Page 60 of Inconvenient Honor
In spite of the ache, Richard felt elated. When his friends went to war, he served from a desk at Horse Guards. Will told him he saved more lives than the lot of them put together, but Richard never saw it, never had the heat of battle. When he dispatched Andrew to France, Richard had the worry but not the elation of actual danger. When his agents took the field, he sat at a desk, sifting and sorting and finding truths other men missed, protecting England with a machine-like mind and cool judgment.
Physical exertion is damned liberating. He thought of the months he spent buried in Britain’s paperwork. He thought of the months he faced his parents to be spoon-fed his father’s goals for the estate. He thought of the months he sleepwalked through the boring rituals of London society.
Better than good. I haven’t been this energized since the Congress of Vienna.
Richard helped Spiru heft a final box onto a lorry, straightened, and rubbed his shoulder.
“Now there’s a fierce one,” Gorg said.
“Fierce?” Richard asked.
“Always come with the big guards. That ‘un’s a Berber,” Gorg answered. He pointed to a tall dark man in a turban glowering down on them. His charge, a cluster of heavily veiled women, stood by the railing.
“Do you ever seen one travel alone?” Richard asked.
“Not often. Had one a month ago. Little thing in English dress with a bodyguard as big as that. But the woman was small. Somewhatstout. Brown hair all piled up like it might give her neck an ache,” Gorg said.
Stout. Not Lily. All this way and it wasn’t Lily.
“Not like the other one.”
“What other one?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Seraglio, Lily discovered, teemed with babies, small children, and their mothers. One pregnant woman provided no distraction. A newly arrived widow, and an English one at that, did.
Her lecture on the Russian court overflowed with eager young women, most of them more curious about Lily than the topic. “Lecture” may have been too formal a word for a talk given in a room with blue tiled walls and lined with cushions where giggling students reclined. Some of them nursed their babies.
“You have been to Russia, Zambak?” one wide-eyed girl asked. She looked to be no more than sixteen.
Lily inclined her head to acknowledge the truth. “My father served in Saint Petersburg.”
“Did you meet your husband there?” the girl asked.
The husband. Lies pile on lies. I have none and probably never will.
She struggled to formulate an answer. She and Valide Sultan agreed their story needed to be simple. She married a man in the British Foreign Service. He died en route to Constantinople, leaving Lily without protection. The women of the Seraglio understood what it was to be without protection.
“No, I met him in England,” she said.
“Do not tease Zambak about it,” an older girl scolded. “It makes her sad to talk about such things.”
“I’m sorry, Zambak, for your sorrow,” the girl apologized. Shebrightened abruptly. “But soon you will have your baby. If it is a boy, it will be a reminder of him.”
A sudden sharp memory of Richard, fierce concern for her in his eyes, stabbed her. The arrogant fool cares for everyone as if they were his own. She knew she admired that even as she wished more from him.
“See, foolish one, you make her even sadder,” the older girl chided. “Her son will never know his father.”
Boy or girl will never know. Never. Even if we return to England, it can’t happen.
Hushing quieted even the most curious of the girls. Sympathy looked back at Lily from around the room.
“Tell us again about Russia’s policy in Poland,” one of them asked, diverting the conversation back to their studies. Most of them had proved more astute than Lily would have expected. She tried to picture Lady Sarah Wharton curious about Russian intentions in Poland and could not.
They streamed out into the sunlight when Lily finished. She gathered up notes, wrapped the still unfamiliar shawls around her shoulders, and followed them. She thought she might seek a fountain she had discovered near the women’s quarters. Fountains here did not dance; scarcity of water made that foolish. They were, however, beautifully decorated. She thought to sit for a moment and bask in the coolness before she filled her water skin.
A messenger intercepted her halfway there. The young eunuch made obeisance and gave her the message.
