The Lion's Daughter by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online

his flat belly. Long fingers,
the nails manicured and clean but for a few grains of Durrës beach imbedded there. Not a
callous,
    scar,
or scratch marred their elegant perfection. She looked at her own
tanned hands, hard and strong, then at her stained, gritty trousers.
Her belly tightened with anxiety. It was the way she always felt when
she encountered her father's countrymen: the same sense of
inadequacy, the same tense anticipation of their barely masked
distaste and scorn. Some looked right through her, as though she were
invisible, and sometimes that was worse than the more open
condescension. She knew they viewed her as little better than an
animal.
    Those
she had met before were only soldiers. This man was a lord. Even now
he seemed to sneer at her. His eyes, she decided as she returned her
gaze to his face, would be cold and hard as stone.
    It
didn't matter, she told herself. His opinion was of no consequence.
She threw the rag into the bucket, angrily wrung it out ... then paused, her hand inches from
his face as his mouth worked soundlessly and his eyes slowly opened.
    Her
heart skittered like a frightened mare. Gray eyes, but not like
stone. Gray smoke. As they focused with painful slowness, the rigid
countenance softened into life, and she drew the cloth away, her hand
trembling.
    It was the
face of a dark angel. For one giddy moment, she thought it was
Lucifer himself, just hurled down by a wrathful Almighty.
    “Percival,”
he murmured. “Thank G—” He blinked. “Who are you?”
    The
low, hoarse voice was smoke, too, enervating as opium. Esme drew a
sharp breath and told herself to wake
up.
    “I'm
called Zigur,” she said.
    Chapter 3

    THE
BOY'S RESEMBLANCE TO PERCIVAL WAS startling: the same feline cast to
vividly green eyes, the same small, straight nose and assertive
little chin. He even related the dawn's events in the same patiently
logical way, though more succinctly than Percival would have done.
Had Varian been his usual self, Zigur's cool self-possession would
have amused him, for the boy could only be a year or two Percival's
senior — fifteen
at most. But Varian's head was pounding, his muscles shrieking, and
the tale, in any case, held no humor.
    “My
father, Jason, is the uncle of the boy, Percival,” Zigur was
explaining. “This morning, I learned my father had been killed
and that men were sent to take me for their master's pleasure. In the
confusion at the harbor, these men took my cousin by mistake.”
    Zigur
pushed back his thick woolen headgear slightly, and Varian saw that
the hair beneath, like the eyes, precisely matched Percival's. Then
the boy's meaning sank in. In these realms, Varian had heard,
children of both genders were commonly abducted and raped. Percival
was in the hands of pederasts.
    Varian
must have looked as sick as he felt, for Zigur added hastily, “You
have no cause for alarm, efendi. It
was me they wanted. With Jason dead, I have no kin to avenge the
insult. Me these villains might take as easily as one collects a
pebble from the shore. But my cousin is English, and Ali Pasha wants
your government's help to extend his domains. The villains know, as
all Albania knows, that to offend any Englishman is to invite Ali's
cruelly painful revenge. When the abductors discover the boy is
English, they will leave him in one of the villages to the south,
where my father's friend Bajo will easily find him.”
    “These
men killed Jason,” Varian said, sitting up hastily. He
instantly regretted it. An explosion seemed to tear his skull apart.
He sank back down. “And they attacked me. That's two Englishmen in a matter of
days.”
    Zigur's
face tightened into a harsh mask. “Jason's kin disowned him
long ago. He is considered an Albanian. Naturally, there must be
blood payment for his murder, but it is not your feud, efendi. As to you — they
struck only to get you out of their way. Had they meant to kill, your
severed head would now be lying upon the Durrës