Authors: MARY JO PUTNEY
As the nayeb guided Ross through the amiable crowd, he murmured, “Even though I leave in the morning, it is not too late for you to change your mind about escape. I implore you, Lord Khilburn, heed my advice, for I cannot guarantee your safety while I am away. Tonight, when all is confusion, would be a perfect time to slip away.”
His host was nothing if not persistent. Ross smiled gently. “It is good of you to be concerned for me, but you are the one going into war. Surely I will be in less peril than you.”
Abdul Samut Khan scowled. “When I saw the amir today, he said you will no longer be allowed to have visitors. He does not wish you to become involved in treason while he is away.”
“I see.” Ross almost tripped over a tortoise with a small oil lamp on its back. A number of them were crawling about the quieter parts of the garden, illuminating the flowerbeds. He bent over and carefully shifted the creature to a safer spot. “Will I be confined to my rooms?”
There was a brief pause while the nayeb calculated whether there was any advantage in keeping the prisoner in closer confinement. “The amir wished that, but I spoke on your behalf and persuaded him to allow you to retain the freedom of the compound. Of course you will be guarded at all times.”
“Of course.”
They reached the roped-off square where the dancing would take place. A tent at one end housed the dancers, and soprano giggles could be heard coming from inside. Musicians were already playing and the night air throbbed with flutes and drums and stringed instruments that Ross could not identify. The music was passionate, with plaintive minor-key melodies weaving through deeper, earthier strains.
Abdul Samut Khan escorted his guest to the side of the dance floor where carpets and cushions had been laid on a dais for the most important guests. The other three sides of the square were filling with onlookers. Ross saw Juliet choose a spot directly opposite him. In her silence and dark veil, she seemed a specter at the feast, a reminder that this gaiety would soon be over.
He hoped that under her tagelmoust she was having a good time. It really was a very decent party, if one could forget the fact that tonight might be their last night together. Just over twenty-four hours from now, they would make their hazardous attempt at escape; if anything went wrong, they might not live to see the next dawn. Ross wrenched his gaze away from Juliet, suddenly impatient to be alone with her. He would watch enough of the dancing to satisfy his host, then excuse himself.
A shout went up from the onlookers as half a dozen dancers suddenly came whirling onto the floor with snapping fingers and tinkling finger bells. Dancing boys were common, but these performers were women—lithe, voluptuous women, whose bodies moved in ways designed to rivet the attention of any normal man. Vast expanses of golden skin were revealed by their colorful costumes, but their faces were covered with translucent veils through which soft features were dimly visible. To an Eastern audience, the display was as provocative as thinly veiled breasts would be to a European audience.
The first dance was slow, with each succeeding one a little faster. The swirling skirts and rolling hips of the dancers were an invitation as old as time, and soon the crowd was clapping with the music, the noise adding a harsh urgency to the night. With the fourth dance, the music changed and the lead dancer dropped to her knees. Pelvis grinding suggestively, she bent her shimmying body backward until her head brushed the floor.
Sight and sound had a primitive power that bypassed the mind and went directly to the blood. His breath quickening, Ross glanced across the floor and his gaze met Juliet’s for a moment before two dancers came between them. He wanted to fulfill the pagan promise of the dance, but only Juliet could quench the fire in his veins.
When the lead dancer sprang to her feet again, Abdul Samut Khan beckoned her to come to him. She wove her way through the troupe, then dropped to the ground in front of the nayeb in a posture of deep submission. She was only a yard from Ross, so close he could have touched her sweat-sheened, lushly curved body. “Yes, master?” she said in a husky voice.
The nayeb gestured to Ross. “Here is the man of whom I spoke earlier.”
Lithely the dancer realigned herself so that she was coiled in front of Ross. She was still breathing hard from her exertions and her ripe breasts threatened to burst from her minimal bodice. Golden bracelets jingling, she purred, “Tell me what you desire, O lord of the ferengi.”
A wave of heat coursed through Ross’s body, for the dancer was the embodiment of sensuality and she was acting out a man’s deepest fantasy. It was impossible not to be affected, and he had to swallow hard before he managed to say, “You dance very well.”
