Nan Ryan (36 page)

“You evil bastard!” she shouted at the sadistic sultan, her heart racing, her eyes flashing with outrage. “Let her go this minute! Do you hear me? You let her go, damn you!” Frantically she looked to Jamal, to Alwan, and to the others. “Please!” she beseeched them. “Make him stop. Make him release her.”

Calmly Jamal said, “His Excellency has instructed me to tell you that he is going to slit the girl’s throat.”

“Oh, God, no, no!” Temple screamed, turning her full attention back to the fat man holding the curved scimitar blade to the trembling Samira’s throat.

“Please, no …” She began begging for Samira’s life. Pleading with him, she told him she’d do anything he wanted if only he would release the girl right now, unharmed.

Jamal informed her that there was only one way she could save the girl.

“How?” Temple asked, her slender body shaking with fury and with fear.

“You will marry the sultan by week’s end.”

Temple swallowed hard, looked at the gloating Mustafa, looked at the weeping Samira. “And if I won’t agree?”

“If you do not say yes in the next sixty seconds,” Jamal told her calmly, “the girl’s throat will be sliced from ear to ear.”

Temple shuddered. The wicked bastard would indeed slit Samira’s throat without blinking an eye.

“Tell him,” she said, defeated, “to let Samira go. I will marry him.”

Temple was, that very hour, separated from the rest of the harem. It was the first step toward the envied position of imperial wife. She was given an apartment and offered slaves of her own. She quickly chose Leyla and Samira to attend her. And when the two grateful women were safely inside the private apartment, Temple sent word to her husband-to-be that Leyla and Samira now belonged to her and he was not to send for them ever again.

When the message was delivered, the sultan clapped his beefy hands in glee. She didn’t want him bedding her personal slaves. Already his fair-haired beauty was jealous!

Temple did everything in her now considerable power to keep the three of them—Leyla, Samira, and herself—safely ensconced inside the walls of the luxurious apartment, which boasted a huge private bath and splashing fountains and fragrant gardens and an aviary filled with exotic birds. The rooms were ornamented with panels of painted flowers and hung with beautiful brocades. Doors and cupboard shutters were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Lush carpets covered the floors. Bedsteads of ivory inlaid with large pieces of coral supported brocaded mattresses and cushions.

For three days and nights she managed to keep them all out of harm’s way. They were allowed to take their meals in the apartment, and have their baths there, and sleep there, monitored closely by two uniformed palace guards.

Each afternoon Temple was required to spend an hour in the company of her future husband, the sultan. But she made it clear that those meetings were not to take place in his bedchamber and that in addition to his interpreter there was always to be at least one female servant present.

The sultan agreed to these terms. And he took no offense when she slapped his chubby hands off her and threatened him as if he were the slave, she the master. Had any other woman behaved in such a high-handed manner, she would have been flogged, mutilated, or worse for her insolent disobedience.

Repulsed by the salacious man who kept attempting to lay his pudgy hands on her, Temple fended him off and endured. And as she cursed him and slapped away his roving hands, she silently told the foolish, smitten ruler that his hours on this earth were numbered.

The Sheik would come to deliver her from this fate.

But as the hours passed and her wedding day approached, Temple felt something tearing at her spirit. Her faith began to waver. Her hopes began to dim. It seemed, after all, that her destiny was to be the bride of the repulsive Turkish sultan.

She would rather be dead.

Temple didn’t realize the reason she was beginning to feel so defeated was that the crafty emir had been having the pomegranate wine she drank with her meals liberally laced with laudanum. A little more was added at each meal, to each glass.

She couldn’t understand why she was becoming so lethargic, why she no longer had the will to fight her fate. She was puzzled by her inability to care as much as she should. Her thoughts were growing increasingly muddled. She felt as if she were constantly in a thick fog.

Temple didn’t know what was happening to her.

The wedding date arrived.

Just four short days after agreeing to marry Mustafa, Temple was awakened early from a drugged sleep and reminded that at noon she was to become the bride of His Excellency, the sultan.

Confused and incredibly thirsty, she was served a light breakfast of fresh fruit and a big golden goblet of pomegranate wine. Temple looked around curiously, asked where Leyla and Samira were. The servant who served her breakfast shook his head. He did not understand what she was saying. He urged her to drink up, then poured a second glass of wine.

Temple felt dizzy by the time a guard appeared to take her from the apartment. In limited French he told her she was to spend the morning being prepared for the wedding to her Turkish prince.

“No,” she objected, “my servants will prepare me for the ceremony. Leyla and Samira will … Where are they? Why aren’t they here?”

The guard gave no reply. Over her protestations, he took her from the apartment and to a place she had never seen before, the Imperial Bath. Two tall, magnificently built Nubian eunuchs, wearing nothing but loincloths of white linen, awaited her there.

Knowing their intent, Temple struggled briefly, but her strength and her will soon gave out. What was the use? She was no match for the pair of black giants. To fight them would be futile and foolish.

The guard disappeared, and the eunuchs ushered Temple inside the imperial bath, which was as large as a spacious bedroom. Walls and supporting pillars of Egyptian alabaster were veined with gold, and overhead was a dome of amber-colored glass through which light gave added brilliance to the marble floor and gold fixtures.

Temple was undressed and led to the very center of the bath, where a pair of marble benches faced each other. Magically the water came on, rushing in from all sides from gold spigots and fountains. For the next half hour Temple stood and sat in the great misty shower of hot and cold water while the twin Nubians bathed her and shampooed her long golden hair.

