The Harem Bride (6 page)

Miss Pemberton sniffed, then recalled herself
to the moment. She had turned Penelope out in fine style. Now she
need only execute the remainder of her plan. Fortunately, her
quest, conducted through voluminous correspondence, had turned up a
familiar name among the young men making the Grand Tour in what was
left of nations that might be termed “peaceful.” Jason Lisbourne,
Viscount Lyndon, a distant connection of the Pembertons through his
mother’s family. The young man’s antecedents were impeccable, his
prospective wealth prodigious, and he was the perfect age, a scant
five years older than Penelope, while her niece, though a mere
Miss, could claim a marquess as grandfather. Surely a good enough
match for a future Earl of Rocksley, particularly since Penny
would, one day, have the Pemberton fortune as her dowry.

But before a proper impression could be made
on Lord Lyndon, it was necessary for her niece to negotiate the
formalities of an Embassy reception. “Penelope,” declared Miss
Pemberton in stentorian tones, “you will recall that the ambassador
is a Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin. I’m told he holds Robert the
Bruce’s sword at Broomhall, the family seat in Dunfermline. Even
though you have heard me–ah–declaim against his rumored destruction
of the treasures of the Acropolis, you will grant him the full
respect of his title and rank.”

“
But, of course, ma’am,” Penny agreed,
all innocence, “for surely he is saving them for posterity, is he
not?”

Miss Pemberton sniffed. “And what of Greek
posterity, pray tell? If Elgin’s men continue at the pace we
observed while we were in Athens, there will be nothing left. They
were supposed to be making drawings, yet they are loading up every
last bit of sculpture they can carry and have begun to chip the
friezes and metopes from the face of the Parthenon itself. ’Tis
little better than rape. It’s a wonder only one ship has sunk
beneath the weight so far.”

Since Penelope was accustomed to her aunt’s
plain speaking, she merely offered an indulgent smile. “I believe
we must be off, Aunt Cass. It would not do to keep Lord and Lady
Elgin waiting. And I will be good, I promise. Not one single
question about his marbles shall pass my lips.”

But Miss Pemberton was still standing firm,
uncajoled, her stern look very much in place.

“
Penelope, you will remember what I
told you about Lord Elgin’s deformity. By not so much as the blink
of an eye will you acknowledge that you have noticed. Do
you—”

“
Aunt! As if I ever would.”

“
Well,” Miss Pemberton huffed, “I am
sure I cannot imagine how he may look, for dread diseases of the
skin are not something with which I am familiar—”

“
What of the lepers we saw in
Ind—”

“
Enough! You will not breathe that
horrid word.”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Penny agreed meekly. In a
moment the small contretemps was forgotten, with neither lady
having the slightest inkling of the major role Thomas Bruce, Lord
Elgin, would play in their lives.

Miss Penelope Blayne, eyes shining with
delight over her debut into Western society in the exotic city of
Constantinople, came close to floating out the door in her Aunt
Cass’s wake. Her white satin slippers seemed to hover just above
the mosaic floor, threatening to launch into a dance at any moment.
She was going to a
reception
.
Not a musicale, tea party, afternoon card party, lecture, or even
an assembly laid on for the “young ones.” She was off to a genuine
evening affair at the residence of the Minister Plenipotentiary of
His Britannic Majesty to the Sublime Porte of Selim the Third,
Sultan of Turkey.

All was right with the world of Miss Penelope
Blayne. There was no frisson of warning, not the slightest hint of
a wrinkle in her cocoon of confidant security. For how could Penny
Blayne, a young bud formed in the gentle confines of Kent, England,
possibly know she was within days of the end of her innocence?

Jason Lisbourne, Viscount Lyndon, put his
quizzing glass to one cobalt blue eye and regarded Lord Elgin’s
guests with all the scornful ennui of a young man of one and twenty
to a courtyard full of people, most of whom seemed to be twenty or
more years his senior. One of the great attractions of his journey
to the once great capital of the Byzantine Empire was the tales he
had heard of its exotically lovely women. But so far his youthful
eagerness had not been rewarded. He might have seen exotic women in
the days of ancient Byzantium, for when the Emperor Constantine
moved the capital of the Roman Empire to a city on the
Bosphorus—the body of water that divided West from East—he had
taken Roman customs with him. But for four centuries now the
Ottomans had ruled Constantinople, and Viscount Lyndon found the
women swathed from head to toe, all but their huge dark eyes hidden
behind curtains of cotton, linen, or fine silk.

