Captive of Kadar

by Trish Morey

  Today the sky was heavy, the fat dark clouds promising snow that Amber was eagerly anticipating. She’d never seen snow falling, her outer Melbourne suburb too low-lying, and she’d never been in the mountains to witness a snowfall. Strange how she’d had to come all the way to Turkey to see it, but it would be another memory to take home with her.

  She was building quite a repertoire of memories to take home with her.

  ‘I never figured you for a tour guide,’ she half joked as they walked around the base of the tall pointed rocks he called fairy castles. There were so many sides to Kadar and this was yet another. Because he’d gone from being someone who seemed to be boss of the town to a man who could relate the history of the valley while they trekked.

  ‘Mehmet used to bring me here,’ he explained as they walked. ‘Whenever I despaired of life or of how unfair or tough things were, he’d bring me here and we’d walk these paths together. The valley had been here for ever, he’d tell me, and the rocks might be misshapen or bent crooked by the wind but they still stood, tall and proud. It was my choice if I wanted to give in, or to stand resilient like them.’

  ‘Mehmet must be very proud of you.’

  ‘I will never be able to repay him for all that he has done for me.’

  She looked at him standing under the dark sky, the cold wind troubling his dark hair, and she understood him better then. She’d imagined he’d always been this way. A leader. Confident and self-assured. But it had been a conscious choice. He could have caved to his loss and his pain and deformity. He could have given in a thousand times to what must have been an agonising journey for a child and a scarred teen trying to find his place in the world, and nobody would have blamed him. But he’d chosen instead to be resilient and to stand tall, to be a leader amongst men.

  And she admired him more than ever for it.

  Admired?

  As the first snowflakes began to fall from the sky, she wished that were all it was. She wished she could summon a hint of the resentment she’d once felt towards him, that she should still harbour towards a man who’d accused her of being a thief. Because instead what she was feeling was a growing respect for the man, and a growing warmth towards him that wasn’t all about how good he made her feel in bed.

  And it was as inconvenient as it was unwanted, because she hadn’t come to Turkey looking for a man, even if she’d somehow managed to stumble upon this very fine example of one. And she certainly hadn’t come looking for love.

  Which was a damned shame, really.

  Seeing that was exactly what she’d found.

  God!

  She turned into the wind so there was no chance he could read the shock on her features and ask her what was wrong. The icy wind blew a flurry of snowflakes, cold against a face flushed with the heat of her discovery.

  She’d been looking forward to the snow. Eagerly anticipating it like a child. Now the thrill of her first snowfall had been overshadowed by the force of something much more momentous. Something altogether more calamitous, the way her heart was racing in her chest.

  What the hell was wrong with her? How could she have let it happen? It wasn’t supposed to happen!

  She felt him take her hand and he whirled her around to face him. ‘It’s snowing,’ he said, with the excitement of someone who knew how much she’d been looking forward to it.

  She did her best to smile. ‘I know.’

  He lifted a hand to her eyes, smoothed a tear from her cheek. ‘Then why are you crying?’

  She shook her head. ‘Because I’m so happy, of course.’

  ‘You look beautiful with snow on your eyelashes,’ he said, and kissed her, excited for her, and she tried to feel as excited as him but all she could think was, No.

  Around them the snow fell heavier, the flakes fatter, turning the landscape white.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we must go. There’s something else you haven’t seen yet.’

  * * *

  Back in the warmth of the Pavilion of the Moon, they peeled away their coats and shook off the snow. Kadar took a big set of keys into a locked room set up like those she’d seen in the palaces in Istanbul, with glass display cases to show the treasures of the time and where the students of the nearest university had worked to provide typewritten descriptions in Turkish, Arabic and English. Almost immediately he had to excuse himself to take a phone call, but Amber didn’t mind. Because there was so much to see, she wouldn’t miss him while she studied the treasures.

  There were costumes, exquisite robes of silk and gold, and fine pottery and pouring ware, and there was jewellery of course. Only a fraction of what was on display in the palaces of Topkapi and Dohlmabahce, but the pieces displayed were beautiful nonetheless, the collection the remnants of a sultan’s hideaway.

  And all of it was magnificent, but it was to the jewellery that her gaze was drawn. There were earrings of pearl and gemstones and armbands of finely worked gold, and bracelets thick and thin, from the simple to the ornate.

  And then she saw it.

  No!

  It shocked her into stillness.

  Shocked her into denial so intense she had to close her eyes because she was sure she was imagining it.

  Because the bracelet she saw in the cabinet could be hers.

  She opened her eyes and it was still there.

  Surely it must be hers? Because, if not, it was the closest thing to identical.

  But a treasure? She’d always believed it was nothing more than a trinket. Hoped it was nothing more than a trinket. Something her great-great-great-grandmother Amber had picked up in a street market somewhere along her travels.

  Oh, God.

