The Harem Bride (9 page)

So Jason told her, somehow finding calm,
coherent words to outline the seriousness of the situation, while
managing to leave some lingering hope. “I will go directly to Lord
Elgin,” the viscount assured her. “He will, I know, initiate every
diplomatic channel that might be useful. And Faik will begin
inquiries among the guides. There have to be rumors about what
happened to her. She is too great a treasure for someone not to let
a tongue slip, bragging of today’s work. I assure you, ma’am,
everything possible will be done. I pledge myself to your
service.”

For the first time in her life, Miss
Cassandra Pemberton knew what it was to be grateful to a man. This
boy, who had barely reached his majority, was revealed as more of a
man than any she had previously encountered. Her eyes filled with
unaccustomed tears. Her head dropped into her hands, and the sobs
came at last.

Viscount Lyndon, after calling for Miss
Pemberton’s maid, took his leave, sweeping Faik along with him.
When seated in the carriage, the viscount turned to the guide. “I
am a liar, am I not, Faik? There is no hope at all.”

“
Sometimes Allah is merciful, my lord,”
Faik intoned.

There were some who might say God had been
merciful to Aimée de Rivery, Jason thought, but a position as one
of the wives of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was far from the
life planned for the French schoolgirl. And it most assuredly was
not the life intended for Penelope Blayne. Yet any fate for a
captured beauty, other than being an odalisque of Sultan Selim the
Third, was worse.

Jason Lisbourne closed his eyes, rested his
chin on his fist, and wondered if Lord Elgin would be as adept at
locating lost maidens as he was at “rescuing” Greek
antiquities.

Penny roused to the horror of finding
herself encased in a tomb. All was dark, she could not move. Yet
she
was
moving. The wiggling
and jiggling, the close confinement, brought on a bout of nausea,
which she firmly repressed. She was so tightly wrapped up that
breathing was nearly impossible, and the thought of being ill under
these circumstances was too horrible to contemplate.

Tentatively, she flexed her fingers and
toes—ah, they worked!—then forced her mind to
think
. The Grand Bazaar. Carpets. That was it.
She was rolled up in a carpet, being carried over someone’s
shoulder.
She must scream!
But when she tried to draw breath, she encountered carpet
fibers that clogged her nose and filled her mouth. She managed
little more than a muffled squeal before the effort tumbled her
back into unconsciousness.

A thump woke her. The dizzy whirl of the
unrolling carpet. The blessed rush of air. She lay quite still,
struggling to find her wits; yet, when the world steadied, she was
afraid to look. Whatever awaited her here in this room could not
possibly be good.

Two men dragged her to her feet, held her up
between them. Although she could not understand a word being spoken
around her, pride and unsquelched curiosity forced her head up. She
stuck her chin in the air and glared at the man who seemed to be
giving the orders. Richly dressed, from the broad turban above his
bearded face to his heavily embroidered gold satin robe, he lounged
on a brocaded divan set on a raised dais. His dark eyes assessed
her with a gleam Penny had never before seen in a man’s eyes. Part
hard-headed business, she guessed. And the other? She suspected it
was that unknown—lust.

Hands—all-too-willing hands—ripped at her
gown. Penny screamed and fought. Laughing, the men brushed aside
her feeble efforts with insulting ease, quickly finishing their
task. Chemise, garters, stockings, half boots. Most horribly
humiliated, Penny stood before her captors, with one arm clutched
over her breasts, and one small hand splayed over her most private
part. She could feel a flush rushing up from her toes to stain her
cheeks and dizzy her mind. This could not be happening. It simply
could not. She was not here. She must have sampled one of the
hookahs in the bazaar, and this was all a mad hallucination.

By some miracle, her degradation was brief.
After having his two henchman turn her slowly around so he could
inspect every inch, the man on the dais gave a nod of satisfaction
and barked a command. An older woman scurried forward and threw a
linen robe around Penny’s shoulders. The man on the dais waved his
hand and two guards, armed with long curved swords dangling from
their belts, seized her arms. Penny found herself trailing after
the older woman, her feet skimming the floor of the audience
chamber. Behind her, she heard the chink of coins. No doubt the
sound of her captors being well rewarded for their efforts.

