Taming Charlotte (10 page)

“Let me go!” she cried, struggling.

“Enough!” Rashad said, appearing at the foot of the table and glowering down at her. “You will be silent!”

She subsided, but her mind sought a method of escape even as she ceased her struggles and lay glaring up at the women who attended her.

When Charlotte’s legs and underarms were smooth and bare, she was washed again, then fragrant oils were massaged into her skin. She closed her eyes, willing her body to be tense, ready for battle, but all her muscles went loose with decadent abandon.

She was dressed in a dancer’s garb: bright yellow harem pants with transparent legs and a tight-fitting bodice, sparkling with topazes, that revealed her stomach. Over these scanty garments went a brown silk robe, embossed with golden thread.

Charlotte’s hair was carefully toweled, scented, and then brushed. One of the women wove tiny orange flowers through the tresses, and another lined Charlotte’s eyes with kohl and painted her lips with pink rouge. With dignified resignation, she followed Rashad out of the harem and along the winding hallways.

“If Khalif thinks he’s going to touch me, he’s wrong,” she said, to Rashad’s broad back.

She thought the eunuch chuckled, but his bearing was stern. He didn’t turn to meet her gaze as he boomed out, “You will do whatever the sultan tells you to do.”

“In a pig’s eye,” Charlotte responded. She was whistling
in the dark and she knew it, but her pride wouldn’t let her accept such a travesty meekly.

This time Rashad glanced back at her. “You will not last long,” he said, with certainty and regret. “You are much too contentious and unruly.”

Charlotte sighed, exasperated. “What are you going to do? Feed me to the sharks?”

The eunuch had resumed his rapid pace. “That fate would be preferable, I assure you, to angering the
sultana valide. “

Charlotte made no response, for she was sure Rashad’s comment was only too true. She followed the eunuch until they came to a huge chamber, where braziers filled the air with the aroma of incense. Here, there was another dais, this one glittering with thousands of tiny mirrors. There were cushions and couches everywhere, and other women, in revealing clothes like Charlotte’s, danced to the music of the tiny bells tied around their ankles.

Khalif was seated on a cushion in the midst of the dancers, looking very much the sultan in his costly blue robes. A gigantic sapphire decorated the front of his turban, and his bright, dark eyes were speculative as he studied the new arrival.

“Charlotte,” he said, and she thought she saw one corner of his mouth curl in a smile, though she couldn’t be certain. He gestured with both hands. “Come forward. I would look at you.”

Charlotte wet her lips nervously with the end of her tongue and took a few steps toward him.

“Turn around,” the sultan instructed, not unkindly, but with the kind of casual dispatch only a potentate would have the brass to carry off.

She made a hesitant little circle in front of him.

“Ah,” he sighed. “Sometimes honor is a great burden.”

Charlotte frowned, perplexed.

“Sit,” Khalif said, with another sigh, gesturing toward a nearby cushion. “Enjoy the dancing. Tonight we are joyous before Allah.”

Relieved and confused, Charlotte took a seat on the indicated pillow without comment. A servant gave her
boza
in a golden chalice, and she actually began to relax as she watched the dancers whirl past like a flurry of brightly colored birds.

Charlotte had not been submitted to the training some of the other women in the harem were undergoing, but she had discerned enough about the culture to know she must not speak to Khalif unless he asked her a question. Baiting Rashad was something else—she’d already guessed that the eunuch had the patience of the Almighty—but the sultan held the power of life and death in his hands. Even though he’d been kind to Charlotte, rescuing her from his brother Ahmed that night when she was returning from Patrick’s quarters, she knew he could be ruthless if he chose, even brutal.

“Have you seen my sons?” Khalif inquired, after clapping his hands and causing the dancers to disband. Talking among themselves, they went to the long, low table next to the dais and began sampling the staggering variety of food displayed there.

Charlotte was startled for a moment—her mind had been wandering, skipping over the courtyard wall and across the sea in search of one Patrick Trevarren—but then she smiled and shook her head. “I wasn’t allowed into Alev’s apartments, but I heard she’d given birth to twin boys.”

Khalif nodded, and it seemed that his whole countenance beamed with pleasure. “It is good for a man to have many sons,” he said.

