Lady Of Fire Read Free Page A

unsettled her. “Know this,” she said, “once you enter the harem, you will not be intimate with a woman until you have fulfilled your end of the bargain by delivering my daughter to my family.”
    He smiled, a mocking thing that showed his teeth had survived the ravages of life at sea.
    Sabine swallowed hard. “Do not fail me, Lucien de Gautier. You are very much a man, and I would not wish to change that.”
    His smile widened. “Be assured, I will be cautious.”

CHAPTER THREE

    The music grew louder, its vigorous beat winding around the slender woman who swayed at the center of the large room. It pulled her head back and closed her eyes, drew her arms up and spread them to embrace the rhythm. It shook her shoulders, rotated her hips, made her fingers snap.
    Slowly, the female dancers hired to entertain the women of Abd al-Jabbar’s harem drifted away, going to stand along the walls to watch the one who had claimed the dance for herself.
    She was different from the others—her hair a flame amid the ashes, skin that should have been pale tanned and faintly touched with freckles, and the eyes she opened upon her captive audience were green and flashed with daring.
    The tempo quickened, and the solitary dancer whose fine-boned body curved where it ought to, swept across the floor. Laughter spilling from her, she snatched the gossamer veil from her waist-length hair, scattering the pins that had held it in place, and drew it between her hands. Once more raising her arms above her head, she pivoted on the balls of her bare feet and whirled amid the diaphanous material clothing her limbs. And when the music reached its zenith, she gave a shriek of delight.
    “Alessandra!” a sharp voice split the air.
    The music ceased, and a din of female voices rose in its place.
    Wrenched from what seemed a trancelike state, the dancer whipped around. She blinked at the woman who stood at the far end of the room. Then, obviously afflicted with lightheadedness, she staggered and stumbled, dropped to her knees, and sank back on her heels.
    Standing between Sabine and Khalid, Lucien silently cursed the attraction in whose grip he had been since laying eyes upon Alessandra, whom he had assumed was a dancer—though with her mother’s hair falling down her back, he should have known otherwise.
    Here was forbidden fruit. Indeed, of all who might tempt him to sins of the flesh, this lady of fire and daring and laughter could move him nearest his downfall. His task had just turned more dangerous. Indeed, it could prove deadly.

    Dear Lord, Alessandra silently appealed to the one above, I did not mean to. But, yes, I have done it again.
    Dizziness subsiding sufficiently to allow her to focus on her mother who stood just inside the doors, she whispered, “Worse, I am caught. Again.”
    She drew a deep breath, blew it up her face, and stood. As she stepped forward, the musicians and dancers resumed their entertainment. Not that their audience would be captive, for the encounter between mother and daughter was surely of greater interest.
    Alessandra was halfway to Sabine’s side when she glanced to the right. Alongside Khalid stood a man of equal girth and height—as much a giant as the chief eunuch. Though fair of skin, he was clothed the same as Khalid, head covered with a turban, a caftan falling from his shoulders, and over that a dark robe.
    Most notable were his eyes, their beauty undiminished by the brown-blue smudge ringing the right. Who had blackened it? Who had dared?
    The answer was found in the strange bend of Khalid’s nose, which conjured a vision of the two men locked in mortal combat. Who had come out on top? Perhaps neither.
    She returned her attention to the new man whose gaze was taking a leisurely jaunt over her. At every place he lit, from her heated face to her toes, she felt singed.
    Why does he stare? she wondered. Does he mock me?
    Regardless, he was surely the eunuch her mother had purchased a sennight past. No