Taming Charlotte (11 page)

Charlotte was awake a few minutes, then asleep for several hours. When the pain was bad, someone would always give her a dose of medicine and make it stop. Once, she opened her eyes and saw Alev standing over her.

“Your babies?” Charlotte whispered, filled with dread because she sensed that her friend had seldom left her side since Khalif and the others had brought her back to the palace.

But Alev smiled and touched Charlotte’s forehead gently. “My sons are safe and strong,” she said. “Rest now. You will be well soon.”

Charlotte rested, but one day she rallied. She was weak but fully conscious, and when she lifted her arms she saw that they were spotted with new skin.

“My face,” she cried, raising both hands to her cheeks. She was certain the desert sun had baked and melted her into some hideous creature fit only for sideshows and circuses.

Alev was sitting beside her couch, nursing one of the new babies while Pakize tried to placate the other one with a finger. “Your face will be fine in a few weeks, thanks to our almond cream,” Alev said.

Pakize handed Charlotte a small hand mirror with an engraved silver back, and she looked warily into the glass. Her skin had peeled badly, but it was clearly renewing itself.

After moving the greedy baby to her other breast and then modestly covering herself again, Alev arched her eyebrows and asked, “Whyever did you do such a foolish thing, Charlotte? You’re in very serious trouble, you know.”

She closed her eyes and tried to will herself into oblivion again, but it was too late. She was definitely on the mend. “What kind of trouble?” she asked.

Alev leaned forward on her stool and whispered, “You ran away and endangered yourself and others. That is a cardinal sin. And you stole the little flask.”

Charlotte swallowed. Wondering where Patrick was, feeling more certain than ever that he truly had abandoned her. “What will happen to me?”

“You will be punished,” Pakize said, in halting, eager English, and the servant girl seemed to relish the prospect.

“How?” Charlotte demanded, looking at Alev instead of Pakize.

Alev sighed and looked away for a moment. “That will depend,” she finally replied, “on what the
sultana valide
decides is fitting.”

Charlotte decided not to ask any more questions for the time being, because her imagination was already running wild. Maybe she would be boiled in oil, or roasted inside a suit of armor, like some English knights were during the Crusades…

She was still imagining horrible fates when a stir of excitement swept through the harem like a fresh breeze and Khalif himself appeared at her bedside. He did not offer her a smile, but instead glared down at her with as much fury as if he’d had to ride into hell itself to perform the rescue.

“So,” he said briskly, “you are recovering.”

Charlotte managed a faltering smile. “Yes, thanks to you.”

He narrowed his dark eyes at her. “You could have perished,” he said. “What would I have told my friend, Captain Trevarren, if you had not survived?”

She felt a little spindrift of hope swirl up in her middle,
even though she was fairly certain she didn’t matter at all to Patrick. After all, he’d left her in a harem without a second thought, and if he’d been planning to return, he would surely have been back by then.

“I don’t think he would even have troubled to ask where I was,” she said.

Khalif glowered. “It is suicide to wander alone in the desert! Did you wish to die?”

“No,” Charlotte replied. “I wanted to be free, and I was willing to die trying to get away.”

Khalif shook his head, looking genuinely baffled. “These strange American ideas are not good,” he reflected. “Especially in a woman.”

Charlotte hadn’t the strength to argue, so she just smiled, hoping somehow to charm the sultan into showing mercy.

He did not look beguiled. “You have set a bad example for the others,” he said. “When you are well, you will be disciplined.”

Charlotte swallowed the rebellious words that leaped to the tip of her tongue. She was in no position to irritate the sultan, and besides, he’d saved her life. “In that case, I think it will be some considerable time before I’m myself again,” she said sweetly.

Khalif’s mouth twitched, and a light flickered in his eyes for a fraction of a moment, but then he hardened his jaw again and fixed her with an imperial look. “I can wait,” he assured her coolly.

