“But that is wonderful!” Skye answered her. “Why are you so cast down, Aidan?”
“I cannot be certain that it is Conn’s child!” came the despairing cry.
Suddenly it was all clear to Skye, and she gathered Aidan into her arms saying, “Tell me about it.”
The warm and sympathetic tone of her sister-in-law’s voice was enough to cause Aidan to shed a few tears which acted to release some of her fear and tension. She cried softly for a moment or two against Skye’s green silk shoulder, and then stopping as suddenly as she had started she pulled Skye down to sit upon the bed with her and began to speak.
“I lost Conn’s child immediately after I was kidnapped, miscarrying it aboard the vessel that took me to Algiers. From that time my moon cycles have not been regular. I never knew when the link would be broken. That is why I cannot be certain whose child it is I carry. Within a relatively short period I was possessed by three men. Prince Javid Khan, the sultan, and Conn. I honestly do not know whose seed it is that now grows within my womb. How can I therefore be joyful about my state? What if it is not Conn’s child?”
“If you cannot be certain, neither can Conn,” said Skye. “I know my brother, and I believe that any child of yers he will consider a child of his.”
“I should not mind if it were Javid Khan’s child,” said Aidan softly, and then she flushed embarrassed. “Ye must think me a terribly wanton creature for saying that, but in my way I cared for him, and he was a good man. I wish I could explain that to ye. Everything is so different in the East. I was considered the prince’s wife for he married me in his own faith, and freed me as a wedding gift.” She sighed. “How can anyone understand it?”
“I understand,” said Skye quietly, “for you see, my dear Aidan, once I, too, was in a similar situation to yers. After the death of my first husband, Dom O’Flaherty, it was arranged that I wed with the man who had been my first love, Niall, Lord Burke. In those days I was already the mother of two sons, and at barely eighteen I was responsible for the entire well-being of my family. Despite the fact I had five brothers, they were all too young for the great responsibility of my father’s office, and my elder sisters were not capable of it. So it was that my dying father appointed me the O’Malley of Innisfana. Conn was a little boy of three then.” She smiled.
“During the period of my mourning for my father I built his ships into a respectable merchant fleet, and it was agreed that I should accompany my fleet to Algiers before my wedding. Niall, God rest him, had no love for the sea; but he came along with us. We were but several days out of Algiers when we were attacked by Barbary pirates. Our safe-conduct pennant had been blown ragged and away in a storm we encountered, and so the pirates who were out of Algiers did not know that we sailed under the protection of the man who was then the city’s dey.
“In the battle that ensued I was captured, and I believed that I saw Niall Burke killed. The shock of it all took my memory from me, and when I finally regained my senses I found myself in the possession of a man called Khalid el Bey, a man known as the Great Whoremaster of Algiers. I could remember nothing of myself but my first name, Skye. He, however, called me publicly Muna el Khalid, which means Desire of Khalid, although in private he called me Skye.
“Khalid had meant to train me for his finest house of pleasure which was called the House of Felicity, but he fell in love with me instead, and I with him. He freed me when he married me as Prince Javid Khan freed ye when he married you according to the Muslim rite, I assume.”
“Yes,” said Aidan, and her eyes were wide with wonder at what Skye was telling her.
“We were very happy, Khalid and I,” Skye continued. “Although it bothered me to a certain extent that I could not remember anything of my past but the fact that I was called Skye, I was content. It was during my first stay in Algiers that I met Robbie, who was Khalid’s business partner in a trading venture that both had invested in, and it was then that I also met my good friend, Osman, the astrologer. The slavewoman who oversaw the operation of the House of Felicity, however, had been in love with Khalid for years, and she was painfully jealous when he married me. Khalid’s best friend, Jamil Pasha, the kapitan commander of the Kasbah fortress, had seen me unveiled, and coveted me. Together these two plotted against us, and Jamil tricked poor Yasmin into believing that she was murdering me in my sleep, when it was really Khalid she killed. When Yasmin learned her mistake she confessed all to me, and then took her own life.
