Silk and Secrets

by Mary Jo Putney

  An advantage of lying folded together in this particular fashion was that he could continue to touch her intimately, ensuring that her response kept pace with his own. And when, as soon happened, she began twisting convulsively, he held her tightly to prevent them from separating as he culminated himself.

  All of her tautness vanished and she melted back against him, as boneless as a pillow, but far more pleasant to hold. He whispered in her ear, "That was the finest way imaginable of preparing to meet the day."

  Her gray eyes fluttered open and she asked with mock innocence, "Did something happen and I missed it?"

  They were still joined together, so he arched his pelvis against her. "Does this refresh your memory?"

  Her eyes widened. "So it does." Chuckling, she rolled onto her back and drew his head down to rest on her breast. "In some ways this reminds me of our wedding night."

  "More like the morning after," he interjected as he relaxed. She made a superlative pillow.

  "That's true, the morning after was much like this. I hadn't known it was possible to make love in such a position. Of course," she added with a smile, "at the time I was quite vague even on the basics."

  "You were a quick learner."

  "The resemblance to our wedding night comes from the sense of wonder and discovery, but this was even better because there was no uncertainty," she said shyly. "Then I wasn't at all sure what to expect, because it was the first time. Thank heaven you knew what to do."

  Ross gave a wry smile and twined a lock of her curling hair around his forefinger. "I was probably more nervous than you. It was my first time too."

  "Really?" she said, suddenly intent. "I always assumed that you had... had experience."

  "Experience, as you so delicately put it, is always available to a young man of fortune, but I found the thought of buying a woman's favors distasteful," he replied. "Nor was seducing a maid an acceptable alternative—I had no desire to father a bastard or ruin a girl's life. It was simpler to put my energies into things like learning Arabic."

  "No wonder you became so proficient with languages," she said with a gurgle of laughter. "But how did you know what...?" Embarrassed, she broke off her question.

  "There are times when a scholarly mind is useful," he explained. "A fortnight before our marriage, I hired the services of a very expensive courtesan and asked her to show me what women liked. She was amused by the idea and demonstrated everything very thoroughly, though she kept saying it would be better if I participated."

  Juliet grinned. "How marvelous. You were actually able to resist her blandishments?"

  "Yes," he said simply. "After I met you, I didn't want any other woman."

  Tenderly she brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. "Your research project worked. I never suspected that you were as much a novice as I."

  "I'm glad I managed to convince you. From the perspective of my advanced years, it isn't significant, but at the time it seemed desperately important that I not betray my ignorance."

  A brittle note came into her voice. "You certainly have experience now. It shows."

  He felt a twinge of annoyance. "Reproaches, Juliet? Surely you didn't expect me to become celibate after you left."

  "No," she said sadly, "of course not. I just find myself feeling a few unworthy twinges of jealousy."

  If the subject had been less emotionally charged, he might have found her honesty endearing or flattering. Instead, her words fueled his irritation.

  Rationally he had accepted that there was no reason to remain faithful to a marriage that was essentially over, but Ross had never been comfortable with the fact that technically he was committing adultery whenever he sought the solace of a female body. The uneasy balance he had struck between conscience and need had been less than satisfactory both physically and emotionally.

  He rolled onto his back so that they were no longer touching. "I don't think you have any right to jealousy, though if it's any comfort, I'm sure that over the years my failures of fidelity were considerably fewer than yours."

  "Reports of my debauchery were greatly exaggerated," Juliet said in a choked voice.

  "Exaggerated, perhaps, but not invented out of whole cloth," he said tightly. Something dark and dangerous was stirring in the black depths of his mind, a scene he had buried, though he had never been able to forget. The memory forced its way to the surface, and with it came fury. "I don't know how many of the stories were true, but I had to believe the evidence of my eyes."

  She sat up and drew away from him, to the edge of the bed. In the predawn light her face was pale and unreadable. "What... what do you mean?"

