Free A Soul of Steel by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

rather... startling trick on me. I had not meant for any of the family to see me in such an undignified state.”
    “But it was charming! I knew, of course, your circumstances. How your father’s death had left you orphaned; how well suited you were to teach my dear nieces. Yet it must have been difficult for one so young and strictly reared to shepherd girls so near to her own age.”
    “Not difficult at all! The girls were delightful, the situation most pleasant. I often... recall those days, that day, myself. We were all so innocent then.”
    “Yes.” His hazel, searching eyes turned inward again, much to my relief. “We were all so innocent then,” he parroted in an astringent tone.
    The silence grew so long and awkward that I cast desperately about for some safe topic of conversation, for a matter not rooted in the past, but the present.
    “But you must tell me about yourself!” I blurted with forced brightness.
    Those pale, piercing hazel eyes penetrated me as a knitting needle transfixes a ball of yarn. “Why must I?”
    “It is what... old acquaintances do: they recall former times by revealing more recent ones. I merely wish to make conversation.”
    He frowned at me with suspicion. “Why should you wish to make mere conversation now? You had no time for such frivolities years ago.”
    “Obviously, I have consorted with the frivolous since then.”
    “Indeed.” Amusement crimped his mouth. “I can see that you are vastly changed. As am I. There is no point in conducting a Cook’s tour of my alterations; they are visible enough in my appearance and my circumstances.”
    I leaned forward in my eagerness to convince him. “But you left England a young officer on the brink of a brave military adventure! Your family was well connected, your future promising—er, not to say that it is no longer so, of course. What I mean is....”
    “What you mean is that Miss Huxleigh desires to know the full extent of my fall from what this world calls position and what some might call ‘grace.’ You wish to satisfy your curiosity about how I have come to such a low state.”
    “No! Not I! I wish to know nothing of a sordid nature. Though your... er, circumstances, of course, are not sordid. I merely wish to offer the solicitude of one who knew you when, when—”
    My blathering discomfort finally stirred him to response. His brown hand, surprisingly warm, clasped mine as he confessed, “My dear Miss Huxleigh! You must forgive a man who has led a hardened life among a foreign people for failing to realize that only Christian concern motivates your questions. Of course I see that it is your duty to learn as much of me as possible, so that you may better minister to my depraved soul. But, I warn you, my confidences may be shocking in the extreme. There are certain episodes involving the harem of the emir of Bereidah and various social practices of the Kafir tribesmen in regard to manhood rituals—”
    “No!” I snatched my hand back though his grip was disconcertingly firm. “I wish to know none of this. It is Irene who has an insatiable appetite for unseemly knowledge, not I.”
    “Ignorance is bliss,” he quoted. I detected an unbecoming slyness in his tone that I chose to ignore.
    “Ignorance is peace of mind,” I returned.
    “But you shock me,” he went on.
    “I? How could I shock anyone?”
    “You underestimate yourself. For one thing, you seem utterly in the control of this American woman.”
    “That is untrue.”
    “Yet you spy for her.”
    “I only inquire into matters that are for your own good. How can you expect anyone to help you unless you reveal yourself?”         
    “I expect no help.” His uncompromising tone sent chills through my veins. Gone was the merry youth who had stooped to play a schoolgirls’ game. The man who spoke now could kill, I think, and he was no longer amused by me.
    “I did not ask to be taken to this pleasant cottage,” he went on, “to be