Free As You Desire by Connie Brockway Page B

swiftly sailing
dahabiya
.
    “Why?” he asked again, his voice quieter.
    She paused, uncertain how to voice the subtle longings the word “home” and “England” and … and “normal” aroused.
    “Miss Carlisle?”
    She turned. Gunter Konrad towered over her, preening his bristling red mustache with the back of his forefinger.
    “Mr. Konrad,” she acknowledged the huge Austrian. She smiled, fixing Harry with a bright glare, willing him to do something to get her away from Gunter. A year ago, not an hour after their first introduction,Gunter had publicly declared himself her slave.
    Dizzy might have pitied Gunter except that his “devotion,” tame and courtly in the extreme, was so patently a device to push himself to the fore with the rest of the archeological community. She resented him using his “infatuation” as an excuse to get close to her grandfather and Simon and Georges.
    “You are wonderful beautiful tonight, little tiny girl,” Gunter bellowed. “You do not know the joy you have given me. I was ecstatic,
transported
when Braxton told me.”
    “Harry told you
what
?” she asked.
    “About the polka festival at the Austrian Club tomorrow afternoon. That you and your most eminent grandpapa will be my most honored guests there. It will be most gay. Schnapps and music—perhaps your grandfather will bring a friend? The director of the Cairo Museum? I have invited him, but he does not answer—”
    “What
polka festival?”
    “Ah!” Gunter waggled one sausage-shape finger playfully. “You are shy that you have told Braxton how much you wanted to go to the polka festival with me. This coyness pleases me very much.”
    “Harry told you that I wanted to go to a polka festival with you?” Her stomach felt hollow.
    “Yes. He said you would all enjoy very much. You, your grandfather … Braxton.” Gunter smoothed the scowl that appeared the instant he’d said Harry’s name. “I see my ploy works.”
    “Ploy?” she repeated numbly.
    “Yes. I, too, can play ‘hard to get.’ ”
    Her gaze swung on Harry with the deadly accuracy of a dervish’s blade. Oh! She quivered, furious she could feel such acute disappointment that Harry would use her. Of course he would use her. He was Harry.
    “Ah, Gunter old son, I’d go a bit lighter on the—”
    “You be quiet, Braxton. It is only because you bring me such good tidings that I do not squash you like a bug for the double-dealing, conniving blackguard you are. If you interfere with me again, I
will
squash you. You got off easy this time, Braxton. Next time, I will not be so munificent.”
    “You promised Gunter I’d go to a polka festival with him so he wouldn’t exact whatever punishment you undoubtedly deserve at his hands?” she asked in a small, stilted voice.
    Harry’s face tightened in sudden recognition of her hurt. His dark brows lowered. “Diz, I—”
    “What is wrong?” Gunter asked.
    She took a deep breath and pitched her head way back so she could look up into Gunter’s face. “Mr. Konrad,” she said clearly, “I am sorry to have to inform you of this, but I did not tell Mr. Braxton that I wished to attend a polka festival with you.”
    Gunter’s eyes widened and then shifted frantically about the crowd surrounding them. He attempted a gruff, dismissive laugh. It sounded as if he were croaking. “No matter. Gunter sees the way you look at him, little girl. I note how you always just ‘happen’ to be where Gunter is,” he said loudly.
    With each word, Desdemona’s sense of injurygrew. Gunter had padded after her for a year, and now he was declaring to all within earshot that
she’d
been hounding
him
.
    “We still go to the polka. And your grandfather. And the director your grandfather will want to invite, too.” He winked.
    “No, Mr. Konrad. I will not. I have prior commitments.”
    “You do? Well, at least your grandfather and the director—”
    “Oh!” She was tired of being used. As a translator, as a