The Cobra & the Concubine (Khamsin Warriors of the Wind) (12 page)

"That was unforgivably rude. Where are your manners?" Standing on the staircase, Badra coldly regarded her friend. Her protector. Her companion in pain.

Rashid’s handsome face pinched with sudden regret. "I am sorry, Badra. I did not mean to upset you."

She descended and paced the gleaming hardwood floor. "Why do you hate him so? Because of what he did to Jabari?"

Deep sorrow reflected in his dark eyes. Then it faded. He grunted. "It is more jealousy than hate. Khepri always led a charmed life. He always had ... advantages most others never did."

Her friend’s blunt honesty startled her. "Rashid, do not torment yourself. There are always others who have advantages we are denied. Life sometimes strips us of choices and we must make the best of what we are given."

Dark torment flashed on Rashid’s face. Badra recognized the look—terror, mixed with deep shame.

"You must be cordial to Khepri, especially at Lord Smithfield’s dinner party tonight."

"It is not necessary. I am not attending."

"But Rashid, you promised."

"I cannot stand the English staring as if I am an artifact on display. I hate them," he said tightly. But she sensed a more compelling reason behind his refusal.

"Rashid, what happened? I know something did. I can tell."

He remained silent. A maid carrying flowers passed. Badra sensed Rashid’s unease. "Let us talk in private. In my room."

Upstairs, she closed the door and watched him sink to the floor, sitting cross-legged. She waited patiently. The warrior took a deep breath, his face pale and glistening with sweat.

"While I walked in the park, I saw someone. He looked exactly ..." Rashid took a long gulp of air.

"Like the Englishman who hurt you," she finished.

Head bent, he traced a line on the elegant carpet. "Badra, there is something you should know. He did not ... force me."

Badra stared, feeling slightly sick.

"He was a visiting English nobleman, purchasing one of our Arabians. A person of great power and respect. I begged him to help me escape the man hurting me each night. He told me such a great favor came with a great price. He, he ... wanted me. If I did not struggle ... he would help me. When I refused, the Englishman asked what was one time with him compared to a lifetime with my tormentor? I was so desperate I agreed. When it ... when it was over, he warned if I told anyone, he would blame me. Then he laughed and rode off. He left me there, Badra. Trapped. There was no escape."

Rashid’s voice scraped across her shivering body. "This is the real reason I loathed coming to England. He is here, in London. I know it. I cannot bear seeing him again. That face, his red hair, it haunts my deepest dreams."

"How old were you?" she asked quietly.

His long black hair curtained his expression. "Old enough to know what he did. What I allowed him to do. I was eight."

Badra forced down the rising nausea, thinking of the little boy subjected to such horrors. For all she had suffered, Rashid had suffered double.

"Do not blame yourself. I wasted years doing so. You must learn to live with the memories. With time, they will fade." Though she tried to assure him, a hollow note rang in her voice.

He caught it. "Do they?" he asked. Doubt riddled his tone. "For years I have lived with this torment. I cannot look upon any Englishman without breaking into a cold sweat. I feel so ... ashamed."

His haunted eyes met hers. ‘Tell me, Badra. Please. Tell me that it will fade, that I will be a man once more."

Her heart ripped in half. She imagined a young boy’s terrified screams as Fareeq’s second-in-command indulged in his evil pleasure ... and then the boy’s shame as he allowed an Englishman to do the same.

"You are a man, Rashid. A brave, honorable warrior. And no one ever doubts it. Your secret will remain safe with me."

He touched her hand, nodded. Some degree of control had returned and his old, familiar look of command returned. "As will yours," he stated formally.

She squeezed his hand. For a minute they sat, lost in memory. And regret.

It was a horrible mistake, appearing at Lord Smithfield’s party. Badra realized that now. She had wanted to shut herself away and mourn her cowardice in refusing Kenneth’s marriage offer last year, but conflicting emotions tore at her. Her curiosity had won. She’d wanted to experience the English society that would have become her world had she married Khepri. So Badra had summoned a maid to help her dress and then went downstairs to the dinner party.

