Joan Wolf (2 page)

Julianne knew what was there even before she looked; she had seen the marks this morning. In the excitement of her homecoming she had forgotten them, but now, as she looked slowly down at her upper arms, she saw that they had not faded during the course of the day.

Julianne had extremely delicate skin, fair and close-textured like a baby’s. The dark ugly bruises were very clear against its white silkiness. The bruises showed, to Julianne’s uneasy eyes, the unmistakable outlines of a man’s hard fingers. She looked up to find the maid’s horrified gaze still on her shoulders. “It’s all right. I almost had an accident and one of the sailors grabbed me. He saved me from a nasty fall, but I was left with this legacy.” She was relieved to hear that her voice sounded normal; her heart, however, was hammering.

“He must have been very strong, miss, to have done that,” said the maid.

“Yes,” said Julianne. There was very faint color in her cheeks. “He was.”

After her bath she dressed in her blue merino dress again and was sitting having her hair done when the dowager duchess came back into the room.

“Don’t you have another dress to change into, Julianne?” her grandmother asked. “That one, I regret to tell you, is sadly unfashionable.”

“Is it?” responded Julianne composedly. “I rather like it. John bought it for me in Harwich and I am afraid it is the only one I own.”

The duchess’s ear registered that “John” immediately. “What were you wearing before you entered Harwich?” she asked suspiciously.

Julianne grinned. “Turkish trousers.”

“Trousers!”

“Yes. And they are most amazingly comfortable. I assure you I parted from them with a pang.”

“Trousers,” said the dowager duchess again, this time with loathing. Julianne chuckled. “Tomorrow, my dear, we will see about getting you some clothes,” the dowager duchess went on, ignoring Julianne’s unseemly mirth. “I do not think you need to wear mourning; Richard has been dead for almost half a year. No. Some lavenders, perhaps. And white.” She tilted her head and looked appraisingly at her granddaughter. Julianne’s hair was darker than her father’s, more a honey than a silver blond, but it was thick and shining and dressed now in a stylish mode by Parker, the dowager duchess’s abigail, it looked beautiful. She did not have her father’s celestial blue eyes. Julianne’s were of a cool shining gray, peculiarly luminous, widely spaced, and large, with surprisingly dark lashes and brows. She was tall, with a long slender neck and magnolia fair skin.

“You have the Wells looks,” the dowager duchess said to her with pardonable pride. “That is at least one good thing that Richard did for you.”

“Papa did a number of good things for me, Grandmama,” said Julianne quietly. “We both of us have got to try to remember that.”

Her grandmother took her shopping for clothes and took her up to Crewe to meet her uncle the duke, his wife, and his children. One of her cousins, Caroline, was a year younger than Julianne and the two girls were thrown together a great deal that winter. For the first time in her life Julianne led the life that a girl of her age and class and family would normally lead in the English society of her day. She and her cousin were to be presented to society in the spring and a great deal of their time was spent preparing for this great event.

Julianne was grimly determined to forget the past and throw herself into the future her grandmother was planning for her. The most immediate goal of the dowager duchess’s campaign was to find her granddaughter a husband, and this was a plan Julianne was not at all averse to. It seemed to her that a husband and a home of her own were what she most wanted in the world. She was tired of wandering, tired of rootlessness, tired of always being a stranger. John had once said to her, “Home is wherever night finds me.” But that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted security. And she wanted a man who could give her the security she craved—a man who would in no way resemble John Champernoun.

Julianne spent a remarkable amount of time that winter trying not to think about John Champernoun. She visited her aunt, rode with Caroline, and went to the shops with her grandmother. She revised and reorganized the diary she had kept during her years in Africa. And she entered with determined enthusiasm into all her grandmother’s plans for her coming London season.

The event that launched Julianne into London society was a ball, which was given jointly by the dowager duchess and the present Duchess of Crewe in honor of Julianne and her cousin Caroline. It was a very lavish affair, attended by all the right people, and was pronounced by so eminent a critic as Lady Jersey to be a great success. Julianne was a great success as well. She wore a gown of pale blue crepe over a white satin slip and looked, her grandmother thought mistily, rather like a lily. Certainly the dozens of young men to whom she was introduced regarded her with blatant admiration.

