Indiscreet (18 page)
"Men's clothes?" She, too, spoke in a low voice.
"You must pass for a native boy." He stayed close, his mouth near her ear. "For the illusion to succeed, wear nothing but these clothes. Nothing occidental. Nothing womanly. These clothes and nothing else, clear?" He pressed her elbow. His fingers were warm through the fabric of her nightdress. "Make haste, Sabine. There is little time to spare."
She looked at the unfamiliar clothing. She'd seen any number of men dressed in such a costume, but that did not mean she knew how to don one herself. She could only guess the order in which they went on.
If she was to leave the palace as a boy, her costume must be precisely right For that, she would need Foye's assistance. Her body hollowed out, but she nodded curtly and like him, stood.
'The
shirwal
first" He picked up the baggy trousers, demonstrated how she must step into them, then handed them to her. Foye's tiny lamp did not cast enough light for her to put on clothes with which she was so unfamiliar. What's more, she knew from his miserable expression he had already anticipated the difficulty. 'I'm sorry," he said with such abject wretchedness that she felt, if not better, then at least less awkward.
shirwal
first" He picked up the baggy trousers, demonstrated how she must step into them, then handed them to her. Foye's tiny lamp did not cast enough light for her to put on clothes with which she was so unfamiliar. What's more, she knew from his miserable expression he had already anticipated the difficulty. 'I'm sorry," he said with such abject wretchedness that she felt, if not better, then at least less awkward.
So be it She hiked up her nightdress high enough to step into the
shirwal.
shirwal.
Foye turned his head while she pulled up the trousers, but he had to fasten them for her while she held her nightdress above her waist. His fingers brushed her bare skin in incidental touches she suspected were more awkward for him than for her. When the trousers were managed, he fumbled around on the bed a bit before he selected a long, narrow length of fabric. He hesitated, staring at the cloth in his bands.
She grabbed his wrist until he looked into her face. "We do what we must," she told him, squeezing her fingers around him for emphasis. 'There can be no modesty now."
Foye nodded. She did not think she was mistaken about his relief.
With some fumbling, they got the fabric in place enough that she could hold it over her chest while Foye removed her nightdress in a swift efficient motion. Despite that she was not tall, she did not have a boy's figure. She understood, as Foye had anticipated, that her bosom, if left free beneath clothes intended for a man, would give the lie to her supposed gender. Foye grabbed the ends of the strip and tightly wrapped the length of silk twice around her in an improvised corset of sorts. She could hardly breathe after he tied a knot in the back and stepped away.
Relieved, she supposed, that the need to touch her was over with. As was she.
He reached into the satchel and took out a clay jar about the size of his hand. She frowned and forgot that she was indecently covered when he opened the jar. A pungent smell filled the room.
"Closer," he said, gesturing. She did so, and he slathered some of me contents of the jar on her bare shoulder. "A walnut extract," he explained, "to darken your skin." Indeed. If she was to pass as a native boy, best she not be English pale. Between the two of them, they covered her upper body and arms with the lotion. The intimacy of him touching her naked skin hardly felt intimate at all. Instead, she worried that in the dimness of her room they would miss some crucial spot. They covered her face and throat last. Sabine applied the ointment using both her hands, and when she thought she was done, she lifted her face to his so he could examine her for spots she'd missed.
Foye picked up the lamp, taking care to keep his body between the light and the door, and slowly examined her. His perusal was thorough. He used the side of his thumb to even out the application on her cheek and underside of her jaw.
"Thank God you've got brown eyes," he said. "Otherwise this would be doomed to failure."
She rubbed a place on her cheek that still felt damp, then waved her arms to make sure the lotion was sufficiently dry on her skin.
Foye snatched a shirt from what was left of the bundle on her mattress. She glanced up while he positioned the garment over her head and confirmed her arms were correctly placed for the sleeves. He brought the shirt down, she thrust her arms through the sleeves, and he continued the downward motion. She was covered now.
The worst was over.
"When we get outside," he said, "do not touch anything. Most especially, don't rub your face."
She nodded. When she had her arms free to finish adjusting the shirt, he picked up an outer shirt of a lightweight fabric with narrow vertical stripes. They were in the process of getting it settled on her when a loud bang from outside her door startled them both.
Chapter Seventeen
They froze, Foye with his hands on the top portion of the striped over garment where her breasts would have been obvious were she not tightly bound, her with her hands pulling the garment down from hip level. From outside her door came the sound of a violent argument in Arabic, muffled so Sabine could not immediately decipher what they were saying.
"Bugger," Foye whispered. His hands gripped the fabric as they waited, not even breathing, either of them, while the shouting continued.
Cheating.
Sabine leaned her head against Foye's chest. They were arguing about cheating. Foye, of course, did not know that
"It's nothing to do with me," she whispered. She touched Foye's arm even though what she wanted to do was throw her arms around him and hug him to her. She did not, of course. Her pulse slowed from a gallop to a trot. "One of the guards has accused the other of cheating at dice."
Foye let out a breath, the only sign that he had been affected by the fright that had paralyzed her. Presently, the argument died away and the palace fell back into silence. He retrieved another item from her mattress, a cloth sash to be wound several times around her waist
"Here," he said when the ends of the sash were secured. He took her pistol from his pocket and slipped it between me folds of the sash. "Next time, don't hesitate to pull the trigger."
"I won't," she said.
"Shoot anyone who gets even half that close to you," Foye said.
She nodded. Over the outer garment and sash came a waist-length embroidered coat with sleeves that ended at the elbow. This, she knew, was left open. For her feet were a pair of red slippers to be worn inside a pair of sturdy boots. The boots were a very close fit, but she could walk in them and that was all that mattered. Last was a brown traveling cloak.