Swallowing a demand to know what was wrong with daughters, Charlotte tried to look demure. “Are there others?” she asked. “Besides the twins?”

The sultan looked troubled. “Yes,” he said. “But one can never be sure they are safe.”

Charlotte felt a chill, despite the uncomfortable warmth of the room, “Surely your children are protected, here in the palace—”

“There are always spies,” Khalif mused. “There are enemies, and small intrigues among the women.” His pensive expression faded in the next instant, however; he summoned the dancers back from the refreshment table.

Once again they whirled around him, this man who was the hub of their world, reflections of their yellow and red and blue and green garments fragmenting in the mirrors on the dais.

Charlotte began to feel dizzy, and looked away. She immediately spotted Ahmed, leaning against a far wall, his arms folded, staring at her. Like Khalif, he wore a turban and robe, but his clothes weren’t of the same grand quality.

She bit her lower lip and made herself watch the dancers.

The evening stretched on interminably. There was more dancing, more eating, more laughter. Finally Khalif made a selection from among the harem women who had attended him so faithfully, and sent the rest away with a perfunctory dismissal.

Charlotte hurried to join the others, vastly relieved that she had not been selected to remain with Khalif in his quarters. She felt Ahmed watching her when Rashad came to collect the women the sultan had sent away, and stayed close to the eunuch.

As she lay on her couch that night, tears of loneliness, fear, and frustration brimmed in her eyes. She might as well stop deluding herself; Patrick wasn’t going to come back for her, and she would probably never see Quade’s Harbor again.

Instead, she would live out her life in Khalif’s harem. Eventually the sultan would send for her, and she’d have no choice but to obey his summons. Maybe she would have children eventually, and a measure of happiness, like Alev.

She wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand. She didn’t want another man touching her the way Patrick had, planting his seed in her. She’d rather die in the desert…

Slowly, her heart pounding, Charlotte rose on her couch and sniffled. No one stirred; she knew the
sultana valide was
snoring in her quarters, exhausted from overseeing Alev’s delivery, and she had not seen Rashad since her return to the harem earlier.

She groped beneath her couch until she found a pair of flat sandals the eunuch had given her and put them on. Then, rising, she carefully lifted the lid of the chest that held her belongings and took out the plainest robe and veil she had.
When she was dressed, she crept into the courtyard, where the elm tree rustled in the night breeze, its leaves ruffled in silvery starlight.

Charlotte made herself sit down on the bench and think, though her every impulse bade her to scramble over the wall and flee. She would need water and food to survive the journey.

As much as she wanted to, she knew she couldn’t make her escape that night.

So it was that Charlotte began hiding bits of dried fruit in her clothing chest. She took hard black bread, too, and small cheeses with rinds to protect them from the air. She squirreled away dates and a variety of nuts, but water was still a problem.

Finally she stole a silver flask from one of the other women—Charlotte didn’t dare even think what the penalty for thievery might be—and filled it with water the first chance she got. The fancy bottle didn’t hold much, but it was better than nothing, and she couldn’t wait around hoping a wine flask or a canteen would turn up.

One night, when Alev’s babies were seven days old, Charlotte waited until she was sure everyone was asleep, then got up from her couch, dressed, took the flask and the bundle of food she’d gathered, and slipped out to the courtyard. It was bathed in the light of a million stars, though there was no moon.

Standing on the bench under the elm tree, Charlotte put the flask in a pocket of her robe, rolled the garment up around her waist, and held the bundle of food in her teeth. Then she shinnied up the rough trunk, nimble as a monkey.

She didn’t let herself think about the things that would happen if she was caught; no, Charlotte kept her mind firmly focused on success. She could not fail, she refused even to entertain the prospect.

She crawled along a branch, selected for its sturdiness, until she reached the wall. Then, after a deep breath and a whispered prayer, she leaped over it and landed with a thump in the white sand.

Charlotte huddled in the shadows for a few moments, catching her breath, waiting for her heart to stop its wild
palpitations. When she had herself under some control, she ran for the desert, as hard as she could go, promising God she would never indulge her penchant for mischief again if only He’d let her escape.

