Silk and Secrets

by Mary Jo Putney

  "Yes, Ross," she answered meekly.

  And that had been that. There was no formal marriage proposal or acceptance, just an absolute conviction on both their parts that they belonged together.

  A storm had broken over their heads when they announced their intention to marry, but Ross was about to turn twenty-one and did not need his parents' permission. He would also come into a legacy on his twenty-first birthday and could support a wife in modest comfort even if his father cut off his allowance.

  Since Juliet's father was dead, only Lady Cameron's permission was needed, and she had given it without hesitation, though the duke had tried to persuade her to withhold it. Resigning themselves to the inevitable, Ross's parents had surrendered and accepted the marriage with good grace.

  And ever since, no matter what her circumstances, the fragrance of lavender would instantly transport Juliet back to her first discovery of passion and a time when she had known perfect certainty.

  Disoriented, she raised her face from the silk gown and returned to the present. She was not basking in an English summer but shivering in the sunset chill of a Persian spring. And in a few minutes she must face the only man she had ever loved, a man who had every reason to despise her.

  Wearily she rose to her feet and shook out the blue silk gown, which was surprisingly unwrinkled. Though the fabric was luxurious and the color rich, the style itself was simple and unprovocative. The chest also contained a chemise and petticoat, so she pulled them out and dressed hastily, for she had wasted too much time on her memories. Then she pulled her hair softly back over her ears and pinned it at the crown, letting the rest fall in waves down her back.

  Juliet removed the simple gold chain and pendant which she could not wear tonight, then studied her image doubtfully. After years of wearing only loose, high-necked robes, the form-fitting gown made her feel badly overexposed, particularly since it was rather tight across the bust. That was one area in which she had grown, though the rest of her seemed much the same as when she was seventeen. Because of the close cut, a neckline that was modest by English standards seemed quite daring, which was not the effect that she wanted.

  After a moment's thought she remembered a richly patterned Kashmir shawl that a visitor had once given her as a return for hospitality. After draping it around her shoulders, she inspected herself again. The dusky blues and grays of the shawl went well with her gown, as well as rendering it more modest

  Unfortunately, she now looked respectable to the point of dowdiness, which wasn't quite right either. She was not an English governess, but the eccentric warlord of a Persian manor. She would not face her husband looking like a timid wren, as if she craved his approval.

  What the outfit needed was gorgeous, barbaric Turkoman jewelry, and Juliet just happened to have some. Like the shawl, various ornaments had been given to her over the years by grateful travelers, though she had never had a reason to wear them. After careful consideration, she decided on flamboyant multistrand earrings that dangled almost to her shoulders and a matching necklace which filled in some of the bare expanse of skin above her décolletage. Both necklace and earrings were made of gold-chased silver, brightened with swinging, irregularly shaped beads of carnelian and turquoise.

  Braving the lavender again, she found a small pot of pink salve, which enhanced her lips. Rouge she did not need, for her cheeks had enough natural color.

  The final touch was purely local. In all the desert lands of Africa and Asia, men and women, especially women, blackened their eyelids with a cosmetic made of antimony and oil. Called variously kohl or surma, the preparation had been in use since at least the days of ancient Egypt, both to soothe the eyes and to provide some protection against the sun's glare.

  It also looked very dramatic and would be the perfect accent for her costume. Juliet took out a small embroidered pouch of surma and deftly applied it, blinking down on the spreading stick as she drew the cosmetic along her lids.

  Finally she regarded her image with satisfaction. She looked like a blend of East and West, certainly not provocative, but also neither masculine nor hopelessly plain.

  As ready as she would ever be, Juliet sallied forth to meet her husband.

  Chapter 4

  An hour after sunset, a polite soft-footed young man escorted Ross to the chamber where he was to dine with Juliet. The lamp-lit room appeared to be a study that had been converted to temporary use as a Western dining room. The Eastern custom was to eat sitting on the floor or on cushions around a low table, but this room contained a wooden table that had been covered with a linen cloth and set with plates and silverware in European style.

