The Panther and The Pearl (32 page)

“Thank you, Turhan.” She and James both rose.

“Say goodbye to the khislar for me,” she said to Turhan.

“I will.” He took her hand and held it to his lips. “We will all miss you,” he added. “Many women come and go from the harem, but none as memorable as you.”

Sarah smiled at him. “What a lovely thing to say.”

He withdrew an object from his tunic pocket and handed it to her. “From Memtaz.”

It was an icon of one of the Russian saints, intricately carved, the border inlaid with bits of colored glass. “For good luck, she said,” Turhan added.

Sarah closed her fingers around it. “I will need it. And please say goodbye to Achmed for me.”

Turhan nodded and opened the door to the coach lane. Sarah looked around the room briefly, trying to memorize it. She would never forget this place, or the people she had met here.

“James, I’m ready to go,” she said finally, and he walked at her side through the door.

“Would like a cup of tea, dear?” Beatrice said. “I’ll bring it over to you.”

“I’m not an invalid, Bea, I can get it for myself.” Sarah rose, pouring from the pot on the trolley in the Woolcott sitting room, and then took the china cup back to her seat. It felt strange to be wearing her own clothes once more; she had never realized before how confining they were, the stays of her corset pinched and the high stuff collar of her dress almost immobilized her neck.

Harem clothes were much looser, more sensual, and she found that she missed them.

“What are you thinking, Sarah?” Beatrice said.

Sarah shrugged.

“Don’t dwell on that experience. Try to put it out of your mind,” Bea added.

“I am trying.”

Bea stirred sugar into her tea and asked quietly, “If there’s something you want to talk about, I’m here to listen.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you like to speak to our minister? There’s a Christian church here, founded for the European colonials, and I’m sure Dr. Hastings would be happy to give you some time.”

“I’ll think about it.”

There was a long pause before Bea said, “You seem so sad, dear. I wish I could help you.”

“You are helping, just by being here and giving me a place to stay until I can book passage back home.”

“Was it awful?” Bea finally said, looking at her directly for the first time that day.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“But weren’t you...violated?”

“I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you were in the harem, weren’t you?”
 

“Yes.”

“But isn’t that the purpose of the harem, to provide bedmates for the pasha?”

“Yes, but he didn’t force me.”
 

“You mean he didn’t choose you?”

“He chose me, but I was willing.” There, it was out.

Bea colored slightly. “Oh. I see.”

“James hasn’t told you very much about what happened to me there.”

“No.”

“I asked him not to, but it seems you want to know about it. I was about to marry the Pasha of Bursa when James was finally able to see me.”

“Marry him!” Beatrice was stunned.

“Yes.”

“What, in some barbaric rite?”

“In a wedding ceremony, the Ottoman version of one. But when I discovered that my intended husband had let me think that James wasn’t interested in finding me, I realized that there was no real future for us.”

Beatrice was silent, unable to think of a reply.

“I know you’re shocked, Beatrice. I wasn’t going to tell you any of this, as I said, but it’s obvious that you are curious and I would rather you know exactly what happened than imagine things far worse than the reality.”
 

“Do you want to go back to him?” Bea finally said.

“Every minute,” Sarah replied grimly.

“Then why don’t you?” Bea asked, surprising Sarah.

“Because nothing has changed. I thought it had, I thought I had helped him to see things differently, but I was wrong. I can’t spend my life with a man who views me as property, property to be hoarded, to be coveted and hidden lest someone take it away.”

“That’s the way they all are here,” Bea said wearily. “Haven’t you learned that?”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right. His upbringing was just too difficult for him to overcome.”

“But you love him.”

“Yes,” Sarah admitted. “I know you must find that shocking, but it’s the truth.”

“I’m not in the judgement business,” Bea said briskly, rising. “It’s true that I’ve found the adjustment to living in the East difficult, but I don’t expect everyone to feel the same way. Now let me see how Listak is doing with dinner.”

Beatrice had barely left the room to confer with the servant before James entered it, sweeping off his tie and heading for the sherry on the sideboard.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” he said, pouring some of the amber liquid into a glass.

“What’s that?”

“I can’t book you on the Orient Express to Paris for another month,” he said.

“Why?”

“There’s some kind of convocation in Paris on the twenty-ninth. All the seats on the train are reserved until then. You’ll just have to wait.”

Sarah was silent.

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” James said in a defeated tone. “I know that sitting around here with nothing to do but think about Orchid Palace and listen to Bea complain won’t be much fun for you.”

“It’s all right. I’m sure that Boston will still be there when I get back.”

“And we’re heading into the bad weather, too, I’m afraid,” James added. “It rains all the time in the late fall. You won’t be able to take many walks or get out much.”
 

“I’ll catch up on my reading,” Sarah said lightly.

James sat heavily in one of Bea’s overstuffed chairs. “I guess that your vacation in the Orient didn’t turn out exactly as you’d planned.”

“No.”

“If I haven’t said so already, let me say it now. I’m so sorry, Sarah. It was my bright idea to get you into the harem in the first place. I feel responsible for everything that happened to you afterward.”

“I’m a grown woman, James. I made my own decisions and must face the consequences.”

“Do you have regrets now?”

“No. I don’t think you should ever regret loving somebody. It didn’t work out because we were just too different, but I’ll probably love Kalid until I die.”

