Читать книгу The Lost Prince - Cindy Dees - Страница 10

The worst of Katy’s jet lag was gone when the first call to morning prayer broadcast across the city at dawn. She went over to her French door and, leaning on the jamb, gazed out across Akuba as sunrise bathed the white metropolis in vivid peach hues. Ox-drawn carts laden with fresh produce lumbered by on the street below, and veiled women met the carts at their front doors, bartering in quick Arabic and filling woven bags with food in a ritual as ancient as the city itself.

Gold onion turrets and the tall needles of minarets marked mosques. Tapering white steeples marked the Christian edifices on the skyline as the sun broke over the horizon and morning burst upon the city at her feet. The first shopkeepers slid back grates from the fronts of their shops and spread out blankets on the sidewalk, arranging their wares for sale. Brass and woven goods, tobacco and spices, piles of fruit, loaves of bread, small electronics and racks of CDs and DVDs emerged to line the margins of the street. The blend of old and new was oddly representative of the city itself.

With the reality of a new day came insidious doubt that she’d actually found Nikolas Ramsey yesterday. Maybe the guy just looked like the king and was hoping to parlay that into some sort of negotiated release. Time to go see if her imagination had been playing tricks on her or not. She had dozens of prisoners to see today, but somehow she’d make time to pay a return visit to him. She donned her mostly dry abaya and managed to get her scarf tied around her head and the veil across her face with the help of the tiny mirror in the corner of her room.

Too nervous to eat much more than a single, delicious honey cake, she hiked up the killer hill to Il Leone, and the climb sucked every bit as bad as she’d expected it to. Nobody needed stair-climbers in this town! Her abaya clung to her sweaty skin, and the silk veil clung to her face in the most annoying fashion when she and Larry finally staggered into the palace courtyard, huffing like racehorses. More like broken-down, asthmatic horses ready for the glue factory.

Throughout the morning a number of the prisoners asked her under their breath and with some urgency whether there’d been any word on King Nikolas. Did she know if he was alive or dead, and where? Did Nikolas, despite his playboy ways, engender loyalty in his troops? Or were they simply being questioned hard about him by the Army?

It ran against her grain to lie, but it wasn’t as though she had any choice. She shrugged and told the men she hadn’t heard anything and that InterAid was not supposed to get involved in such matters. Right.

Many of the prisoners were in bad shape. Most of their injuries could have come from the rigors of combat, but she suspected that many of them had actually come from beatings administered during their initial interrogations. The soldiers controlling the palace were rude to her and arrogant enough to set her teeth on edge. It was easy to dislike this bunch of thugs who’d taken over Baraq. They might have legitimate reasons for what they’d done, but their methods left a great deal to be desired.

Moving from prisoner to prisoner within the palace, it didn’t take Katy long to figure out that the coup had been planned for some time prior to Nick’s father’s death. He’d died a lingering death of heart disease, apparently, and the Army had waited only for the poor man to stop breathing to seize the kingdom. Larry commented to her that the former Ramsey king had been so popular that no coup against him would have worked anyway. Not so with the younger Ramsey. Everyone she came across, both rebel and royalist, agreed that Nikolas was a complete stranger to them.

It was midafternoon before she was able to make her way back to Prisoner 1806 without it seeming unnatural. But finally she stood in front of the iron-banded door once more.

Her guard escort today was named Riki. He was a gregarious youth who swore he was eighteen, but she’d put his age at closer to fourteen. He was a distinct departure from yesterday’s surly escort, and for that she was grateful.

“I’ll be with this prisoner for a while,” she informed the boy.

Riki shrugged and reached for the door. She waited impatiently while he fumbled with the rusty lock. Finally it creaked open and she stepped inside.

The prisoner was sitting up when she entered, one foot propped up on the ledge and his arm resting across his knee. Their gazes met and locked, their shared secret hanging heavy in the air between them like the scents of cinnamon and curry that hung over the city. She hadn’t imagined a thing. It was all real. The aristocracy cloaking him, the impatience of a man used to getting his way. The sheer royalty of the man. He was the king.

She stepped farther into the cell. His expression was warm, an intimate caress that pierced her robes to touch her skin in the most disturbing fashion. Katy actually felt herself flush under her veil. Even in heavy gloom, wearing a ruined uniform, his face as battered as a prizefighter’s, he oozed magnetism—heck, outright sex appeal. How could anybody mistake him for a common soldier? But then, maybe it took a woman to sense it. And the Baraqi Army was notably lacking in women in its ranks.

She waited for the heavy door to lock behind her before she spoke. “How are you today?”

“My nose feels much better. Thanks for the bandage.”

His gaze seemed to strip the robe right off her. Instead of feeling safely swathed in shapeless yards of cloth, she felt exposed. Naked.