  The servant bowed and left Ross alone. He didn't mind, for he found it interesting to examine his surroundings, which bore a distinct resemblance to his own untidy office back in England.

  Besides unusual bits of pottery and statuary, there were books and scrolls in half a dozen languages, both European and Eastern. Several of the Asiatic texts were so unusual that they filled his heart with scholarly lust. He wondered if there was any chance that Juliet would let him borrow them, or stay long enough to make his own translations.

  Recalling his mission, he reined back his enthusiasm. He would have to return alive from Bokhara before he could borrow any books.

  Even more interesting were Juliet's own maps and notebooks, where she had recorded her observations of the land and its peoples. There were more than a dozen notebooks, and he thumbed quickly through several. Perceptive and ironic, the journals would be a great success if published in London under some title such as Persian Travels of an English Gentlewoman. They were also an interesting insight into the woman his wife had become.

  Lifting the last notebook, he opened it at random and glanced down to see, written in Juliet's distinctive angular handwriting, the words "I wish to God that I had never met Ross Carlisle."

  His heart jerked as if a sliver of ice had stabbed into it, and he slammed the book shut and returned it to the shelf. He stood very still, breathing deeply to counteract his incipient nausea. So she kept a private diary as well as a record of external observations, and within its pages she was characteristically frank.

  Bleakly Ross regarded the tooled leather binding of the journal. The answers to all his questions about what had gone wrong in his marriage were probably in that book—and he did not have the courage to look inside.

  At the sound of approaching footsteps, he turned and tried to look as casual as if he were taking his ease in his own library. Then Juliet pushed aside the door hanging, and he stiffened. She had always had a genius for the unexpected, and now the damned female was doing it again. This afternoon in her Tuareg robes she had looked like a warrior queen. Now, dressed as a cross between a governess and a Turkish dancer, she was every inch a woman.

  She paused in the doorway, her expression wary. "Good evening, Ross. I'm sorry that I'm late."

  "No matter," he said easily. "I assumed that either you were delayed by the unexpected or you've developed an Eastern sense of time."

  "A little of both, perhaps."

  As she entered the room, he studied her face, comparing it with the past. The rounded features of youth had slimmed and hardened as the strong underlying bone structure became more prominent. Juliet would never be pretty in the soft, helpless, feminine way that many men liked. Instead, she was quite shatteringly beautiful.

  Gesturing at the table, she said, "I thought you might like to eat Western-style, and the table here in my study was best suited for that."

  "It will be a pleasant change, assuming that I haven't forgotten how to use a fork in the last three months."

  As she gave a slight smile, a man and two boys entered with trays of food, which they set on a worktable along one side of the study. The man said, "Do you wish anything else, Gul-i Sarahi?"

  "No, Ruhollah. We shall serve ourselves. You may retire for the evening."

  The three bowed, then departed.

  Juliet explained, "I thoug
ht it would be best if we had no interruptions."

  "I agree. I also just realized what your name means. I had thought it was a Tuareg word that I didn't recognize, but it must be the Persian phrase gul-i sara-i. Flower of the desert."

  "It's because of my coloring." She lifted a self-conscious hand to her bright head. "The first time we met, Saleh called me Desert Flower and the name stuck."

  "Why did you prefer to speak French rather than Tamahak this afternoon?" he asked curiously. "I thought you had learned the Tuareg language when you lived in Tripoli."

  "I did, but you spoke Tamahak so well that I was afraid you would notice if I made a mistake. I haven't spoken Tamahak in years, so French seemed safer." She lifted a bottle. "Would you like some wine?"

  Ross raised his brows. "That must be hard to come by in this part of the world."

  "Yes, but I like to keep a little wine and brandy on hand for guests." She opened the bottle and poured two glasses of red wine, keeping her fingers away from his as she handed him one of the glasses. "Since alcohol is forbidden to Muslims, there is no problem with the servants drinking up the wine cellar, as there often is in England."

