Seize the Fire Read Free Page B

followed by the little man's faint shriek. The sound of a scuffle drifted from the darkness. "Sheridan Pasha! No, no! I was not sleeping!"
    "Lying dog." A distant male voice carried clearly on the cold air. "Give over those blankets."
    The little man cried again, a sound that rose to a mournful ululation. "Sheridan Pasha—I beg you! My daughters, my wife! Who will send them money when I am a dead and frozen corpse?"
    "Who sends them money now?" The unseen speaker gave a snort. "They only exist when it suits you anyway. What the duece would you do with a woman if you had one? Look here, you Egyptian donkey—there's a hole in this shirt I could poke a nine-pound cannon through, and I've got no shaving water."
    The servant replied vigorously to that, a plaintive rise and fall of tones in a language foreign to Olympia, who spoke five fluently and could read and write in four more. The deeper voice answered in English, the thump of footsteps closer and clearer as the speaker moved down the corridor toward the stairs. "Well, send her to the devil! Damned if I'll be ambushed by another bombazine horror in a hideous hat." Disgust reverberated in the air. "Females! The streets ain't safe. Get her…"
    In the midst of a curse he appeared in the shimmer of candlelight, half naked, a white towel slung over his shoulders and shadows tarnishing his bare chest. He carried the blankets bundled loosely in one hand. His fawn breeches and black boots blurred into the gloom at the top of the steps.
    He saw her. He halted. A faint spark of dull gold flashed from a crescent-shaped pendant as it seemed to twist in the light and come to rest against his chest. He closed his fist over the towel on his shoulder, hiding the crescent in shadow. Olympia clutched her gifts tighter, peering through her hat feathers as he stared down at her in abrupt and heavy silence.
    He wasn't at all what she had imagined.
    Tall, yes—but not plain, not dependable, not kind. Not by any stretch of fancy.
    The gray eyes that regarded her were as deep and subtle and light-tricked as smoke from a wildfire. The face belonged to an archangel from the shadows: a cool, sulky mouth and an aquiline profile, and Satan's own intelligence in the assessing look he gave her. The candles behind him lit a smoldering halo of reddish gold around his black hair and turned each faint, frosted breath to a brief glow.
    He was not homely, He was utterly and appallingly beautiful, in the way the gleaming steel blossoms of murder and mayhem adorning the walls of the great hall were beautiful.
    "Who the dickens are you?" he asked.
    Courage , she said to herself. It didn't help. She straightened her snow-crusted shoulders, attempting at least the image of composure. She dropped a slight curtsy. "Olympia St Leger. One of your new neighbors. I've come to welcome you to Hatheleigh."
    He looked down at her from the landing with no sign of concern for his state of undress. "Good God," he said, and raised the towel to scrub at a spot under his chin. "I ain't worth the trouble, I promise you." He flipped the cloth over one shoulder and watched her a moment longer, his head tilted a little to one side, like a sleepy panther mildly intrigued by a mouse. Then he turned and bellowed over his shoulder, "Mustafa!"
    "Sheridan Pasha!" the little servant cried. "I was not sleeping!"
    " Yállah! Brother of vermin, do you see this? Miss…St Leger, was it?…has been soaked. Take her the blankets."
    Mustafa appeared, catching the woolen bundle that his master tossed at him. He slid down the banister, his loose white trousers flashing in the dimness. Whispering under his breath, he placed the blankets over her, fussing about and smoothing the corners into place. Olympia noticed for the first time that he, too, wore around his neck a golden ornament shaped like a crescent moon, with a tiny star hung just above the lower point. She peeked up at Sir Sheridan, but could no longer see his pendant in the shadows and the