The Lost Prince Read online

  She could swear he muttered the word for harlot in French as she took the pile of cloth from him. It smelled of sweat and dust and smoke and maybe a hint of some cooking spice she couldn’t identify. She held up the abaya, turning it in several different directions, trying to make sense of its voluminous folds.

  A female voice from behind her startled her. Hazel Whittaker, the team’s third female member. “Find the neck hole and put it over your head. The opening goes in the front and ties shut. Once you’ve got it on, I’ll show you how to put on the hijab—the head scarf and veil—so they don’t drive you crazy.”

  In no time, Katy was swathed in what turned out to be some sort of polyester georgette fabric. It actually wasn’t nearly as hot or uncomfortable as she’d expected. It looked like an oversize choir gown, with long loose sleeves and a baggy fit over her clothes. However, it was a royal pain in the rear trying to climb up the narrow metal steps into the back of the truck with it swirling around her legs. She collected the fabric in big handfuls, hiking it up as far as she could, but still she couldn’t see her feet. A soldier snarled something at her in Arabic. As best as she could tell, he was growling at her for showing too much of her ankles. Something about being a lewd American. Tough. He could just look away if her ankles were so offensive. She had no intention of breaking her neck on these stupid steps.

  The interior of the truck was airless and close. Were it not a cool, pleasant day outside, it would have been sweltering. Katy looked over enviously at the men in their open truck.

  The caravan of trucks set out. They drove for nearly two hours up into the mountains, where people still lived as if it were the twelfth century. The one constant of the trip was that every woman she spied looked scared.

  Finally square white-stucco structures began to cluster more and more closely together. They were coming into a large city. It must be Akuba. The capital of Baraq. Seat of the Ramsey dynasty for a thousand years, according to Katy’s guidebook.

  The streets were narrow and crowded. Nasal shouts of Arabic mingled with car horns. Turbaned men, young and old, stared suspiciously at them as the trucks rolled by. Women peeked fearfully from shadowed doorways, and Katy caught occasional glimpses past them into gated courtyards with colorful mosaic paving and dancing fountains. Heavily carved wood decorated the shop fronts, and a dusty smell of cumin hung in the air. She identified cinnamon and allspice, pepper and a hint of the rare and expensive spice saffron seasoning the smoke rising from pots over open-air cooking fires.

  The truck turned a corner, and she caught her first glimpse of the royal palace, called Il Leone, towering over the city on its nearby mountain peak. It was an imposing pile of gray granite perched over Akuba like a hulking sentinel. Its walls were high and thick, topped by crenellated teeth of stone. A huge drawbridge was pulled shut, a medieval iron portcullis crisscrossing in front of it.

  Circular towers rose up from each corner of the fortress, and striped red, black and green flags fluttered above them. The Baraqi flag pictured in her guidebook was white with the crossed swords and lions of the Ramsey family crest emblazoned upon it. She assumed what hung now were improvised flags from the Army regime that currently held the country.

  As their trucks wound deeper into the city, the streets grew even more congested and turned to cobblestone, which was incredibly uncomfortable, even in a rubber-tired vehicle with modern shock absorbers. The medieval buildings were taller here, made of stone and crowded in closely upon them, creating deep, mysterious shadows all around. Music drifted out of an open doorway—drums and a whiny, nasal horn of some kind. Katy half expected a camel caravan carrying a sultan and his harem to overtake them any second.

  She felt like a well-shaken martini by the time the trucks wound through the ancient streets up to the foot of the great fortress of Il Leone. Chains clanked, and she risked lifting the canvas side of the truck to peek at the source of the noise. She saw a gigantic drawbridge ponderously folding down to admit them to the palace, its chains unwinding from great spools on either side of the cavernous entrance. The truck lurched forward, and she watched in awe as they passed over a no-kidding, murky, water-filled moat and drove into a palace courtyard. The place teemed with soldiers, and she quickly dropped the canvas flap lest she get chewed out for indecorous peeking or some such dire crime.