  For the next several minutes she was busy ladling soup into bowls and setting platters of bread and other food on the table.

  Ross watched in silence, taking an occasional sip of the wine. He remembered her blue silk gown very clearly. She looked better than ever in it, for her lithe body had added a few more curves. In fact, she looked so provocative that he wondered if she had deliberately set out to tease or seduce him, and if so, which of those two things would be harder to endure.

  She glanced up at him, her fiery hair swirling and dancing around her shoulders as she turned her head. The sight was enough to make a man forget every wise resolution he had ever made, yet as her gaze met his, uncertainty was briefly visible in the clear gray depths of her eyes. At seventeen, Juliet had not understood how intensely alluring she was. To Ross's surprise, she still had that same quality of innocence.

  Which had to be false, considering the swath she had cut through Mediterranean manhood before disappearing into Asia Minor. The rumors about her behavior had been so lurid that he would not have believed them, had he not had irrefutable proof. But he acquitted her of any desire to tempt him tonight; if that had been her aim, she would be doing a better job of it. Instead, her wariness seemed as great as his own.

  Oblivious of his speculations, Juliet said, "Your two servants are here, none the worse for wear. They're staying in the men's quarters."

  "I'm glad to hear that." Trained to be polite under any circumstances, Ross pulled out a chair for her. After a moment's hesitation Juliet sat down. Her silky hair brushed the back of his hand as she did, and Ross jerked back as if scalded. His mother's training in manners had not extended to how a man should behave when dining with an estranged wife who wished that she had never met him.

  Taking his own seat, Ross asked, "How long have you lived here, Juliet?"

  "Over nine years now. After I..."—she hesitated, then chose a neutral term—"left England, I traveled through the Mediterranean, then into the Ottoman Empire. As you know, I lived in Teheran as a girl, when my father was posted there. I wanted to see Persia again, so I spent quite some time journeying through the country. I was about to return to Constantinople when I discovered Serevan."

  Ross tasted his soup. It contained yoghurt, rice, and mint and was delicious. "Was the fortress a ruin then?"

  "Yes. This eastern frontier of Persia is terribly poor from the constant Turkoman raids. Many of the villagers were taken to Bokhara as slaves, and others left for safer places."

  He tore off a piece of flat bread and used it to scoop up a mouthful of hummus, a blend of chickpeas and various flavorings. "Serevan looks capable of withstanding attacks."

  "It is now, but when I came here the walls were crumbling and the main well had been poisoned, so only a few people were left in the village." Juliet sipped at her wine, her expression distant. "I fell in love with the place, though. There is something very pure and elemental about the mountains and the desert. Saleh was living in the village. He is an Uzbek, from Bokhara originally."

  That caught Ross's attention. He must talk to Saleh before he went on to see if the Bokharan might have some useful suggestions. He also wondered if the Uzbek was Juliet's lover. The man might be old enough to be her father, but that meant nothing. His mind veered away from the thought. "And since you admired Lady Hester Stanhope, you decided to emulate her and set up a little kingdom of your own here?"

  "I suppose one could put it that way." Juliet stood and cleared the empty bowls away. Then she placed on the table a platter of roast lamb surrounded by rice mixed with nuts and dried fruit. "I was tired of continually traveling and wanted to settle somewhere. Money is power, and my fifteen hundred pounds a year has been enough to finance new wells, rebuild the fortress, and buy livestock and seeds. Once they knew they would be safe, people began trickling back. Now there is quite a sizable community. Mostly Persians, but there are Uzbeks and Afghans, even a few Turkomans. All are welcome, as long as they will live in peace with their neighbors. It's a rather feudal arrangement, with me as lord of the manor."

  Reluctantly Ross admitted that she had made good use of his money. It would have been easy to lavish it on herself in the fleshpots of Europe; instead, she had created an island of peace and prosperity in a troubled land.