“And how are you today?” he asked, his voice mellow and intimate.

She frowned. She could really do without this whole turn-on-the-charm thing. It was incredibly effective—and distracting. “Fine, thank you.”

“Have a seat.” He scooted over to make room for her on the crude ledge. “So. What did you find out about protecting my identity?”

She shook her head regretfully. “The Geneva Convention is clear. You have to tell the Army your name or else forfeit protection under the Convention.”

He asked soberly, “Are you required to notify them that I no longer have Geneva Convention status?”

“It doesn’t say specifically that I have to.”

“So what the Army doesn’t know won’t hurt it. Until they figure out who I am and that I’ve broken the rules, I’m safe.”

She glanced around at the dank stone walls and replied drily, “I’m not sure I’d call this safe.”

“Hey, it’s safer than flying around a Formula One race course at two hundred miles per hour.”

She snorted. “Not in my book.”

“Well, it’s a lot safer than navigating a room full of social-climbing, money-lusting, crown-seeking women looking to trap me into marriage.”

“You have a point there.” Her grin faded. “How can you joke around at a time like this?”

He shrugged, an elegant movement of his broad, athletic shoulders. “How can I not? I prefer laughter over the alternative. By the way,” he added casually, “if you’d like to drop your veil while you’re in here with me, I won’t tell on you.”

Surprised by the offer, she gazed at him searchingly. Funny, but she was shy about showing him her face. Would he think she was too forward if she took off her veil? Oh, for heaven’s sake. The guy’d lived in England since he was a kid! He was perfectly accustomed to western women. If anything, it must be strange to him to see women all covered by veils.

“Please,” he murmured. “Give me a pretty face to think about as I languish here waiting for my luck to run out.”

Was she pretty? She wasn’t exactly ugly, but she’d never been overly concerned with her looks. She wore decent clothes and put on makeup when she thought a camera crew might be lurking outside her apartment, but that was about it. This man was no doubt used to looking at exotic, gorgeous supermodels.

Had she detected a hint of desperation in his lightly voiced request? She cast a glance around the medieval dungeon. He must be going crazy staring at these featureless and depressing walls in near-total darkness. It was a simple enough thing to grant the poor guy. She reached up and removed the safety pin securing the end of the veil but blinked in surprise when he brushed her hand aside and reached for the veil himself. The black silk caressed her cheek as he slowly lifted the panel of fabric aside.

Why showing this guy her face should be a big deal, she had no idea. But here she was, holding her breath like some Moorish virgin on her wedding night. Sheesh. She risked a glance up at him. A faint smile curved his lips as he regarded her like a connoisseur observing fine art.

“Lovely,” he breathed. He let the silk slide from his fingers to trail down over her breasts.

She shrugged, embarrassed. “I suppose. If you go for that wholesome all-American look.”

He laughed lightly. “You must remember—in this part of the world, your blond hair and blue eyes are exotic. Very few women here share your coloring.” He chuckled and added, “Admittedly I’ve spent most of my life in England. But to my eye, most people there are one shade or another of paste-white. Your tan is a nice departure from that. And you have extraordinary bones.”

Bones? Uh, okay. If he said so. He was the connoisseur, after all. And as for being exotic, she’d never thought of herself that way. Belatedly it occurred to her that if she’d been in a bar and he’d said that, she’d have blown off his observation as a pickup line.

“What’s your first name, Miss McMann?” he asked.

“Katy.”

“Is it just Katy or is that short for something?”

“My real name’s Katrina, but I’ve always hated it.”

“It’s a beautiful name, like its owner. But if you insist, I shall call you by your so very American nickname.”

Why in the hell did his blatant flattery knock her off balance like this? Aspiring young lawyers hit on her all the time, trying to get an introduction to the legendary McMann clan. And of course, there were the fortune seekers who mistakenly thought she lived off her brothers’ wealth. And then there were the occasional jerks who’d hit on anything in skirts.

She mumbled, “What should I call you?”

He grinned. “Under the circumstances, we’d better stick with Prisoner 1806. Or Akbar,” he added.

She looked up, startled at the dry humor in his voice. His stunning eyes sparkled like twenty-four-karat gold. No doubt about it, this guy was a lady-killer.

He spoke in an intimate tone pitched for her ears alone. “Thank you for coming back to see me today and thank you for not betraying my identity. I owe you my life.”

His face was partially hidden in deep shadows. Beneath his swollen bruises and the big white bandage over his nose, she caught a glimpse of the man he normally was—a man so beautiful it almost hurt to look at him.

“Dang,” she murmured. “No wonder you’re on the list of the world’s most eligible bachelors.”

Oops. Had she just said that aloud? Oh, God. She had. She watched in dismay as he threw his head back and let out a rich laugh.