The Panther and The Pearl (31 page)

“I’m so glad you’ll be able to attend the ceremony,” Sarah said to Memtaz.

The servant nodded happily. “The pasha said all may come. And Dr. Shakoz said the khislar is well enough to be up for a few hours as well.”
 

“Good.” It wouldn’t seem like an Orchid Palace event without Achmed.

“Is there anything else you need?” Memtaz asked.

“No. Please tell Kosem that I’m ready.”
 

Memtaz went to get the valide pashana, who would accompany Sarah to the coach, and then to the throne room, where Kalid was already waiting.

The pasha paced back and forth in front of his throne, oblivious to the crowd of his subjects who waited for the ceremony to begin. He ignored the halberdiers and janissaries who stood in attendance and the khislar who occupied a chair by the door, permitted to sit in the presence of the pasha because of his injury. Kalid looked repeatedly at only one spot: the door through which Sarah would enter the throne room to become his wife.

It seemed an eternity before she finally appeared, standing tall and regal behind Kosem, who was also outfitted in her finest, looking like a tiny doll. He watched as the women walked toward him and Sarah took her place at his side. He smiled tenderly and lifted the abayah, looking down into her face.

At the same time Turhan Aga stepped out of the crowd, banging his halberd on the floor.

Kalid whirled on him furiously, growling something in guttural Turkish.

Turhan said something in ancient, ceremonial language that Sarah couldn’t understand, but there was a murmur in the crowd, and Kalid left Sarah’s side abruptly, moving rapidly through the assembled people to the door.

“What is it?” Sarah said to Kosem, whose expression was wooden. “What’s wrong?”
 

“Someone objects to the marriage,” Kosem said evenly. “It is our custom that the ceremony should not take place until the grievance is aired, even if the groom is our pasha.”

Kosem did not seem surprised by the turn of events, and Sarah said to her, “Do you know something about this?”

Kosem made no reply, and then Sarah was stunned to see her cousin James appear at the entrance to the throne room. As she watched, aghast, Kalid made a gesture and two halberdiers seized her cousin and held him fast.

“Don’t worry, Sarah,” James yelled over the excited babble of the wedding guests. “You don’t have to marry this man!”
 

“Take him to the dungeon!” Kalid called.The halberdiers began to drag James away.
 

“You can’t stop me!” James shouted. “The American Embassy knows I’m here! I have come to take Sarah home.”

Chapter 13

Sarah ran up to Kalid and seized his arm. “If you have him arrested him I’ll never speak to you again,” she said tightly. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

Kalid jerked his arm away from her, but gestured for the guards to release James. They did so, and James shook himself, then straightened his coat and tie, his eyes on his Sarah.

“Clear the room of the guests,” Kalid said harshly to the janissaries. “There will be no wedding today.”

They all stood awkwardly as the people filed out, and then Sarah said, in as normal a tone as she could manage, “Just what exactly is going on here?”

“I’ve been trying to get in to see you since you disappeared from the Sultan’s harem, Sarah,” James said in a rush. “I finally sent a letter to the pasha here, and he replied that he would be busy for a month and unable to grant me an audience.”

Sarah looked at Kalid in astonishment, but he avoided her gaze, his expression grim.

“Then I finally tried to bribe my way inside the palace, and when the valide pashana heard about it she sent for me.”

Kalid turned to glare at his grandmother, who met his gaze defiantly.

“She told me that you had been kidnapped by the bedouins, and that the pasha had gone after you. She promised that if you came back here she would get word to me.”

A vein in Kalid’s temple was throbbing as he looked at the old lady. Sarah moved to Kosem’s side and took her hand, staring malevolently at Kalid.

He looked away.

“A few days ago I got a note from the valide pashana saying that you were in Bursa, and well, and planning to marry the pasha today,” James went on. “I left Constantinople and got here as soon as I could. This morning I sent a message to the pasha saying that I wanted to see him immediately. He refused an audience and barred me from the palace.”

Sarah’s eyes filled with tears of rage. She couldn’t even look at Kalid.

“How did you get in?” she whispered to James.

“The Captain of the Halberdiers is honor bound to obey the custom of admitting anyone who objects to a wedding to attend the ceremony. That’s why I’m here.”

Sarah looked at Turhan Aga, who was staring morosely at the floor. Not even for the pasha would he shirk his duty. He truly was an honest man.

“James, I will be with you in a few minutes,” Sarah said calmly. “Kosem, would you see that my cousin is made comfortable while he waits for me? I would like to speak to Kalid alone.”

Kosem looked at Kalid, who said flatly to the khislar, “Achmed, make sure that the ikbal’s wishes are fulfilled. Kosem will entertain our guest. The rest of you may go.”

When they were alone Sarah said to Kalid, “How could you do such a thing? How could you?”

He looked back at her stonily, saying nothing.

“You allowed me to think that my family didn’t care about me! You allowed me to think that I had been abandoned to whatever fate befell me here. You lied to me!”

“I didn’t lie. I merely didn’t tell you about your cousin’s inquiries,” he finally said.

“It’s the same thing!” She felt the fullness of more tears in her throat and fought them back. “When you told me I didn’t have to sleep with you in payment for my rescue from the bedouins, I thought you had changed. When you said I was still free to go home to Boston when we got back here, that it was my choice to stay with you, again I thought you had changed. That’s why I decided to marry you. I assumed you had learned to respect the feelings, and the free will, of someone other than yourself. Now I find out that all along you knew James was trying to contact me and you never even told me. You haven’t changed, Kalid, you were merely saying what you knew I wanted to hear in order to pacify me.”