She ran until she was out of breath, until she was stumbling and falling in the sand, then forced herself to moderate her pace. Once or twice she looked back to see the palace receding grandly into the distance, but there seemed to be no one in pursuit.

Charlotte walked, hoarding her small supply of water, letting the stars guide her. Surely she would come upon a village or even a city soon, and someone would help her get back to the Continent, where she could find a British or American embassy.

Gradually the stars faded and the sun rose.

At first Charlotte was wonder-struck by the beauty of a crimson sunrise spilling over snow white sand, but as the splendor of dawn gave way to the bright heat of morning, she was forced to take a sip of her precious water. She stopped once, and nearly decided to go back, but the palace was no longer visible and the hot desert wind had wiped away her footprints.

An hour passed, and then another, and the sun was relentless.

Charlotte kept walking. The air shimmered and undulated, like an ocean, and for a while it seemed that Lydia, her strong, sensible stepmother, walked beside her. “You’re never defeated unless you quit,” Lydia said. She was wearing a sprigged cotton dress and carrying a parasol that cast cool shadows over her soft blond hair and beautiful face.

“You’re only a mirage,” Charlotte pointed out, opening the flask and taking her second drink since her departure. “But you’re right.”

Lydia faded, but after a while, Charlotte’s father, Brigham Quade, took her stepmother’s place. “You’ve gotten yourself into a hell of a mess this time, Charlie,” he said good-naturedly.

“I know that,” Charlotte said, somewhat shortly. Sun-addled as she was, she knew this vision wasn’t really her
father, and therefore she didn’t have to be polite. “If you’re going to talk to me, at least give me some sensible advice.”

“Go easy on the water,” Brigham complied. “You’re a long way from the pump house.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes and trudged on. She was in desperate trouble, and she knew it, but she still didn’t truly regret leaving the palace. To her way of thinking, it was better to risk everything for freedom and die in the attempt than to spend the rest of her life in the harem.

Finally, just when she thought she would surely fall to the hot sand and fry like a sausage on a griddle, she spotted a series of dunes off to her right. Some of the higher ones were casting shadows—cool, dark ponds of twilight.

Charlotte stumbled into one of them, praying the shade wasn’t a figment of her imagination, like Lydia and her papa had been. She sank to her knees, her fingers digging deep into the fine sand, and let the shadows hide her from the sun. As her consciousness slipped away, she knew for a fact that she was going to die.

When she awakened—because of the heat, she quite expected to find herself in someplace other than heaven—she was looking up into a familiar face. Khalif stared down at her, his dark eyes grim.

“Foolish one,” he scolded gruffly, lifting Charlotte into his arms. She blinked, saw that there were half a dozen riders around them.

“Patrick?” she asked, but the name only trembled on her lips. There was no breath behind it.

Khalif set Charlotte on the back of an impatient sorrel gelding and swung deftly up behind her. When she was settled, he opened a canteen and held it to her lips.

“Slowly,” he warned. “Drink very slowly.”

Charlotte’s craving for water was all-pervasive, but she managed to obey the sultan’s command because she knew he spoke from experience. She drank as much as Khalif would allow, then sagged against his chest. She was barely conscious of the powerful horse carrying them back to the palace beside the sea.

She drifted in and out of awareness during the ride, and awakened briefly to find herself in the harem again. Alev and
Rashad were stripping away her clothes, which seemed bonded to her skin, but she could not find the strength to protest. If she came too close to the surface, she knew, she would feel the pain, and she wasn’t ready for that.

Later, a cool, soothing cream was applied to her flesh. The pain drew nearer, snarling at her like a beast in the darkness.

Then her head was lifted, and some potion was poured onto her tongue. It was vile-tasting stuff, but it drove the dragon away, and soon she floated on a cloud woven of a thousand dawns and sunsets.

She heard Alev’s voice. “Will she live?”

“I’m certain of it,” Rashad responded. “Though I daresay the
sultana valide
will make her wish she hadn’t.”

Inwardly Charlotte flinched, not from fear, but anger. She hadn’t escaped, she was still a prisoner in the palace, but that didn’t mean she would let one mean old woman bully her. She was determined to recover, if only to spite the sultana.