasis on my surname.

The newcomer smiled broadly and spat out a mouthful of blood. “How do you do, Miss March?”

Sebastian turned to me and lifted a shaking finger to the other man. “Poppy, say hello to Gabriel Starke.”

Twelve

“But you’re dead!” I exclaimed. It sounded stupid even to my own ears but he was gracious enough to smile.

“
Dead
is a relative term out here, Miss March.”

The application of a few cold water compresses and copious amounts of new wine seemed in order, and I watched as they assessed the damages. Sebastian prodded a cracked rib or two and a bruised solar plexus while Starke had a bloody lip and a spectacular bruise coming up on his cheekbone. He also had a dislocated finger which he forced back into the socket in a manoeuvre that left me feeling queasy.

“You ought to have taken notes,” he told me as he wrapped a cloth soaked in cold water around the swelling digit. “It’s a useful skill to have out here.” His eyes were a peculiarly opaque shade of brown, uncanny and not particularly attractive.

“Miss March isn’t in our line of work,” Sebastian said quickly.

Starke gave me an appraising look, blinking furiously. “Do pardon me, Miss March. This isn’t the most pleasant thing to watch.” He reached into his pocket for a small tin and flicked it open. With a deft gesture, he levered something out of his eye, holding it out for my inspection. It was a piece of glass, the centre of it painted a muddy-brown. He removed the other and blinked again, shaking his head a little. “God, I hate those things.” He peered at me again, thoughtfully, and I saw that his eyes were actually the most startlingly beautiful shade of blue. Little wonder he was forced to disguise them. No one, having seen them, would soon forget Gabriel Starke’s eyes. He tipped his head as he studied me. “Not in our line of work? You surprise me, Slightly. She looks like she might like an adventure.”

I dimpled at him, and he smiled back, a pirate’s smile, and I passed him a plate of nut-studded pastries. “Eat these. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, helping himself to a handful. Sebastian sulked in the corner.

“Those were mine,” he said pointedly.

“Don’t begrudge me, lad,” Starke said calmly. “I haven’t eaten in two days. I just got in from the
Badiyat ash-Sham
.”

“The desert?” I asked, my ears perking up. I had read of it in the Baedeker guide. The vast stretch of desert reached from just beyond Damascus to the border of Mesopotamia. Within it lay Crusader castles and ruined monasteries, desert oases, and the fallen glories of Palmyra.

“The same,” Starke said. “I was with our friend Hamid,” he added to Sebastian.

Sebastian unbent a little. “How is he? It’s been a long time.”

“He is well. Another wife, this one even prettier than the first two,” Starke told him. He turned to me. “Our friend Hamid is a Bedouin chieftain.”

“A
sheikh
! How marvellous. Can we meet him?” I asked Sebastian.

“No,” he said sternly. “Gabriel, I’m trying to get Miss March out of Damascus and back to safety, but she’s reluctant to go. I don’t need you swanning in here with tales out of Arabian Nights to make it more difficult.”

Gabriel shrugged, and I might have pointed out that in his Eastern robes with his kohl-rimmed eyes and extremely snug trousers, Sebastian was doing quite enough to showcase the romance of the place. I primmed my mouth.

“Pay no attention to him, Mr. Starke. He’s just cranky because I want to go with him to find the Ashkelon gold.”

Starke’s expressive brows shot skyward. “That’s what this is about? The Ashkelon hoard? Is that why you’ve been looking for me?” he demanded.

Sebastian folded his arms over the breadth of his chest. Anger simmered in the air between them. “Yes. Of course, the main reason I came was to make sure you were still alive, but since it didn’t seem to bother you to play dead without explanation, we’ll assume the friendship is of secondary importance and focus on the treasure, shall we?”

His words were coldly clipped, and Gabriel answered him softly. “It bothered me, Slightly. More than you’ll ever know.”

I looked from one to the other. “Slightly?”

“Don’t ask,” Sebastian ordered. He waited, and Gabriel took a breath, steeling himself it seemed. He let it out slowly, and with it came the story.

“I regretted it, Sebastian. I regretted every decision I made, from the moment I let Evie think I went down with that bloody ship. Everything I did after that was a lie. Except the friendships. Those were real,” he said, giving each word slow purpose. “The lot of you were the only family I had left besides the Bedouin. And when I saw how badly I was letting them down with that ridiculous charade, I realised I was letting the rest of you down, as well.”