He looked away from her.

“Can you give me one reason why didn’t you tell me?” she persisted.

“I thought if you assumed no one outside the palace was looking for you then you would be more likely to stay with me,” he said tonelessly.

“In other words, you tried remove the element of choice,” she said.

He did not deny it.

“Kalid, maybe it’s too much to expect from someone who was raised to believe that he is superior to everyone else, but I
should
have a choice. What you want is not the only thing that matters. I matter too. Didn’t you ever consider the implications of your silence on me? I knew James had received a message that I was here, and I thought he didn’t care enough about me to pursue it!”

“I care about you,” he said shortly. “That should be sufficient. And who sent your cousin James a message that you were here? Was it Kosem?”

“Leave Kosem out of this, it’s between you and me. It’s about respecting me as a mature human being and not thinking of me as property to be managed or a child to be controlled. How can I marry someone who views me as an object?”

For the first time he looked alarmed. “What are you saying?” he demanded, his eyes wary.

“I’m saying that I can’t marry you,” Sarah replied, crying openly now, removing the tiara from her head and setting it on a table. “I’m leaving with my cousin James.”

“What are you talking about?” Kalid said, seizing her arm in a viselike grip. “You love me, I know you do. You never would have slept with me if you didn’t. How can you even think of leaving?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t love you, I said I’m not going to marry you. Now will you please let me go?”

His hold on her arm tightened.

“What are you going to do, Kalid?” Sarah asked wearily. “Throw me in the dungeon, threaten to whip me, or Memtaz, again? Tell me that you’ll line up a row of draftees and shoot them in the head if I don’t do as you say? No matter what you do, or claim you will do, you can’t force me into the mold of the compliant little sex toy you so obviously want.”

“That’s not what I want,” he said bitterly, his fingers biting into her flesh.

“Oh, no?”

“No, Sarah. No man in his right mind would get involved with you just for sex, you are far too much trouble. I have a whole harem full of women willing and eager to warm my bed, but it is my sorry fate that I am besotted with you.”

“Then that’s our shared misfortune.” She tugged, and he finally released her so suddenly that she stumbled. She took off the rest of the gold rings and bangles she was wearing and set them next to the tiara.

“You are really going?” He seemed to be having some trouble absorbing it; after all of his time with Sarah, for it to come to this just when they were about to be married was an incomprehensible blow.

“Yes. I’ll go back to the harem to change. And I hope you’re honorable enough not to punish Kosem or interfere with my cousin’s business in this country after I’m gone. They did what they thought was right, and I hope that when you calm down you will understand that.”

He said nothing.

“I’ll leave anything else I have in the ikbal’s suite,” Sarah said, depositing her earrings in the pile of jewelry. “I want to go just as I came, with nothing.”

“Except memories,” he said.

She started to walk away from him, barely able to see for the tears in her eyes.

“I’ll haunt you,” he said, his voice breaking.

Sarah turned to face him one last time, dressed in his wedding day finery, looking as handsome as he had on the first day that she saw him.

“No, you won’t. You’ll miss me.”

She ran out of the room and he stared after her, shaken to the roots of his soul.

“So he wasn’t forcing you to marry him?” James asked incredulously.

“No. I know this is difficult for you to understand, James, but I love him. I just can’t be the kind of wife he really wants. He doesn’t see that now, but maybe he will, in time.”

James looked at this woman he had known all his life and felt as if he were staring at a stranger. They were waiting in the Carriage House for the escort to take them off the Orchid Palace grounds. Sarah had said painful goodbyes to Memtaz and Kosem and was now dressed in her split skirt and riding blouse, the only things she was taking with her. Her tear stained face was sad, but resolute.

She had not seen Kalid again since she left him in the throne room.

“But he kidnapped you, Sarah. He paid the Sultan for you and drugged you and spirited you away in the dark of night!”

“That’s the way it began, yes. And I was as outraged as you are about it, at first. But after I got to know him... well, he can be quite different from what you saw today.”

“He’s very handsome,” James said. “In the Western way, I mean. I was surprised when I saw him. I suppose that contributed to your feelings for him.”

Sarah sighed. “The situation is...complex, James. I just know that preventing me from hearing that you were trying to find me was unforgivable.”

“He did it because he wanted to keep you with him.”

“His reasons don’t excuse his behavior. And it wasn’t just this incident, there’s a whole pattern that I thought he had abandoned where I was concerned, but I was wrong. He once threatened to whip a friend of mine, the servant assigned to me at the palace, when I wouldn’t do something he wanted.”
 

“He threatened to whip a servant to get YOU to do what he wanted?”

“Yes.”

“He understood you very well.”

Sarah nodded resignedly.

“I just don’t see how you can go back to Boston and resume your old life after this... experience,” James said.

“I probably can’t. I’ve changed too much.”

“I don’t know if you’ll still have your job.”

Sarah looked at him in surprise. She hadn’t even thought about that.

“I wrote the school board after you disappeared and said that you had been...unavoidably detained,” James said.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“They wrote back and said if you returned by the spring semester they might still have a place for you.”

Sarah put her hand on his shoulder. “James, thank you for everything that you have done for me.”

He reached up and patted her hand. “Bea will be so glad to see you. She’s been very worried.”

“James, maybe we’d better not tell her about the wedding or my relationship with Kalid. I don’t think she’ll understand and I don’t want to upset her.”

James nodded.
 

Turhan Aga appeared in the doorway. “The coach is waiting to take you to the train station, Miss Sarah. The next train for Constantinople is in two hours.”