None of the young men made a reciprocal impression upon Julianne, however. In fact, out of the entire evening there was only one person who stood out in her memory.

She was sitting on one of the gilt chairs surrounding the dance floor waiting for one of the ubiquitous young men to bring her a glass of punch when an older man than the boys she had danced with all evening came over and sat beside her. “Miss Wells, I’m Robert Southland,” he said. “Your aunt introduced me earlier.”

“Oh, yes,” she replied vaguely. Her Aunt Elizabeth had introduced a host of men to her this evening. She smiled politely and said, “Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Southland?”

The man shrugged. “They’re all the same, these crushes.”

Julianne laughed. “Oh dear. That isn’t a very encouraging thing to say to a girl whose fate it is to attend them all.”

He grinned at her. He had an open good-natured face with bright brown eyes. “I understand you and your father spent a good deal of time in Egypt,” he said.

“Yes,” she responded cautiously. “We were there.”

“You didn’t by any chance meet a man called John Champernoun?” he asked.

At the mention of that name Julianne felt her heart turn over. “Why, yes,” she answered faintly. “I met him—briefly.”

“I understand he’s become quite a fixture with the pasha,” Southland said. “We were together on the
Tigre
in 1799, you know. I was there when John pulled Mohammed Ali out of the sea. Ali was one of the Albanians who had come to Egypt with the Turkish expedition against Napoleon. Bonaparte routed them at Aboukir. The sea was filled with fugitives swimming for their lives and John fished out Mohammed Ali. They became good friends after that.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Whoever would have thought that that half-drowned fugitive was destined to become the future Pasha of Egypt.”

“I doubt if destiny was the only factor,” Julianne said dryly.

He grinned. “Not destiny, eh, but John. You know, it’s a damn good thing he chose to stay in Egypt. If he had come home he would certainly have been hanged by now. Goes his own way, does John. Makes his own laws. Best natural fighter I ever saw. I often thought Wellington would have given half his staff in exchange for John if he’d ever seen him in action. I still don’t know why he wasn’t in the army. Seems the natural place for a man of his talents.”

“I doubt if he could stand the discipline of the army,” said Julianne, betraying a deeper knowledge of their subject than she had originally confessed to. “He’s not a man you can push into a mold.”

“That is true,” agreed Mr. Southland with a reminiscent grin. “I remember him at Acre.” He whistled in amazement.

There was a pause. “I did not know John had been at Acre,” said Julianne.

Mr. Southland shot her a suddenly shrewd look. “Well, he was. I should go so far as to say he had a good deal to do with our success.”

Acre was one of the most famous sieges of the late war; a small contingent of Turks led by Sir Sidney Smith’s crew of the
Tigre
had held out for almost two months against the entire French army and had handed Napoleon his first defeat.

As Julianne and Mr. Southland watched the young man who was threading his way around the dance floor toward them, two glasses of punch in his hands, Southland continued speaking.  “We were both with Sir Sidney Smith until 1803, when the British pulled out of Egypt. I went home, found I had inherited some money, and left the Navy. John stayed in Egypt. He was having too good a time to leave, he told me. Actually, I think he was up to his neck in the power struggle that ended up with Mohammed All being named pasha. I remember not being very surprised when it finally happened.”

“No,” murmured Julianne. “One wouldn’t be, I suppose.”

The young man had reached them by now and she smiled, accepted the punch, introduced the two men, and after a few, minutes Mr. Southland excused himself and went off to the card room.

After all the guests had left, the duchess crowed over Julianne’s success. “Emily Cowper promised to send around vouchers for Almacks,” she told Julianne. “And Mrs. Drummond Burrell complimented me on your looks and behavior—and
she is
very difficult to satisfy, my love.
And”
- this was said as if it was the biggest coup of all - “I thought young Lord Rutherford seemed very taken.”

Julianne smiled absently. “He was very nice, Grandmama.”

The old woman looked at her seriously. “Rutherford is the oldest son of the Earl of Minton. He is undoubtedly the biggest catch presently on the marriage mart.”

“He was very nice,” Julianne repeated obediently.

The duchess yawned. “I am tired, my love. I’ll bid you good night and seek my bed. You must do the same. I think we will be having visitors tomorrow and I want you to be looking your best.”