Charlotte squirmed. “It’s cruel, the way you’re all being so mysterious about this. Why, a person would think you meant to feed me to the sharks in one-inch cubes.”

The sultan’s white teeth showed in a smile that quickly disappeared. “The sharks have done nothing to deserve such a fate,” he replied, and then he turned and swept grandly out of the harem, leaving Charlotte to stare up at the ornately decorated ceiling and go right on wondering what was to become of her.

“The rules cannot be suspended for one woman, Patrick,” Khalif told his newly arrived friend, who was sitting cross-legged on a cushion, enjoying a cool drink. “If I allow such a
departure, the others will be in revolt before I know what is hitting me. It would be chaos.”

Patrick smiled at his friend’s convoluted phrasing, but he was worried about Charlotte. Discipline could be harsh in Riz, and it was true that Khalif would lose face if he allowed the error to pass. “I don’t want her hurt.”

“I warned you,” Khalif replied, “that Charlotte would have to abide by our ways. She did not. She endangered herself, my men, and a number of good horses in her silly attempt to escape!”

Patrick lifted one hand, palm out, in an effort to establish peace. “I know what she did was foolish, Khalif, but she was raised in a place where there’s plenty of fresh water as well as an inland sea, and trees stay green the year around. She knew nothing of the desert.”

“There is only one way I can give the responsibility of this woman over to you,” the sultan said seriously, after a long, pensive interval. “Do you know what that way is?”

Patrick gave a heavy sigh, full of long-suffering resignation. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll have to marry the little fool myself, God help me.”

B
Y THE TIME THE SUMMONS TO KHALIF’S APARTMENTS FI
nally came, Charlotte had mentally rehearsed her fate so many times that the reality seemed almost anticlimactic. She submitted to the usual bathing and anointment, buffing and brushing, with stoicism.

Alev and Pakize dressed her in white robes—symbolic, Charlotte decided, of a lamb being prepared for the slaughter. Her hair fell loose around her breasts and down her back, but flowers and strands of tiny golden pearls were woven through the tresses.

Finally Rashad signaled that it was time to go, and Alev solemnly kissed Charlotte on both cheeks. Unlike the other women, she wore no veil.

Shoulders straight, head high, Charlotte followed Rashad out of the harem with a tragic dignity reminiscent of Mary Queen of Scots on her way to the gallows.

When she and the eunuch had woven their way through the complicated system of hallways to finally reach Khalif’s apartments, however, her heart began to pound. Would she be publicly beaten? Thrown into a rat-infested dungeon and
forgotten? Turned out into the desert to wander until she died in an agony of thirst?

Khalif, resplendent as always in silks and jewels, greeted her with a curt nod of resignation. She was a problem to be dealt with, his manner said, like a stubborn mare refusing to take the bit, or a dog that wouldn’t come to heel.

Despite her fear, which was suddenly profound again, Charlotte felt the sting of fury, too. She was about to tell Khalif what she thought of his pompous tyranny, but a quick look from Rashad made her bite her lip instead.

The sultan dismissed the eunuch with a gesture, and Rashad left the apartments.

It was all Charlotte could do not to run after him, pleading for protection. Instead, she looked Khalif straight in the eye and said, “Well, let’s get on with it. I’m tired of dreading my punishment.”

Khalif smiled, but Charlotte was not reassured by this small indication of goodwill. “Perhaps this day will not be remembered for bringing your punishment,” he said mysteriously, “but someone else’s.”

Charlotte frowned and looked around, but the great, opulently decorated room was empty except for the two of them. “I don’t understand,” she said.

The sultan chuckled, but without humor. “That is true of many things, I think,” he replied. He grasped a golden cord near the place where he stood and pulled. “For your own sake as well as that of others, my dear, I hope you will make an effort to overcome some of your more obvious shortcomings—like following your every impulse and speaking when you would be better advised to remain silent.”