  A soldier’s face appeared abruptly at the back of the truck. In Arabic he ordered her and the other women to get out. These Baraqis were certainly not long on courtesy. Fearing a broken neck, she groped blindly for the steps with her feet and climbed down out of the truck wielding great armfuls of black fabric.

  The castle walls rose around her, dark and ancient, with tiny leaded-glass windows here and there, the only relief to the stone facades. No wonder Nikolas Ramsey had preferred to run around on the French Riviera and party in London’s wild and wacky West End rather than stay home and learn how to be king—if the tabloids were accurate. This place was depressing her, and she’d been here less than two minutes. Of course, he’d paid for shirking his duty in blood. And in the loss of his country.

  An Army officer strode up to the InterAid team and said arrogantly in excellent French, “I am Major Moubayed. You will begin cataloging the prisoners and casualties immediately and report to me the names of every one of them.” His sharp condescension reminded her of her brother Travis when a reporter was being a moron around him.

  The team leader stepped forward and replied evenly, “I am Don Ford, and we will proceed according to international protocol. In due time we will, indeed, give you a complete list of casualties from both sides of the conflict, in addition to notifying the families of said casualties. We will also interview all of your prisoners and wounded to ascertain their status and treatment within the Geneva Conventions.”

  The major scowled, his black eyes narrow and menacing. Ford stared right back at the guy. Patience, Don. Patience, Katy urged silently. Finally the Baraqi officer looked away. Nicely done, Don.

  The major growled, “Do your work quickly and be gone with you, then.”

  Ford nodded pleasantly and turned to face his team. “You heard the man. Let’s get to work. We still have a couple hours of daylight left.”

  Larry Grayson materialized beside her and shoved a leather satchel into her surprised hands. “Med kit,” he announced. “We’re allowed to render minor first aid. Clipboard, paper and pens are in there, too, along with a spreadsheet I worked up for recording vital stats on each prisoner.” She had to give the guy credit—he was organized.

  “Come with me,” he threw over his shoulder as he strode forward and approached Major Moubayed.

  Katy hurried to catch up with her partner and reached him just in time to hear him tell the major imperiously in English, “Show me to your prisoners.”

  She flinched. Not the best way to handle a pissed-off authority figure like Moubayed. Sure enough, the major scowled and threw a spate of angry French at Grayson.

  “Do you understand what this guy’s saying?” Larry asked her, thinly veiled contempt in his voice.

  She cleared her throat and said delicately, “Let’s just say he’s commenting on the state of American etiquette.” She’d swear the Army major understood what she said, because she was sure a ghost of a grin flickered across his face.

  She spoke hesitantly to Moubayed in French, being sure to look down at his shoes all the while. “Please forgive my colleague for his abruptness. He is eager to get started on the work you have requested of us. Perhaps one of your men can show us the way to any prisoners you might be holding here?”

  Apparently mollified by her humble attitude, the major signaled to a soldier, who stepped forward silently. Moubayed told the guy to take them to…someplace…a quickly uttered Arabic word she didn’t recognize. The soldier nodded briskly and gestured them to follow him.

  The soldier stopped in front of a bulky wooden door with a curved top, banded by iron hinges and set low in the base of a round stone tower. It looked like s
omething straight out of the Dark Ages.

  “What is this place?” she tried in French to the soldier.

  “Le cachot,” he replied. The dungeon.

  Get out! A real, live, honest-to-goodness dungeon? This country was like some sort of weird time warp. She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. Her first mission as a relief worker.

  The reality of standing in a tiny country halfway around the world from home, about to visit actual prisoners of war, hit her. Dauntingly. The scowling soldier beside her, casually toting a machine gun, was a whole different ball of wax than the smiling and grateful faces of hungry children she’d envisioned when she signed up for this job. A creeping sense of being an impostor stole over her. Maybe she was just a spoiled little rich girl playing at being a social activist, assuaging her conscience over the advantages life had granted her.

  “Come on, girl!” Larry snapped. “You don’t want to make these guys mad, especially since you’re a female.”