  His hands clenched as he fought to bring his anger under control, but it would no longer be denied. "Do you remember when you stayed at the Hotel Bianca in Malta? I do."

  Juliet gasped and drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them. "What were you doing in Malta?"

  He pushed himself up on one elbow and stared at her, his eyes narrowed. "What the hell do you think I was doing? I had come after you. Did you think that you could end our marriage with one cryptic note?"

  His pulse began pounding as the past unrolled before his inner eye in all its gut-wrenching agony. It had been late when he had disembarked at the port of Valletta. He had gone direct to the Hotel Bianca, said to be the best hostelry on Malta. He had learned that Juliet had taken ship to the island, but expected that finding her would require a search.

  Nonetheless, when he registered he asked, without much hope, if his wife, Lady Ross Carlisle, had arrived yet, for she would be meeting him soon.

  When he described her, the concierge's face had lit up. Ah, yes, the beautiful fire-haired English lady, indeed she was here. Ross's bags had already been taken up to his room, but the romantic concierge gave him a knowing smile and another key, along with directions to Juliet's room "in case the English milord did not want to delay his reunion until morning."

  It was very late and Ross knew he should wait, but he had been unable to stop himself from taking advantage of the concierge's indiscreet helpfulness. The room was easy to find, at the south end of the second-floor corridor.

  His heart had beat faster at the knowledge that Juliet was just a few feet away from him, but he paused before knocking. Though emotionally he was convinced that if they saw each other everything would be all right, logically he knew that she might be ambivalent about the unexpected arrival of her husband.

  But he did not seriously doubt that they could solve the problem, whatever it was. There was too much love between them for their marriage to be over.

  While he stood indecisively, the door had unexpectedly swung open and a man emerged. As the door was pulled shut and locked from inside, Ross froze, feeling as if he had been kicked in the belly.

  The man's clothing was disheveled, as if pulled on in haste, and he had a sleek smile of tomcat satisfaction on his handsome face. Letters of flame on the wall could not have said more clearly that he had just had a sexual encounter with the woman on the other side of the door.

  And Ross had recognized him, which somehow made the whole nightmare worse. It was the Comte d'Auxerre, a French diplomat who had once been pointed out to Ross at a ball in London. A tall fair man in his late thirties, he had been popular with society hostesses.

  The count did not know who Ross was, for they had never been introduced, and Ross was not important enough to have been noticed by a distinguished foreign visitor. After a moment of surprise, the Frenchman saw the heavy old key in the newcomer's hand and gave a tolerant chuckle. "Ah, so the young lady is as hot as her hair. Enjoy yourself, my friend. She is worth the loss of a night's sleep."

  Then the count had politely circled the younger man, unaware of how close he had just come to death.

  Alone again, Ross had stood paralyzed, his body chilled yet drenched with sweat, his hands clenching and unclenching as he realized that his world had just irrevocably shattered.

  The pain of his nails digging into his palm
s brought him back to the present; a present that was almost as painful as the past. Harshly he said, "When I arrived at the Hotel Bianca, I was told you were a guest, so I went up to your room. I was about to knock when one of your lovers walked out, looking very pleased with himself. The Comte d'Auxerre. Do you remember him, or was he just a passing fancy, forgotten by morning?"

  A spasm crossed Juliet's face and she bent her head, retreating into a tight little ball, but she said nothing. A stray beam of early sunlight glinted mockingly from the gold chain around her neck.

  Her very silence increased Ross's anger. He had never spoken of what he had seen in Malta, but now the anguish could no longer be denied. "It never occurred to me that I would find you in bed with another man," he said bitterly. "It had been only three weeks, Juliet. Three bloody weeks! Was he the first, or had you found a different man in every hotel between Chapelgate and Malta?"

  She shook her head, her long hair veiling her face, but she made no attempt to defend herself.