Charlotte’s cheeks burned, and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She knew Khalif had summoned someone by tugging on the bellpull—a servant bearing a whip or club? A swordsman to whisk off her head? A slave-master to drag her off to market?

She closed her eyes tightly, struggling to retain her composure, and when she opened them again, she saw Patrick stride through one of the great doorways. He wore his usual
breeches, high boots, and pirate’s shirt, and his dark hair was tied back, as always, with a narrow black ribbon.

Charlotte’s knees went weak with relief and confusion when he smiled at her.

He approached, gripped her shoulders in his hands, and gave her an indulgent kiss on the forehead. “I hear you’ve been misbehaving, Charlotte. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Her throat had closed; she forgot to breathe. How she loved this man, and how she despised him at the very same time!

Patrick let go of her—she barely kept herself from crumpling to the floor out of sheer shock—and turned to grin at his friend the sultan. Then he met Charlotte’s bewildered gaze again.

“Here’s your choice, goddess,” he said. “You can either marry me or take a beating.”

By some miracle, Charlotte found her voice. She was overjoyed at the prospect of spending her life with Patrick, but his nonchalant, take-it-or-leave-it manner was hardly the reaction she would have wanted. “This is a difficult decision,” she replied. “After all, the beating would be over in a few minutes, but a wedding might be only the beginning of my grief.”

Patrick narrowed his eyes at her. “Mind your tongue, darling,” he said, with acid affection, “or you’ll get both the wedding
and
the beating.”

Charlotte swallowed, glanced warily toward Khalif. Then she took a subtle step nearer to Patrick. “Why do you want to marry me at all if you feel that way?” she demanded in a whisper.

He let his gaze travel over her, lingering at her breasts, then her narrow waist, then her softly curving hips. “I am something of an optimist,” he said, looking into her eyes again, filling her with a delicious sense of softness. “I believe there is still hope that you can be salvaged, though it will take work and a lot of determination.”

Charlotte would have kicked Patrick in the shin at that moment, if she hadn’t needed him to escape Khalif’s
primitive disciplinary policies. She fluttered her lashes and made herself smile sweetly. “I will try to cooperate,” she promised, hoping she wouldn’t choke on her own words.

Patrick gave her a skeptical once-over, then turned impatiently to his friend. “Let’s get on with it,” he said, his tone clipped.

Khalif pressed his palms together, rolled his eyes upward, and murmured a chant in his own language. Then he smiled at Patrick and shrugged. “You are one flesh before Allah,” he said. “Take your bride and—please, see that she stays out of trouble.”

Charlotte glanced wildly from Khalif to Patrick. “Are we truly married?”

Her alleged bridegroom drew a deep breath, let it out, and then swept Charlotte up into his arms. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “There’s nothing to do now but make the best of it.”

With that, he walked out of the sultan’s apartments, carrying her with him like so much salvage from a wrecked ship.

“We didn’t sign any papers,” Charlotte babbled, full of terror and sweet anticipation. “Nobody said, ‘You may kiss the bride’ or ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’—or ‘Does anyone object to this marriage?’!”

Patrick favored her with a wicked smile as he strode down a familiar hallway. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Trevarren—I mean to kiss you thoroughly, among other things. And here in Riz, Khalif’s word is law—he can pronounce us anything he wants. Anyone who objected would probably have been beheaded for his insolence.”

Charlotte’s face throbbed with hot color, partly because Patrick had spoken so bluntly and partly because her body was already making preparations for fireworks. “Oh,” was all she dared to say.

Patrick shifted her in his arms to open the door of his apartments, then crossed the threshold.

Charlotte saw the same nest of pillows where she had responded so scandalously to this man’s attentions on another occasion and buried her face in the curve of his neck.

He laughed and set her on the huge round couch.

“What if someone comes in?” she managed to ask, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them.

“No one would dare,” her husband answered, tugging his shirt off over his head to reveal a muscular, sun-browned chest and a vee of dark, masculine down. “Everyone in the palace knows we’ve just been married.”