The Lure of the Moonflower (30 page)

One year later . . . Constantinople, 1808

A
woman’s shrill scream rent the air.

Janissaries rampaged down the normally forbidden Golden Way, the Sultan’s private passageway through the harem, shoving eunuchs and slaves out of the way. The sound of agitated cries and footfalls echoed off the domed ceiling and tiled walls of the privy chamber. All was in disarray.

Rumors were everywhere. The rebels had sacked the city; the Sultan was dead. The Sultan was alive and enacting terrible reprisals. The Sultan had murdered his brothers and was killing their concubines.

No one quite knew what was true and what wasn’t, but no one wanted to be there to find out. The history of the Ottoman sultans was too bloodstained to take chances, and Mustafa IV was not known as a kind or generous man.

“Assassins!” someone screamed, and a rampage began, people running first this way and then that, some by accident, others by design.

In the confusion, no one noticed when yet another Janissary threw a screaming slave over his shoulder. She was Georgian, with the fair hair and gray eyes of her people, but her ordinarily well-tended skin was streaked with ashes, and her garments were torn and dirtied.

“You got Mahmud safely away?” muttered the Janissary, as he bore the slave girl off down a narrow stone staircase, away from the fray.

“Only just.” The slave girl lay in a seeming swoon, her mouth close by the Janissary’s ear, her lips hidden by her white veil and the large flap of his uniform hat. “The assassins were already there. I tossed ash in their faces. Naksidil Sultan got Mahmud up to the roof of the third court while I held them off.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Hidden in a furnace beneath the baths of the Valide Sultan.” The slave girl spoke with absolute confidence.

This plan had been weeks in the making. The slave girl had worked closely with Naksidil Sultan, Mahmud’s mother, who spoke beautiful, lightly accented French. Some whispered that it was because she was French, kidnapped by Barbary pirates on her way home to her native Martinique. Whatever she had once been, though, Naksidil Sultan had become a force to be reckoned with within the harem, fierce in her defense of her son.

Tonight, Mustafa IV had sent assassins to kill his half brother, Mahmud. He hadn’t reckoned with Mahmud’s secret allies.

“Oh, bother it.” The Janissary checked as he caught sight of a large cluster of eunuchs, but as they seemed more occupied in fleeing with whatever loot they could carry than impeding his progress, he brazenly went on.

“And you?” the slave girl murmured to her captor. “Did you bring Alemdar Mustafa Pasha?”

The Janissary permitted himself a smug smile. “He is proclaiming the new Sultan as we speak.” It hadn’t been easy herding the leader of the rebel forces, but when it had been explained to him that a palace coup was in progress and he could be in or out, the rebel leader had chosen in. “I assume you have the new Sultan’s assurance?”

“That no treaties will be signed with France? Yes.”

Napoleon had had his eye on an Ottoman alliance for years. But right now the new Sultan owed a far greater debt to someone else: the Pink Carnation.

The Pink Carnation smiled wryly up at her husband. “Whether he’ll honor it is another matter.”

Outside the Gate of the Girls, a covered palanquin waited to convey them to the port at Yenikapi. The curtains swished closed around them. In the confusion of the night’s events, one palanquin leaving the palace would hardly be noticed.

The Pink Carnation glanced through the slit in the curtains, a worried line between her eyes. “Do you think we were right to interfere?”

“Mahmud can’t be any worse than Mustafa.” More seriously, the spy known as the Moonflower added, “Between Mustafa and the rebels, there was going to be bloodshed; the most we could do was try to prevent it. You saved at least one life tonight. More than one. Well-done, Mrs. Reid.”

Jane’s fingers twined through her husband’s, clasped and held. “I did have some assistance.”

Jack grinned down at her. “I try to make myself useful.”

The sun was beginning to rise over the Bosphorus, turning the sky to an imperial display of purple and gold, the light dancing between the waves that lapped at the quayside. At the end of the quay, a boat waited for them, and in it a new set of instructions, of papers, of disguises.

“Shall we?” said Jane, and together they sailed off into the sunrise.

