The Pleasure of Your Kiss Read Online Free Page B

pouring into the courtyard where he was about to be shot.
    He tensed. There were shouted words, the majority of them denouncing the interruption in a furious Arabic he understood only too well, but a handful in a language he hadn’t heard for a long time. A language that should have been utterly impossible in this most unlikely of places—the King’s English. Sensing that he was no longer the center of attention, he began to work at the ropes binding his hands behind his back. As the sounds of discord mounted, he felt a flare of something he’d surrendered long before this moment.
    Hope .
    The guttural Arabic erupted in a snarled curse before lapsing into the heavily accented English of an outraged husband. “And who are you that you would invade my home with your infidel dogs and dishonor me in this disgraceful manner?”
    Finally responding to his desperate efforts to wiggle himself free, the ropes fell away from Ash’s wrists. Just as he reached up to tug off the blindfold, he heard a voice he would have recognized anywhere. It was every bit as resolute as it had been when ordering him to surrender his toy battleships or risk having them sunk in the bathtub.
    Ash snatched off the blindfold, stunned to find himself gazing into cool gray eyes that were as familiar as his own amber ones.
    His savior’s clipped words fell like shards of ice into the sweltering Moroccan heat. “I. Am. His. Brother.”
    “Lord Dravenwood will see you now.”
    “That’s what I was afraid of,” Ash murmured as he rose from where he had been lounging on a pile of sandbags to follow the pinch-cheeked young corporal. It was impossible to tell if the man’s rigidly formal manner was due to military training or disapproval. Ash suspected the latter.
    As he ducked beneath the open flap of the spacious tent, escaping the ruthless rays of the desert sun, it was all he could do not to let out an appreciative whistle. Leave it to his brother to create an oasis of impeccably preserved English culture in the wild heart of the Moroccan desert just outside Marrakech. If not for the billowing canvas walls and the fine layer of grit overlaying every surface, Ash might have been strolling into the elegantly appointed study of any London town house.
    A Turkish rug added a rich splash of emerald and garnet to the interior of the tent. The carpet had no doubt been rolled up and transported all of the way from England when its twin might just as easily have been purchased in a local bazaar for a few pounds. A single place setting of porcelain, crystal, and silver adorned a square table draped in white linen. There was even a wheeled tea cart topped by a gold-rimmed Worcester tea service to allow his brother and his top commanders to indulge in that most civilized of English rituals—afternoon tea.
    The scrolled foot of a Grecian chaise longue peeped out from behind the lacquered privacy screen in the corner. The mahogany shelf next to it held a perfectly arranged row of leatherbound books. This time Ash couldn’t quite muffle his snort. They were probably in alphabetical order as well. Even as a boy, his brother had preferred weighty tomes detailing obscure military battles and the musings of Greek philosophers, while Ash thrilled to the derring-do exploits of the heroes springing from the fertile imaginations of novelists such as Sir Walter Scott and Daniel Defoe. That is, when he wasn’t perusing a book of naughty etchings slipped into the house by one of his father’s bolder footmen.
    On the west wall of the tent a pastoral landscape in a gilded frame hung from a thin strand of rope. Ash blinked at the painting, recognizing the Romantic style of John Constable. He was almost certain it was an original.
    He shook his head in bemusement, wondering how many wagons, horses, and camels it had taken to accommodate his brother’s private retinue. Ash had always prided himself on traveling light. He had learned the hard way how to beat a hasty exit with