“Forewarned against the kapitan I was able to stave off the advances of Jamil Pasha for a thirty-day mourning period during which time with Robbie’s aid I secretly moved Khalid’s wealth from Algiers to England, and then escaped from Jamil. He was a very wicked man and my secretary’s wife, Marie, sent him a plate of sweetmeats in my name just before we left. They were his favorites, and he ate them all; but Marie had added to the sweetmeats a drug which rendered Jamil impotent. It was a clever revenge.”
“I wish I had been able to do that to Sultan Murad!” said Aidan with a vehemence that Skye had never believed her capable of. “God, how I hated him!” Her voice suddenly dropped, and she shivered as her eyes filled with loathing and memory. “The things he did to me, Skye! Terrible things he did to me!”
“Tell me,” said Skye calmly.
“I cannot,” Aidan whispered, her tone one of horror.
Skye leaned forward and took her sister-in-law’s hands in hers. Her blue-green eyes were serene, yet as serious as her voice. “I returned to Algiers a second time many years after my first sojourn there, Aidan. By that time I had been married a third time to Geoffrey Southwood who had died along with our younger son, John, in an epidemic; and was now at last, my memory restored, the wife of Niall Burke. Our two children were born, but both were babies when Niall was captured, and sold into the galleys. It was there he was seen by a slave merchant who purchased him from the galleys because he knew that he could sell Niall to Princess Turkhan, a half-sister of your Sultan Murad, a lovely young widow who lived in the city of Fez in the kingdom of Morocco.
“The princess had a great taste for men, and kept a male harem of her own to the shock of all. No one, however, dared interfere with her for she was Sultan Selim’s daughter; a fabulously wealthy royal Ottoman princess who gave so generously to the poor, and was so popular with the very people she cared for, yet shocking.
“When I learned where my husband was, Aidan, I sought to rescue him, but in order to reach Fez, which is a holy city, and therefore closed to foreigners and infidels, I had to be a member of a citizen of Fez’s household. Osman had a nephew, Kedar, and pretending I was a slavegirl he had purchased in the bazaar he presented me to his nephew who came twice yearly to Algiers from Fez with his caravans, and always stayed with Osman.
“Kedar, my dear Aidan, was the most lustful man I have ever known. His appetite for women, for me, was insatiable. His sensuality knew no bounds. He enjoyed taking several women together, to seeing women perform acts upon each other. He invented sexual games in which all the women of his harem were required to participate. He resorted to lotions, and potions and he possessed several appalling ivory dildos fashioned exactly as he was fashioned which he used upon his women as either an instrument of pleasure, or one of torture as the mood suited him. There is nothing, Aidan, that ye can tell me that was done to ye by Sultan Murad that will shock me, but if ye are to relieve yerself of the unhappy memories ye possess, ye must face those memories bravely and squarely.”
“Javid Khan,” Aidan began hesitantly, “was a gentle lover. He taught me things that gave me pleasure. Things that Conn certainly never did to me.”
Skye smiled. She could well imagine what Javid Khan had taught Aidan that gave her pleasure, that Conn had not done to her. Conn did not understand, having never been told, that there was really no great difference in making love to “good” women as opposed to making love to “bad” women. “I hope,” she said, “that ye will tell Conn what it is that yer prince did that gave ye pleasure.”
“Dare I?” Aidan was surprised by Skye’s words.
“If ye do not tell him, then who will?” Skye demanded of her. “But go on with your story.”
Aidan continued on with her story, her voice occasionally faltering, particularly when she described, or tried to describe the demeaning perversions that Sultan Murad had forced upon her. At that point she could go no further, and her eyes filled with tears.
Skye closed her eyes for a moment as her own dark memories assailed her. “It’s all right, Aidan,” she said comfortingly. “I know what it is ye are trying to say, and ye don’t have to speak the words. What the sultan did to you is a particular unkind perversion favored by men who think by doing such a thing they prove their superiority over women.”
“I hated it,” Aidan said fiercely. “I felt so helpless, but that was only the beginning. Sometimes he liked having other women with us, and then there were the little silver balls with which he enjoyed torturing me.”
Here was something new, thought Skye. She had never heard of this particular perversion. “Tell me about them,” she said frankly curious, and Aidan obliged her. “God’s nightshirt!” Lady de Marisco swore softly when Aidan had finished. “I thought I knew all, but I never encountered your little silver balls, Aidan.”