  Like he was anyone to talk. She jumped and followed her partner hastily. Her black abaya flapped around her like an unruly sail, and she batted at the billowing fabric. How did Muslim women function in these stupid things, anyway? And she couldn’t see squat out the veil swathing her head and covering most of her face. No wonder women weren’t allowed to drive in this part of the world! In these getups they were half-blind.

  She and Larry followed their escort into a round room with a desk and a couple chairs, all occupied by lounging soldiers. Their escort stepped across the space to another iron-studded door and knocked on it. A peephole slid open. Fluid words of Arabic were exchanged, and the door squeaked open ponderously. She followed Larry inside. A second soldier fell in behind them.

  The sense of walking into a time warp intensified.

  The passageway stretching away into blackness before them was dark and dank, lit only by torches in iron sconces on the walls. Straw littered the stone floors, and shiny black water dripped down the rock walls, its noise the only sound interrupting the heavy silence. The hallway looked carved out of the bowels of the earth itself. Katy swore she saw a rodent of some kind scurry off into the dark. Huge ancient padlocks adorned rows of ironbound doors that wound away into the gloom. An otherworldly chill skittered down her spine. This was the kind of place that touched souls. Changed them. Crushed them.

  Larry glanced over his shoulder at her, grinning. “Some cool dungeon, huh? You take the doors on the right and I’ll take the doors on the left. It’ll go faster that way. Holler if you run into an injury you can’t handle. I’m a trained trauma first responder.”

  “Uh, okay,” Katy mumbled. She had to go solo right from the start? She gulped. This would be just like her work at the homeless shelter back in Washington, D.C., where she took care of minor bumps and bruises and lent a sympathetic ear as needed. The only difference here was that she was dressed like a mummy and standing in a medieval den of torture.

  The first soldier peeled off with Larry, and the second guard went with her. She gestured at the first door, and the guy unlocked it.

  She stepped forward, but the guard blocked her way. “Infidel bitch,” he snarled. “Do not pollute a son of God with your filth.”

  She blinked, startled. Now what was that supposed to mean? That she wasn’t supposed to recruit the prisoner to become Christian? Or she wasn’t supposed to touch him, maybe? But she had to touch these guys to treat any injuries they might have. Crud. She’d just have to brazen it out. She had a job to do, and if this solider didn’t like it, he could just lump it.

  She stepped around the guard and into the tiny cell. And then she turned and shut the door in the guard’s face. She took deep satisfaction from the look of surprise she glimpsed right before she all but whacked him in the nose.

  Alone. Thank God. The prisoner—part of the house guard of Il Leone, judging by his khaki uniform—had a minor concussion and some minor blunt-injury trauma. She wrote down his name on Larry’s spreadsheet and took note of his injuries, describing them in detail. Nothing to write home about.

  At the second door, her soldier escort drew a breath to say something to her again, but she held up a hand, surprising him into silence. In resolute French she told him, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell me how to do my job.” To soften her words, she added, “And in return, I will not tell you how to do yours.”

  He seemed so offended by the idea of her even suggesting what he do, that he appeared unable to come up with a snappy comeback. She slipped into the second cell alone. This prisoner had a broken finger that needed splinting.

  Apparently she’d achieved a hostile but silent truce with her escort guard, for he merely opened doors for her now—still glaring at her, of course, lest she think she’d won. By the fifth prisoner or so, her nerves calmed down and she fell into a groove of treating minor injuries while the men babbled out their fears, mostly over dying at the hands of their Baraqi Army captors. She couldn’t blame them for the sentiment.

  And then she stood in front of the sixth cell. Her escort unlocked the door and stepped aside while she entered. The padlock clicked shut behind her.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she squinted into the semidarkness. The small cell was just like all the others, a ten-foot-by-ten-foot cube carved out of stone. The single tiny window high on the back wall must open onto some sort of air shaft, for indirect light filtered through it. A bucket of drinking water stood in one corner, and another bucket in the opposite corner served as a restroom facility, from the smell of it. She made out the shape of a man lying on the hip-high stone ledge that passed for a bed. He looked asleep.

