But dear God, she had finally recognized that it was time to give up and go home.
Jebal changed his mind. Zoewasa liar, and she might very well be a thief. If she had Zohara’s personal belongings from her Christian life. Jebal would be very interested in examining them. As if it might give him some insight into the woman he had fallen so deeply in love with—and now hated so completely.
As he strode through the women’s quarters, he thought about how ironic it was. He had married two very beautiful and very different women, but they both had one thing in common—they were both utter, self-serving liars. Zoe had ceased to please him long ago. Her failure to give him a son and heir had not helped. But he was still, foolishly, bitterly disappointed about Zohara.
He was in an exceedingly bad mood, as he had been ever since discovering Zohara’s treachery and infidelity, and Blackwell’s escape had only heightened it. He was almost capable of barging into Zoe’s bedchamber without knocking, but he managed to restrain himself at the last moment. His fist lifted. About to bang on the door, he ignored her slave, Masa, whose eyes bulged. Jebal did not care why.
And then he heard them.
The woman’s soft cries, the man’s savage, sexual growl.
Instead of knocking, in a state of absolute disbelief, stunned to the point of mindlessness, Jebal opened the door.
And saw his wife lying naked with her legs spread wide on the marble floor. A man knelt above her, his knees by her shoulders—his cock ramming down her throat.
Jebal saw red. But not before he had regained a modicum of thought and realized that the man was Rais Jovar.
“I don’t understand,” Alex cried.
The two soldiers who had demanded she come with them did not reply.
They were striding briskly through the eerily deserted palace that next morning, at dawn. Alex began to shiver. The moment was horribly reminiscent of the other day when Jebal had dragged her to the town square to witness Blackwell’s execution. Had he been recaptured? Alex began to sweat even though it was still comfortably cool out in the final moments before sunrise.
“Please tell me what is happening,” she begged her guards, stumbling to keep up with the rapid pace they set.
One of them glanced askance at her. “Lilli Zohara, we are under orders not to converse with you. I am so sorry.”
Alex plucked his vest. “Have they recaptured Blackwell?”
The man set his face in a stony expression and did not reply.
And then Alex heard the hissing, the shouting, the jeers.
Her heart plummeted to her feet. Ohmygod! They were not far from the public square, and clearly a bloodthirsty crowd had gathered there.Please, not Xavier!she begged silently.
She and her escort turned the corner. The narrow dirt street had a slight slope to it. At the bottom was the square. Alex’s heart sank even further. She could see that the square was filled to overflowing with excited spectators—just as it had been the day Blackwell had almost been executed. She strained to see as they hurried toward the piazza.
The bashaw sat his snowy white mount in the center of the square, just to the right of the stained execution block, exactly as he had the other morning. The tall, burly executioner stood there in his flowing black robes, loosely holding his huge scimitar. The long, thick, curving blade glinted in the Mediterranean light. And four heavily armed soldiers kept a prisoner in their midst, a prisoner whose build and features were obscured by the men surrounding him.
She was sweating. Shaking. Violently afraid.
She could not live through this nightmare again.
They reached the crowd and Alex could no longer see. The soldiers shouted at the gawking people, who had to be shoved aside to make way for them. Alex finally glimpsed Jebal. His face was frozen, and this time he was mounted on a bejeweled black Arabian gelding that danced nervously beside the bashaw’s stallion.
Her guards pushed her through the last row of spectators. Alex gasped as the prisoner in the center of the square became visible. Standing amongst the four armed janissaries, his wrists manacled behind his back, was the blond Scot renegade, the admiral of the bashaw’s navy, Rais Jovar.
Alex did not understand.
Was Jovar a spy?
And then she was propelled forward, toward Jebal. He met her gaze briefly, looked away. The guards halted with Alex. She stood a half dozen feet from her Moslem husband.
The bashaw’s stallion pranced. “Where is she?” he demanded of Jebal.
Alex jerked, turning her wild eyes on Jebal, wondering what horror awaited her now.
But Jebal’s frozen eyes moved slightly. Alex realized he was looking past her, and she turned to follow the direction of his gaze. She gasped.
