His bride. Lady India Anne Lindley, daughter of a duke, sister to a marquis and a duke. A conniving, deceitful little bitch who had swooned in his arms and sworn she loved him. But she hadn't. She had taken the first opportunity presented to her to flee El Sinut with his child in her belly-if indeed there had been a child, and that was not just another lie to lull him into trusting her. God only knew he had learned early that women could not be trusted, and yet he had allowed the golden-eyed vixen the opportunity to dig her claws deep into his heart; and once she had him, she had wantonly flung him aside.

He well remembered his return from the mountains with Aruj Agha. The town was in an uproar for two nights before a group of English captives had taken back their round ship and sailed out of El Sinut. It had been cleverly executed, a well-thought-out workmanlike plan that had given the English many hours' advantage. It wasn't worth going after them. It was unlikely he would find them in the vast sea. He chalked the loss up to fate. Then he learned that India had disappeared on the same night. As it had been her relation, Captain Southwood, who had made good the escape, it was obvious where she was. He was both devastated and furious by turns.

"She was kidnapped, my lord," Baba Hassan insisted, and Azura strongly agreed with him.

"She loves you, Caynan Reis," the older woman said. "She was so happy about your coming child. She would not have left you of her own free will. She was taken. You must go after her, my dear lord!"

"A part of the garden wall was not secured," Baba Hassan continued on. "We did not realize it, my lord. I hold myself completely responsible. They came over the wall using grapnels and stout ropes. Only when we discovered the lady India missing did we search the garden and find the evidence. One grapnel and rope remained, and so it is obvious that there were two of them. When the second man slid down into the street, it was impossible to release his grapnel from the top of the wall, and so it was left behind. The marks of the second grapnel were plainly visible in the top of the wall. Both your wife and her servant were stolen away. They could not leave the girl behind, and since she was one of their own, they would, of course, take her, too, rather than kill her."

"Why did India not scream?" the dey demanded angrily. "Surely she could have cried out and alerted the guards."

"She would not have wanted to endanger her blood kin, my lord. I am certain that was her reasoning. She is a woman, and soft of heart. And then, too, there was that terrible storm that night. It is doubtful if she had cried out that anyone would have heard her call," the eunuch replied logically. "We must find her, my lord!"

"She had the advantage over her captors," Caynan Reis persisted. "They could not have gotten her over that damned wall, nor the servant girl, either, if she had not gone willingly. She has betrayed me, the false bitch!"

"What if the two women were rendered unconscious?" Azura suggested.

"Both of them?" the dey scoffed. "It would be difficult enough climbing that wall alone, or with someone on your back, but with a dead weight, I think it improbable. Nay, my good Azura. India was always determined to escape El Sinut, though she learned to hide her true thoughts from us. She has betrayed me. She has betrayed you who were her friends. She is no better than other women, whatever we may have previously thought."

"Improbable, but not impossible," Baba Hassan persisted. "Those hooks on the grapnels were dug deep into the wall, my lord."

"Proving what? That each rope held two people? That we already know, my good friend. I know you do not like to admit that we have all erred in our judgment, but we have. She bedazzled us with her beauty and charm, and then deceived us. I do not wish to hear her name ever again, Baba Hassan. Do you understand me?"

"But what of the child?" Azura cried out to him.

"I suspect she cozened us there, too," the dey replied sadly.

"Nay, never!" Azura said boldly. "Not India!"

He sent them away. His heart was broken. He had loved her. Nay, he loved her yet, despite her behavior. If she walked into his chamber this moment he would forgive her. And as for the child, he might deny it to ease his own heart, but he could not believe that she would have lied to him about that. There was no way she could have been privy to her duplicitous cousin's plans until the moment the captain appeared in her apartments to help her escape. If she had lied about the child, what excuses could she have made when there was no child?

The earl of Oxton turned his horse toward home as his thoughts moved on to the events that had brought him back to England. Knowing of his interest in the young English milord, Aruj Agha had, shortly after their return from the mountains, brought the dey word that the young man had a serious fever, and was in the slaves' hospital by the harbor.