Beneath her elegant emerald silk gown, Badra broke into a cold sweat as she glimpsed the crowd. Choking panic welled in her throat.

The swirl of elegant women in ruffled silk gowns and the gentlemen in elegant black suits was flustering as Lord Smithfield introduced her. Men gave her speculative glances and smiles. The women were cool and assessing. Badra felt like a display piece, gazed upon and examined by curious spectators.

And then a familiar face towered over the crowd. The Duke of Caldwell. Her mouth went dry.

One woman in a lemon-yellow gown leaned close to Kenneth, clearly enthralled. Badra noticed several other ladies rivet their attention to him, too. His prodigious height, dark good looks and piercing blue eyes attracted females like sand to wet skin. With seeming ease, he conversed with his admirer.

Then Kenneth lifted his head. His gaze caught Badra’s and held it across the room. For a single moment his eyes burned into her, scorching her with a heat more intense than her beloved Egyptian sun. Then he fastened his attention back on his companion. His deep, rich laughter sounded as he responded to something she’d said.

Anxiety clenched Badra’s stomach. She was here in his foreign, imposing world. On her own. If she committed some grave social error, he would not rescue her. Sweat dampened her palms.

As the footman announced dinner and they were ushered toward the dining room, full-fledged panic arose. She wanted to turn and run.

But her feet, and pride, would not permit flight.

An enormous table with a handwoven lace cloth featured shiny dishes, sparkling crystal and gleaming silver. The sour-faced footman stood nearby, his manner as stiff as the dark blue velvet and gold-braided uniform he wore. The relative casualness of Lord Smithfield’s usual dinners did not match this cold formality. No wonder Rashid remained upstairs.

Her heart galloped as her dinner companion, Viscount Oates, gallantly held out her chair. For a long moment Badra’s legs froze. How could she do this? She was a simple Bedouin woman who sat on thick carpets on the sand, ate with flat bread as utensils and drank cups of thick, rich camel’s milk. A footman moved methodically down the table, pouring ruby-colored wine into glasses. She did not drink alcohol, either.

She glanced across the table at the duke, who was conversing with his pretty dinner partner. Badra swept the table with her gaze. Which fork to use? What if she spilled something? So many crystal glasses as well.

Women glanced at her with avid interest, bright eyes eager to see her fail.
How could she manage this? I cannot.

Badra stared at Kenneth, willing him to look at her, to offer some reassurance. Studiously, it seemed, he ignored her.

Please look at me, Kenneth. Please. I’m frightened.

Finally, he did. Badra’s desperate gaze held his steady one. Helplessly, she touched the gleaming utensils near her plate. She raised her gaze to Kenneth in a wordless request.

"Watch me," he mouthed.

Servants began serving the first course. Badra studied the white liquid sitting before her in a delicate china bowl, and then at the assortment of spoons. The duke lifted the largest spoon and dipped it into the soup, slowly bringing it to his mouth. Badra attempted the same, tasting the concoction, surprised at the creamy taste. She ate more, smiling politely as Lord Oates chatted about his family’s fine collection of horses.

I will not appear a savage. I can use the correct utensil.

Badra watched Kenneth carefully as footmen cleared the soup bowls and brought the next course. He picked up the heavy silver utensil, speared a white oval dotted with green shavings and brought it to his mouth. She followed suit, resisting the strong impulse to break off some thick white bread to scoop up the meal, just as she longed to push back the heavy mahogany chair and sit on the floor.

A florid-faced nobleman sitting nearby addressed Kenneth from across the table. "So, Caldwell," he boomed. "Shall we go shooting again this year at my estate? Bag a pheasant or two?"

"As long as it is pheasant and not peasant I down, Huntly. I’m afraid the last time I nearly clipped one of your tenants instead of the bird," Kenneth joked smoothly, to the amused laughter of those listening.