Foye produced a knife from his satchel. "Can you pin your hair or must we cut it?"
There was no time for her to fumble in the dark for pins let alone fasten it securely enough. Nor could they risk her hair coming loose during whatever period of time she must spend dressed as a boy.
She turned her back to him. To her shame, her throat closed off at the thought of losing her hair. Her hair was one of her few vanities. It hung nearly to her waist in thick golden curls, and every night, she counted out one hundred strokes of her brush. By the time she retired, every strand was soft as silk. "Cut it," she said.
Foye gripped her braid, and she winced even though he wasn't hurting her. He cut in several passes, all very close to her neck. She felt the pull of his hand on her braid, the blade sawing through, and then, nothing. Weightlessness.
He dropped the severed plait, but she stooped and handed it back to him. Better no one knew for certain that she now had short hair.
"Burn it later or some such thing," she said.
"Good man," Foye said. He smiled when he said it, but even though Sabine knew he meant to ease the insult of what he had done to her, the loss of her hair nearly undid her. The direness of her situation came home in force. All she really wanted to do was climb back into bed and go to sleep in the hope that this entire episode turned out to be a misunderstanding. Nazim Pasha did not intend to establish her in his harem; the delays in arranging for her return to the consulate in Aleppo were due to his concern for her health.
No matter how badly she wanted that to be the truth, it wasn't. She knew that in her heart. Sabine clamped down on her emotions. Better to be bald than trapped here. Her hair would grow back.
Foye held out the jar again, and she rubbed ointment through her hair until he was satisfied with the result. The guards outside cursed at each other again, in shouts that increased in heat until a sudden silence. Her heart pounded again. This was taking too long. They would be discovered, surely they would.
When she was done with her hair, she rubbed her hands together to even out the ointment left on them then scrubbed her hands through what was left of her hair to get it as dry as possible. There wasn't time to wait. Foye laid a thick, dark scarf across her damp hair that fell down to her shoulders and secured that with a knotted head rope. He stuffed her shift into his satchel. They both knelt to attempt to shape the bedding so anyone who did not look closely might believe she was there.
Foye coiled her braid into his satchel, too, then sheathed his knife and shoved that into one of the outer folds of her sash.
"Tolerable," he said, looking her up and down. "Keep your head down. You are to go by the name Pathros. You are a Christian of Syrian descent and my dragoman. I brought you with me from Aleppo. We are infidels, you and I. You are my servant, so for God's sake, defer to me in everything. Do not question anything I tell you."
"I understand."
"You have consequence among the other servants on account of your working directly for me," he said, "but never forget you are in my employ. Do as I say when I say and ask no questions. Defer to me in all things. Our lives depend upon you remembering that Is that clear?"
"Very."
He stooped for his lamp. They walked through the adjoining room to her uncle's apartment. Nothing remained to prove Godard had ever been here but his trunks stacked by the door. Sabine Godard no longer existed, she told herself. She was Pathros, the English lord's interpreter. Her unfamiliar clothes, she found, assisted in her attempt to leave Sabine Godard behind and become young Pathros.
Foye did not head for the door but for the opposite side of the room, along the wall where the high, narrow windows looked onto the courtyard. She followed to within a few feet of him. He reached up, so tall that he easily hooked a finger in one of the window frames and opened it wide. His point of ingress, and, she presumed, their egress. He turned to her and said, "Is Anthony Lucey right about your Arabic?" His gaze scoured her without any of the warmth she was so used to seeing. The sight made her wonder if she knew him at all. "Have you really no accent?"
"Very near," she replied. "I've improved since we came north."
The way he looked at her so intently, the crisp tone of voice, the tension in his body was new to her. He was not giving orders as Godard had so often done, but neither was there any doubt he was in command of this situation and expected her to fall in. She had no intention of disappointing that expectation just now. But she could not shake the feeling that she was seeing a different Foye, a man she didn't know and hadn't suspected existed.
"If we are stopped," he said, "say nothing." He took a step forward and grabbed her upper arms but immediately let her go. "If you do speak, do so in English. Not French. Do not let on you understand that language."
"That seems a wise precaution." She rubbed her arms. Her skin tingled from his touch. He had not held her tightly, but neither had his touch been gentle. "The pasha is not the only one here to speak French," she said. "There are others;"
"If something important comes up in some language I do not speak, please, do translate," he said. In the dimness, she saw him smile, and that comforted her, to see something familiar about him when everything else was so unfamiliar. "I should hate to miss something crucial because you followed my directions too literally."
"I'm not a fool," she said. "You may trust my judgment in the matter of when I ought to translate."
"No doubt," he said. "But best if I make myself clear given a misunderstanding between us might be fatal."
"You are, of course, quite correct." She plucked at her overcoat with brown hands that startled her. A rather pretty brown, she thought "You are right to be cautious." Her skin was not terribly dark, but she could—would, she hoped—pass for a youth who'd spent his life in the sun. Her clothes were a very good fit, but she felt awkward in them. Not herself. Unwomanly. Her bound bosom required that she breathe from the bottom of her lungs if she wanted to get enough air, and that was an adjustment to make. "If I do speak, I shall endeavor to limit myself to only a phrase or two."
"Good." Foye doused the lamp and stowed it in a cabinet She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. He'd planned this well and thoroughly. She was impressed. And relieved and grateful and any number of emotions she could not at present properly parse out. But then, she would never have expected less from Foye than this precise attention to detail.
He returned to her, his satchel slung across his body, and gestured. She approached. In the dark, he boosted her up, easily and without effort until she perched on the window ledge. Her stomach hollowed out when she looked out. How far away the ground seemed.
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