Lady Of Fire (7 page)

Alessandra did not understand the bout of modesty that ought to be reserved for Rashid when she came to their nuptial bed, but she was so overwhelmed by the thought of Seif seeing her bare body that the warm air grew thick, and she felt almost ill.

“Mistress?” The girl’s eyes sparkled as if she might spill tears.

“You have not offended. I am chilled, that is all.” Alessandra touched her head that was yet tender. “I suppose I am not entirely healed, but still you can assist with my ablutions.” She lowered to the stool before the sink.

Immediately, the girl began gathering up Alessandra’s hair and securing it atop her head. When she moved to the sink to retrieve soap and towel, Alessandra looked over her shoulder.

Seif was where she had left him, but he had turned to the side. Arms crossed over his chest, he appeared fascinated by the gleaming fixtures that carried water into the bath house. But as he had surely seen them when last he was here, she wondered if his interest was a means of affording her privacy—unaware she had not shed her robe as was the normal course of bathing.

As if feeling watched, he looked around. His gaze held hers a moment, then he moved it down her robed figure. On the return to her face, he paused upon her nape that was no longer curtained by her hair, and which she had heard was an exquisite place to feel a man’s kiss.

When his eyes once more settled to hers, she could barely breathe, but though she longed to break the contact that stretched between them like a taut, unraveling rope, she could not.

If his eyes could so affect her, what might his hands do if ever she allowed them to touch her as boldly? Those things the wives and concubines spoke of when their conversations turned to lovemaking?

For shame, Alessandra!
she silently rebuked.
You ought not to have such thoughts—not of Rashid, and certainly not of this eunuch!

As the rational reminder banished sensations she should not feel, an outlandish thought crept in.
Or is he a eunuch?

Was it mere coincidence her mother had purchased an Englishman to replace the eunuch who had fallen into disfavor? Eunuchs were not so scarce that Sabine would have had to settle for one so inexperienced. And then for her to force his company upon Alessandra…

The appearance of a concubine at Seif’s side broke their eye contact, and Alessandra turned forward again.

“Is your chill gone, mistress?” the servant girl asked where she knelt at Alessandra’s feet.

It was long gone, but to admit it would be to consent to the removal of her robe. “I fear not.”

With a sympathetic smile, the girl slipped the clogs from Alessandra’s feet. “Then I shall bathe you one limb at a time, and when you are clean, I will henna your hands and feet. Then you will feel yourself again.”

If only she
could
feel herself again. She did not like the turmoil she had been suffering since Seif’s arrival, nor that she had such sinful feelings for the eunuch when she had none for Rashid.

A half hour later, scrubbed clean, hair washed and hanging damp down her back, Alessandra rose from the stool and tightened the belt of her robe.

“You are leaving?” the girl asked. “What of the henna I promised?”

“Another day. I am still chilled.” It was even more of a lie now considering the perspiration dotting her brow, but she could not stand to sit still any longer.

Avoiding looking toward Seif, she approached the women clustered at the pool’s edge and lowered herself beside Hayfa, second wife to Jabbar. Raising the hem of her robe, she sank her feet in the water.

Hayfa, whose once slender body had grown heavy with overindulgence, scooted near and flicked the robe’s sleeve. “You will faint if you insist on wearing that.”

“I have taken a chill,” Alessandra said, hoping to quell the whisperings about her remaining clothed. “When I am warm again, I will remove it.”

Hayfa leaned close. “Tell me of this new eunuch. What type is he?”

She knew what the woman referred to, but could not keep her cheeks from coloring with embarrassment. “I can tell you nothing.”

“Hmmph,” grunted a concubine who had been listening. “Is it not you with whom he has spent these past days?”

The woman made it sound as if she and Seif were lovers! Though Alessandra knew she should not allow herself to be drawn into this conversation, she felt a need to defend her innocence. “He has been given the task of following me wherever I go and sleeping outside my apartment. That is all.”

From the women’s expressions, it was clear neither believed her, making Alessandra’s palms itch to smack their smirks away.

