Page 55 of Inconvenient Honor
“Unless you discover she went with Volkov, she isn’t the Foreign Office’s concern.”Mine perhaps, but not yours.
The oarsman pulled out into the stream, and the slap of the oars pulled him back toward London, back to the affairs of state.Where are you, Lily? What have you done?
If he couldn’t reach her, he couldn’t change her mind. He leaned back and squinted up where stars that ought to shine lay hiddenbehind city smoke and foul miasma. Lily wanted to manage her own life. He ought to leave her to it.
Let her try it anyway.
Three daysat sea and Lily’s uncharacteristic mal de mer continued unabated. Pregnancy had stolen her sea legs as well.
Ahmet looked down his substantial nose at her, his now familiar sympathy shining in his eyes. “You wish to rest?”
She shook her head. “Could we try something sitting still for a while?” She refused self-pity.You brought this on yourself. You got what you asked for.
The delegation assigned Lily a tiny cabin apart from Sahin and the rest of his entourage, one just large enough for lessons in court protocol. Ahmet had been assigned to teach Lily what she needed to know to impress the Valide Sultan.
He had demonstrated how to bow out of a room for the past half hour. Lily thought she might have it; she knew for certain the bowing contributed to dizziness. The ways of the Ottoman court remained strange, but Lily persisted. The more I learn, the better I will be able to get along.
“I assume we should also skip the protocols for the serving of food?” Ahmet asked rhetorically. Amusement lurked in his eyes.
Lily felt herself pale. “Please,” she managed, swallowing hard.
“Let’s review the hierarchies inside the women’s quarters then.” He began to drone on, listing the hierarchy beginning with the lowliest servant girl or Kalfa.
When he began expanding on the rights and privileges of the various ranks of imperial wives from the Iqbal, who may be favored with the sultan’s attention but have no children, to Haseki, who would be awarded her own quarters and servants once she had given birth, Lily’s head began to spin. Higher still was the Kadin, who had given the sultan a son. The concept of such a marriage and the structureof privilege felt as strange to Lily as the words themselves.Where will I fit? As Kalfa, no doubt, or worse. Surely not wife.
“Repeat the words for me, please Ahmet.”
“You learn quickly, Lady.”
She smiled wanly. “Languages come to me.” Language, she knew, held the key. She could carve out a place for herself as a teacher only with perfectly fluent Turkish.
Kalfa, Iqbal, Haseki, Kadin, Kafir. Kafir—infidel.
“Kafir? That is me. Do you object to teaching a kafir, Ahmet, and a woman at that?”
“I live to serve women,” the man said with a smile. “As to the rest,” he shrugged, “You learn quickly. It is my privilege to teach.”
She smiled back. “So shall I. It is my wish to teach.”
“Then we both serve the women of the sultan’s household, no? Shall we continue?”
Ideas felt less strange with repetition. The rigid order of precedence reminded Lily of the house party at Chadbourn Park. Chadbourn’s guests had gathered before dinner and promenaded in rank order to their seats. The seats had been laid out according to the rules of etiquette and rank. The two worlds had more in common than someone might suppose.
The Seraglio need not be strange. One need only learn the rules to get along. Lily would do it. She had no other choice. She had burned her bridges behind her. If Richard found her background lacking, he would find the scandal of life in the Seraglio insupportable. He would never have her after this.
Chapter Twenty
Anervous clerk greeted Richard at Horse Guards.
“Fair put out he sounded.”
“Castlereagh always sounds fair put out. What exactly did he say?” Richard demanded.
“You are to call on him immediately. And you—beg pardon, my lord, but these are his words—‘damn well better have your analysis of Malta in your hand.’”
The agitated clerk blinked up at him, anxiety giving him the fidgets. Richard dismissed him with an abrupt gesture.
Malta. Did she sail to Malta? How unsafe are those waters?He looked at his unfinished report.If you concentrated on your damned work, you would know.