“He meant that much to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then how could you leave him?”

“I don’t know. The strength came from somewhere. He’s very intelligent, he had me fooled, had me believing what he wanted me to believe, but when you arrived I suddenly saw what a sham it had all been. He can’t change, and I can’t stay with someone who thinks of me as an accessory.”

“Were you afraid he would discard you? They often do, that’s why the harem exists, for variety.”
 

“I wasn’t afraid of that, not really. In his own way he was very... devoted.”

“Then what? Was the cultural gap too wide? I know Bea has never been able to bridge it.”

“I guess that was part of it. After all, his culture made him what he is.”

Beatrice appeared in the doorway and said, “Oh, hello, James. I didn’t realize you were home. Listak will be serving dinner in ten minutes.”

Sarah and James rose to follow her into the dining room.

“Get out of my sight, old woman, before I have you drawn and quartered and served up to the janissaries in their soup,” Kalid said darkly, not looking at Kosem.

“I have to talk to you,” his grandmother replied stoically, disregarding the halberdiers who stood ready to throw her out of the pasha’s suite if Kalid inclined his head.
 

“I think you’ve already said enough.”

Kosem sat next to him and patted his hand. “All is not lost,” she said.

Kalid muttered something in Turkish under his breath and snatched his hand away.

Kosem surveyed him, shaking her head. He had three days’ growth of beard, his shirt was open to the waist revealing that two buttons were missing, and his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. He looked dissolute, disagreeable, and dangerous.

“Leave us alone,” Kalid barked to the guards.

They disappeared.

“I know where she is,” Kosem said.

“I know where she is too. She’s at her cousin’s house in Constantinople. I have four of Turhan’s men watching the place at all times. That doesn’t mean she is coming back to me.”

“I can help.”

“Oh, really? The way you ‘helped’ Sarah to take off with her cousin? I don’t understand you, donme pashana, you must be losing your mind. Before Sarah came here you could talk of nothing,
nothing
, but my getting married and presenting you with an heir. Then the perfect opportunity to achieve both those goals presents itself and what do you do? You tell James Woolcott where Sarah is so he can come and take her away. I don’t know why you’re still alive. Why haven’t I executed you?”

“Perhaps because you’ve been too preoccupied with getting Sarah back to do anything else,” Kosem said primly. “The chief of your mint has been waiting two days to see you.”

“If you even attempt to lecture me now I’ll have you thrown into the dungeon,” he snapped.

Kosem said nothing.

He turned to look at her fully for the first time. She saw that his expression was more bleak than even she had imagined.

He was taking Sarah’s departure very hard.

“Why did you tell her cousin that she was here?” he asked softly, his gaze narrow and hard.

“She deserved to know that her family was looking for her. Did you really want her to stay with you because she thought she had no alternative?”

“I just wanted her to stay!” he exploded. “You knew she would be angry when she discovered my deception, what did you think would happen then?”

“I didn’t think she would leave you,” Kosem said quietly. “Honestly, Kalid, I didn’t. I knew it was possible, but I really thought she would just be reunited with her cousin and relieved that he knew she was all right. I thought that her strong feelings for you would keep her here.”

“I guess we both underestimated her, didn’t we?” he said bitterly, saluting his grandmother with two fingers held together and a sarcastic nod.

“So are you just going to sit here? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

“I am formulating a plan.”

“And what is that?”

“I haven’t finalized it yet.”

“Kalid, this inactivity is not like you at all. When Sarah was taken by the bedouins you were on your horse in ten minutes to go after her.”

“When she was taken by the bedouins I was worried for her safety and I was certain she would be glad to see me. This situation is very different.”

“You are in power here, you are the pasha. You can do anything you want!”

“And where have all of my high handed tactics gotten me so far? Sitting here in deep despair, having this miserable conversation with you!”

Kosem was silent a moment, and then said, “When is Sarah leaving Turkey?”

“Not for several weeks. I had Turhan bribe the stationmaster so that when the cousin inquired he was told that all the seats on the Orient Express were booked for a month.”

“High handed tactics?” Kosem said, raising her brows.

“Sarah won’t find out about that one. But she’ll know if I have her arrested or impound her passport and so bar her from leaving the country.”

“I take it these are possibilities you have considered?” Kosem inquired.

“Yes, but they won’t work. She must make the decision herself. She wants me to behave like a civilized western gentleman, not an Ottoman tyrant.”

“The problem with that is you
are
an Ottoman tyrant. And Sarah would be bored to distraction by a civilized western gentleman, she only thinks that’s what she wants.”

“It’s what she thinks that I’m battling, not what she feels. If her heart ruled her head she would still be with me.”
 

“How are you going to keep her here?”
 

“Merely keeping her in this country won’t make her come back to me,” Kalid said musingly, shaking his head. “I think she used her cousin’s sudden appearance as an excuse anyway, though she doesn’t recognize it herself. What she’s really afraid of is committing herself to a way of life that’s so foreign to her. She loves me, and as long as she is with me she’s sure, but I can’t be with her every minute of every day. I have a whole district to run.”
 

“Not that you have been running it lately,” Kosem replied pointedly.

“I’ll get back to it once this crisis is past,” he said.

“So you think you will get her back?”

“I must.”