  Ross rolled out of the bed and stalked to the window, which was covered with slatted blinds that admitted air and light. Staring through the thin slats at the empty courtyard, he snapped, "Have you nothing to say for yourself? Surely you can find a confession or a denial or a boast. Say something, dammit. With a little effort, perhaps you can convince me that I went to the wrong room."

  "I can't deny it. What you think happened that night... happened," Juliet said, her voice almost inaudible. "You are right to despise me. But having come all the way from England, why didn't you try to see me, if only to tell me what you thought of me?"

  Ross swung away from the window and flattened his trembling body against the roughly textured wall, his nails digging into the plaster as he struggled vainly to master himself. The answer to her question was the blackest piece of self-knowledge he had ever faced, and it shamed him. Nonetheless he answered, for in his rage he wanted Juliet to know what she had done. "I left because I was afraid that if I saw you, I might kill you."

  For an endless time, only the rasp of Juliet's shallow breathing disturbed the stillness. At length she said bleakly, "This is why I have tried to keep my distance from you since Serevan. I feared that if we became intimate again, all the barriers and denials that made it possible to live would be destroyed. And that is what has happened."

  She slid from the bed and knelt on the floor, lifting her crumpled robe and holding it in front of her while she blindly gathered her clothing with her other hand. In the distance, muezzins could be heard calling the faithful to prayer from a dozen different minarets. It was light enough now to see detail, though objects were still flat and colorless.

  Bleakly Ross wondered how it was possible to go from joy to disaster in a handful of moments. Juliet was right that intimacy had destroyed the barriers; for years he had successfully suppressed his anger, even through the last difficult weeks when he had been constantly with his errant wife. But in some mysterious way, becoming lovers again had weakened his control, and once it began to unravel, his anger was unstoppable.

  As he tried to understand why, he suddenly realized that Juliet was crying, huge soundless tears running down her face as she fumbled for her scattered garments. Her grief was all the more devastating for being expressed in total silence.

  The pain inside him did not diminish, but the nature of it changed, as did his anger. He swore a wordless oath at himself. He could feel her drawing away from him emotionally and knew that soon she would be gone past recalling.

  The thought was unbearable. For a brief ugly moment he had wanted to wound his wife, to make her suffer as he had suffered. Yet by doing so he had hurt not just her but himself, for he could not endure the sight of her pain, no matter how much she deserved his fury. His voice raw, he said, "Juliet, I'm sorry I lashed out at you. I shouldn't have done it."

  "I'm sorry too—for everything. I was mad to think the past could be overcome. Remember the poetry of Omar Khayyam?" She looked up at him, her eyes wide and bleak, the long lashes clumped by tears. "The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. And all your piety and wit, won't call it back to cancel half a line. Nor will your tears wash out a word of it."

  She closed her eyes, her face twisted with misery. "Last night I wanted to give you the only gift in my power. Instead I hurt you unforgivably, and not for the first time."

  Swiftly he crossed the room and knelt beside her. The knife wound which he had seared with red-hot steel was now a sullen, almost healed line curving around her upper arm. It was a reminder that there was no one like Juliet anywhere and that her uniqueness was what he had loved about her.

  Choosing his words with care, he said, "I can't say that the past doesn't matter, because it does, enormously. But that was then. This is now."

  "The past is now, for we are what our deeds have made us. Last night was a mistake. We opened Pandora's box, and I don't think it is possible to have the pleasure without the pain."

  Ravaged by her guilt, Juliet was unable to meet Ross's gaze. There was unbearable irony in the knowledge that he had actually followed her halfway across the Mediterranean and reached Malta on that fateful night. If he had arrived a few hours sooner, she would have greeted him with open arms; their marriage would have survived and perhaps become stronger. But by the time he had reached the Hotel Bianca, it had already been too late.

  Ross caught her chin with his hand and turned her to face him. "No! Last night was not a mistake. You were right: it would be a sin to waste what time we have left."

  With a faint wry smile he softly quoted another of the Persian poet's verses. "'Make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend.' Don't pull away from me again, Juliet. I need you too much."