There were places he could go to find women,
his guides had been quick to reveal, but so far he had not done so.
Not that he was unaccustomed to paying for female favors, but
somehow a good English tavern wench, or a London demi-rep seemed
right and proper. A slave girl in a Levantine brothel did not. He
supposed London’s light ladies were as close to slaves as made no
difference . . . yet he found himself shying away from the local
commodities so loudly touted by his guides.

Truly, he had not thought himself so
fastidious. What man would not wish to see what was beneath the
veil? Certainly, his two traveling companions had been openly eager
to embrace the underbelly of Ottoman culture. Arrangements had, in
fact, been made. And Jason knew his resolve was weakening. Yet it
was possible he might find a rude surprise beneath the veil. Or
problems worse than ugliness. The kind that lingered . . . and
drove a man mad before they killed. Or caused their noses to
disintegrate, as had happened with his Scottish host.

With a curl of his lip, Viscount Lyndon
dropped his quizzing glass. In no hurry to join the milling throng
in the courtyard, he leaned against one of the marble pillars
supporting the roof of the loggia on which he was standing and
continued to examine the scene before him. The foreign residents of
Constantinople, unlike their counterparts in England, did not seem
to fear the night air. He had to grant there was a certain
attraction to an outdoor party, rather like an evening at Vauxhall.
The fountains cooled, as well as soothed—some a mere gurgle, others
shooting up into the early evening air well above the tallest
visitors’ heads. And the air was perfumed by flowers, many of which
Jason could not name. Marble benches, scattered about in places
where one might best view either flowing water or garden flowers,
invited intimate conversation.

He would have to leave his refuge soon, get
off the demmed pillar and plunge into the crowd, doing his duty as
a titled Englishman greeting a host of foreign dignitaries—most of
them younger sons—and their plump wives, spotted sons, and ugly
daughters. He must smile and shake hands with wealthy merchants and
their even more unappealing offspring. Society in Constantinople
was far more eclectic than the one to which he was accustomed. But
had his father not sent him on this Grand Tour to broaden his
education, gain polish in dealing with every type of situation? He
must—

Jason straightened off the pillar.
Quizzing glass forgotten, he stared at the vision of loveliness who
had just stepped out onto the loggia, not twenty feet away.
Exquisite
. The embodiment of the
dream every man keeps tucked away in his heart. Hair so pale it
might have been made of moonlight. A face to make the angels weep.
A gown of virginal simplicity, clinging to the petite but promising
figure of budding youth. Stunned, Viscount Lyndon failed to note he
was acquainted with the young lady’s chaperone, even when the two
women turned and walked straight toward him.

The older woman was tall and imposing, an
Amazon of a female. Although impeccably dressed in a long column of
amber silk, with matching turban, in which gemstones winked in a
style a pasha might have envied, her stride was that of a man,
strong and confidant. Spine straight, shoulders back, she looked
more as if she were marching in a military parade than negotiating
a marble loggia overlooking Lord Elgin’s courtyard. She stopped not
three feet from his pillar and looked him up and down. “Lyndon?”
she inquired, her sharp gray eyes peering intently up from only
slightly lower than his own.

In response to his slight bow of affirmation,
she flashed a triumphant smile. “I am Cassandra Pemberton. You were
naught but a scrubby schoolboy when last we met—Felicity
Warrington’s wedding, it was. My mother was a Warrington, as was
yours. You would scarce remember my dear niece, Penelope, however,”
she added, turning toward the beauty who hovered like a small moon
in the wake of Cassandra Pemberton’s sun. “My lord, may I present
Miss Penelope Blayne. Penelope, Jason Lisbourne, Viscount Lyndon.
Although you are not related by blood, my dear, you are connected
to him by marriage.”

