Laura Kinsale by The Dream Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

abruptly.
    “What?”
    “It is no matter, my lord.”
    “Come with me,” Arden said abruptly, surprising himself. “El-Nasr has no blood feuds, and pays everyone for protection. Otherwise I’ll have to hire a new rafik to see me through each tribe.”
    “I do not wish to be rafik to you, my lord.”
    “Why not? I’ll pay you very well.”
    “Because then I could not quit your company. I would have to share your journey even unto death, and I don’t want to die.”
    He gave a short laugh. “A foregone conclusion, in your opinion!”
    “They say there is no water for fifteen camel marches across the red sands.”
    “Ah, but only think of how you’ll electrify all your acquaintance with the story, and be known ever after as a singularly intrepid individual.”
    “You are mad,” Salim said grimly. “I wish to go to Beyrout.”
    “Why the devil this longing for Beyrout, little wolf? Did her ladyship make you too soft for the desert?”
    “Yes, excellency.” The boy bit down with savage effect on an olive and spat out the seed. “I hate the desert.”
    “A pity. She did you no favor there.”
    The boy turned on Arden suddenly. “My lord!” he demanded in English, “are you a spy?”
    “I am not. Though no doubt I’ll be thought one, and you too, cub, if the pair of us burst out in English at any inconvenient moment.”
    “Then why is it you come here? What can you want in such a place?”
    He looked about him at the huge clear sky and the desolate country. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
    Selim hugged his arms around himself, shivering. “You are absurd! When you could be in England!”
    He laughed. “You sound remarkably like my maiden aunt. What do you know of England?”
    “I know everyone sleeps in a feather bed there,” the boy said pungently, “and not on a mule’s back on a mountainside.”
    “Ah! So it’s a feather bed you want in Beyrout.”  
    “I do not want a feather bed in Beyrout. I want—” Lord Winter observed the boy’s intense face. Whatever it was, he desired it very badly. Such longing was no common thing.
    “Gold?” the viscount suggested. All Bedu had a burning desire for gold coins.
    Selim cast him a proud, uncertain look, a quaint mixture of disdain and interest. So, Lord Winter thought, whatever it is you want, my fine cub, it can be bought for gold.
    “What do you suppose,” he mused, “it would be worth in sovereigns—the price of a rafik to Nejd and back again?”
    The boy said nothing.
    “Two thoroughbred camels?” Lord Winter suggested. “I saw them selling for thirty in Damascus.”
    Selim scowled at the ground. “I have no use for camels.”
    “You may buy what you like with sovereigns. Say, a purebred Keheilan mare, for a hundred.”
    The boy began to look hunted. “I do not want a mare,” he muttered.
    Lord Winter raised his eyebrows. “Tell me what it is you do want, and let us discuss the matter. Perhaps we’ll find ourselves in charity.”
    Selim stared at him, almost through him, breathing quickly, as if his mind was grappling with some desperate calculation. “You would pay gold sovereigns? English money?”
    Lord Winter nodded.
    “How much—excellency—what would it cost for a passage to London?”
    Arden, his curiosity aroused, had been running possibilities through his mind: the price of a doctor or a magician for some sick relative, the cost of an expensive bride, the value of a grove of date palms—but this made him look down at the boy with astonishment.
    “London! Whoever do you wish to send to London?”
    Selim’s delicate jaw tensed. He turned his face downward, his tangled hair falling forward to conceal him. “It is I who wish to go, excellency.”  
    In a long moment of silence, Zenia felt herself the object of unnerving scrutiny. In spite of his sharp manners, she perceived that Lord Winter did not altogether despise his wolf cub. But she dared not let him discover she was female. Lord Winter was of one