  It was impossible to deny his plea, especially when her own need was so desperate. She leaned forward to kiss him, her mouth fierce and compelling. In one powerful move he pulled her hard against him. They were both kneeling and the robe she still held became caught between them, but his hands feasted on her bare back and buttocks, kneading and arousing wherever he touched.

  The robe fell away as he bore her down to the carpet and their naked bodies intertwined, each of them seeking wholeness. Pain and anger were transmuted to passion, and they came together as if their earlier gentle lovemaking had never happened, using desire as a drug in a vain attempt to deny what had proved undeniable.

  Ross made love to Juliet with the same dangerous wildness that she had seen in him after the bozkashi match. It was a purely masculine act of possession, yet it was also lovemaking, rooted in aching emotion. Her response came straight from the heart as she tried to say with her body what would have sounded false in words: that she loved him, had always loved him, though he had reason not to believe her.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to become lovers again, for pain lurked perilously near the surface. But now that they had come together, it was impossible to draw apart. For better and for worse, they were joined under the shadow of death.

  Chapter 20

  After their fierce mating, they lay spent and silent for fear of what words might bring. Juliet's head rested on Ross's shoulder, her bright hair a mantle over his chest, her fingers laced with his.

  With his other hand he slowly stroked the back of her neck and wondered where they would go from here. In the last six hours they had experienced passion driven by rediscovery, sweetness, and finally desperation; if he weren't so tired, he would be impressed by his stamina.

  Now it seemed that a fragile truce had been established, but nothing had been settled, not really. Instead, he guessed, they would go on like this, together but guarded, neither of them willing to deal with the painful issues that had briefly flared out of control and very nearly divided them again.

  A peremptory knock sounded on the door and they both tensed as a servant announced that Abdul Samut Khan wished Lord Kilburn's company for breakfast. Both of them jumped to their feet and began scrambling into their clothing while Ross called out that he
would be honored to join the nayeb.

  Ross envied Juliet the simplicity of her enveloping Tuareg garments; she was fully dressed, looking exactly as Jalal always looked, while he was still wrestling with his cravat. Before she went to admit the servant, Ross said in a low voice, "I'll probably be out all day. Will you be here tonight?"

  Her brows arched. "Of course."

  He was glad to hear that; he had not been entirely sure. After pulling on his coat, Ross ran a comb through his hair, arranged a calm expression on his face, and went off to his host.

  The nayeb greeted him volubly. "My dear Lord Khilburn! Was the interview with the amir a difficult one? If only I had known you would be summoned last night, I would have accompanied you."

  He took Ross's hand and guided him to a spot by the table, his cold eyes a disquieting contrast with his effusive manner. "Unfortunately, important matters concerning the artillery demanded my attention and I did not learn what had happened until this morning. What did his majesty say?"

  "It was no great matter," Ross said easily as he settled onto a cushion. He suspected that the nayeb already knew what had happened the night before in the audience chamber, word for word and inflection for inflection. "The amir merely said that he had decided not to allow me to take Major Cameron's body home for burial. Naturally I regret that, but it is his majesty's right to refuse. When I asked permission to depart, he said that it would be granted soon."

  Abdul Samut Khan glanced about warily. A guard stood by the door at the far end of the room, his expression bored; no one else was present. "If only that were true," the nayeb said in a low voice. "But the amir is notoriously volatile. He will grant you permission, only to withdraw it again and again, as he did with your brother. So it will go until he takes offense at something you do—or perhaps for no reason at all."

  Ross gave his host a level stare. "Then what—the Black Well, or will he execute me out of hand?"

  "I cannot say." The nayeb frowned. "The situation is difficult, and about to become more so. You must have heard that there has been trouble between Bokhara and Kokand. Yesterday the amir decided to personally lead an army against his enemies. As chief of artillery, I will go with him. That is why I was busy last night—I was making preparations to go to war, for Nasrullah wishes to leave in ten days and there is much to be done."