“T
he Pink Carnation was also married from Selwick Hall,” said Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, as she adjusted one of the bobby pins that held my antique-look veil in place.

My eyes met hers in the long mirror. For an eighty-year-old woman who had been kidnapped, escaped her bonds, and felled her attacker, she looked pretty good. It was either makeup or good bones. My money was on good bones.

This, I decided, boded well for Colin’s and my future children.

I was still feeling more than a little sluggish, but a pot of strong coffee and the makeup man had worked their magic. Ten layers of foundation had dimmed the dark circles under my eyes, and various arcane tints and powders had provided the illusion of healthy color. No one looking at me would guess that I had been up until four in the morning.

Or, if they did, they would probably assume it was because I was tying one hundred tiny ribbons onto our favors. The truth was far too bizarre for anyone to even begin to contemplate.

The incident would never appear on any official record. Not the sort open to the public, in any event. No one had wanted to call the police. Instead, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly had borrowed my cell—I mean, my mobile—to make a discreet call to persons unknown. Said persons unknown had shown up about an hour later and removed the unconscious Dempster and our sheet.

I had decided it was wiser not to ask who they were or where they were taking him. There were some things you just didn’t want to know, especially at three a.m. the morning before your wedding.

By the time we had staggered back, the sky was beginning to look suspiciously light, and I was beginning to wish that I had taken my mother’s advice and had an evening wedding, like normal (translation: American) human beings.

But it was my wedding day and the sun was shining, which isn’t something you can take for granted in England, even in June. The lark was on the wing and the snail was on the thorn; the marquee hadn’t collapsed yet, the vicar was only mildly hungover, and I was buoyed by a swelling sense of well-being that owed a little bit to coffee and a great deal to a sense that the world was just as it was meant to be.

I hadn’t seen Colin yet. Adhering to tradition, we’d decided that would be bad luck, so he and my father were busy tying their bow ties elsewhere. My mother and Jillian were currently under the heavy hand of the makeup man and the hair woman, respectively. Grandma had wanted to make sure that no one stole her front-row seat, so she had gone in early to stake her claim and her cane, with Jeremy in attendance.

Pammy was prinking and Alex was assuring Serena that she didn’t look fat in her dress, which left Mrs. Selwick-Alderly momentarily in charge of care and management of the bride, i.e., me.

She gave my veil a final tweak. “Very nice, my dear.”

I stepped back to take a look. We were in the library, one of my favorite rooms of the house, which had been commandeered for the occasion as robing room. It looked much as it usually did, the only jarring notes the large three-sided mirror that had been plunked in the center of the room and the incongruous clutter of hair dryer, brushes, and makeup cases where my laptop usually sat. Light slanted across the carpet through the long windows, creating the sort of radiant effect that generally takes a great deal of fiddling with filters and lenses.

I wish I could say that my dress was a Regency reproduction or, even better, one of the Pink Carnation’s own. But that would have been a bit much, even for me. I wanted Colin to know I was marrying him, not some historical daydream.

So my dress was Vera Wang, cream-colored satin with a waist cinched in with a bow and a full skirt. There was, however, a design of beaded flowers on the strapless bodice. It struck me as a subtle nod to what had brought me and Colin together.

It was also the one dress on which Jillian and my mother had both agreed.

We will not even discuss the wedding dresses that Pammy had attempted to make me try on. Leopard print and tulle do not go together in the same garment.

“What happened to the Carnation’s wedding dress?” I asked curiously.

“Wedding dresses then weren’t what they are now,” said Mrs. Selwick-Alderly. “I imagine the material was cut down and reused. But we do have one of her wedding presents. A silver tea set.”

Rather like the very large, very heavy silver tea service currently sitting on our dining room table. “
That
silver tea set?”

Her eyes meeting mine in the mirror, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly adjusted one discreet silver earring. “It was a wedding gift from Lord and Lady Vaughn. It was left behind with Amy and Richard. Jane and Jack didn’t have much use for a full tea service on their travels.”