  Her eyes scanned the description.

  A jewelled bracelet of gold and precious gems, ruby, sapphire, emerald and lapis lazuli, from the nineteenth century, one of a pair according to the manufacturer’s brief, made as a gift to the Sultan’s favourite. The identity of the favourite and the whereabouts of the second bracelet are unknown.

  Sensation zipped down her spine, a potent combination of shock and wonder mixed with fear, holding her rooted to the spot. Because she knew the whereabouts of the other bracelet. It was secreted in a pocket of her pack in the room she shared with Kadar.

  In the room that the last Amber had shared with the Sultan.

  Right here.

  She’d actually found her great-great-great-grandmother.

  Her ancestor had been here, in this very place, and now, five generations later, she was walking in her shadows and in her footsteps.

  The earlier Amber, the favourite of a sultan, no less, and the bracelets a gift from her lover. She’d taken one home and she’d left the other one here—with him?

  But why would she have left and gone home to England if she loved him?

  There were too many unanswered questions, too many things she still wanted to know. She searched the case, scanning its contents, looking for some other clue but there was none, just the glint of coloured stones—precious stones—in the light.

  And a chilling thought occurred to her, when she realised her supposedly cheap trinket was none other than a precious Turkish antiquity.

  How was she ever going to manage to leave the country with it? It was sure to be found and they would think—

  ‘What have you found?’

  She started. She hadn’t realised he’d finished his call let alone that he’d caught up with her. How long had he been watching? For a split second she toyed with the idea of coming right out and telling him and explaining how she’d found the bracelet in her gran’s attic and she’d just found the matching one right here.

  But no, she realised, because all along he hadn’t trusted her. All along he’d been looking for a reason to prove she was a thief.

  He’d assume she’d stolen i
t, somehow from somewhere. It was better he didn’t know. Better he never found out.

  ‘Just some gorgeous pieces of jewellery,’ she said with a shrug, moving on along the display.

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, itching to get out of there as quickly as she could. ‘I want to see what’s on the other side of this display.’ And then get the hell back to our room and make sure the bracelet is nowhere he can stumble upon it.

  For the first time in days, Kadar sensed trouble. He didn’t really need her to show him. He’d seen her staring at the piece. He’d witnessed her stillness, her intense concentration and the way her hands had balled as if she was having to stop her fingers reaching out and taking the piece.

  It was no surprise what she was looking at, because it was like so many pieces that had captured her attention and turned her eyes wide at the palaces in Istanbul they’d visited. The pieces that combined beaten gold with coloured gemstones.

  And he was disappointed because he’d been beginning to think that he must have been wrong, that he must have misjudged her after all.

  Except here she was, her eyes greedy, her fingers twitching with excitement.

  But why he should feel disappointed, when he’d always taken her for a thief—how did that work?

  When had that changed?

  Last night, he realised. Right about the time he’d left her arms unrestrained when he’d made love to her and she hadn’t recoiled when her fingers had touched his tortured back, and he hadn’t felt repulsed courtesy of any horrified reaction. There had been no horrified reaction.

  Just a woman holding a man with nothing but passion between them.

  It had felt good to hold a woman that way, and to have her hands hold him. It had felt good to hold Amber that way.

  There was no miracle. He had not forgotten his scars, because he would never be able to forget them when they twisted and pulled with every movement, but for once in his life making love to a woman, he hadn’t cared.

  He watched her make her way to the other side of the display case, her fingers trailing along the wooden edge, her blue eyes lingering on an item or to read a description before moving on, making out she was innocence itself, even though he could see the tension around her eyes and in the set of her mouth.

  What was going on in her head right now?

  She looked up and threw him one of those dazzling smiles that seemed to flick a switch inside him, lighting up all the dark corners inside him, and his body responded the only way it knew.

  What was it about her? They had spent days and nights together and still he felt the tug of her body on his. Still he hungered for her as he had that day in the Spice Market.

  And for the first time in his life he could remember, he wanted to be wrong.

  He didn’t want her to be a thief.

  Because he didn’t want to be able to like someone who was capable of that.

  His phone buzzed again and he checked the screen, and excused himself, knowing there was nothing she could do, even if she wanted to.

  This place might be no Topkapi, the security systems no way near as sophisticated, but there was no way she was getting her hand on any of the pretties.

  Not on his watch.

  Three more days, he told himself. Three more nights to enjoy, and then she would be gone.

  Then his life could be normal again.

  Why didn’t that make him feel better?

  * * *

  When he took her to bed that night, she couldn’t help but think about the Amber who had gone before. Who had walked these very rooms and slept in this same bed, looking up at the same constellation of stars. She felt her presence everywhere she looked.

  Had the Sultan’s eyes burned hot as Kadar’s did for her?

  Had his hands worshipped her, peeling off her clothes, one by one, turning touch into a delicious assault on her senses?

