He closed his eyes, reminded achingly of that brief glimpse of heaven.

"All will be well," she whispered as she cupped his nape, her fingers threading through his overgrown hair. "Now, listen to me. I'm sure all those weapons of yours can remain put away in that box. You just stay out here where it's quiet and the air is clean," she said softly. "In time, your peace will come."

"So say your Gypsy powers?" he murmured skeptically, loving her touch.

"So says my heart." Her gentle stare caressed his face. To his amus.e.m.e.nt, she pressed an almost motherly kiss to his forehead.

Leaning back again to her own chair, she smiled uncertainly at him.

Gabriel watched her every move with riveted intensity.

"It's getting late," she mumbled. "I'd better get these dishes done."

"Leave them."

"Mrs. Moss will have an apoplectic fit."

"I'll deal with her. You've done enough work for one day. Go and choose a suitable room and we'll put some clean sheets on the bed for you."

"Clean sheets for a person who smells like a stable?" she muttered, laughing in mild embarra.s.sment.

He shrugged. "You can reuse the bath if you want. It'd be a simple matter to add a few pails of hot water to warm it up again. It's just sitting there-or is that too Army for you?"

"No, I'll take it!" she exclaimed, lighting up. "Oh, bless you-I'm not too proud to say yes. That would be grand!"

"Right, then. We always keep a cauldron of hot water on the fire-crane. Go and choose a room to sleep in," he ordered as they both rose from the table.

"One where the door locks?" she replied with a saucy look, recalling his words from outside.

"If that's what you prefer," he answered in a silken tone.

She blushed.

He laughed quietly and turned away. "Run along, Gypsy girl. I'll bring the water up for you."

She smiled uncertainly at him and started to go, but when she reached the doorway, she glanced back over her shoulder. "Gabriel?"

"Hm?" Heading for the hearth, he turned back to her.

"I don't think you're mad," she said softly. "I believe in destiny, too."

He smiled at her in grat.i.tude. "Thanks." She turned to go. "Sophia?"

"Yes?" She spun around again at once with the hint of a peachy blush in her cheeks.

"I'm glad you're here," he admitted with a nod.

She gave him a tremulous smile in answer, then hurried off into the shadows, leaving him alone.

When she had gone, he let out a sigh. Well, she was certainly more interesting company than the kittens or Mrs. Moss. He reached toward the fire-crane to fetch the hot water for her bath, puzzling with some irony over how the master had become the servant.

Ah, well. Such was the power of a beautiful woman, he mused. And whatever Sophia might be, she was certainly that.

CHAPTER.

SIX.

T here was something curiously seductive about using the same water Gabriel had bathed in. She felt...covered in him somehow.

It was not an unpleasant feeling.

Sometime later, Sophia was luxuriating in warm water up to her shoulders and silently rejoicing to have washed the smell of the stable out of her hair. Unlike during Gabriel's bath, she had made sure to keep the door to the dressing room closed. By the light of a few candles burning here and there, she glided the small oval of soap slowly up her arm. Gabriel had gone to make a fire in her chamber so she would not catch a chill when she left the bath.

He had also said that he would make her bed. Strangest man. All of this was thoroughly bizarre. She leaned her head back against the edge of the tub, still in a state of lingering amazement over all that he had told her, and filled with an unnerving sense of destiny.

If Leon had shouted any other code at her in those frantic moments of her escape from the ambush, she'd have ended up elsewhere. Instead, by an unforeseeable twist of fate, she had arrived here, safely under the care of a decorated war-hero-a man not only experienced as a diplomatic bodyguard, but who also had family ties to one of the Foreign Office lords who was to have attended last night's secret meeting at the castle. She had not met Lord Griffith yet, but she had certainly heard the name.

But that was not all.

Gabriel's service in India had left him well versed in the Eastern way of warfare. Blinded as they were by chivalrous Western notions of honor, the English diplomats she had dealt with so far could not seem to grasp the kind of savagery that fought to win, by any means, at any cost. If, as Sophia suspected, she was being targeted by Ali Pasha, then the Iron Major was just the sort of seasoned ally she needed by her side.

Above all, here was a man who had defied Death itself, that black shadow that had taken so much from her. She was in awe of his mystical glimpse into the afterworld, and by his words that there was something he still had to do, some task as yet unfulfilled that he had to accomplish.

She had a fair idea she knew what it was.

No, she thought with a grim shake of her head. Enough people she cared about had already been killed. She could not ask it of him.

She did not want him involved, not after all he had been through. One thought of that cruel scar she had seen in the center of his solar plexus like a small, angry sun with little rays shooting out from all around it-that alone was enough to forbid her from asking him to join her quest.

The man had already been through h.e.l.l. His courage had cost him enough of his blood. As he had said, all he wanted now was to live in peace, and he deserved that chance, the same boon she wanted to bring to her people.

Therefore, she concluded firmly, as much as she might want to tell him now who she really was, more than ever, she knew she could not. Of course he had won her trust, but her secrecy was no longer about protecting herself.

Now it was a matter of protecting him.

She had seen enough of Gabriel Knight to know that if she explained her situation, his honor would require him to get involved, and with all her heart, she vowed to keep him out of her family's nightmare.

Her heart ached for all he had suffered, nearly giving his life for his brother. This was one warrior who had laid down his arms, and she respected his right to do so.

