The Pleasure of Your Kiss (10 page)

She sometimes wondered if he had always been a slave and a eunuch. Or had he once had a wife of his own? A family? A voice?

As they entered the harem, a high-pitched titter assaulted their ears. Clarinda grabbed Poppy’s arm and urged her closer to the opposite wall, hoping to remain undetected by the two women who were huddled in the curtained alcove closest to the door. She could just make out their silhouettes behind a translucent veil of purple silk shot through with gold threads.

“Well? Have you seen this mysterious Englishman who saved our master’s life?” one of the women was asking.

“I have not,” her companion replied. “But Serafina managed to steal a peek at him on her way back from the spice cellar. As you know, most of the English are pasty and soft and look as if a harsh desert wind would blow them away. But not this one, Serafina swears. He is handsome. And strong. And hard.”

The first woman cupped a hand around the second woman’s ear and whispered something that sent them both into lusty gales of laughter.

“Serafina claims he has the golden eyes of a tiger and moves with the grace and power of a lion.” The first woman sighed. “I had hoped I would be summoned to attend him in his bath, but Solomon sent Zenobia and Salome. They returned a short while later and said he had sent them away and insisted on bathing himself. Can you imagine such a thing? A man bathing himself? The silly creatures must have displeased him in some way.”

Clarinda briefly closed her eyes, a treacherous swell of relief surging through her veins. Since she no longer had any claim whatsoever on Ash, she could only attribute it to nostalgia. While the women began to discuss exactly how they would go about
pleasing
the handsome, golden-eyed Englishman in his bath, she tugged Poppy past the alcove, thankful for once that their slippers consisted of little more than scraps of colorful fabric.

As they passed beneath the gracefully arched doorway at the end of the long corridor and into the main hall of the harem, Clarinda’s nostrils were overwhelmed by a choking cloud of incense and the cloying scents of dozens of women oiled and perfumed to within an inch of their lives.

The sultan’s wealth was on display in every carefully chosen detail of the spacious octagonal chamber. The domed ceiling had been trimmed with genuine gold leaf while detailed murals had been painted on each panel of the ceiling, many of them erotic in nature. The top half of the walls consisted of teakwood latticework, which contributed to the airy, yet unsettling, feeling of being trapped in an oversize birdcage. Graceful columns carved from priceless marble and topped with bas-relief of papyrus leaves were scattered throughout the room. The floor had been tiled with mosaics in rich shades representing every color of the rainbow.

The chamber’s opulence would have put even the most extravagant ballroom in London to shame. But to Farouk it was nothing more than a setting for his most prized jewels—the beautiful women reclining on pillows and couches throughout the room in various states of repose and undress.

Normally in the early-afternoon hours the women of the harem would be napping while eunuchs and young slave girls stirred the sultry air around them with huge fans adorned with precious gems and peacock feathers. But on this afternoon a current of excitement had swept through their ranks, leaving them wide-eyed and alert and whispering among themselves. Since they had little to occupy their idle hours but gossip and petty intrigues of their own making, Clarinda wasn’t surprised the arrival of Farouk’s exotic guests had generated such a stir among them.

In some ways life in the harem was no different from life at Miss Throckmorton’s Seminary. Only here, instead of receiving instruction on dancing and needlework, the women learned the most effective techniques for weaving jewels into their elaborate braids and how to indulge a man’s every sexual fantasy.

At first glance, it might even appear that the sultan’s women enjoyed an extraordinary degree of freedom compared to their English counterparts. They rose whenever they wanted and had their every need tended to by devoted slaves. They weren’t expected to lace themselves into rigid corsets or shove their feet into shoes that pinched their toes, but wore flowing robes or loose-fitting trousers that were more like pantaloons.

They didn’t spend hours engaged in dutiful but dull pursuits such as doing needlework, practicing scales on the pianoforte, composing answers to endless stacks of correspondence, or learning how to pour the perfect cup of tea. Instead, they could while away a morning sunning themselves in the enclosed garden of the harem and spend the afternoon curling up with a book of poetry or having their taut muscles kneaded by the capable hands of a eunuch. It wasn’t hard to understand how they had all managed to learn English at Farouk’s command. With that much time on her hands, Clarinda could have mastered several languages.

