Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Noah woke with a start. He’d dozed off, despite his best efforts. Two nights of the barest minimum of sleep had been more than he could manage.
His arms ached. Osborne had tied his arms behind his back, binding his wrists tightly. At this angle, the circulation to his shoulders was constricted, numbing his fingers. He wiggled his fingertips, and they scraped the stone wall behind him. The wall had provided him a place to sag against.
He tried to gather his thoughts and get his bearings.
Osborne had brought him inside the Greater Vaults of the Serapeum, a long underground corridor of enormous curved ceilings and vaults containing smooth granite sarcophagi.
The ancient Egyptians had built this as a necropolis for their sacred bulls, and the sight of it was breathtaking.
He didn’t know what time it was. Even at midday, the chambers had to be lit with candlelight: without them, they’d be left in pitch darkness.
Though Noah had been here before, he would have appreciated the Serapeum’s spectacular architecture, if not for Peter Osborne, who sat across from him. A pistol sat lazily on his lap, pointed at Noah. They appeared to be otherwise alone.
Osborne watched him thoughtfully. “You were asleep for a few minutes that time.”
Noah shifted, shooting pains traveling down his legs from sitting in one position for so long.
“How clumsy of me.” He didn’t mean to sound as though he was mocking Osborne, but he couldn’t quite help it either.
The dry, unaffected tone of voice that he’d gotten accustomed to using in situations like these would only enrage Osborne further.
Given his position in government, Osborne’s inability to keep a stiff upper lip about his emotions either displayed a man who teetered on the edge or who lacked control.
Both could prove dangerous when provoked.
Osborne pulled a coiled, polished black rope from his rucksack. Noah blinked at it. No, not a rope. A whip. “Do you know what this is?”
Noah studied the object. “A kurbash.”
A wicked gleam came to Osborne’s eyes. “Good.”
The kurbash wasn’t any ordinary whip. The weapon was made of hippopotamus hide, used as a symbol of Ottoman oppression over Egyptian slaves for centuries and recently outlawed in Egypt because of British objections.
Osborne caressed the braided leather base.
No doubt he intended to use the damn thing on Noah.
“I’m curious. Why you? Fisher has more than enough reason to want to see me dead himself.
Wouldn’t he rather see it done than send a lackey?
Or you could have returned me to the military.
Made a public spectacle of my death and brought yourself glory.
” Noah was parched, his lips cracking, but he wasn’t about to ask Osborne for water.
“Oh, dear fellow, don’t worry. I won’t kill you.” The tips of Osborne’s teeth showed as he sneered. “Not on purpose, at any rate.”
Just torture him, then. Noah’s jaw clenched at the thought. Noah’s death was too merciful for Stephen. Probably for Osborne too. But he was certain Osborne had no intention of letting him go.
“Won’t Fisher be angry that you haven’t turned me over to him?”
Osborne shrugged. “I will. Eventually. But I made a deal with Fisher. If I helped him, then I got you. I don’t need his permission to do what I want with you.”
Osborne’s vitriol toward Noah was dumbfounding. They must have crossed paths before. Noah stared him down. “I have no memory of you.”
Osborne’s cheeks reddened. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? I was nothing to you when we met. At least that was what you said to me. Your precise words were ‘you don’t matter.’”
You don’t matter. Noah leaned his head back against the wall, racking his memory. A man like Osborne, who acted from a place of revenge, could often be more dangerous than a man who simply knew his soul to be black. But what could Noah have done?
The answer had to be in Kut. Osborne had indicated as much.
Noah had been there twice. Once with the delegation sent to offer a bribe to General Pasha, and before then, when he’d visited the commanding officers during the height of the siege, tried to advise them against their mad actions.
He’d barely escaped with his life going in and out of the besieged city.
He’d snuck one of his fellow intelligence mates out of the city, and there had been an officer clinging to his leg, weeping, begging to come with him.
Noah lifted his gaze to Osborne’s face. Could it be?
The memory of the man’s face was faint in his mind, but the grey eyes … they had once been filled with desperation. The back of Noah’s throat itched. “It was you—you who grabbed me as I tried to leave.”
Osborne leveled his chin. “You punched me instead. Left me in a pile of excrement.”
Any remorse Noah may have felt for his actions would have evaporated because of Osborne’s threats.
Though there wasn’t much to feel sorry for.
