V.S. Carnes

Kent steepled his fingers in consideration. Blood-red rubies flashed in the sunlight, like the eyes of a demon clutched in his hands.

Therefore, she hummed the provincial lullaby she had learned from the officers_ children in the English Quarter of Jerusalem, and watched in fascination while the savage radical__ eyes misted over with tears. For an instant, the prison bars melted away, and she felt God__ presence__or the first time since their imprisonment. She was not a captive, and this man was not her captor. Indeed, they were both merely God__ children.

There are still many souls to be won for Christ,_ she answered with quiet dignity, eyes downcast__ut not, he figured, in humility. __ven here. Perhaps, especially here. Where better to spread his love, than a country just recently ravaged by war?_ __here better to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, than a country just recently ravaged by war?_ with a discernible sneer.

I stole you, among others, from the streets of God__ birthplace. I forced you to work as a slave. Imprisoned, mistreated and starved you and your companion. To top it off, I am in the process of selling your life to the highest bidder. Why would you trust me?

He squinted at her. He recalled the tears in her eyes that had not fallen into her teacup. No, it wasn__ a revelation. Not even to him. Yet, this was the same woman who had stolen a camel right out from under the Anti-Zionist army__ nose. She__ taken his hand, thrown herself down a sand dune on a dare, and then beaten him back up it. She__ glared at him and refused to part from his side. A coward? __ever,_ he said again.

I__e crossed a world of sand and tears in search of you. I love you. I__e done nothing in my life worth more than that.

His head snapped sharply aside to collide with his own aching shoulder. The hulking brute he had heard referred to as Abdullah leaned into Caine__ face while his brain was yet reeling, flexing his fingers from the punch just dealt to his jaw, and said in Arabic, __ did not know English women were so strong.

What she knew was sand and wind and innumerable stars. The rumble in a camel__ throat as it swayed over shifting dunes, its trappings jingling in time with its steps beneath her. She knew the sting of thirst and the taste of dried fruit, the glare of sun and the frigid, bone-numbing cold of the air when the sun gave her throne over to the moon. She knew that, to survive, one must often revise one__ caliber, and one must completely depend upon Jesus Christ.

This man was no servant. She looked up at him in acute agitation and knew: this man was now her master.

She__ said she loved him. She'd put that impossible, unimaginably beautiful gift in his hands and he__ thrown it back at her. To save her. To save himself.

I will not marry Ashton. However bound by honor to do so, I will not marry Ashton. I will not marry, ever!_ __hy not?___ecause I love you, you idiot!

Are you in the habit of taking tea with anyone who approaches you in a foreign port?_ He went on and snorted carelessly. __o wonder you were abducted so easily.

Fate had a cruel sense of humor. It had been all his fault, anyway, whatever Mick or Gillia told him. Careless preoccupation and utter stupidity. Boyhood ignorance and negligence. He was only getting what he deserved, over and over again, for the rest of his life. If only in his dreams.

There will always be another war, Gillia._ He allowed his cynicism to seep through. __o you know why? Because there will always be bigots and cowards and power-mad devils in positions of omnipotence. Look around you. There has been war here since time began. It__ nature. Animals kill each other for survival, for territory_ and for the taste of blood in their mouths. Man is no different.

Remind me to thank God I don__ have a sister.__aine eyed him critically. He was a filthy heap of blood and soot and sand stuck to the gun oil on his face. __eah,_ without much enthusiasm. ____l thank Him for ya.

It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.

She thought she loved him. She was crazy.

And what was to become of what he had taken from her? He had dashed her heart to the ground and danced on it with combat boots. Did he sit in that seditious palace day after day and not even bother to scrape it off of his soles with a passing thought of her?