The Elusive Bride Read Online Free

hands fell from her, Emily managed to blink. “Y-yes.” This must be what shock felt like.
    Indeed, she was amazed she hadn’t swooned. He’d seized her, dragged her from danger, then held her close, effectively plastered to the side of his body. His brick-wall-hard, excessively warm—not to say hot—body.
    She didn’t think she’d ever be the same.
    “Ah…” Where was a fan when one needed one? She glanced around, and noise suddenly assaulted her ears. Everyone was talking, in several different languages.
    Hamilton hadn’t moved. He stood like a rock amid the sea of surging humanity. She wasn’t too proud to shelter in his lee.
    She finally located Mullins—her grizzly ex-soldier guard—as he came stumping back through the crowd. Just before the attack, a wave of bodies had pushed him ahead and separated them—then her attacker had stepped between her and Watson, her courier-guide, who’d been following on her heels.
    Her people were armed, but having lost her assailant in the melee, they gradually returned. Mullins recognized Hamilton as a solider even though he wasn’t in uniform, and raised a hand in an abbreviated salute. “Thanking you, sir—don’t know what we’d’ve done without you.”
    Emily noted the way Hamilton’s lips tightened. She was grateful he didn’t state the obvious—if not for his intervention, she’d be dead.
    The rest of her party gathered. Without prompting, she quickly put names and roles to their worried faces—Mullins, Watson, Jimmy, Watson’s young nephew, and Dorcas, her very English maid.
    Hamilton acknowledged the information with a nod, then looked from her to Watson. “Where were you planning to stay?”
     
    Hamilton and his people—a batman in his mid-twenties but with experience etched in his face, a fierce Pashtun warrior, and his equally fierce wife—escorted her party off the docks, then, with their combined luggage in a wooden cart, continued through the streets of Aden to the edge of the diplomatic quarter, and the quietly fashionable hotel her uncle had recommended.
    Hamilton halted in the street outside, studied the building, then simply said, “No.” He glanced at her, then past her to Mullins. “You can’t stay there. There’re too many entrances.”
    Stunned anew—and she still hadn’t managed to marshal her senses enough to think through the implications of the cultists’ attack—she looked at Mullins to discover him nodding his grizzled head.
    “You’re right,” Mullins allowed. “Death trap, that is.” He glanced at her and added, “In the circumstances.”
    Before she could argue, Hamilton smoothly continued, “For the moment, at least, I’m afraid our parties will need to stay together.”
    She looked at him.
    He caught her eye. “We need to find somewhere a lot less…obvious.”
     
    There was nothing the least obvious about the house in the Arab quarter Emily later found herself gracing. Not far from the docks, and in the opposite direction to the area inhabited by Europeans, she had to admit the private guesthouse was quite the last place anyone would think to look for her—the Governor of Bombay’s niece.
    Nestled behind a high stone wall off a minor side street, the modest house was arranged around a central courtyard. The owners, an Arab family, lived in one wing, leaving the main living quarters and two other wings of bedchambers for guests.
    At present their combined party were the only guests. From what she’d understood of the negotiations, Hamilton had hired the entire house for the duration of their stay.
    He hadn’t consulted her, not even informed her of his intentions. He hadn’t told her anything at all—simply whisked her and her people up, and set them down there with his household.
    Admittedly they were safe. Or at least as safe as they could be.
    She’d been just a little distracted at the time as the implications of the attack on the docks had finally impinged. Realizing she’d come within an