“What can I say?” Michel said. “I am here to maintain laws and safety for our merchants. I can’t allow something like that to happen right on my route.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” François took a sip of his coffee. “Do you speak her language?” he asked, an eyebrow raised to Michel.
Michel shook his head. “When I rescued her, she spoke an eastern dialect I didn’t recognize.” He let out a long sigh. “I am hoping the translator you’ve arranged for me to take east can communicate with her.”
“He’s quite good,” François conceded. “He spent time in Kashgar when his father was still working as a merchant. Picks up dialects fast.” François cleared his throat. “He’s young. Traveling with you will be good for him.”
“I look forward to meeting him,” Michel nodded. Then he turned his attention back to Eve. “I’d love to know where she came from. I’m guessing she has run away or perhaps got separated from her tribe.” He glanced at her. “She is lucky she stumbled upon my route.”
“You will cause yourself trouble trying to get her home,” François said. “There are hundreds of hill tribes, and many of the people are hardly literate. They won’t like seeing you with one of their own.” He raised his eyebrows in a warning. “Be careful how you treat her, son.”
Michel held his hand to his chest. “You know me, François,” Michel said. “I know how to handle the tribes. I wouldn’t do anything to offend them.”
François gave him a tight smile and a nod before taking another sip of his coffee.
Michel continued, taking his own cup. “I have no other intentions, I promise you. This is my duty. I will help this girl return safely to her home.” He looked at her and shook his head. “I just wish she spoke an educated language so we could communicate.”
It was that final comment that made her explode.
“You disrespectful twat!” She jumped up, the cushions she sat on toppling, her fists balled, and her chest strained. Both men jumped, and Michel spilled his coffee down his front. “You think you saved me?” she spat. “I could have ridden that fat merchant’s cart anywhere I wanted!”
“You speak French?” Michel sputtered, looking between her and the coffee he had spilled all over himself.
“Do I look too poor and stupid to speak your idiot language?”
“Did you...call me a twat?”
“You bought me because you wanted to avoid a fight.Andyou said I was a peasant who wasn’t worth as much as a goat.”
“I didn’t—” He held up his hands, surprise in his expression. “I was just negotiating! I didn’t mean it!”
She stomped over to him and grabbed a napkin from the tray. “Well, you got me for a great price. You own me now, so let me serve you.”
She went to her knees and pressed the cloth into his chest. Michel sat stunned in his seat. She fumed even as she felt the heat coming from him seeping into her skin.
Perhaps she took a misstep in revealing that she understood every dumb word he said, but now at least she could take a more active role in getting him to do what she wanted. She couldn’t take it—his words, him thinking she had no value, had no means by which to protect herself.
She’d never been subservient to a man before, but if she had to learn the role to get what she needed, then she would. Besides, this man—she realized as he sat there with a stupid, surprised look on his face—was not going to be difficult to manage.
If she could keep herself from strangling him.
ChapterFour
Ganbold. Warrior. Hunter. Ganbold. Warrior. Hunter.
Ganbold repeated the meditation chant in deep throaty tones as he crushed over the twigs and rocks in the dirt. Far from his mountains, he was on the hunt for the missing woman with light hair. She had disappeared from the edges of his tribe, just as she had become a part of it.
When he had learned of her crimes against his people, he had set out immediately. He did not wait for the Il-Khan or the elders to make any decisions, to organize or plan how they would bring her back. He was not interested in what Borjigin Khan—the leader of all the Il-Khans and their tribes—thought about his daughter disappearing. He hated the planning that went into journeys. When she ran away, Ganbold was the first one after her, determined to find her and be the one to return her. It would be his way back into the tribe.
As the daughter of the Khan, the woman coming into Ganbold’s tribe was an enormous celebration for Ganbold’s people. Her marriage to Ganbold’s kinsman would create the alliance his tribe needed to be respected, to connect themselves with the tribe that ruled them all, and to get better wives for his people.
But Ganbold did not like her, did not like her tribe. Ganbold did not want the alliance.
Hundreds of years ago, during the rule of the great Genghis Khan, the woman’s tribe and Ganbold’s tribe were one. They were of the conquerors that pushed furthest west, swallowing up towns and cities in brutal glory, the people who looked like him and the people who looked like her. They had been the fiercest warriors the land had ever seen, their voices and songs alone enough to cause people to tremble.Thesewere the ancestors of Ganbold. He knew he had come directly from those men who fought with fire in their fists. He was proud to come from these warriors.
But the ancestors divided, and there came a distinction between the tribes. The children who grew into the woman’s tribe began to settle. They spent less time following the herds. They built monuments and palaces. They liked the soft touches of the Europeans they had conquered. Ganbold hated these changes. His people were put on the earth as warriors, and it angered the ancestors to see them become soft. Ganbold did not want this filthy influence in his tribe, the influence of the light-haired woman. Then she arrived. He watched as his tribe celebrated the woman—a woman who would fool his tribe, attack his tribe, and then run away.
Ganbold would find the woman and bring her back to stand for her crimes.
