The Harem Bride (11 page)

“
A slave?” Penny ventured.

“
More than a slave,” the black giant
replied, with a look that indicated he questioned her intelligence,
or decried the ignorance of foolish foreign females. “I am the
Kizlar Agha, the Chief Black Eunuch,” he announced. “I am master of
the Sultan’s seraglio. A man of great power. A man to be obeyed. A
man to be feared. Do you understand?”

Penny nodded, for the moment too intimidated
to speak.

“
You are now part of the Sultan’s
harem. You will learn to serve the wives of the Sultan and the
women who are his favorites. You will also learn how to please the
Sultan, if it should ever come to pass that he wishes to honor you
with his presence. Do you understand?”

“
Yes, Excellency” Penny managed. There
was nothing in his words she had not come to understand during her
time with the women of Mustafa Rasim. Events there, even without a
mutual language, had been made all too clear.

“
Your name is now Gulbeyaz. Rose White.
You will answer to it at all times.
Gulbeyaz
,” he repeated. “You will do as you are
told, not only by me, but by the other eunuchs, by the Sultan’s
wives and favorites, and by the more experienced odalisques. A
golden treasure you may be, but you have much to learn. Anyone here
may command you. Is that understood?”

“
Yes, Excellency.”

“
The Valide Sultana, the Sultan’s
mother, is the great lady here. You will kiss her hand, you will
prostrate yourself before her. The wife of our former Sultan,
Nakshedil Sultana, is also of great importance. It is she who has
taught us to speak French.”

Aimée de Rivery!
Penny’s hopes soared. Surely—

“
To Nakshedil Sultana, you will not
prostrate yourself. She does not care for such formalities. You
may, if she indicates she wishes it, kiss her hand.”

She would kiss her feet, Penny thought,
if only the French Sultana would help her get out of this place!
But what a slim hope. If Aimée de Rivery had not been able to get
herself out, how could she help anyone else? But, then, perhaps
after . . . after she had borne a child, there was no going back.
Perhaps even after one night there was no return to the Western
world, to the green meadows of Kent, to the cold and haughty eyes
of the
ton
.

“
You are now the property of his
magnificence, the Sultan Selim,” declared the Kizlar Agha, rising
to his feet. “You will put away all childish thoughts of the world
you have known. You are the odalisque, Gulbeyaz. You are here to
stay until life leaves your body.” He waved her toward the door in
a gesture not dissimilar to a farmer shooing chickens. “Go now. The
guards will take you to the seraglio, where you will do as you are
told. Do not forget!”

Penny nodded and, almost sightlessly, pushed
her way through the damask curtain. There was no hope. At sixteen,
her life had come to an end. Silently, forlornly, she allowed the
eunuch guards to lead her away.

Miss Cassandra Pemberton’s temper, usually
well-contained by the certainty of her power to control the world
around her, grew progressively more uncertain as the length of her
niece’s disappearance approached one month. Assaulted by guilt, her
confidence shattered, she was reduced to taking out her frustration
on the two gentlemen who were making the greatest effort to help,
Lord Elgin and Viscount Lyndon.

“
Your reliance on something called
“bundle women” is absurd,” she cried, brandishing her plain tan
parasol as she paced the exquisitely knotted carpet in the
ambassador’s reception room. “You must send another petition to the
Grand Vizier, demand an audience with the Sultan. If you will not,
then I must go myself!”

“
No!” “That you will not!” Both men
spoke at once.

“
Miss Pemberton,” the viscount said,
containing his youthful anger with some difficulty, “you will only
succeed in doing more harm than good. We are trying to conciliate
the Grand Vizier, not incite his fury. We must wait until one of
the bundle women reports that she has actually seen Miss Blayne in
the Sultan’s harem. Only then do we dare challenge the
Vizier.”

“
Believe me, Miss Pemberton,” Lord
Elgin added, “we are very much on sufferance in this empire so much
larger than our own. The Sultan may have welcomed our help in
driving Bonaparte out of Egypt, but, partly thanks to the dratted
Aimée de Rivery, he is, at the moment, more inclined to favor the
French than the English.”