  And it took more than money to rule here; the men of Serevan would not obey her orders if she had not earned their respect. "Speaking of Lady Hester Stanhope, did you hear that she died? About a year and a half ago."

  "I hadn't heard. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose—she was well along in years. But she was a legend for so long that it's hard to believe she's gone." Juliet looked wistful. "When I was in Cyprus, I thought of going to Syria to meet her, but decided to wait until after my trip to Persia. Since I stayed here, now I'll never meet her."

  "Perhaps that's just as well," Ross said. "She was a fascinating person, but she liked men much more than women and would probably have been very uncivil to a young female who so much resembled her. This way, you can retain your illusions."

  Juliet's eyes rounded. "You actually met Lady Hester Stanhope?" When Ross nodded, she exclaimed, "Please, tell me everything about her!"

  "Not tonight." Ross divided the last of the bottle of wine between his glass and hers. "Why the Tuareg costume?"

  She smiled. "It lends an aura of mystery, which is no bad thing in a land where myth is as powerful as reality—perhaps more so. Also, the veil protects my face from the sun and disguises the fact that I'm a woman. Everyone at Serevan knows, of course."

  "It sounds like you have created a unique niche for yourself here." Ross paused, then found himself adding in a soft voice, "Have you been happy, Juliet?"

  She looked down at her plate. "I am content. It's important to do something worthwhile." With an obvious desire to change the subject, she asked, "How is Sara?"

  "Very well. She's expecting a child early in the summer."

  "Does she have other children? I suppose she could have half a dozen by now."

  "Not considering that she's been married less than two years," Ross replied. "This is her first."

  "Didn't she marry that young man she met when she came out?" Juliet asked with surprise. "They certainly seemed on the way to the altar. I forget his name, but his father was a viscount and his uncle was a cabinet minister."

  Ross had not forgotten the name, but he never used it. "He decided that he didn't want to marry a woman who might be crippled for life. Since there was no official engagement, it was easy for him to withdraw after Sara's accident. Not very honorable, but easy."

  Juliet had been about to sip her wine, but at Ross's words she set her goblet down on the table, hard. "What accident?"

  "Don't you know? I assumed your lawyer communicated news along with the bank drafts."

  "He is under orders to restrict himself to th
ings like deaths in my immediate family. He never said anything about Sara." That had been a deliberate choice on Juliet's part because she did not want to be weakened by longing for her friends and family. Now, shaken, she realized how much she had missed.

  "Just a few weeks after you left England, Sara had a riding accident. She nearly died, and would never have walked again if she was not so indomitable. Her horse had to be destroyed. It was that pretty gray mare, Gossamer." Ross's face hardened. "I've sometimes wondered if the accident happened because she was distracted with worry about you and me. It wasn't like Sara to be careless when she was riding."

  Juliet gasped at the implied accusation, wanting to refute it, but she could not, for Ross was right: it was not like Sara to be careless.

  She swallowed hard. All of the years she had been thinking Sara happy, her friend had been suffering pain, probably despair and loneliness at the loss of the man she loved—and quite likely some of the blame could be laid at Juliet's door. Every action produced ripples of reaction, and Juliet would never know all of the consequences of her mad flight from England. Her voice tight, she asked, "How is Sara now?"

  Ross's face eased. "She couldn't be better. She married a friend of mine and they are quite besotted with each other. Mikahl suits her much better than the vapid young fool who abandoned her."

  So perhaps the ripples of consequence from Juliet's actions were not all bad. Or perhaps, she thought with the fatalism she had developed in her years in the East, she had just been a very small link in Sara's chain of fate. At least Sara was happy now.

  Lost in thought, Juliet did not react quickly enough when she caught a familiar flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. In one graceful bound a sleek black cat leapt onto the table. The tablecloth skidded under the intruder's weight so that the cat slid across the surface, ending with both forepaws in the lamb platter and looking as surprised as Ross did.