“Zahra is my gift to you for the night, Lord Khilburn.” Abdul Samut Khan accompanied the comment with a knowing elbow in Ross’s ribs. “I realized that you have been deprived of what a man needs for health and happiness, so take her to your room and dance with her to your heart’s content.”
Zahra slithered forward and lifted her veil so Ross could see her face. Though the movement was coy, the invitation was as blatant as if a Western woman had ripped open her bodice. Her black lashes fluttered over dark velvet eyes as she raised a languid hand to run her fingers through Ross’s hair, whispering, “Like fine-spun gold.”
She was a gift few men would—or could—refuse. If Ross had been the man he claimed to be, with a staid wife back in England, it would have been almost impossible to resist temptation, at least a temptation that was half-naked and in his lap. But he wasn’t that man, and his wife was thirty feet away.
Glancing up, he found that Juliet’s gaze was on him and even across the width of the dance floor her outrage was palpable. Ross almost laughed out loud. Deciding that it was time for the night’s real entertainment to begin, he removed the warm hand that was creeping up his leg. “A thousand thanks for your consideration, Abdul Samut Khan. Zahra is magnificent, a gift fit for an emperor, but since I am a married man, I must decline your generosity.”
The nayeb gave him an astonished glance. “Your wife is on the other side of the world and Zahra is right here.”
“True, but the laws of my religion forbid adultery, and there is no exemption for being far from home.”
His host’s heavy brows drew together. “There will be a troupe of dancing boys next. Would you prefer one of those? That would not be adultery.”
After detaching the plump fingers that had resettled on his knee, Ross got to his feet. He saw that the spot on the other side of the floor where Juliet had been was now empty, and hoped she wasn’t circling around so that she could knife him in the ribs. “But it would be equally a sin in the eyes of my people.”
The nayeb looked at him with disbelief and some respect. “Truly you are a devout man.”
“Perhaps, but I am still a man, and subject to temptation, so I think it best that I retire to my chamber before I succumb.” Ross patted Zahra on the head. “Sin was never so sweet.”
Unmollified, she pulled her veil over her face again and flounced up to join the other dancers, her eyes snapping with anger. The way Abdul Samut Khan’s gaze followed her gave Ross a reasonably good idea of where Zahra would be spending the night.
After taking leave of his host, Ross worked his way through the sweaty enthusiastic crowd, Yawer Shahid Mahmud and another soldier behind him. The air was fresher inside the house, but scarcely quieter, for the pulsing beat of the dance music permeated the mud-brick walls. When they reached the door of his rooms, Ross turned to bid his escorts good night.
The young soldier bobbed his head amiably, but Shahid responded with a scowl. “Because of you, ferengi, I have been deprived of the pleasure of going to war.”
“I regret that,” Ross said, a statement that was true for a number of reasons. “It is a crime to waste a warrior’s skill, but the decision to keep you in Bokhara was not mine.”
The yawer jerked his head at the guard, who prudently withdrew out of earshot. Then, eyes narrowed, Shahid said, “Nonetheless, you are responsible, and you shall pay for it.”
Ross suppressed a sigh. “I’m sure you have a suggestion for how I can make it up to you.”
“In gold or in blood. The choice is yours.” Shahid’s face twisted threateningly. “Give me two thousand gold ducats and I shall guard you as tenderly as a mother with her firstborn babe. If you refuse…” He shrugged his massive shoulders eloquently.
“No one in Bokhara seems to believe this, but Englishmen are not made of gold,” Ross said mildly. “Good night, Yawer Mahmud.”
As he started to open the door, Shahid snapped, “So the devout infidel retires to his bed, there to hump his Tuareg boy.”
Ross’s hand tightened on the knob and he half-turned to the Uzbek. “I do not hump boys, Tuareg or otherwise.” His eyes narrowed. “I believe that is a military habit.”
“Lying swine.” Shahid spat on the floor. “Once Abdul Samut Khan is gone, you will be my prey.” He beckoned the young soldier closer. “Don’t think you will escape tonight, for your door will be guarded.”
Impassively Ross went into his apartment, then closed and barred the door, thinking that he was getting a little tired of extortion and melodramatic threats.