As they followed the older woman across a
courtyard, the guards slowed their pace, allowing Penny’s feet to
touch the tiles, an intricate mosaic so hot, she was thankful for
the drops of moisture spilling onto the walk from the central
fountain. As they continued on in the shadows of a colonnaded
loggia, Penny was actually grateful for the strong hands holding
her up, for pride dictated she not fall to her knees, and she very
much feared she could not stand by herself. The sun spots, which
had danced before her eyes as they crossed the open courtyard, had
not gone away. They flitted before her, like a legion of
fireflies.

She must bear up!
But despair shook her. This afternoon had been the worst of
her life, and she greatly feared it would only grow
worse.

The older woman swept aside heavy velvet
draperies hanging over an archway, then seized Penny’s arm in a
grip almost as strong as the guards’, before waving the men to
positions on either side of the arch. Inside, the steaming,
moisture-laden air hit Penny like a blow. Head swirling, she
staggered. More hands clamped down on her arms, and, suddenly,
Penny found herself seated on a surprisingly plain wooden stool in
a setting so exotic she could not quite take it in. Scattered about
the room were women with skins of every shade, from midnight black
to brown to warm tan. There was even one with skin almost as pale
as her own. Some of the women were sitting on stools exactly like
her own. Others perched on a stone dais near the center of the
room, a few with small children at their feet. Others lounged on
stone benches along the walls. Some of the women wore thin robes of
fine white linen, transparent from the dampness. Others wore
nothing at all.

Thoroughly shocked, Penny ducked her
head . . . until, at last, simple curiosity triumphed over her
innate English modesty. She raised her eyes, blinked, and took
another look. The misty vapors filling the room originated from
four huge sinks set against the walls. Above each one, a large pipe
poured out what was most certainly hot water.
Merciful heavens!
This was a bathing chamber!
Perhaps not so very different than the olden days in Bath, Penny
reasoned, for Aunt Cass had told her that bathing in the nude, even
with mixed sexes, had once been the custom in Bath’s warm
sulphurous springs. And had not the Romans spread their intricate
plumbing designs to the East, as well as to the West?
Constantinople was, after all, the final capital of the Roman
Empire.

For a few moments Penny was so fascinated she
almost forgot the seriousness of her situation. Until a bevy of
hands stripped off her robe and a bucket of startlingly hot water
sluiced over her head. She screamed. And was instantly mortified
that she had let these women see her fear.

It wasn’t fear! Truly, it wasn’t. She was
simply startled.

Penny only had time for one swift glance,
reassuring herself that the male guards had truly stopped outside
the velvet draperies, before three women, clad only in linen towels
wrapped round their waists, attacked her with sponges so rough they
reminded her of the time she had fallen into clump of raspberry
bushes. Penny squirmed, protested, was ignored. Another bucket of
hot water poured over her. Once again, the loofahs attacked. Her
skin was beginning to turn the shade of a cooked lobster. Tears
filled her eyes. This could not possibly be happening. Not to Miss
Penelope Blayne, of Kent, England. Not to Penelope Blayne, who had
traveled the world, inviolate behind the protection of wealth and
privilege.

At last—after suffering the humiliation of
having every square inch of her body scrubbed by strangers—it was
over. No, not quite. For the drying process was nearly as intimate.
When Penny was finally offered a dry white linen robe, she was so
grateful, her tears spilled over. To her surprise, many of the
women gathered round, making soothing sympathetic sounds. A huge
brass tray, piled high with fruit and pastries, appeared, as if the
slave who brought it had been waiting for the pale foreigner to
finish her bath. Several of the women continued to hover, offering
Penny tidbits from their own fingers, their faces anxious, hopeful,
urging her to eat.

Lacking a mutual language, was this the only
way the women could say, “Courage, Take Heart”? Touched, in spite
of her fear and despair, Penny accepted a sweet pastry, which
melted in her mouth and sent an instant surge of energy to her
flagging spirits. By the time she had nibbled a date and sampled
two more pastries and a cluster of grapes, her mind was beginning
to return from the pit into which it had plunged.