A pang of jealousy twisted Badra’s insides at the women’s adoring glances. Khepri was gone forever, Kenneth the duke neatly sliding into his place, a polished, sophisticated nobleman who assimilated smoothly into this strange, gleaming world. She felt like a dull pebble surrounded by sparkling rubies and diamonds.

Surprising her, Lord Oates sneered. "Bagging peasants sounds well and good, but you rarely attended any of last season’s balls. Are you shunning the Marriage Mart? Or is it waltzing you fear? Did they not teach you any social graces in Egypt?"

Kenneth narrowed his eyes.

"Oh, right, I forgot. That lazy heathen tribe who raised you doesn’t dance. Except when poked with a British saber."

Oates’s laughter rang out. Badra flinched at the insult.

A sound escaped Kenneth’s lips: a whisper, a familiar undulating purr from the past, a war cry Badra knew he made when confronted with male posturing. It was the call to arms his father had taught him. Not his real father, but the sheikh who’d raised him.

"What was that?!" one woman exclaimed.

Silence fell around the table like a heavy curtain. Badra bored her dark gaze into Kenneth’s, thoroughly shocked but secretly gleeful. Khepri may have been swallowed by the urbane duke, but he could surface still, the Khamsin war cry undulating from his lips. The duke turned his attention toward the woman.

"That, my dear Lady Huntly, was a demonstration of the call to dance by the tribe who raised me. You are correct, Oates. The Khamsin do not dance in the traditional English sense. Their dances are fierce displays of strength before battle. The warriors strip to the waist, anoint themselves with ceremonial decorations and gather before a mighty bonfire, preparing themselves for the bloodletting to come. They dance to show to the sheikh their willingness to die."

"Are women permitted in these ceremonies?" asked one woman faintly, fanning herself. A tiny bead of perspiration rolled down her temple.

Kenneth gave Badra a meaningful glance. "No, for it is feared a lady would faint from witnessing such a spectacle." He added softly, "For women, such displays of male potency are reserved to the privacy of the black tents."

Badra felt her cheeks flame at his remark. His sapphire eyes burned into her. Heat from her cheeks spread through her body, fanning it like a stoked fire—as if they were alone, and he’d dared to relay something forbidden, exotic and mysterious.

Oh, yes. He was still vaguely threatening and yet exciting. Badra’s lips parted as she watched his long, elegant fingers stroke his wineglass’s stem as if it were live, warm flesh. Her imagination flamed as she pictured his hands caressing a woman’s soft thigh, teasing and arousing ...

Her mental picture shifted. It was her thigh, the duke’s hooded gaze lazy and meaningful as it captured hers and his fingers slid slowly upward, heat flaring in their wake. Badra hitched in a trembling breath, disturbed and aroused.

Fans fluttered wildly now as many flushed-faced women sighed. Kenneth asked them with wicked glee, "Would you care for me to explain the war dance of the Khamsin warriors?"

A chorus of female voices cried out in unison. "Oh, yes!"

The duke smiled and obliged them. The women craned their necks forward to listen. A mutual sigh of their admiration undulated down the table as he sketched with his hands how the warriors tangled with each other "like wildcats" to demonstrate their prowess to their sheikh. And how they denied themselves their wives’ company before battle but after victory, the warriors stalked off to their tents and demonstrated a "savage, insatiable prowess." Kenneth’s suggestive look hinted at air filled with different cries—female cries of pleasure.

They all listened, clearly enthralled. And by the time he finished, every woman was flushed. Several looked faint.

The duke gave each a polite smile before riveting his attention to Badra. Her insides felt as formless as fresh yogurt. Kenneth’s burning gaze pierced her.

"Well, Badra, I hope my explanation of the Khamsin rituals did not make you homesick," he said.

"It sounds like you are the homesick one," she noted.

His startled expression stopped the breath rising in her lungs. Sadness lingered there, twisting her emotions. In his face she saw a longing, the call of sand and sun and the warbling of warriors racing on their mares to battle. Then the look vanished like thirsty sand drinking precious raindrops.