She might have envied them their indolent lifestyle, but once the doors of the harem clanged shut, it quickly became evident that their freedom was only an illusion. They might be pampered and spoiled, but they were just as much captives to the sultan’s whims as the slaves who served him.

Some of Farouk’s women were wives, others concubines. No matter their station in life, they each had only one purpose. They existed solely to serve the sultan. To see to his needs and provide for his pleasure. To give him ease—either carnal or simply by cradling his head in their lap and stroking his brow while he poured out his cares on their sympathetic ears.

Although she had been desperately casting about for some way to escape before Ash’s implausible appearance in the courtyard, Clarinda had begun to fear it was only a matter of time before she took her place among their ranks. Then she would lose what little freedom she had as Farouk’s
guest
and be doomed to spend the rest of her life beating frantically against the bars of this gilded cage.

She had even wondered how long it would take her to become like the others. To end up living for the hope
she
might be the one summoned to the sultan’s bed that night, if only to break up the soul-sucking monotony of the long, languid hours.

Aside from the locked doors and the towering eunuchs guarding them, one other thing was amiss in the harem—there were no children. No little feet scampered over the tiled floor, no bright bubbles of laughter floated up to the domed ceiling. If she gave Farouk a son or a daughter, the child would be wrested from her arms at birth, given to a wet nurse, and taken away so it could be raised by strangers in another part of the palace.

Clarinda felt her features harden into an expression she hardly recognized. She would never let such a thing happen. She would scale the palace walls herself and march barefoot across the scorching sands of the desert before she let anyone tear a child from her arms.

As she and Poppy began to wend their way through the chamber, several of the women cast them furtive glances beneath their lashes. Others openly stared, not bothering to hide the resentment simmering in their kohl-lined eyes.

Clarinda knew they despised everything about her, especially her pale skin, green eyes, and long blond hair, which was a constant source of both contempt and envy to them. With their luxuriant dark tresses, almond-shaped eyes, and ripe curves, most of them were more beautiful than she could ever hope to be. But they had been born knowing what she had learned only in the months since her abduction.

Men didn’t crave beauty. They craved novelty.

Even more than her fair English looks, they resented her freedom to come and go as she liked without being ordered or summoned, to roam the corridors of the palace without a guard or a veil to protect her from prying male eyes. That privilege, more than any other, proclaimed her special place in their master’s heart.

And earned their undying enmity.

Clarinda had survived their rancor for the past three months by telling herself that under other, less cutthroat circumstances, she might have found friends among them. That enabled her to hold her head high as she crossed the chamber, pretending just as she had during her first days at Miss Throckmorton’s that their taunts and slights did not trouble her.

She might have succeeded in that ruse if a woman hadn’t uncurled herself from a purple fainting couch with the sleek grace of a jungle cat and sauntered over to plant herself directly in their path. As Clarinda was forced to a halt, Poppy huddled behind her, no doubt remembering the many times Clarinda had protected her from the bullies at the Seminary.

Clarinda eyed the woman, her gaze coolly appraising. It was the sloe-eyed Yasmin, who had appointed herself Clarinda’s chief adversary and tormentor.

According to what little gossip Poppy had been able to glean by eavesdropping on the other women, Yasmin had been about to take her place as one of the sultan’s most honored wives when it was discovered she was not the innocent she had claimed to be. Given how proud and possessive Moroccan men were, she was lucky to have escaped with her life. Some whispered it was her extensive
talents
on the sleeping couch that had convinced Farouk to spare her life and keep her on as one of his concubines after learning of her deception.

With her pouting, plum-colored lips, her waist-length fall of glossy midnight-black hair and her dancing, dark eyes, she was truly one of the most stunning women in the harem. Her nose was a shade too large for her heart-shaped face, but that only gave her beauty a more exotic appeal. Her lush curves were covered by little more than scraps of translucent silk fashioned to draw a man’s eye to the dusky circles of her areolas and the hint of shadow at the juncture of her thighs.