Their travels. That had a ring to it. I twisted slightly, the lace of my veil brushing my cheek. “Where did they go?”

“It might be simpler to tell you where they weren’t.” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly gave a little tweak to my veil. “We’ll never know the whole of it, but I’ve always suspected that they had a hand in putting Mahmud the Second on the throne of the Ottoman Empire in 1808. From there, they went to Russia. As I’m sure you know, that particular venture didn’t go very well for Napoleon.”

No. No, it hadn’t. Although it had worked out rather nicely for Tolstoy, half a century later.

“Where did they go after the war was over?” It was a wishful-thinking sort of question. I didn’t really expect her to know.

But Mrs. Selwick-Alderly answered without hesitation: “They settled in Brazil. I did a bit of work there,” she added modestly.

I didn’t ask what kind of work. After last night it seemed safer not to know. At least for a hundred years or so, at which point it might be my great-great-grandchildren inquiring into Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s secret activities, wondering over such quaint costumes as minidresses and bell-bottoms.

The mind boggled. Over many things.

“They settled in Brazil?” It wasn’t so much that it was Brazil, per se, as that I hadn’t really thought of the Pink Carnation and the Moonflower settling anywhere. One expected them to sail off into a glowing sunset, à la an Errol Flynn movie. “Why Brazil?”

“The Portuguese crown owed them a few favors,” said Mrs. Selwick-Alderly. She seated herself in a large cracked leather chair. “Although I think King John came to regret his largesse later on. Jack and Jane were instrumental in Brazil’s War of Independence.”

“I gather that is basically what it calls itself?” My knowledge of Brazilian history was limited to my friend Carrie’s dissertation-in-progress, which focused on the German community in Brazil post–World War II.

“Brazil had been governed by the Portuguese crown,” Mrs. Selwick-Alderly explained patiently. “Jack and Jane backed the move to make Brazil an autonomous constitutional monarchy. Jane learned to speak Portuguese, of course.”

“Of course,” I echoed.

What was the little matter of a language barrier? Both Jane Wooliston and Jack Reid were the sort who would eventually take charge wherever they landed and fight for what they believed to be right.

I wondered what their children had been like. I suspected that if I opened any textbook on Brazil, I would find them staring out at me. One couldn’t imagine that the offspring of the Pink Carnation and the Moonflower would lead placid lives, any more than their English cousins had.

“There’s a book there,” I said.

“More than one, I should think,” said Mrs. Selwick-Alderly with a faint glimmer of amusement. She rose from her chair, taking the largest bouquet from the row the florist had left on one of the scarred old tables. “But all in good time.”

“Thank you.” The bouquet was heavier than it looked, weighing down my wrist. It required two hands to hold properly.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the long mirror, veil, bouquet, and all, and knew that Mrs. Selwick-Alderly was right.

Perhaps someday I would write the Pink Carnation’s love story. But right now I was more interested in my own.

“Are you ready?” My mother bustled into the library, wearing a lime green silk suit and matching shoes, Jillian close behind in pale green chiffon.

Pink might have been more appropriate for the Carnation, but green went much better with my hair. I was sure that Colin’s ancestors would understand.

“Everyone is downstairs,” said Jillian. In an undertone, she asked, “What were you and Colin up to last night?”

I shot a sideways glance at my aunt-in-law. I could tell my mother’s ears had perked up. “You’d never believe me if I told you,” I muttered.

Downstairs, the bridal party had assembled in what had once been a music room, but had devolved, over successive, less musical generations, into a sort of den.

My father was fidgeting with his tie. Pammy was admiring her face in a small handheld mirror. Alex was giving last-minute instructions to her daughter, my flower girl. The page boy we had borrowed from one of the Canadian branches of the Selwick clan.

Through the curtain that had been hung over the music room door, I could hear a fanfaronade of baroque music.

My mother sent the first wave through. I could hear the requisite oohs and aahs as my flower girl minced down the aisle, carefully portioning her petals.

Alex followed her daughter, followed by Pammy, who mouthed something to me before she disappeared behind the curtain. It sounded like “More rouge!”