“
But you tell me women have no power,”
Miss Pemberton shot back, glaring.

The ambassador, wearied by Miss Pemberton’s
constant nagging, minced no words. “Aimée de Rivery gained her
power in a manner I doubt you would wish to emulate, ma’am.”

Cassandra Pemberton gasped. Viscount Lyndon
turned sharply away to hide his face. And then, because he had
grown considerably older and wiser during the anguish of the past
month, Lord Lyndon mastered his emotions and managed to address
Miss Blayne’s aunt with both sympathy and sincerity. “I promise
you, ma’am, the moment we hear Miss Blayne is definitely inside the
Sultan’s seraglio, Lord Elgin and I will be on our way to the
palace.” Though how they would pry young Penny loose from her
imprisonment the viscount could not yet imagine.

Hastily, Lord Elgin rang the bell for his
majordomo. Miss Pemberton found herself ushered to her carriage
with the ambassador’s assurances—undoubtedly insincere, she
grumbled to herself—still ringing in her ears. But Lyndon was
showing far more bottom than she had expected in a gentleman so
young. Yes, if anyone could rescue her dear Penny, it was Jason
Lisbourne.

A tear coursed down Miss Pemberton’s
cheek. She, who had vowed never to cry like a silly girl, was once
again on the verge of being awash in saltwater.
Oh, Penny, dearest child, is there any hope left? For I fear
the men do not think so.

For Gulbeyaz, the White Rose, newest
odalisque in the seraglio of Sultan Selim—ruler of an empire that
stretched from Russia through Arabia to North Africa, and from
Greece to the Caspian Sea—there were more lessons. She learned to
walk more daintily, with steps that seemed to float above the
tiles. She prepared coffee over and over again until she earned a
nod of approval from the Kislar Agha himself. She continued her
lessons in the other skills necessary to an odalisque, not all of
them to do with lotions, potions, and scenting her clothes. In
short, Miss Penelope Blayne studied humility and the acceptance
that women are placed on earth solely for the pleasure of men.

Blessed with intelligence and the resiliency
of youth, Penny conquered her shock, and as one day passed into the
next, she raised her eyes and attempted to make sense of this
exotic, indolent life, as walled off from the Ottoman Empire as it
was from her beautiful countryside so far away in England. She even
acquired two new friends, Ayshe and Leyla, dark-haired, dark-eyed
beauties of about her own age, who took her in hand and introduced
her, by way of gestures, giggles, grimaces, and groans, to the ways
of the seraglio outside the hours of their “training.”

Yet, in spite of being in the midst of the
restricted life of the harem, Penny still found it difficult to
imagine that these women would never see the outside world except
through a latticed window. They would never go shopping in the
Grand Bazaar, never see a play they did not perform themselves.
They would not know the thrill of riding a ship under full sail,
the wind blowing their hair. They would not dance and flirt or have
the opportunity to choose a mate. They would never be seen by any
male other than the Sultan and their eunuch guards.

With no society but their own, the sultan’s
women were forced to improvise. Their amusements ranged from
fortune-telling to childish games. Some told stories, others wrote
poetry. Almost all enjoyed the lush gardens with gilded gazebos,
ponds with colorful fish, the sounds of nightingales, canaries, and
doves, overlaid by the cries and squawks of parrots, macaws, and
peacocks. And many liked to peer out the latticed windows facing
the Bosphorus, watching ships come and go, the only sign there was
a life outside the seraglio. Still others, having long since given
up hope of becoming a wife, or even a favorite of the Sultan,
settled onto their cushions, a hookah their only comfort, dreaming
away the days of their confinement. Still others, Penny discovered,
even more thoroughly shocked than by her lessons in how to please
the Sultan, found pleasure with the eunuchs or with each other.

She would never adapt, Penny vowed. Never
accept this was to be her home for the rest of her life. There had
to be something more for her. There simply had to be.

Jason. Dearest
Jason
. Somehow, during her time of trial, this young
man Penny scarcely knew became an intimate friend. Her dream lover,
who would surely rescue her from her terrible fate.