  The torch in her hand guttered as a cool finger of air whisked down her spine. Premonition roared through her, nearly knocking her off her feet. This prisoner is different.

  Chapter 2

  He looked much the same as the others, dirty and exhausted, wearing the beige uniform of a soldier from the royal guard. As her eyes adjusted fully to the gloom, she saw his face was badly battered and swollen. Black eyes, a gashed and broken nose, a split lip and a bad cut on the jaw were all in need of attention. Honestly his face looked like hamburger. A swollen, painful hamburger.

  She spoke softly in French so she wouldn’t startle him out of his sleep. “Bonjour, je suis avec InterAid. Je suis ici pour vous aider.” Hello, I’m with InterAid. I’m here to help you.

  The man’s eyes flew open—as much as two puffy slits could open—staring at her, alert and wary. No panic hovered close to the surface in this guy’s steady gaze. If anything, fury swirled in them. Great. Another chauvinist who felt her breathing the same air as him was an affront to his manhood.

  Still, the instinctive sense of pull in her gut toward this man was unmistakable.

  Shock rendered Nick speechless. Merciful God. She was gaping at him as if she recognized him. She couldn’t. She mustn’t!

  He was supposed to pass himself off as a common soldier. Nobody was supposed to find out who he was. Kareem had broken Nick’s nose and blackened his eyes himself and had assured him when he came to that he didn’t look one bit like a king.

  “Êtes vous Américaine?” Are you American, he asked. Although, how could those big, round cornflower-blue eyes in a tiny patch of lightly tanned skin revealed by her veil be anything but American?

  She nodded. “Oui.”

  He switched into English, a language his guards were much less likely to know than French, and asked low and urgently, “How did InterAid get into Baraq?”

  The woman shrugged. “That’s way above my pay grade to know. As far as I know, we were invited.”

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded. Sharaf was up to no good letting these people in so soon after the coup. What was the bastard planning now?

  “We’re here to render humanitarian aid and monitor the treatment of prisoners.”

  Sharaf must be making a run at legitimizing his control of Baraq. Dammit. The country mustn’t fall into the general’s bloodthirsty
hands. Chagrin at his helplessness to protect his people from the madman burned in his gut.

  “Would you mind if I had a look at your nose? It could use some attention.”

  Nick flinched as the aid worker reached for him. She still wore a strange expression as though she half recognized him. Frantic to get her to stop looking at him like that, he stilled himself and answered smoothly, “Be my guest.”

  She stepped closer. The first thing he noticed was that she smelled like lavender. The scent reminded him of cottage gardens in the English countryside—enchanting and gentle. The second thing he noticed was the expression in her incredibly blue eyes. Complete disbelief about summed it up.

  Either he looked a whole lot worse than he realized or she had a darn good idea of precisely who he was. Damn! He had to distract her. But how? His mind went completely blank. “You smell like lavender,” he announced for lack of anything else intelligent to say.

  She laughed as she reached for his nose. “I don’t see how. I think the Army got this robe off some goat herder’s wife who’s never heard of bathing.”

  Her fingers lightly probed the swelling, and his grin turned into a grimace as shards of glass-sharp pain shot through his face. He shifted carefully and made room for her on the ledge beside him. The woman sat, her black robe billowing against his hip in a seductive slide of smooth fabric. An urge to put his hands on her, to feel the curves beneath her flowing robes, made his palms itch. He fisted his hands at his sides. So not the time for that. Must be some sort of primitive survival reaction kicking in because, damn, she was attractive—and all he could see of her was her eyes.

  Her touch was gentle on his skin. The peroxide she used to clean his cuts stung like crazy, but he managed not to wince too much. However, when she carefully probed his broken nose again, he couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath.

  She said cheerfully, “Underneath the swelling, your bones are actually aligned fairly well. You shouldn’t come out of this with a crooked nose.”