Read Online Blue Damask by Annmarie Banks - Free Book Online Page A

prepare you.  He would have had to leave one of us unguarded by Davies.”
         She made a face.  He was correct.  “Please turn your head, then, while I get my things from the suitcase.”
         He turned the chair around and faced the window, tapping his knee while she opened her suitcase and removed the dark skirt and white blouse on top.  She wiggled into the skirt and then buttoned the blouse as quickly as possible.   Her stockings and shoes slipped.  Her hair was still a mess and her dress wrinkled, but neither of those things was important.  Her notebook was important.  It was near him on the dressing table.
         “May I have my notebook and pencil?” She asked him.  He handed them over his shoulder without turning.  She said as she took them from him, “I’d like to talk about last night.”
         He tilted his head.  “Can I turn around now?”
         “Yes.”  She sat on the bunk and put the notebook on her knees.
         “You surprised me, Brunhilde.  You were on that Turk before I even realized he was trying to kill me.”
         “Please stop calling me ‘Brunhilde’.”
         His brown eyes were merry and he tried to grin but stopped, touching his swollen lip with a grimace.  “As you wish.  Though you flew through the air like a Valkyrie with all that blonde hair streaming behind you, and you screamed like a harpy when you leaped on his back.  You scared me .  He must have been terrified.”
         “I screamed?” Elsa’s pencil paused.  She did not remember screaming.
         He nodded to himself.  “Valkyrie,” he murmured.
         “Mr. Sinclair,” she tried to sound firm.  “This is serious.”
         His face became more than serious.  His brows knitted and his face darkened.  “I am deadly serious.  This Turk burst into my cabin and tried to slit my throat.  He would have slit yours as well,” he paused and looked at her sideways.
         She sat up straighter, thinking about that for the first time.  “Yes.”
         He said, “I swore to myself never to kill another man, Elsa Schluss.  And yet here I am,” he held up his swollen and bruised hands, “a killer.  Again.  I am deadly serious.”
         Her pencil moved across the paper.  “You made this oath when you were released from service?”
         He rubbed his chin.  “Before that.”
         She paused.  “That must have been awkward for a military man.  Did you continue to bear arms?”
         “I did.”
         “Perhaps the opportunity did not present itself,” she offered him a way to explain further.
         “The war ended in Britain and France and Germany…” his voice faded, “But the war had no clear ending in the Levant.”  His eyes hardened.  “It still hasn’t.  That is why I am being shipped there now.”
         “Yes.  I have been reading the newspapers, and Mr. Marshall shared some of his reports with me.  I saw that the French and English have divided great swathes of what was once the Ottoman Empire.  It is the French Mandate that concerns the locals.”
         He leaned back in his chair.  “The area is rich in petroleum.  This mineral is becoming the twentieth century’s gold mine, Miss Schluss.  The tribal people who live over those deep black pools of money have no use for it.  Their ignorance feeds the greed of the French,” his face fell, “And the British.  My father was deeply involved in moving petroleum from the ground and into his bank account.  You have heard of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company?  Turkish Petroleum?”
         “No,” Elsa finished writing that down.  “But I am not surprised.  The recent war has emphasized the value of fuel for their ships and tanks and trucks and trains.”  She lifted her pencil and her eyes. “If you are being sent there to make a treaty,” she said, “make one that favors both sides.  Everyone profits.”
         He