He would, he would. She knew he would.

~ * ~

The bundle woman was quite certain. She had
seen the English miss in the Grand Bazaar. How could she not notice
such a fair young virgin? And, yes, young master, the new odalisque
in the Sultan’s seraglio was the same girl, there was no doubt. The
Jewish woman, obviously sympathetic, also imparted a second bit of
helpful information. A custom that, to his credit, took Jason
Lisbourne aback only for a moment. If what the woman told him was
true, there might yet be a way out of this coil. Both the bundle
woman and Faik left the villa of Lord Lyndon much pleased by the
gold in their purses, with promise of far more to come if the
woman’s information proved true.

But even for the British Ambassador who had
managed to get approval from the Ottoman Empire to remove the
marble friezes from the Parthenon in Greece, an appointment with
the Grand Vizier was not easily granted. Particularly, when neither
the Grand Vizier nor his Magnificence, Sultan Selim, wished to hear
what Lord Elgin undoubtedly wished to say. But the day came when
excuses waned and the matter could no longer be postponed. Lord
Elgin and Lord Lyndon were granted an audience in the royal throne
room.

Jason noticed, with interest, that the Sultan
was wearing what was likely his most impressive sleeveless robe,
heavy scarlet silk edged in ermine, worn over a garment of gold
brocade. Lord Lyndon also noted that in a room full of men with
colorful robes and full black beards, he and Lord Elgin appeared
oddly bare in their shaven faces and tight English jackets and
fitted breeches. But there was no way they could blend in, after
all. They were here to ask the unthinkable—the removal of a female
from the Sultan’s seraglio.

Lord Elgin stepped forward, bowed low before
the Sultan, the only man seated in this vast room of Ottoman
dignitaries and guards. The Scottish lord’s petition was simple. He
desired the return of Miss Penelope Blayne, a young Englishwoman
who had, quite by accident, he was certain, become part of the
Sultan’s harem. Miss Blayne’s relatives, represented by Viscount
Lyndon—Lord Elgin gestured toward his companion—were most
distressed and wished to have her returned to them immediately. If
his Magnificence would be so kind—

“
You must be aware this is not
possible,” the Grand Vizier interjected, the dragoman interpreter
precisely imitating the official’s sharp tone. “No woman leaves the
seraglio.”

Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, squared his
shoulders, summoning all his stubborn Scots ancestry to aid him. He
spoke slowly and clearly so the translator would be certain to
interpret his words correctly. “Lord Lyndon is the eldest son of an
earl, the heir. In England an earl is a great pasha. It is known
that, on occasion, his Magnificence, the Sultan, may give one of
his women—if she is untouched—as a gift to a great lord. I
therefore assure you that Jason Victor Granville Lisbourne, Lord
Lyndon, is such a lord, and I humbly request that he be granted
this gift, a token of respect between our countries.”

The Grand Vizier began to speak, his words
fading into silence at a wave of the Sultan’s hand. “If such a gift
is made,” Sultan Selim intoned, “it is required that the pasha
marry the girl immediately.” His dark eyes regarded the viscount
with considerable interest, as if certain the young man would
refuse.

Jason bowed so low his head nearly touched
his knees. Ever since the bundle woman had told them of this
ancient custom, there had been little doubt it was the only hope
for Penelope’s rescue. He was reconciled to the inevitable. “Your
Magnificence, I would be honored to take Miss Blayne to wife.”

“
You may return in two days time with
whatever man of your religion you choose,” the Sultan decreed. “You
will be married here. You will spend your wedding night in the
palace so we may know the matter is properly accomplished. And then
you may take your woman and go.”

Jason had thought himself prepared for
almost anything, but a wedding night in the palace . . . with a
hundred eyes watching.
Impossible!

While Viscount Lyndon suffered from
speechlessness, Lord Elgin made a sincere, and properly flowery,
speech of thanks. He bowed. Jason, recovering his outward aplomb,
also bowed, and the two men backed their way out of the presence of
his Magnificence, Sultan Selim the Third, ruler of the Ottoman
Empire.

Good God
,
Jason groaned,
how will I
manage?