Julianne kissed her grandmother’s soft, scented cheek and walked with her up the stairs to their bedrooms. But after her maid had left the room, Julianne got out of bed, put on a warm robe, and went to sit by the fire.

John. For months now she had been trying not to think of him. But she had only to hear his name mentioned tonight and so much of what she was trying to forget had come rushing back. She closed her eyes and his face was vividly present to her memory: lean, dark, strong, lit by those brilliant, strangely light eyes. So strong was his image that she was vaguely surprised not to find him there when she opened her eyes.

She poked the fire, sat back in her chair, and for the first time since they had parted she allowed herself to think of the things that had happened to her in Africa after the death of her father. She had not told her grandmother the true story, and she had determined that she would forget it herself. But though she had tried, Julianne had not forgotten. She sat now before her comfortable fire and let herself remember the strange and extraordinary circumstances that so many months ago had thrown her into the path of John Champernoun.

Chapter Three

…captive into Africa.

—Christopher Marlowe

Lord Richard Wells was killed by a lion in Abyssinia. He and his daughter Julianne had been staying with a local king, who upon further acquaintance had proved to be a full-fledged tyrant. Lord Richard had refused to grovel before him as commanded, and Mutesa had consequently refused to provide guides and porters so the Wells party could continue on its way. They were forced to remain with Mutesa for five months, and one evening Lord Richard wandered out of camp, his Bible his only companion. When she realized he was gone, Julianne had taken a gun and followed. She heard her father cry out and ran as fast as she could toward the sound. She shot the lion as it was savaging her father’s body, but she was too late. Lord Richard’s neck was broken.

After his death, Mutesa sold Julianne to the next Arab slave traders to pass through his territory.

The slavers took her to Harar, a Moslem holy city and center of the slave trade in Abyssinia. Here she was sold again to other traders who were taking slaves to Cairo. Julianne was a fair-skinned blonde and the Mamelukes of Egypt were always looking for fair women to add to their harems. She would command a very high price in Egypt.

Because she was valuable goods, she was treated well and the trip from Harar to Cairo was not as hellish for her as it was for the unfortunate black slaves who traveled with them. In all her time with the slavers no man attempted to assault her. Virgins commanded more money.

For Julianne the entire experience was a nightmare from which she continually prayed she would awaken. Like her father she had condemned the slave trade, and the traffic in human beings so prevalent in Africa had horrified her. But never had she dreamed that she would be one of the poor unfortunates she had so pitied! It was not possible that she, Julianne Wells, could be sold into some man’s harem as if she were chattel. When she got to Cairo she would escape, she told herself, trying to keep her courage up. She would escape and seek sanctuary from one of the Christians who still lived in the city. She thought of the Cairo slave market, of the women she had seen, standing almost naked side by side in pens waiting to be sold, and she shuddered.

She was not sent to the slave market. She was brought to a big house near the Cairo citadel and turned over to a black eunuch. He took her to a very large room filled with other young women, all of whom turned to look at her curiously as she entered. Julianne for her part surveyed them with wonder. There were a number of Circassians as blond as she and several stunning black girls whom she recognized as Ethiopians. The girls had two things in common. They were all dressed in almost transparent shirts and ankle-length Turkish trousers and they were all beautiful.

Julianne was at the house near the citadel for almost a week. During that time she was relentlessly bathed and groomed and painted with cosmetics. She was not going to be sent to the slave market, the other girls told her. She would be offered at a private sale held for the benefit of the powerful Mamelukes, who for centuries had been the real rulers of Egypt.

Julianne knew about the Mamelukes. They were the descendants of Christian slaves who had been brought to Egypt to staff the armies of the sultan. The slaves in turn had become the enslavers and the fighting and intrigue among the Mamelukes had made any kind of organized governmental administration impossible. The Mamelukes had no ties of blood or of interest with the native Egyptians, and for centuries had plundered the country for their own aggrandizement. They were still a powerful presence in Egypt, even under the strong-willed Pasha Mohammed Ali. These were the men who would be looking to increase their wealth and prestige by the addition of a blond slave girl to their harems, and so a special private sale had been arranged for their convenience.