When she was fresh and clean and her body patted dry with thirsty gold-trimmed towels, she was taken to another room directly in back of the bath. There the mauve-colored walls were scented with roses, and pink light poured in through the high, rose-tinted windows. Alabaster basins of white and gold were at each end and on one side of a long cushioned table that was so high off the floor there were steps for mounting it.

Temple was guided up the set of steps and helped onto the padded table, where she was placed on her back. While the bright sun streamed down through the rose-tinted windows and turned her pale flesh a soft pink hue, the eunuchs went about the lengthy task of removing the hair from her body. Dexterous hands spreading a paste depilatory on her long slender legs, her underarms, and her groin, the Nubians kept her on the cushioned table for more than an hour, spreading, rubbing, peeling, washing, and searching for any sign of wispy golden hair they might have overlooked.

When both were satisfied that her flesh was as smooth and hairless as a newborn babe’s, Temple was led back into the bath and bathed once more. Afterward she was taken to yet another chamber, a rose-hued room where the floor was covered with a rich rose carpet and a long table at room’s center was draped with towels. A low divan of shimmering rose silk rested against an alabaster wall. Temple was placed on the towel-draped table and those same four large hands that had bathed and removed the hair from her nude body began gently to rub rich perfumed oils into her pale porcelain skin.

She lay on her stomach while one eunuch, standing at the head of the table, worked on her slender arms, the other, at the table’s foot, on her long legs. Then one eunuch moved around to the right side of the table, the other to the left. One turned his attention to her shoulders and back, the other to her bottom and thighs.

Then she was turned over.

She lay spread-eagle while one carefully massaged her shoulders and breasts, the other her belly and thighs. When finally they finished, there was not a single pinpoint of flesh on her naked, hairless body that had not been perfumed with oil. Next they painted her fingernails and toenails with henna, stained her lips with scarlet rouge, and kohled her emerald eyes.

Wondering if this terrible nightmare were ever to end, Temple was taken to yet another room. There, finally, she was dressed for her wedding, beginning with sheer stockings and ending with a white satin gown being lowered over her head and fastened up the back.

Her long golden hair was brushed out, and she was covered with priceless diamonds. They spilled in shimmering rivers over her breasts, were stacked in flickering cairns across her brow, and ringed her fragile wrists and ankles and throat.

Her stockinged feet were slid into white satin slippers, a white veil was lowered over her unsmiling face, a bridal bouquet of ivory orchids was handed to her, and Temple’s heart sank.

The time had come.

The Sheik had not.

All was ready
.

The noontime ceremony was to take place on the sunny rooftop of the sultan’s seaside palace. Lush white carpets had been spread. Shimmering white silk sheathed the palace’s many ledges and parapets. Two matching chairs of silver cushioned with white brocade were placed side by side at the end of a long white silken aisle.

The huge cannons on the sea wall were manned and ready to fire a thundering salute to the Turkish prince and his beautiful foreign princess. Dazzling fireworks displays were to begin the minute darkness descended over the seaside empire.

The Turkish sultan’s many slaves and servants were dressed in their finest. The harem women were comely in varied shades of pastel with jeweled veils covering their faces. The palace guards especially were resplendent in smartly tailored uniforms of green and gold, the long flowing ends of their golden turbans wrapped around their chins.

Invited guests dressed grandly in intricately patterned robes of linen and silk and satin had been arriving hourly since the command for their presence had been issued. None came empty-handed. They bore lavish wedding gifts of precious jewels and priceless paintings and marble statuary and opulent wall hangings.

The obese sultan was dressed for the happy occasion all in white satin with white egret feathers adorning his robe’s long, flowing sleeves. The garment was exquisite, but shortly before the ceremony was to begin, the gluttonous sultan, sweeping past one of the heavily laden feast tables, couldn’t resist. He grabbed up a whole game hen and dribbled drops of grease down his rounded belly as he greedily devoured the roasted game. His personal servant, Alwan, appeared immediately with a dampened cloth to tidy up his slovenly master.

“Never mind that”—Mustafa waved him away—”soon enough I’ll be out of this robe and into my bride.” He chuckled loudly, amused by his own crude wit. Picking a sliver of the fowl out of his teeth, he waddled down the long white silk aisle toward the waiting silver chairs.

A clock of alabaster and gold ticked steadily toward her impending doom.

Temple was alone.

The two Nubian eunuchs who had painstakingly prepared her for the wedding had left her locked here in the plush white dressing chamber. She waited now for the heavy bolt to be thrown and the door to be yanked open, signaling the palace guards had come for her.

Seated on a long satin-covered bench, Temple clutched the bouquet of ivory orchids in stiff fingers and gazed sadly at the veiled woman in white she saw reflected in the mirrored walls. She couldn’t believe this was actually happening. It could not be true.

But it was.

She, Temple DuPlessis Longworth, was to be the wife of a depraved Turkish sultan. She shuddered at the prospect of what lay in store for her before this long day ended.

Temple sighed and slowly bowed her head.

All hope was gone.

The bolt on the heavy door was loudly thrown. Temple didn’t bother to lift her head. She didn’t look up as the tall green-and-gold-uniformed guard entered the mirrored chamber and strode purposefully toward her. Her head remained bowed as the bright green of the guard’s trousered legs stopped directly in front of her.

A low, commanding voice softly spoke her name.

“Temple.”

Temple’s head jerked up. She blinked through her covering veil, stared wide-eyed at the tall uniformed guard. His dark face was half covered by the ends of his gold turban. She could see nothing but his eyes.

She would have known those beautiful black eyes anywhere.

“Sharif!” she murmured soundlessly, stunned, wondering if the sight of him was but an illusion to further torture her. “Sharif,” she murmured again as the orchid bouquet fell forgotten to the white carpet.