“If it is true our innocent Alessandra knows nothing of his type,” Hayfa said, “perhaps she should ask him.”
 

“Ask him yourself,” Alessandra said.

“I think she is frightened of him,” Hayfa submitted. “See how she keeps herself covered in his presence. Perhaps he has warmed her cold English blood, and she knows not what to do.”

It was too near the truth. Though Alessandra wanted to ignore the challenge, she hastened to her feet. “I am not frightened of him,” she said and started toward Seif.

Legs braced apart, hands clasped behind his back, he watched her approach through narrowed lids.

She halted before him and looked up with what she hoped was indifference. “Hayfa”—she nodded at the woman—“wishes to know what type of eunuch you are.”

Puzzlement lined his brow. “Of what do you speak?”

She groaned inwardly. He surely knew to what she referred and but played with her. Knowing she could not return without the information, she said, “She would know if you are the type who can make love to a woman and yet not spoil her with a child the master would deny as his”—how she hated the tremble in her voice!—“or the type who has been…altered such that he can do neither.”

His eyebrows lowered over his amethyst-colored eyes. “How do you know of such things?”

So great was her discomfort that she nearly fled, but as she had come this far, she gestured to the eunuch who stood on the other side of the pool. “As Hayfa often boasts, Yusuf is able to give pleasure without getting her with child. Thus, he is of the first type of eunuch.”

“Has he given you pleasure as well?”

Her knees nearly buckled. That he would suggest—

She tamped down her outrage with the reminder it was the same as Hayfa and the concubine alluded to. That a young woman could reach the age of eight and ten and remain untouched was almost unheard of in a land where girls were often wed by their thirteenth birthday. Alessandra would have been wed as well had her mother not interceded time and again. Thus, she was chaste among women who had long known a man’s touch and pitied her for her lack of experience.

Though the denial had been upon her lips, instead she lied. “I am no maiden.”

His eyes bored into hers as if he might see the truth of her words, but finally, he said, “And I am no Yusuf. You may tell Hayfa and her friends I am the same as Khalid.”

Alessandra caught her breath. This day, she had entertained the possibility he might not even be a eunuch, and now to be told he was one in every sense of the word…

“I do not believe you.”

He shrugged. “Though you claim to have no maidenly senses left to offend, I do not think your mother would like it if I offered proof.”

Flushing toe to scalp, presenting the very real possibility she might be overcome by heat as Hayfa warned, Alessandra whirled and made as swift a retreat from the bathhouse as she could manage.

Long after she had enclosed herself in her apartment, she still felt Seif’s laughter and heard that of Hayfa and the concubine.

As Lucien exited the bathhouse, Sabine returned to the shadows where she had slipped upon witnessing Alessandra’s flight. Hand to her chest, she searched the Englishman’s profile as he strode past, certain he had the answers to the questions spinning through her mind.

What had been the cause of Alessandra’s haste? Why the flush upon her skin that could not be solely attributed to heat? Why her trembling lips and the tears in her eyes?

All manner of imaginings plagued Sabine, each tied to Lucien de Gautier and none without foundation. He had been in the bathhouse as Alessandra bathed and had undoubtedly seen what was denied Englishmen until they wed the lady.

What had happened between them? Certainly nothing untoward with the others present, but something.

The coughing came again, but she suppressed it until Lucien was out of sight. When she released it, wheezing and gasping breaths threatened to prostrate her. Desperate to muffle the terrible sounds, she lifted the skirt of her caftan, pressed it to her mouth, and lurched toward her apartment.

Providing she could reach it without calling attention to herself, she could lie down and clear her mind enough to determine what to do.

A moment later, Khalid’s concerned face swam before her and he lifted her high in his great arms. “Hush, mistress,” he soothed. “I am here. Give over to me.”

Clenching fistfuls of his robe, coughing into his chest, she was mollified by the knowledge that, as always, he would take care of everything.

“Enter!” Alessandra called. Without turning from the latticed window, she motioned her visitor forward. “Come see.”

