Taming Charlotte Read Free Page A

find my way back to the Vincents’ compound!”
    Patrick picked a familiar face from the crowd, an earnest little boy who sometimes ran errands for him, and gave him a few pieces of silver. He knew the Vincents and had visited them on several occasions.
    In quick Arabic, he instructed the boy to take the lady home—she would obviously be no help at all in finding her friend. Then he began questioning bystanders.
    Despite Patrick’s easy command of the local language and the fact that he was well-known in the kingdom and received in homes on all levels of the social scale, he was still an outsider. The men frequenting the marketplace would sympathize with the kidnappers, not the girl. To them, theselling of innocent young women into virtual slavery was honest commerce.
    Still, Patrick searched the alleyways that snaked away from the
souk
in every direction, a feeling of panic rising in him as he struggled to accept the hopelessness of his pursuit. The girl was lost; there would be no saving her from the fate that awaited her.
    In the late afternoon, when the sun glared mercilessly down on the ancient, dusty city, Patrick returned to the harbor, where his ship, the
Enchantress,
was at anchor.
    She was in a dark, cramped hole, a place that smelled of rats, mildew, and spoilage. Her head ached as though she’d been felled with a club, and nausea roiled in her stomach. Patches of tenderness all over her body told her she was black and blue, and where there wasn’t a bruise, her skin stung with abrasions.
    Charlotte wanted to throw up, but she was gagged, and when she moved to uncover her mouth, she discovered that her hands were bound as well. Tears of frustration and fear burned her eyes.
    You wanted an adventure,
she scolded herself.
Here it is.
    Hysteria threatened, but Charlotte would not surrender. She knew it was crucial not to panic; she had to think calmly and come up with a plan of escape.
    Instead of strategy, however, she thought of Bettina. Had the kidnappers taken her, too? Charlotte shuddered to think how terrified the girl would be if that was true, and guilt lanced through her spirit. If Bettina came to harm, it would be Charlotte’s own fault and no one else’s. She had literally browbeaten her companion into visiting the
souk,
and the result might well be tragic.
    Another rush of bile seared Charlotte’s throat, and she swallowed. If she kept her wits about her, she might be able to find Bettina, and the two of them could flee their captors together. On the other hand, she might never see her friend again.
    Colorful and patently horrifying pictures filled Charlotte’s mind. She’d often pretended, in the privacy of her mind, to be a harem girl, with Patrick Trevarren as hersultan. It had been an innocent game, heating her loins and bringing a frustrated blush to her cheeks, but the reality of facing a life of white slavery was no schoolgirl fantasy. Of course, she wouldn’t be sold to the man she’d dreamed about all these years—oh, no. She would surely become the property of some whoremaster, or a concubine to some sweaty, slobbering wretch who valued her no more than he would a dog or a horse.
    Charlotte thought of her home in Quade’s Harbor, on the green shores of Puget Sound, where her father owned and operated one of the largest timber operations in Washington Territory. Brigham Quade was a man of very firm opinions, with no inclination at all toward nonsense, but Charlotte had never doubted his love for a moment. She and her sister, Millie, had always known he would give up his own life before letting anything happen to either one of them, and because of this certainty, they’d grown up to be confident and secure.
    Lydia, their stepmother, had taught them to be strong women, unafraid to take risks and let their intelligence show, and for the most part, these traits had stood Charlotte in good stead. Until that morning—if indeed it had been that morning—when she’d awakened with the