I was not putting on more rouge.

As Serena made her way up, I felt her thin hand clasp my wrist.

I couldn’t tell whether green wasn’t a good color for Serena or if it was the aftereffect of being held at gunpoint by her ex-boyfriend, which admittedly could make anyone feel a little queasy. Her long brown hair was as shiny as ever, but her face was nearly as green as her dress.

I put a hand on her arm. “Are you all right? If you need to sit down—”

“I’m fine.” She didn’t look fine, but I decided not to argue. The last time we’d had this sort of exchange, I’d wound up holding her head over a toilet bowl, and I was due in front of an altar in approximately three minutes. “I just wanted to say . . . I’m sorry. For everything.”

“It’s okay,” I said, giving her a quick hug. “And that’s your cue.”

In fact, it had been her cue a few times already. Jillian, whose bouquet was larger and whose dress was longer to mark her elevated status as both maid of honor and Great and Mighty Younger Sister (which ranked a few steps higher than Oz and well above grand poobah), whispered, “What was that about?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I murmured, and chivvied her out onto the runway.

Which left me. I peeked through the curtain. From my vantage point I could just make out Colin, his blond head shining in the light from the French windows.

The vicar winked at me. I hastily pulled my head back through the curtain.

My father held out an arm. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I said, flexing one foot beneath my dress. My heels were very, very high. Not as high as Pammy’s, but there was some serious leverage going on.

“If you have any second thoughts . . .” my father murmured.

“No second thoughts.” Except possibly about the shoes, which were going to get very uncomfortable very quickly.

About Colin, on the other hand, I had no doubts at all. If he and I could face an armed archivist together, we were ready for anything. Up to and including diapering and midnight feedings.

Eventually. I had some books to write first.

The music changed, swelled. My father opened the curtain and we stepped through, into the bright light of the drawing room. Old friends and new acquaintances were a happy blur on either side of the aisle, the line of Colin’s groomsmen a gray smudge against the pale walls.

Only Colin stood out distinctly. Because in the end, that was what this was about. The two of us.

He held out a hand to help me up the two steps onto the makeshift platform, and the words of the ceremony washed over me as I held his hand, dust motes drifting around us in the sunlight.

It was hard not to think of the first time I had entered this room, nearly two years ago. It had been autumn then. Colin was an inscrutable albeit attractive stranger in a green Barbour jacket. And I was going to finish my research, write my dissertation, go back to the States, and fling myself into the academic job market. My world had been coffee soaked, rain gray, November cold.

November would come again and rain—it was England, after all—but my horizons had opened and expanded in ways I could never have imagined.

Once, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. Now I hadn’t a clue. But I had a book and I had Colin, and I had learned to take the unexpected in stride. The future lay ahead of us, uncharted and full of possibility, and I gave silent thanks to the Pink Carnation for turning my plans upside down. If she had been any less elusive, I wouldn’t be here.

Colin’s eyes met mine in one of those moments of perfect well-being.

Solemnly, the vicar intoned, “Do you, Eloise, take—”

Which was, of course, when Pammy’s mobile began bleating, making the entire bodice of her dress vibrate.

The vicar lost his place in the service as Pammy dug in her bodice, muttering, “Sorry, sorry . . .”

Three out of four groomsmen looked as though they were ready to start drooling. Jeremy was too busy fixing the set of his cuff links to be distracted by vibrating cleavage.

My mother, who had never liked Pammy, took a death grip on my bouquet, which had been handed off to her. My father took a death grip on my mother.

I couldn’t look Colin in the eye. If I did, I was going to lose it laughing, which isn’t necessarily how you want to precede that all-important “I do.”

“Hey!” Pammy had managed to fish her phone from her bra and was waving it triumphantly in the air. “It’s Jim! He says he got you a book deal!”

“You got a book deal?” said Jillian, from her place at the front of the row of bridesmaids. “Yay!”

Unsure what to do, some of our guests began clapping, but it quickly died out as they glanced around and saw that other people weren’t.

“A reading from the Book of Eloise?” murmured Colin, sotto voce.