"The physician does not think he will live," the janissary told the dey.

"Allah!" the dey swore. "I must go to him. I meant to ransom him long since, but in my happiness I completely forgot. Perhaps if he has the hope of going home, he will rally himself. Now my joy is ashes, and the same woman who brought me such misery can also be said to be responsible for Adrian's demise."

"Adrian?" Aruj Agha was both fascinated and mystified. "Is that his name? And how do you know it, my lord?"

"He is my younger half-brother," Caynan Reis admitted. "I believe that he and his mother are responsible for my having had to flee England. I took India to my bed originally to spite him. He did not recognize me, of course, when we met in my audience chamber. He was still only a boy when I left my homeland, and I did not wear a beard. I meant to tell him after I took his betrothed for my own. I thought to hurt him as he had hurt me, but then things did not go as I had planned. I decided I would release him from the galleys, and hold him here in El Sinut until the ransom had been paid. Then I would reveal myself to him, and tell him how happy I was with my beautiful English wife, who might have been his wife. Both he and his greedy mother would have been quite piqued to learn that not only had I taken a ransom from them, but an heiress as well. But in my happiness I forgot about him! Now you tell me he is dying? I must go to him at once! He is my father's son, too, and my brother, for all he and his mother have done to harm me."

The aga brought the dey to the slave hospital. Caynan Reis stood by the younger man's pallet gazing down upon him. Gone was the soft and foppish arrogant milord. A lean, hard-muscled young man lay flushed and quiet upon the straw mattress. The dey's blue eyes filled with tears as he remembered the little brother he had taught to ride. He sat heavily when a stool was brought for him, waving everyone else from his presence.

"Adrian," he said quietly. "Open your eyes, Adrian. We must talk together, you and I." The English words felt strange on his tongue.

Adrian Leigh's purple-shadowed eyelids fluttered open, then closed, and then open again. "Who are you?" he asked softly.

"Your brother, Deverall Leigh," was the reply.

Adrian Leigh stared hard, and then hot tears rolled down his gaunt cheeks. "Forgive me, Dev!" he said.

"Forgive you? I should be asking your forgiveness for having so cruelly condemned you to the galleys, little brother, but I was still angry at what your mother had done to me."

"You knew?"

"I knew what poor old Rogers babbled to me that night," Deverall Leigh told his brother. "That Jeffers was to be killed, and I would be held responsible. That I must flee, or die on the gallows. One way or another I was to go else I stand in your way. MariElena was quite determined that you succeed our father as earl of Oxton. Of course, with my usual stubbornness, I waited hidden to see what would happen, but when I heard of Jeffers's death, and that my dagger had been found in his chest, I boarded the first ship I could."

"How came you here?" Adrian asked, curious, and then he coughed.

The dey of El Sinut held a cup to his brother's lips, feeding him cool water, and when the fit had subsided, laid him back on his pallet. "My ship, like yours, was bound for the Mediterranean. Like yours, it was captured, and I began my service in the galleys. When I proved trustworthy, however, I was released because I accepted Islam. I served the captain of the vessel as secretary because of all the languages I speak. One day we were anchored in the harbor here when the dey Sharif came out in his barge to speak with my captain. A freak wave overturned the barge, and all were cast into the sea. I dove overboard, and saved the dey Sharif. In gratitude he freed me, and took me into his service. We were close, he and I, and he formally adopted me as his son, and asked the sultan in Istanbul if I might succeed him as he was ill and wished to retire. Permission was given, and that is how I became the dey of El Sinut, little brother."

"I am dying," Adrian Leigh said softly.

"We will heal you," the dey replied. "You will not go back to the galleys, but rather home to England."

Adrian Leigh shook his head slowly. "Nay, I shall never see England again. I must right the wrong that my mother and I perpetrated upon you all those years back, Dev!" He coughed again, but manfully regained control of himself despite his weakened state. "I need someone to write it all down, Dev, and then I will sign my name to it. Father has suffered greatly since your departure. You must succeed him as it was always meant to be. You are Viscount Twyford, not I."