Read Online Reign of the Favored Women by Ann Chamberlin - Free Book Online Page A

fellow’s sentiments, nor the roving of his defective eve, but the young lover had no choice. No way could he have kept the force he struggled with in his arms on his own.
    The bravo swords, oddly enough, seemed to have a calming effect on the maelstrom .Andrea held to him in a parody of the passion he’d hoped for.
    Then, into the halt a breath the bravo gave her while he worked the veil into a manageable gag, Sofia compressed these words. “No gag. I won’t scream.”
    Andrea had the unease’ feeling she spoke to his accomplice as much as to him, but he pretended otherwise and signed the man to hold off. The bravo shrugged and complied, but kept the gag poised a mere heartbeat awav from where he wanted it to be.
    “Why did you do it? Barbarigo, why?” At least she was speaking Italian now, although he didn’t like the formal name with which she distanced herself, “After the .Arsenal—I thought you were my friend.”
    “Your friend? Cora mia , I love you. I do this because I love you. I do everything because I love you and can bear no one else to have you.”
    There was a snort of impatience in her voice. “I mean, why did you have to kill Khalil?”
    “Khalil?” Andrea didn’t like the caress she gave the name. Worse, the bravo heard it, too, through the language barrier, and raised a teasel brow over the mad lurch of his eye.
    “Him.” Sofia pointed to the ground behind them.
    “The janissary?”
    “Yes, the Chief Soup-Maker.”
    “He has nothing to do with this.”
    Andrea didn’t like the recollection nagging at the back of his mind that until very recently, the Sultan’s private army had been sworn to celibacy, living together like monks. Andrea had always found this a very unnatural—and dangerous—mode of existence for men of the sword. Such a life could not help but be dangerous for any women in the janissaries’ neighborhood.
    Sofia insisted, “Khalil has everything to do with this.”
    “An unfortunate accident. He got in the way. But not one that need detain us. Please, Sofia, don’t let it keep us a moment longer.”
    “Excuse me, captain,” the bravo said.
    Andrea waved impatiently against the interruption of Turkish into a flow of Italian that, for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, was taking all his concentration to follow.
    The bravo persisted. “Perhaps it will hasten things along if I mention that that red-booted fellow there made my job easy. He exposed his heart, as nice as can be, by raising his arms for an embrace.”
    “Infidel,” Sofia hissed. “Murderer.”
    The bravo grinned maniacally. “Seemed the best thing to do, under the circumstances. To run him through.”
    Andrea felt as if his heart, too, had been punctured. But no, no, a Barbarigo could shield his heart in a gauntlet of iron.
    “Get her into the sedan,” he ordered, dragging the woman none too gently himself, baby or no. “Let’s get out of here.”
    “Barbarigo, you don’t understand.”
    “I think, madonna, I understand a little too well. What should have happened in Ca’ Foscari seven years ago, I intend to see happens now. I will make you mine. You will be rescued in spite of yourself.”
    To Andrea’s surprise, she came more complacently now. A little firmness would manage her. By the time they got to the sedan and he’d opened the door, he couldn’t help but give Sofia a quizzical look.
    “Well, what is there left for me here in Turkey?” she snapped at him, as if the logic was all too simple.
    The child, Andrea reminded himself. Her son Muhammed.
    But Sofia said nothing about any child. “The plot has failed,” she said instead, “now that Khalil is dead.”
    “I don’t notice you weeping.”
    “But I might. I just might.” This shrill pinnacle of her voice had ugly edges. “Khalil was our only hope for Cyprus.”
    “Cyprus?” The consideration that there might be more at stake here than the possession of one woman’s body for one man’s pleasure took Andrea quite