“Like hell you will,” Adam said.
“Just because you are a man, Adam—”
The earl raised a stilling hand. “I, for one, wish to think about all this. The both of you can argue to your hearts’ content once your mother and I are gone.” He lightly tweaked his daughter’s chin. “A holiday in Naples? I am not certain if the gentlemen at court could survive such a whirlwind. We will speak of it tomorrow.”
The earl rose, smiled thoughtfully at Adam and Arabella, then offered the countess his arm.
No sooner had their parents left the veranda than Adam said firmly, “Arabella, I do not want you in Naples.”
“And why not, may I be so bold as to ask? I have more chance of charming information out of a gentleman than would you.”
“This is not a game, Bella.”
“Ah, ye never change,” Scargill said, emerging from the shadows onto the balcony. “All ye do is scrap.” He took a puff from his pipe and blew a thoughtful cloud of smoke upward.
“Adam,” Arabella said firmly, “is being a brother, Scargill.”
“Since this twit is my sister, I must protect her despite herself.”
Arabella threw her napkin at him, jumping to her feet. “It will not be your decision. Father is not so unreasonable. And I will go to Naples with the Lyndhursts, you will see.”
Scargill blew another cloud of smoke, and shook his grizzled white head. “Do ye want yer dueling pistols now?”
“I would prefer a foil,” Arabella said. “I could skewer him easily.”
“Lord,” Adam said, ready to smack her. “I pity the man who has the taming of you.”
“Taming? And what of the poor woman who must bear with your ridiculous whims?”
“Now, lassie,” Scargill said, waving his pipe at her, “ye must at least make men think they are getting their way.”
“Men,” Arabella said, “should all be lined up and shot.”
“Men, my dear sister, also have their uses, which you will learn if you ever decide to grow up and be a woman.”
Eversley’s face flashed in Arabella’s mind, and she flushed. “I don’t want men, or their uses,” she said.
“I think, Scargill,” Adam said, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, “that this time I’ve had the last word.”
“Then ye’d best take yerself off now, lad, afore yer sister finds her tongue.” He banged his pipe against his palm, chuckled, and disappeared into the gardens.
Chapter 3
Oran, Province of Algiers
Alessandro di Fer
rari, known in Algiers as Kamal El-Kader, Bey of Oran, stood in the front courtyard of his palace, resting his bronzed hands on the mosaic tile of the garden wall. He raised his eyes from the formidable fortress below him to its sister that straddled the sloping hill across the valley. Together, with their guns trained upon the harbor or Oran, they were a warning to Europe and a promise of protection to the ships nestled in the harbor below. At least a dozen xebecs, the deadly swift three-masted ships favored by the corsairs, were moored there, and a heavy Spanish trading vessel, its captain come to arrange tribute. The drill commands of Kamal’s Turkish troops, over five hundred strong, floated up to him. It was a fine day, the cloudless blue sky overhead mirrored in the smooth surface of the Mediterranean.
A warm breeze ruffled his wheat-colored hair and dried the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. He heard the soft tinkling sound of bells, and a smile flitted across his tanned face. They reminded him of Elena, a new concubine to his harem, a gift from the Dey of Algiers. He remembered her lying soft and languid in his arms, her silken ebony hair flowing over his chest. When he had learned she was captured as a child by rais Hamidu in a raid on the coast of Italy, he asked her if she would like to return to her home. She had opened her dark chocolate eyes in astonishment, and when she realized he was serious, she had burst into tears. She had little memory of Italy, and even less of her parents. She was a sweet child, he thought, but like the others in his harem, she was unlettered and ignorant, save in the art of pleasing him.
Kamal frowned at his uncharitable thought and turned to rest his back and stretch his tense muscles. The death of his half-brother Hamil was still raw in his mind, and he was tired, having just returned the evening before from Algiers, where he had served as the dey’s wakil al-kharidj, or foreign-affairs minister. Because he had lived for many years in Europe and spoke three of their languages, it was he who dealt with European councils. They would begin with expressions of surprise that he, a Muslim, spoke their language, without a Jewish interpreter, and then the usual honeyed complaints about the pirating Algerian rais, the sea captains. He answered in phrases as smooth as their own, knowing full well that the privateering would not be halted, not until the Europeans opened their ports to the Barbary trade. Perhaps not even then, he amended to himself. It was a way of life to the rais, and it brought too many men, the dey included, substantial wealth. His people were raised to accept and pass on traditions, and they would not easily embrace abandoning this one. It troubled him, for he understood the Europeans as well. They would soon be forced to war with Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, indeed the whole world into which he was born. His Turkish blood rebelled at the thought, yet he knew that the western powers could not for much longer abide the Barbary corsairs, not in the modern world.
He had listened to the foreign councils, and directed them as always to the khaznadar, the dey’s treasurer, a wily old man, who, if they didn’t pay the tribute the dey demanded, would merely smile, noting those who refused.
As his half-brother Hamil had before him, Kamal dealt more openly with private merchants such as the Italians, who could not afford the protection of a navy. They understood each other, and their business always ended with a banquet, and music, and nightly gifts of slave girls to warm their beds. The wealthy merchants knew that their tribute would buy their ships safety in the Mediterranean, safety even from the Tunisian privateers, for their sovereign, a bey just as was Kamal, would take his share of the tribute.
Kamal’s thoughts turned again to his half-brother Hamil, who had been more like a father to him than had Khar El-Din. It was Hamil who had helped his own mother, a former Genoese contessa, to convince Khar El-Din to have him educated in France and Italy. To help him understand the foreign devils, Hamil had said. And it was Hamil’s death in a storm off Sardinia that had brought him back to rule his people. Hamil’s first wife, Lella, was swollen with Hamil’s child, and Kamal intended that the child would never forget his father had been a great and powerful ruler, a man of courage and strength.