As the very young lady sank into a
deep, and perfect, curtsey, Jason feasted his eyes, even as his
heart plummeted to his toes. She was a child, a veritable child.
Only a well-known eccentric, such as Cassandra Pemberton, would
commit the social
faux pas
of
bringing a schoolgirl to such a reception. For although he had not
recognized her face from that long-ago wedding, Miss Pemberton’s
name was legion. Everyone had heard of her unladylike traipsing
around the world, dragging her poor niece after her. Into every
momentary pause in the
ton
’s
scandals Cassandra Pemberton’s name would fall. There was always
some shocking new story to titillate jaded palates. And, if not,
nothing lively minds could invent would be too outlandish to be
believed of the peripatetic spinster from Kent.

Penny stared in wonder at Aunt Cass’s
previously unknown connection. He was everything her girlish heart
had ever dreamed of. From his golden hair and eyes of brilliant
azure . . . from his rich brown tailcoat and cream vest heavily
embroidered in gold to his dark breeches, gold-clocked stockings
and shiny black evening shoes, he was a young lady’s idea of
perfection. His face—darkened by what was undoubtedly months in the
Mediterranean clime—boasted a regal nose and full inviting lips,
though they seemed, as now, all too ready to curl into derision.
Oh, dear, what had she done? Why was he looking so . . . so
arrogant and withdrawn? Had Aunt Cass presumed, once again? He was,
after all, a viscount—

“
You must forgive my manners, ma’am,”
Viscount Lyndon drawled. “I was startled by Miss Blayne’s
youth.”

“
I am turned sixteen!” Stung, Penny
interjected herself into the conversation.

And looked a veritable child. The viscount
raised his quizzing glass, one enormously magnified, and
exceedingly distorted, eye examining her from head to foot. “Are
you quite, quite certain, Miss Blayne?” he inquired.

The sweet mockery of his tone was enough to
send Penny into battle. There were those who said she had been much
overindulged by a doting, though sometimes careless, aunt. It is
possible they were correct.

“
I saw you standing here, examining the
guests,” Miss Blayne informed the viscount, “quite as if you were
Zeus himself looking down from Olympus. And ‘tis plain Aunt Cass
and I are also numbered among the mere mortals attending Lord
Elgin’s reception. I am quite sorry for you, my lord, for I fear if
you scorn the ambassador’s guests, you will miss much of the exotic
flavor of Byzantium.”

Before responding, Viscount Lyndon broke his
aristocratic stance long enough to offer Miss Pemberton an
adult-to-adult look of condolence. “Byzantium is long gone, child,”
he announced to Penelope, “its treasures ripped from its palaces
and cathedrals and carted off to enrich the cities and manor houses
of the greedy, thieving knights of the Fourth Crusade. Most
particularly, Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice. Did you not know the
very walls of St. Mark’s are coated in the spoils of
Byzantium?”

Penny’s chin went up. “Of course I knew, my
lord. My Aunt Cass’s instruction is never bound by the narrow
confines of religious preference. I am well aware that Christians
looted Byzantium long before the coming of the Ottomans.”

Jason Lisbourne glared, and then his lips, of
their own accord, began to twitch. What English schoolgirl could
even find Constantinople on a map, let alone have the slightest
inkling of its history? Miss Penelope Blayne might look a scant
thirteen—except for that figure, of course—but her mind and
education might well be the equal of his own.

“
Have you just arrived in
Constantinople, Miss Blayne?”

“
We have barely had time to settle into
our villa,” she replied eagerly, the clouds clearing from her face
as if by magic at this simple offer of a truce, for she was at that
age where she could go from child to woman and back to child again
in a matter of moments. “We have seen nothing of the city but the
limited view from our carriage. I can scarcely wait to see
more!”

A slow smile lit the viscount’s face. It was
like the sun coming out from behind a great black cloud. Penny was
dazzled, while Jason Lisbourne was as captivated by her innocent
beauty and unfeigned enthusiasm as any other young man might be,
particularly one so far from home.

“
I believe,” he drawled, “that I am
able to show you something you would truly enjoy. Miss Pemberton .
. . if you and Miss Blayne would be willing to accompany me on a
small climb up to the roof? I vow you will find the view most
rewarding.”