Aunt Cass must be frantic. To whom would she
turn for help? Lord Elgin, Viscount Lyndon? Would Faik have any
idea how to find her?

Would she ever see family or friends again?
Or was she destined to live out her life like the other women in
this room, cut off from any society but their own?

Except, of course, for occasional intimate
encounters with their lord and master?

Penny had no illusions. She was not that
naive. She was in a harem. And it was very likely she was here to
stay.

In all of his twenty-one years Jason
Lisbourne had encountered few true challenges. He had moved
serenely through a life filled with more love and understanding
than most young aristocrats of his time. His entrance into Eton and
Oxford had been assured from birth; he enjoyed women without
suffering any of the pangs experienced by some of his friends.
Everyone around him knew he would one day be the eighth Earl of
Rocksley, an old and venerable title, and treated him accordingly.
A long line of ancestors, noted for not frittering away their funds
on frivolous women or even more frivolous pastimes such as games of
chance, had increased the Lisbourne fortune until it was one of the
greatest in the land. In short, from the moment the expensive
London doctor had handed him to the maid standing by with
lace-edged linen towels, a silver bowl of warm water, and finely
embroidered swaddling cloths, life had flowed remarkably smoothly
for Viscount Lyndon.

Now, for the very first time, he was faced
with a challenge worthy of a knight of old. There was a fair maiden
in distress, and he, Jason Victor Granville Lisbourne, Viscount
Lyndon, was going to rescue her. Though, at the moment, the how of
it quite escaped him.

When Lord Elgin had, at last, been granted an
audience with the Sultan’s Vizier, he readily agreed to the
viscount’s presence at his side. Lord Lyndon was, the two men
reasoned, a connection of Cassandra Pemberton and, in an effort to
impress the totally male society in which they found themselves,
would be presented to the Grand Vizier as head of her family. But
the Vizier, the Ottoman equivalent of Prime Minister, had merely
looked askance at the two noble British petitioners and barked
words that had been translated as: he was distressed to hear of the
young lady’s disappearance, but even more distressed that Lord
Elgin should think he or his magnificence, Sultan Selim the Third,
could possibly have knowledge of such an outrage.

So now Jason sat alone, slumped onto a divan
in the main salon of the villa he and his friends had leased. He
had sent the others off on their evening adventures without him.
How odd to discover, after twenty-one years, that he had more
substance than he had thought, for somehow he could not enjoy
himself while God alone knew what was happening to little Penelope
Blayne. Why she had become his responsibility, he was not certain.
His connection to Cassandra Pemberton was tenuous, at best. But
thoughts of the lost girl haunted his days and his nights. He had
to get her back. It was his duty.

And, yes, he groaned to himself, his
self-esteem demanded it as well. No foreign bastard was going to
steal a woman under the protection of Jason Lisbourne! And if his
noble fervor was increased by the young lady’s sheer beauty, as
well as the lively spark in her eye, was that not a requisite
ingredient for a knight rescuing a fair maiden?

“
My lord, you have a visitor,” the
majordomo announced, a bit dubiously. “The man Faik.”

“
My lord.” Faik, hard on the
majordomo’s heels, salaamed, then crossed the room to stand before
the viscount. He stood tall and proud, his dark skin highlighted by
the room’s flickering oil lamps, augmented by a single brace of wax
candles. “There is a new rumor, lord. A mere thread, but it is
spreading through the bazaar quarter like fire or a
plague.”

Jason sat up straight, all attention. “Quick,
man, tell me!”

“
It is said that Mustafa Rasim, a
merchant of great wealth, has long wished control of all the poppy
fields in the eastern provinces. Such a gift would grant him riches
and power beyond all but the greatest men at court.”

“
Yes, yes, get on with it,
man!”

“
It is said that Mustafa Rasim has just
given a gift of great price to the Sultan, a foreign virgin so fair
her hair could be spun from moonlight. A very young woman of great
beauty.”