“You wanted to abandon your men. And you were making so much noise and were so unfit. You would have caused not only my capture and death but the death of my companion. I had no choice but to leave you.”
With a grunt, Osborne rose to his feet, pistol in one hand, kurbash in the other.
He stalked closer to Noah. “Yes. And I was left instead to watch those men die of starvation. To see us abandoned by the weak, pathetic representatives of the insipid Crown. To march across the deserts at the end of a whip.” Osborne brushed the coiled whip against Noah’s cheek.
Noah stiffened.
And Osborne blames me.
“I imagined you out there, drinking your tea and getting fat while I wasted away on mule meat and stale biscuits so hard that when the Turkish officers gave them to us, almost a hundred men died overnight from eating them.” Osborne leaned down, sniffing Noah’s hair, the barrel of the gun digging into Noah’s neck.
The action was strange and intimate, igniting his nerves. Osborne squatted to Noah’s eye level.
“And after rotting away in prison for a year, whom should I meet but a German officer who hated you as much as I do.”
Fisher.
“You met Fisher after he escaped to the German side last May?”
“Fate, it seems, brought us together. When the British wanted to arrange a prisoner exchange, Fisher arranged to have me be part of it. And it was easy from there. I came back a hero.” He set the kurbash down, then tugged at the laces of Noah’s boots.
Noah pulled his feet back reflexively. “What are you doing?”
Without answering, Osborne pulled off one boot, then the other. “Have you ever felt the kiss of the kurbash, Benson? It’s quite a thing to watch. To see the very life beaten from a man. Observe them reduced from a living, fully formed being to a bloody lump of clay.”
As Osborne exposed Noah’s bare feet to the air, he couldn’t help the gooseflesh that broke out on his arms, the shiver that ran down his spine.
Whatever Osborne had planned, he imagined it involved a maximum amount of pain.
“If I’m found that way tonight, you won’t have much leverage to convince Lady Virginia or Mrs. Hanover to negotiate with you.
Give you those precious concession papers. ”
Though he’d hated to tell Osborne about Ginger’s offer, he hadn’t had much choice. Osborne needed a reason to keep him alive. His attempt to capture Sarah had shown just how badly he, or Stephen, wanted the concession paperwork.
He hoped Ginger would stay away, even if he knew she wouldn’t.
Maybe this was what Lord Helton meant. About love driving people to do the irrational.
“Don’t worry. Your injuries won’t be visible.
Besides which, if you think those women will have much room for negotiation this evening, you’re underestimating me.
There’s only one way in here.” Osborne went back to his bag and grabbed rope.
Kneeling once again before Noah, he tied Noah’s ankles together.
He waved the pistol at Noah. “Now, onto your stomach.”
A sense of caution pounded through his body as Noah did what Osborne asked. He was thoroughly depleted, his brain exhausted. “What about the women?” Noah asked, closing his eyes. He doubted Osborne intended to let him live. “What will become of them?”
Osborne sneered. “Fisher wants your whore unharmed. She’s an English rose—spoilt, I’ll admit.
There’s nothing more reprehensible than women who choose to throw themselves at your kind.
How Fisher could still want to marry her after you seduced her is beyond my comprehension, but who am I to deny him his chosen wife? ”
The thought of Stephen near Ginger made him ill. Noah’s diaphragm ached as he struggled to breathe. Osborne bent his knees back and used another rope to bind his legs in that position by attaching the rope to his bound hands—a hog-tie position.
Osborne had stopped speaking to him and removed his uniform jacket. Noah turned his cheek, breathing into the dust. A rock poked into his cheek. His fingers were already numb with the strain of being tied behind his back.
Osborne unrolled the kurbash. “There was a German officer in one camp I was in. He introduced me to this method of discipline.” Before Noah could imagine what that might mean, Osborne struck Noah with the whip, hard, across the soles of his feet.
Pain exploded through Noah, his body jerking with the limited motion allowed by his position. Noah grunted, squeezing his eyes shut. He’d experienced various beatings, been shot, broken bones.
Nothing had ever hurt so much.
Spots flashed in his eyes as the whip cut through the air again, whistling before it snapped once more against his feet.
The agony of it was blinding, and a scream curled in his throat and hung in his mouth. He didn’t want to give Osborne the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. Of seeing him broken. With his chest to the ground, he felt suffocated, dizzy.
Another strike.