He smiled a little, for the first time since they had separated at the ball. "I can still speak a cockney so thick you wouldn't be able to understand more than one word in three. It's another foreign language."
Sara pulled her legs up under her in the chair, tucking her blue robe around her ankles. "You said that you lived in England for your first eight years. Why did you leave?"
"My mother died of a fever. By chance one of her friends, a sea captain, was in port. Knowing that if I was turned out on the streets I'd probably end up on the gallows, he took me on as a cabin boy." Mikahl sighed, his face deeply sad. "Captain Jamie McFarland, from Glasgow. If you listen hard, you'll probably hear a trace of Glaswegian in my accent. Most of my mother's lovers thought of me as an unavoidable nuisance, but Jamie McFarland actually liked me. He would bring me small gifts from his travels and always had time to talk. He was the closest thing to a father I ever had."
Sara had never imagined her husband as a child. He seemed too elemental, too fully formed, ever to have been small and helpless. But now his words conjured up a picture of a girl called Annie, who had followed her heart and who had given her resilience and good nature to her son. It was equally easy to envision the fatherless child who had been eager to love a man who gave him the protection and love all children deserved.
Her heart ached for him, but she guessed that it would be better to change the subject, for Mikahl hated showing any weakness. "How did you end up in the wilds of Asia?"
His face closed. "That is a long story, too long for tonight. The summary is that after my seafaring days, I wound up working on the caravans through Central Asia. When I was about twenty, I was captured in a raid and made a slave."
She winced. "That is when you got the scars on your back?"
He drank some of the brandy, his expression impenetrable. "Some of them. It was my second stint in slavery, and most of the scars are from the first time. After about a year, I managed to escape with a fellow slave, a Kafir named Malik. Once we were free, he wanted to return to his mountains. Since I had no better ideas, I went with him."
"And you stayed?"
He nodded. "Yes. I liked the Kafirs a great deal. I was adopted into Malik's family. They accepted me as no other people ever had, and I found that I rather liked having a family. Even though I knew I must leave eventually, Kafiristan became my base of operations for the next dozen years."
"Were you really made a prince?" Sara asked curiously.
"There is no hereditary aristocracy in Kafiristan. What makes a man prominent is wealth and fighting skill. Especially wealth. After I led the expeditions to the lost city of Katak, I was the wealthiest man in Kafiristan. Ergo, I was in some ways the most prominent, so saying that I was a prince has a certain metaphorical truth."
He sipped more brandy, his face thoughtful. "I had an odd status, rather like a favorite cousin who had come for an extended visit. I spent several months a year there, the rest traveling, making my fortune. Malik and his family always made me welcome. Largely because of me, they had become rich in their own right. They always said that their house was my house, and they meant it quite literally."
"Where did you meet Kuram?"
"In India. He was a scout for the Indian Army. After he had a falling out with authority, I helped him escape the consequences. He felt a strong sense of obligation to me and offered to serve me as a way of repayment. Also, Kuram wanted to travel and see the world. In six months or a year, he will be ready to return home for good. When he does, he will visit Malik and his family, to assure them that I am well and that they are in my thoughts. Which they are."
Sara leaned her head against the back of the chair. "So many things make sense now," she said quietly. "For example, you said that you never belonged where you were born, and you did not even want to belong there. Now I understand why."
"No one with a choice would ever return to the poverty and violence of the East End." His eyes narrowed. "Any comments, now that you've heard the story of my unsavory origins?''
Not an easy question to answer. Groping for the right words, she said, "While you have become a citizen of the world, I like the fact that you spent your formative years here in England. It makes you seem more comprehensible. Less alien."
His mouth quirked humorlessly. "Aren't you shocked to learn that you, the daughter of a duke, have been sharing your bed with a cockney bastard?''
"My life has been one shock after another ever since I met you, so learning that you were born in London isn't worth much more than a raised eyebrow," she said tartly. "The only reason I mentioned 'suitable rank' earlier was because Drina is very conscious of birth, and I wanted to say something that would convince her to decide in your favor.''