LITMIR.BIZ

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to bear as much of her own weight as she could. The ground wobbled slightly, but not for long. The captain stepped away, which made her sorry. At last, everything had righted itself. Even so, she could not look at the form of the fallen man’s body as it slumped on the hillside.

      Captain Huntley stared at her for a few moments, as if waiting for her to crumple to the ground again, but then he seemed satisfied. He turned to Batu.

      “Speak English?” he demanded.

      “Russian, too,” Batu answered.

      The captain gave a clipped nod. “Good.” He pointed at Thalia. “Keep an eye on her. I’ll return in five minutes.”

      “Where are you going?” Batu asked.

      “I hobbled my horse on the other side of this valley,” was the reply. “I’ll get her and then I’m coming back.”

      Thalia stopped as she was reaching down to retrieve her rifle. “Back?”

      “Yes, back.” He took up his hat and set it on his head, the broad brim shading his face. She felt, rather than saw, his eyes on her, the interplay of determination and, oddly, humor. “You aren’t taking another step on this journey of yours without me. Someone’s got to knit the socks.”

      Chapter 4

      Captain Huntley’s Mysterious Disappearance

      He didn’t expect her to wait for him, but when Huntley came back into the valley, riding his horse, there she was, her servant nearby. Huntley had expected a long chase across the rolling steppes of Mongolia—it seemed like her contrary nature to do something along those lines—and maybe had been perversely looking forward to it, but she had stayed. Another surprise from the continually surprising Thalia Burgess. The bigger surprise, and one he hadn’t welcomed at all, was how much he’d enjoyed holding her, how good she had felt in his arms. The woman had been in shock, for God’s sake, and there he had been, stealing her touch like a randy schoolboy. Sometimes, he thought disgustedly, he just wanted to punch his own face in.

      When Huntley returned, she did not look up from repacking the horses. Some of the baggage had fallen from the horses during the skirmish. They had been frightened by the gunfire, unused to the sound, but they hadn’t been the only ones.

      He watched Thalia as she worked, how she stayed with her task and forcibly kept her gaze from straying toward the dead man on the hill and the other body nearby. She wasn’t a killer. Drawing blood had marked her, stunned her. Though she’d handled herself with admirable calm and nerve during the fight—he was still shaking his head with respect at her marksmanship, to take down a man galloping up a hill with one shot—it was in the aftermath that the facts had been laid bare. Her innocence was gone. She was left on the barren plain of guilt and horror.

      So he’d done for her what he had done for his men, what he’d had to do for himself, so many years ago: showed the way back from that bleak place. One time, he’d made a trembling private, covered with the enemy’s blood, tell him all the bawdy limericks he knew, until the boy had tears in his eyes from laughter. There was another, a lance corporal, who’d had to hold down his best friend while the surgeon cut off an infected leg. The lance corporal hadn’t been able to sleep for days, hearing the screams of his friend whenever he closed his eyes in the quiet of night. Huntley had sat with him one night and told him to describe each variety of apple grown on his father’s farm in Essex, each tree and leaf, until the lad had slipped off to sleep.

      None of them had he commanded to look at him, none of them had he held, but that was something both for Thalia and himself. Seeing guns pointed at her made him need reassurance that she was whole and well. The world for her might one day return to normal, but, he hoped, she would never grow thick-skinned when it came to killing, the way he’d had to in order to survive. He didn’t want her to become like him.

      That didn’t seem to be the case, not yet. She was still riding close to the border of shock. The best way to get her fully back to herself was not to coddle her too much. He knew that much about her.

      “Don’t fiddle with those packs for much longer,” he said from atop his horse. “Your friends might come back to finish what they started.”

      She turned her remarkable green eyes to him as she finished tying down the bags, and that strange, unwelcome flash of heat shot through him. He pushed it down, tried to make himself ignore it, but he recalled the lush late summer color of her eyes when he’d held her after the skirmish. He’d learned then that he had been wrong: she didn’t wear cosmetics. The gem-like brilliance of her eyes and the rosy color in her cheeks were hers through nature and not art. On top of everything else he was discovering about her, about his response to her, it wasn’t a comforting thought.

      “How did you know?” she asked. She walked toward her horse and stared at him over the saddle.

      Huntley found himself momentarily thrown, and wondered if one of her other unusual qualities included mind reading. That was an even less comforting thought, and he struggled to think only of sunshine-filled meadows and kittens playing with dandelion puffs. “Know what?” he stalled.

      “About…about…” She gestured toward the bodies of the men but still could not look at them.

      “The ambush?” He shrugged, dismissive. “I knew they were following you just after Urga.”

      She recovered enough to glare at him. “You knew all the way back then?” she demanded. “And you didn’t do anything until now? Why the hell not?”

      Huntley had never before met a respectable woman who cursed. Despite her unconventional attire and her ability with a rifle, Thalia Burgess was a respectable woman, and to hear such language come from her edible-looking mouth was something of a thrill for Huntley, not unlike going to a prayer meeting and finding it full of unrepentant strumpets.

      “I needed to see what they wanted before I made any moves,” he said. “And there were five armed men against myself. The best chance was to take them by surprise.”

      “But it wasn’t five against one,” she protested. “It was five against three.”

      “I never count on an untested ally.”

      She shook her head, muttering something about soldiers, then swung up into the saddle with a fluidity that caused another unwanted flare of interest to spark inside him. Gone was the awkward, confined miss he’d met the day before. This other Thalia Burgess had grace and confidence in her movement, even in her long robe and heavy boots. She walked her horse beside his until they were side by side. Her leg brushed against his, and his grip on the reins tightened, causing his horse to move and bump their legs again. His night with Felicia seemed very long ago, now. In his mind, he called himself many colorful names that would shock even a sailor.

      “I thought they were you,” she said grudgingly. “That is why I was unprepared when they appeared.”

      “You wouldn’t know I was coming.” It wasn’t a boast, merely a statement of fact. Huntley had learned years ago how to track and follow without being detected, something else that had come in useful more times than he could recall. Somehow, despite his abilities, Huntley couldn’t manage to avoid touching this one woman. He guided his horse so that there was a decent distance between himself and Thalia Burgess—for now.

      “I’m not certain whether that is supposed to comfort or terrify me,” she replied. “But I do thank you for coming to our aid. If you hadn’t been there…” She could not hide the shudder that moved through her slender body, the body he remembered pressed against his own.

      “I recognized them,” Huntley said. “The dark-haired bloke and the other one, the blond toff.”

      That sharpened her attention. “From Southampton?”

      “It was the toff that stabbed Morris.”

      A look of fury hardened her features, an impressive sight. She was a woman who gave herself fully to her passions. “Henry Lamb. I should have killed

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