  But tonight was no delicious assault and there was no repeat of the tender lovemaking of last night after the fireworks. Instead, there was an edge to their lovemaking, her fears playing on her mind, the ghost of the Amber of long ago whispering in the darkness, even while Kadar took her body higher and still higher.

  And there was a tension in him too. It was there in his tight body and his clenched jaw, and the desperate way he drove into her, again and again, almost as if he were punishing her.

  Almost as if he were punishing himself.

  But then even the air around them felt tightly sprung and ready to snap, and shimmering with expectation, as if waiting for something to set it off. A room full of mousetraps and ghosts and her mind in the centre of it, spinning in circles around her fears. Kadar. Love. And a bracelet she had to somehow get home.

  Love.

  And that was the greatest fear of all.

  And still Kadar pounded into her, his body sleek with sweat, taking her body inexorably in one direction, the pressure inside her building until her mind had no option but to let go and go with it, and her fears were left spinning aimlessly behind while her mind emptied of everything but sensation and a spiralling need for more.

  In the end she didn’t come. Not willingly. Her climax was wrenched from her on his cry as he shattered inside her. Not a cry of victory, but an anguished cry that tore at her heart as it sent her hurtling apart.

  Tears spilled from her eyes, unwanted, unbidden. Tears that spoke of pointlessness and fear and a love that was never supposed to be.

  ‘Amber?’ He cradled her in his arms and his tenderness was so at odds with his lovemaking of before that it only compounded her own anguish. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, though she knew he would.

  He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose and her chin before his lips met hers, the briefest, most heart-wrenching brush of lips against lips. ‘Then what’s wrong?’ His breath was warm against her skin, and flavoured with him. She would miss it so when she had gone, and suddenly everything was conspiring to her wretchedness.

  ‘Nothing. Everything.’

  He swept the hair from her brow, tendrils that had curled and become glued to her skin in the heated cauldron of their lovemaking. ‘What do you mean?’

  She sniffed, her mind awhirl, wondering what she could do or say that would make sense of her tears. ‘It’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing.’

  ‘You lost your tour and your money and you didn’t cry. You don’t strike me as the kind of person to cry over nothing.’

  She couldn’t tell him of her love or of the bracelet hidden away in her belongings that was a double of one here. Couldn’t admit her fears about either. And without a shred of inspiration for what she might make up to account for her tears, instead she licked her lips and said, ‘There was a reason I chose Turkey to visit, something I haven’t told you. Something that didn’t seem important to tell you.’

  And she told him of her great-great-great-grandmother setting off a century and a half before from her home in rural England to journey in a far-off land. Of how she’d disappeared in Constantinople with no trace of her to be found, and how she’d somehow miraculously reappeared five years later, when her family must have assumed her lost for ever, to the feared white slave trade, or worse.

  Kadar listened as she explained about the diary she’d found, stained and worn in that attic, where she’d read of the exotic places her gran of so many generations ago wanted to visit. He listened when she explained about the missing pages, torn from the diary, as if her ancestor’s story had been so scandalous it had been destroyed.

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Eventually she married a local man and had many children and lived a long life, but, as far as I know, she never travelled again.’

  ‘So why the tears?’

  ‘I came looking for her w
hen I chose Turkey to visit. Wanting to see the sights that she had, wanting to follow in her footsteps. And, I know it will sound strange, but I feel close to her here, in this place.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘I know,’ she said, swiping her cheeks of the tracks of her tears. ‘Maybe it’s because I’m going home soon, but it’s like I’ve found something of her. A glimpse of where she stepped, or at least what she would have experienced and seen.’

  ‘You should have told me earlier. We could have gone to see some of the places she was excited about seeing.’

  She hadn’t wanted to tell him. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested. Besides, it wasn’t like we were friends going on holiday together.’ Far from it. She’d been an imposition and she’d been made to feel it. An imposition of convenience, because he’d made no secret of the fact he’d enjoyed their lovemaking.

  He pulled her closer into the crook of his shoulder on a sigh. ‘Maybe that is true. But still, I don’t know why you would cry over it now.’

  ‘I told you it was nothing.’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘I thought I had hurt you.’

  ‘No,’ she assured him as the tiny lights in the constellation above the bed winked down at her knowingly.

  That would come later.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE FLIGHT BACK to Istanbul was unremarkable, the turbulence of the thin winter air as they rose over the mountains no match for the turbulence going on inside him.

  The days they’d spent at Burguk had been some of his best. He should know. His best days were easy to find.

  Days spent in the company of his desert brothers. At the university where the foursome, initially resentful at being thrust together, had forged a bond made of steel. At their occasional adventures since then—with Bahir introducing them to the excitement of the casinos and the games of chance at which he somehow excelled, and with Zoltan racing across the desert sands to save the princess Aisha from the clutches of the warped and power-crazed Mustafa.