Page 64 of Inconvenient Honor
“You have witnessed the complexity of my household. Administration requires skills—motivating people and seeing to their needs, managing finances, planning, and, of course, politics.”
“Politics?” Lily couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.
“This is the sultan’s household. The affairs of empire are discussed in his offices, at his dinner table, in his chambers. I need women with a head for such affairs who are able to listen and influence. I have hope for you.”
She bid the Valide Sultan good day and turned toward her quarters.A vision of long years in this place stretched out in front of Lily.
A few years only, I beg. Papa will come for me, and I’ll go back.Go back to what? Life alone with my baby in a remote English village, near people who cannot add months? The Seraglio offers a sort of power and autonomy once you accept the basic structure. Would it be so bad to stay here?
Lily’s hopes for a husband had faded with the marquess’s offensive proposal. Richard’s face, intense, determined, and arrogant, while he demanded—not asked, but demanded—marriage haunted her. She forgave him class snobbery. His assumption of male superiority stung, however. What man wants a partner for a wife? What man will offer for a “widow” with a child anything other than a place as his brood mare or nursemaid?
She turned into the bathing facility. Women and their young children clustered around a pool laughing and playing.
You have it better than many women. Here at least you and your baby are safe. No one willfind you here.
The coastalboat smelled better than a fishing boat, but its company proved less savory. The boat stopped frequently, in and out of small coves, picking up packages and people.
Richard acquired a black eye before he arrived in Constantinople. He lost a shirt, a flagon of rum, and all of his money. He found freedom. For the first time in his life, the burden of responsibility and expectations lifted, leaving him with no cares but his own desires.
Lying on his back one night, he studied the endless stars and wondered if Lily watched them, too. It came to him then that he might love her. What else would explain this madness?
He began to laugh.You always said love belonged to fools, and you’ve become one.He laughed out loud until a fellow traveler threatened to blacken his other eye.
But love? he wondered, suddenly sober.I never believed in it. I want her. I want her so badly that I offered marriage twice, even after she threw it in my face. That ought to be an end to it.
He closed his eyes and tried to let the rocking of the boat lull him to sleep.Why can’t she accept that I care what happens to her? Isn’t that enough?He drifted to sleep knowing he would never understand women.
The boat put in to the foreign section of Constantinople, a blessing but a minor one. Crowds of peddlers thronged new arrivals in front of the colorful walls of old fountains and new mansions. The place seethed with humanity. A half dozen languages assaulted his ears at the same time; odors new and painfully familiar assaulted his nose; a confusing knot of narrow lanes, fanned out in several directions, assaulted his vision.
Did Lily pass through here? Proper ladies would put handkerchief to nose and demand immediate transport to a “good” (by which they meant European) house immediately. Lily would revel in this; she would refuse to hurry until she absorbed her fill. A wide grin stretched his dry lips.When we’re married, I’ll bring her here.
For now he had business. He asked directions to the British embassy. After two false starts and a long detour, complimentsof a fig vendor with a particularly nasty sense of humor, he walked up to the British embassy.
A rail-thin boy in soft cotton trousers and hemp sandals stopped his systematic sweep of the steps to look at Richard with narrowed eyes.
“No beggars,” the boy said firmly. He returned to his work.
“I’m not a beggar!” Richard bit back the impulse to announce his name and title. This savvy little laborer had taken in his appearance; he would laugh at some shabby beggar claiming to be a marquess.
“You Englishman?” the boy asked.
“I am.”
“Office by side. His m’jesty’s subjects get help there.”
Well. A marquess is certainly a subject of the king. The boy’s exercise of pompous authority amused him.
“Do you think I could get help?” he asked.
The boy appeared to think it over. “Possible,” he said at last. “No beggars though.”
The warning had teeth. When he tried his luck at the office, the clerks were equally unimpressed. Richard finally insisted that he knew Sir Robert Liston emphatically enough that a skeptical young man agreed to send a message to the ambassador.
Thirty minutes later the man himself arrived, hurried and annoyed. “Who the devil claims—Glenaire!” He stared at Richard in open-mouthed astonishment.
Richard rose, chin high, with as much aristocratic presence as he could muster in a stained shirt and undersized trousers.
“Sir Robert,” he said, “I need your assistance.”