Even for the sake of her people, she refused to let her own pressing goals override this man's need for peace and healing. Bad enough that she had to answer his stark honesty with deception. There was no need to drag him into this and subject him to more danger, more violence-let alone ask him to volunteer himself as a target for the faceless enemies out for her blood.

No, as much as she wanted to tell him the truth, the secret of her ident.i.ty must stand.

She had already put him enough at risk just by hiding here at the farmhouse.

This was no time to lose faith in her trusty retinue of Greek guards. She had faltered outside, nearly letting her fears get the best of her, but with her flagging courage restored by food and shelter, she refused to give up hope.

It would not be long now before her men reappeared to usher her back to her mission. She merely had to give them a bit more time to locate her.

Perhaps if another twenty-four hours pa.s.sed and there was still no sign of them, then she might consider asking Gabriel to help her reach the castle.

But only as a last resort. She promised herself she would only involve him if she had no other choice.

She reminded herself that she was no drooping damsel in distress. With a good night's sleep, some improvements to her disguise, additional supplies pilfered into her knapsack, and a few of those unused weapons she had spotted in Gabriel's traveling trunk, she could always take the bay horse again and make her way on to the castle alone.

Just then, a hesitant knock sounded politely on the door.

Rap, tap, tap.

"Sophia?"

Gabriel.

At the sound of his deep, silken voice, she lifted her head and looked over; his trusty nearness brought the hint of a smile to her lips. Unfamiliar longings for an even greater closeness with him rippled through her.

"Yes, Major, what is it?"

"I, ah, got your bedroom ready and found you something to wear."

"How kind." He had to know that she desired him, she thought, biting her lip as she fought a girlish smile.

What was it about this man that entranced her?

At supper, she had had such trouble trying to hide her attraction to him. He must be able to feel it, to see it in her eyes.

A part of her wanted him to see it.

On the other side of the door, Gabriel cleared his throat as if he could hear her thoughts. "I have a shirt of mine for you, and a robe, as well, if you want it. I'll hang them on the door for when you're ready, all right?"

Sophia sat up straighter in the tub and answered all of a sudden: "Would you mind bringing them in?"

For a heartbeat, no sound returned.

She was motionless, having shocked herself with her scandalous invitation. It sounded like she must have shocked him, too.

But why must they go on denying their mutual attraction? Who were they fooling? He wanted her, she wanted him, and this might be the only chance she'd get before her guards returned. One precious night to shrug off the burden of her royal role and discover the pleasures other women knew.

Yes, in one impulsive moment, Sophia decided to reach out to him, to explore her first sensual experience with this man. If the old troubles of her family were back, then her days on earth were probably numbered. It was too unfair to go to her grave never knowing the sweetness of a skillful lover's touch. Gabriel Knight was beautiful in mind and body; his desire for her, his raw need had been obvious earlier when he had kissed her.

More important, she trusted him-this chivalrous, oh-so-handsome officer. She wanted her first taste of love to be with him, if he was willing.

It had to be him, for with every suitor who had ever tried to court her, she was never sure if it was she herself that each beau wanted or her throne. A tedious approach to romance, to be sure.

But Gabriel had no idea of her true status. When he looked at her, he saw a woman. That was all.

They were stuck here together anyway tonight, so why not make the best of it?

No one else need ever know.

Certainly, she'd never get away with something like this with the eagle-eyed Leon nearby-and he was always nearby.

The fact was, the Virgin Queen was not her only model for a female ruler.

So was Cleopatra the seductress.

The door opened slowly.

Heart pounding, Sophia leaned forward, resting her crossed arms along the edge of the tub to conceal her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. As she watched and waited for him to step into the little closet of a room, the first part of him to appear was one ebony riding boot, followed by a thickly muscled leg in dun-colored breeches, and then the man himself.

He glanced at her as he came in, his black eyebrows knitted in a suspicious line. As his gaze swept over her bare skin, he looked away at once, focusing his suddenly glazed stare on the clothes he had brought for her. They were draped over his arm.

"Uh, where would you like these?"

Staring at him in avid interest, Sophia gestured toward the nearby chair with an idle wave of her hand. "Over there, if it's no trouble."

He bowed his head. "As you wish."

I wonder what Mrs. Moss would have to say about this...

Sophia tracked him with an almost predatory stare full of wicked amus.e.m.e.nt as he walked slowly around the bathing tub. He threw the shirt and robe down on the chair, and it occurred to her that the n.o.ble major was trying very hard to keep his eyes averted.

"Well-there you are, then," he said. "Is there, ah, anything else you need?"

She giggled. "There certainly is."

He frowned at her, meeting her gaze at last as Sophia sent him a mirthful glance over one bare shoulder.

"What is it?"

She tried to think of how to put it, exactly-and suddenly lost her nerve.

"Nothing," she blurted out, turning red.

"Ahem, well, then. I shall leave you your privacy." Gabriel started back toward the door, marching past the tub with a resolute look, his gaze fixed straight ahead.

Sophia saw she was about to lose her chance. Oh, Lord, what would Cleopatra do if her stallion of a soldier, Mark Antony, were about to walk out the door?

"Um, Gabriel?" she spoke up hesitantly, scrabbling about for her nerve as best she could.

With one hand on the doork.n.o.b, he went motionless, not looking back, still staring straight ahead.