A moment later, she wished she had not, struck as she was by an awareness of the man she had left in the bathhouse an hour past. Had she known it was Seif, she would not have answered his knock.

“What is it?” he asked, his arm brushing hers as he came alongside.

She drew her arms nearer her body, nodded at the two romping in the garden. “There.”

“Ah, gazelles.”

“A mother and her baby. It is the first I have seen of the little one since its birth.”

Seif made a sound of acknowledgment, then said, “I have come to apologize.”

She kept her gaze fastened upon the gazelles. “For?”

“I should not have been so forward with you.”

“That is true.”

“Then you accept my apology?”

She sighed. “Mother says allowances must be made for you, so that I shall do.”

“What sort of allowances?”

As seemed to be becoming a habit regarding him, she wished she had said less. She shrugged. “You are English. Thus, you cannot know our ways.”

“How are your ways different from mine?”

She reflected a moment. “I do not know exactly, only that they are.”

He chuckled, a sound made new by the fact it came from him. “The differences are great, mistress. For instance…” He gently pried her fingers from the lattice she gripped.

Surprised that he would touch her again, and so soon after apologizing for being forward, she tried to pull free.

“…it would not be mortally untoward for a man to kiss a woman’s hand in England.” He drew hers to his mouth and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.

A shiver raced up her arm. “Do not,” she breathed.

He smiled. “Here, one could lose his head over so small a thing.”

Providing he survived the loss of other parts of his anatomy, Alessandra reflected. “Which is what will happen if it is known what you do,” she said.

His hold on her hand lightened, and though she could have pulled free, something inside her bade her remain still.

He put his head to the side. “Will you reveal me?”

She moistened her lips. “I would not wish to see you harmed for…” His eyes having lowered to her mouth, her next words were mostly breath. “…so small a thing.”

His eyes returned to hers, the pupils of which had dilated, leaving only a narrow ring of violet. “And if it is no small thing?”

She was sure she did not understand what he meant, and yet she longed to be nearer, for her first real kiss to be given by his mouth. She swallowed. “Let me go.”

He opened his fingers.

She did not retreat, and the hand he had kissed remained lifted toward him.

“You are still here, Alessandra.”

Perhaps it was her name on his lips, deeply spoken as if she were not the only one incapable of movement, but when she was able to move, she stepped nearer, slid her arms around his neck, and lifted her face to his.

“Tell no one,” she said and pulled his head down.

Seif’s mouth upon hers was nothing like the kiss with which she had surprised Rashid. It was more like that of which the women spoke—a thrill that went to her every edge, a longing for no end to it, an ache for more.

“Seif,” she breathed.

“I am Lucien,” he rasped and pulled her so near there was no space between them. Sliding his arms around her, he pressed a hand to the small of her back, the other to her nape, and threaded his fingers up through her hair.

So very dangerous, and yet it was her voice that beseeched, “More, Lucien.”

And Lucien’s voice that said, “That is enough.” He released her and stepped back.

Alessandra put a hand to her lips and stared at the man she had kissed, a slave into whose arms she had gone without thought of consequences. Without thought of Rashid.

Hurriedly, she crossed to her dressing table. “You should not have done that,” she said, though she knew it was more her doing.

Seif—rather, Lucien as her mother had also revealed—moved behind her but did not touch her again. “If you would salve your conscience,” he said, “consider it but a demonstration of the differences between our cultures.”

She picked up her comb and began tugging it through her hair. “Is that what you consider it? Merely a lesson?”

“And desire for what is forbidden me. I
can
still feel such want.”

Slowly, she looked around. “You desire me?” She did not mean her words to be whispered. They were. She did not mean to sound hopeful. She did. And it shamed her, for it made her seem like a child promised a toy long denied her, one she was afraid to believe was truly within her grasp.

“I would not have touched you otherwise,” he said.

More hopeful. More shameful. More dangerous. How she longed to return to his arms!

End this now, Alessandra,
she silently demanded.
No good can come of wanting something you cannot—and should not!—have.