A single lamp burned in the reception room, and the door to the balcony was open, admitting the full volume of festival merrymaking. He glanced around for Juliet, surprised not to see her, for he had assumed that she had preceded him into the house. Then he realized that she must have returned or the lamps would not be lit. Hungry to have her in his arms, he crossed into the bedroom.
Another flickering lamp revealed Juliet as a dark form curled at one end of the divan. As he entered the bedroom, her caustic voice said, “What, no chubby charmer?”
Ross grinned and began removing his coat and boots. “I was tempted, naturally, but knowing that you would cut out my liver had a dampening effect.”
“Wise man.” Juliet’s gaze followed him but she did not rise.
Ross had thought that mock jealousy was just another of their teasing games, but her aloofness made him wonder if she might be genuinely upset; with most of her face covered by the tagelmoust, it was hard to judge her mood. Softly he said, “Surely you don’t believe that I was interested in that dancer.”
She gave a snort of disbelief. “Of course you were interested. What man wouldn’t be?”
“Not seriously interested,” he amended. “Even wrapped in a black blanket and scowling, you are more alluring than she.”
“I’m glad you have such good judgment.” With one dramatic gesture, Juliet swept to her feet and cast aside her mantle and tagelmoust to reveal a dancer’s costume of black silk so sheer that every detail of her body was visible. Outlined in dark surma, her eyes shone like silver as she gave a slow, provocative smile. “I improvised this out of the silk I bought from Hafiz’s father. Now I’m going to prove that there is nothing that plump hussy does that I can’t do better.”
Ross’s breath caught in his throat and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. A cord around Juliet’s hips secured a number of ethereal veils, and more floated from her shoulders to cover, but not conceal, her torso. Though she was completely covered, even her cascading hair dimmed by a veil, the transparency of the fabric gave the effect of total, seductive nakedness.
She spun gracefully into the center of the room, veils swirling about her like smoke. Irresistible as Delilah, she said huskily, “Shall I dance for you?”
“Oh, yes…” Ross whispered as he sank down on the divan, unable to take his gaze off her. “Please do.”
For a moment Juliet closed her eyes, immersing herself in the potent currents of sound that eddied through the night. Then she began to sway sinuously. First just her twining arms, then her lithe torso, then her hips and legs, until her whole body was a physical expression of the music.
Juliet was a born dancer. Ross knew that she had learned Highland reels as a child in Scotland and later effortlessly mastered formal European ballroom figures. Heaven only knew what exotic performances she had seen or participated in over the years. Now she drew on everything she had ever learned to create a sensual dance that was all her own.
He watched, entranced, as she went beyond skill to the level of true art, where spirit and movement and music were so much in harmony that it was impossible to separate the dancer from the dance. Juliet was fire and grace and freedom, everything he had ever loved and despaired of in his wife.
But most of all she was the embodiment of desire, and without a single touch she raised Ross to fever pitch. Drifting layers of silk first revealed, then concealed her exquisite body. A brief flash of her long slim legs might be followed by a tantalizing glimpse of dusky nipples, then the dark triangle between her thighs. Red hair, white limbs, smoky silk; no more was needed to fuel a fire.
But watching was not enough. The next time she swirled within reach, borne on the passionate beat of the music, Ross caught an edge of the veil that covered her head. It came away in his hand, revealing the light-struck brilliance of her hair.
She laughed and grasped the other end of the veil that he held. “Dance with me, O my master.”
Ross understood her invitation; in many Middle Eastern societies men and women could not touch in public even if they were allowed to dance together, so they used a scarf to connect them without physical contact. Rising to his feet, Ross began moving to the music, joined to Juliet only by the silk veil that ran taut from his right hand to hers.
Gazes locked, they circled each other slowly, so intent that it seemed as if they held still while the world revolved around them. He had met Juliet in a waltz, a formal dance with conversation above and yearning below, and even then they had had an instinctive understanding of each other’s rhythms. Now they had come full circle, and in the dark heat of a Central Asian night they shadowed each other in a
pas de deux
of desire.
As Ross yielded to the music, he found himself executing steps he had never consciously learned. Soon they were improvising patterns of increasing complexity, their motions so perfectly attuned that they might have been controlled by one mind, not two. Steps quickened and gestures became more dramatic as they separated to the full length of the silken tie that bound them, then spun together again, close enough to feel their mutual heat but never quite touching.