“What charade?” I asked.

He turned to me. Every word seemed forced through his lips, as though he were heaving each one like a stone out of his heart and offering it as penance. “I presume you have heard of Colonel Lawrence’s exploits in Arabia?”

“Of course! The newsreels were absolutely spectacular,” I enthused. But his eyes were shadowed, and his mouth was set in a grim line.

“Yes, well, it was nothing like that glamorous in real life. Lawrence was tasked with uniting the southern Arab tribes and using them to harass the Turks wherever he could, mostly in the area of Aqaba and the Hejaz Railway. The rest of us were busy in the north, wreaking our own havoc on the Turkish border.”

I blinked. “But Lawrence was a legend! How is it you were doing the same in the north and no one knew?”

He smiled thinly. “Politics is a nasty business, child. There are competing offices and bureaus and ministries that don’t much care to talk to one another. And if two of them should happen to hit upon the same strategy at the same time, neither one will give ground to the other lest they get the glory. The Arab Bureau in Cairo directed Lawrence’s efforts, largely at his instigation. After he and I had a rather instructive meeting in Jerusalem,” he added.

I gaped. “You mean Lawrence stole the idea of using an Englishman to unite the Arab troops to fight the Turks?”

He shrugged. “Lawrence and I disagreed on the fundamentals. He felt the tribes would come to support Prince Feisal as their natural leader. I thought it was madness. The Bedouin of the
Badiyat ash-Sham
would never rally behind a Howeitat from Mecca like Feisal. The Bedouin are very like our Scots, all rival clans and blood feuds. Expecting them to rally to a single flag simply because they happen to speak Arabic and worship the same god is as preposterous as expecting a Campbell and a MacGregor to sit down to supper. It cannot be done.” He paused, a faraway look in his eyes, and Sebastian poured himself another drink and I thought of the similar conversation I had had with Armand on the very subject.

“But,” Starke went on, “there was something to be said for rallying the northern Bedouin around a figurehead of their own choosing, a legend from their own folklore. There was an Englishman, a rather bright lad with a head stuffed full of legends and poetry, who remembered that the Bedouin of the north had a fellow rather like Robin Hood in their mythology. A fellow called the
Saqr
, the falcon. And that was how we came to create our own legend,” he said, finishing the last word with a bitter twist of his lips.

I turned to Sebastian. “The legend of the
Saqr
—you were the one who knew of it.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “I have a gift for useless information. Languages, history and folklore. Those were the talents I was recruited for, among others.”

“Recruited?” I looked from one to the other. “By whom?”

They exchanged glances and Sebastian gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Starke spoke again, smoothly this time. “The exact organisation is unimportant. But Sebastian and I were amongst a very select group of young operatives deemed unsuitable for more conventional activities.”

“Unsuitable? But why?”

Starke’s mouth quirked into a grim smile. “I made the mistake of eloping just before I was due to begin training. That spontaneity made me suspect in the eyes of our superiors. They questioned my judgment and my ability to keep my wife safe from the complications of our work. As it happened, they were right.”

“And that’s why you pretended to go down with the
Lusitania
,” I said, piecing it all together. “You were trying to keep her out of harm’s way.”

“Oh, I was crueler than that,” he said, his eyes gleaming with guilty malice. “I told her I was going to divorce her. I broke her heart before I left her just to make certain she wouldn’t have a reason to regret me when I was gone.”

My eyes stung with sudden tears. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

Starke gaped at me. “How can you think so?”

“You sacrificed your own happiness for her safety,” I said simply. “It’s heroic.”

His mouth worked a moment, but nothing came out. Finally, he managed a simple grunt and a nod.

“Has no one ever put it to you like that?” I asked gently.

“No,” he said, his voice rasping. “No one except Evie.”

“Then you have seen her,” Sebastian put in.

Gabriel nodded. “She came to Damascus to find me. I was in the
Badiyat ash-Sham
, working on an archaeological expedition.”

“How did she know where to find you?” Sebastian asked evenly, but there was an icy edge to his question.

“Because I sent her a photograph with my general location on the back,” Starke answered. “I needed to make amends. I brought her out here because I had something to give her, something she would stand a far better chance than I would at getting out of Syria.”