“They were a gift to the sultan from the Emperor of China, I was told,” replied Aidan. “Oh, Skye! It was so terrible! The sultan was never satisfied. There were nights when he kept me with him the whole night, and still had three or four others brought to him so he might use them while I watched. God, how I hated him, and how I pray that the child I carry is not his!”
“The child ye carry is yers, Aidan. Never stop thinking that! It is
yer
child who will bear
yer
name even as Conn bears yer name. Ye must tell my brother of yer honest fears. He will understand.”
“How can he?” Aidan cried. “How can he be so accepting of such shame? Oh, we can pretend to the world that we have simply been in France these past months, waiting out a temporary exile meted out to Conn by the queen, but Skye, he and I know the truth of the matter. I have spent over a year away from my husband, enslaved in a carnal bondage by two other men! We cannot escape it, and now I am with child! A child whose paternal parentage I cannot be certain of, may God have mercy upon me! How do I wipe the shame of my child’s possible bastardy from it, poor innocent?”
“Like ye, Aidan, I once had a Muslim husband. No child of ours would have been accepted in this society of ours, and yet my eldest daughter, Willow, is most respectable, is she not?”
“Willow is the daughter of Khalid el Bey?” Aidan was startled by Skye’s admission.
“Aye,” said Skye quietly, “and that secret I must insist ye keep to yerself, Aidan. Even Willow does not know that her papa was the Great Whoremaster of Algiers. For her peace of mind I gave her Khalid’s European identity, with certain alterations, and both she and the world have been content with my explanations. Willow was born here in England, and despite an Irish mother and a Spanish father turned Algerian dey, she is the most English of all my children.” Skye laughed. “Strangely it suits her though for the life of me I do not understand why.” She gave Aidan’s hands a squeeze. “Unless yer child is born looking exactly like its father, Aidan, there is simply no way for ye to know which of the three men involved has fathered it. Do not reject yer baby because ye fear Murad is its father. The child is not responsible for its parentage. As for Conn, he is, I think ye will agree, a kind man. He will understand that both ye and the child are innocent victims of circumstance, and besides there really is a very good chance that he is the bairn’s father.”
“Do ye really think so?” Aidan looked hopefully at Skye.
“Aye,” Skye said, and seeing the look of relief upon Aidan’s face she was glad she had answered in the affirmative for the truth of the matter was that she really didn’t know herself what the odds were that her brother had fathered this child upon his wife.
“I’ve been so frightened,” said Aidan. “It was only a few days ago that it dawned upon me that I might be with child. I haven’t felt particularly well these last few mornings, and my nipples were suddenly sore. When I realized I was enceinte, and as quickly realized that I couldn’t be certain of the baby’s father, I became terrified.”
“Understandable,” said Skye dryly, “but I really think ye must speak with Conn now. Dear Lord, Aidan, I have never seen a man so in love with a woman as my brother is with ye. Ye have quite tamed the rogue. He will be simply delighted with yer news, and I will wager it never crosses his mind that he might not be the father of yer child.”
“But I must still tell him,” said Aidan. “I would rather die myself than hurt Conn, but if this child is a son, and not his, it is not fair to force it upon my husband as his heir. Conn must know the truth of the matter, and make the decision as to whether he wishes to acknowledge this baby as his own. If he does not, then I will go away, and bear it, and put it out with a decent family.”
“He will reject neither ye, nor the child,” said Skye with certainty. She knew her brother, and he was a softhearted man.
“Will ye fetch him in to me?” asked Aidan.
Skye nodded, and leaving the room hurried downstairs to find her brother, and bring him back to his wife. Aidan ran to the chest, and lifting out a fresh nightrail of creamy silk with soft pink ribbons, she replaced the wrinkled garment she was wearing with it. Then taking up her boar’s-bristle brush she ran it vigorously through her tangled hair until it was smooth, and soft curls framed her serious face. She could hear Conn’s familiar footstep upon the stairs, and grabbing for her scent bottle she dabbed her lavender water behind her ears, at her wrists, and in the hollow of her throat. She had only replaced the bottle down when the door opened, and whirling she turned to face her husband.