From the day Clarinda and Poppy had arrived at the harem, Yasmin had made no secret of her loathing for them. Clarinda suspected it was only respect for—and fear of—her beloved master that had prevented Yasmin from poisoning Clarinda’s wine or slipping a jeweled dagger between her ribs while she slept. At least at Miss Throckmorton’s she’d only had to worry about barbed words and venomous gossip.

The woman planted her hands on her shapely hips and lifted her chin to an even more haughty angle as she surveyed Clarinda with open contempt. Her harem sisters sat up straighter and leaned closer, like sharks scenting fresh blood in the water.

“We hear that one of your own kind has arrived at the palace,” Yasmin said.

“Indeed?” Clarinda replied pleasantly, refusing to give the woman the satisfaction of confirming or denying what she already knew to be true.

“We were discussing just what might bring a strapping Englishman to our doors. We have decided that perhaps he tires of bedding bony English ice princesses and desires a taste of a real woman in his bed.” Yasmin cast a glance over her shoulder, making sure her audience’s avid attention had not wavered. “Or several real women.”

As the women behind her collapsed on their couches in fits of giggles, Yasmin’s lips curved in a triumphant smile.

Clarinda kept her face carefully impassive. “Unlike Moroccan men, Englishmen don’t require a multitude of women to satisfy their desires. They only require one. As long as she is the
right
woman.”

Although her sultry voice was still clearly audible throughout the chamber, Yasmin drew closer, as if to share a confidence. “Had Solomon sent me to attend this Englishman in his bath, he would not have sent me away. I would have proven myself to be the right woman to satisfy his
every
desire.”

Clarinda had learned about far more than just the proper way to weave jewels into her hair in the past three months, and as an image of this woman on her knees at Ash’s feet flashed through her brain with shocking clarity, she had to curl her twitching hand into a fist to keep it from slapping the smug expression from Yasmin’s face.

Leaning even closer to Yasmin, Clarinda lowered her voice to an actual whisper, one intended only for Yasmin’s ear. “If you were able to satisfy a man’s
every
desire, you would be Farouk’s wife instead of his concubine, would you not?”

Clarinda was the only one standing close enough to see the flash of hurt in Yasmin’s dark eyes. She felt a reluctant twinge of remorse. It must be doubly galling to be forced to live as little more than a slave when you were plainly born to be a queen.

Knowing instinctively that the slightest inkling of sympathy would be construed as a weakness to be exploited later, she forced her feet into motion, neatly sidestepping Yasmin and sweeping the rest of the way across the chamber.

Although she couldn’t afford the luxury of glancing over her shoulder to savor her triumph, Poppy was not bound by such constraints. “What on earth did you say to the hateful creature? She looks more inclined than ever to murder you in your sleep.”

Clarinda tossed her head, keeping her own voice deliberately light. “I told her that the mysterious Englishman—and his desires—were absolutely no concern of mine.”

Clarinda restlessly paced the curtained alcove that served as her bedchamber as she waited for her summons to join the sultan for supper. Since she was still being treated as Farouk’s honored guest, she wasn’t required to sleep in the main hall with the other women but had been given this tower retreat at the top of a narrow flight of stone stairs. Poppy slept in an even smaller alcove directly off the hall.

Clarinda’s alcove contained little more than a luxurious sleeping couch heaped high with an array of pillows and bolsters in vibrant earth-toned patterns, but at least it was hers. And tonight, more than any other, she was grateful for the privacy it afforded her, even if that privilege had also given Farouk’s wives and concubines yet another reason to resent her.

The older women who served the occupants of the harem, many of whom had once been the cherished concubines of Farouk’s father, had already come and gone, taking their lotions and potions with them. Although one could never accuse them of being lax in their duties, they seemed to have taken extra care with her appearance on this night. They must have been informed she was about to be put on display not only for the sultan but for his foreign guests as well.