Sebastian’s jaw tightened and his hands curled into fists. “You gave her the gold.”

Gabriel held up a hand. “Calm yourself, Slightly. I’ve no wish to be on the receiving end of your temper for a second time tonight. I didn’t give Evie anything that belonged to the Lost Boys.”

“The Lost Boys?” I asked.

Sebastian’s hands relaxed. “That’s what our little band was called. There were seven of us who didn’t fit into any other work the bureau wanted. We were the leftovers, the flotsam and jetsam of the department. It was Gabriel who called us the Lost Boys the first time we met and the name stuck.”

“Where are the others?” I wondered.

Starke shrugged. “Dead, missing, scattered by the war. I’ll admit I didn’t make it my business to find out.”

“No, you were too sunk in self-pity and recrimination to wonder about the rest of us,” Sebastian shot back. He rose, wincing only a little. “I’ll be back in a minute. I want to make certain Demetrius’ shop is still secure.” He let himself out through the little door in the wardrobe, and I turned to find Starke smiling after him.

“The boy looks good. He still had a bit of puppy fat the last time I saw him. Glad to see that’s been worked off.”

“He’s rather hard on you,” I ventured.

Starke swiveled his head, fixing me with those devastating blue eyes. “I only found out recently that when the war ended and I walked away from it all, he was rotting in a Turkish prison. I don’t think I’d blame him if he had slit my throat the minute I walked in the door.” My stomach gave a lurch as he went on, softly, “I don’t know what they did to him. But I know what they did to Lawrence, and those are things I wouldn’t do to a rabid dog. The fact that he’s still alive and sane means he’s a far stronger man than I am. He’s got the heart of a lion, that boy. And the rage of a Viking berserker,” he added with a knowing wink.

I blinked. “But he’s a clergyman,” I said.

Starke grinned his pirate’s grin. “Clearly you’ve never seen him in a knife fight.” Before I could decide if he were joking or not, there was a rustling at the door and Sebastian appeared with a fresh skin of wine. He tossed it to Starke, who opened it and poured out a full measure for all of us.

“So what did you give Evangeline if not the gold?” Sebastian asked, settling into a chair.

I darted a surreptitious look at him from under my lashes. There were no scars, at least none I could see, and I wondered what horrors he had endured at the hands of his captors.

Starke was speaking. “The abandoned monastery outside Ashkelon, the last night we were all together, do you remember? It was the night before we went our separate ways to take up our roles in the great charade. There was a storm outside, raging, and we took refuge in that old wreck up on the hill. But the roof was gone, and the wind and rain drove us down through the crypts and into the old temple of Venus. We burned whatever we could get our hands on to stay warm, furniture and barrels and packing crates. And that’s when we found the manuscripts, cached there when the monks abandoned the place.” His words were directed at Sebastian, but he did not look at him. His gaze was soft and unfocused, and I knew he was seeing the scene in his head, unrolling like a moving picture. The storm raging outside, the little band of spies, brothers, gathered together one last time before they embarked upon a mission that could destroy them all.

“We didn’t know what they were at first, not until you deciphered them. But they were ordinary, lists of caravan goods and orders for chapel goods. Until you came to the one that told of the Templar treasure, Crusader gold brought to this land to finance the wars of the Middle Ages, the wars between gods and men, a treasure lost to time. But this document was more than a history. It was a map, and someone recognised it as being a copy of the same manuscript Lady Hester Stanhope had purchased on her travels.”

“Jocasta,” Sebastian said softly. “It was Jocasta. She specialised in modern Levantine history.”

Starke gave a quiet laugh. “Jocasta. How could I have forgot? She was giddy as a schoolgirl when she realised what we had found. A treasure map detailing the location of the Ashkelon hoard, the gold that Lady Hester spent her fortune in search of.”

I shook my head. It seemed fantastical that they were discussing Lady Hester so casually. She was a real historical personage, but her story was straight out of myth. She had served as society hostess to her bachelor uncle, the younger Pitt, when he was Prime Minister, but a disappointment in love had driven her to travel. She had struck out for the East, adopting the dress of a Turkish man and Eastern customs as they suited her. She had established the first modern archaeological dig at Ashkelon, looking for ancient art and, according to rumour, something more fabulous—a cache of gold pieces hauled to the Holy Land by the crusading Templars.