by Anna Randol
Mari couldn’t imagine Fatima helping anyone unless she directly benefited. “From your husband?”
Fatima shook her head, her lips wrinkling like prunes. “No, thankfully, he has me to guide him and protect our future plans. Truly, the man is like a baboon in need of a leash.”
“Then who did you save me from? If you did save me at all.”
Fatima’s brows lowered. “I told you I rescued you. You don’t need to know anything more.” She lowered the candle toward Achilla, scowling as it revealed the maid’s filthy, vomit-stained clothes. She pressed her hand over her mouth in disgust. “I don’t know why you freed her. Vermin take better care of themselves.”
Mari stepped between Fatima and her sick maid. “If you saved me, why am I locked in your cellar?” Fatima must know who she was. She always loved dabbling in intrigue.
Achilla retched and Fatima practically leaped away. “Because I will have a use for you eventually.”
Ah, of course. “What use?”
“You will have to wait and see.” Fatima smiled slyly, her eyes gleaming with poorly hidden triumph.
Whatever small amount of patience Mari possessed had long since evaporated. “Let us go.”
Fatima flicked her hand as if to dismiss the ridiculous idea.
“You cannot keep us prisoner,” Mari pointed out. “Bennett will find us. You won’t like the consequences when he does.”
Fatima’s lip curled. “Your major left Constantinople yesterday.”
If Mari had had the strength, she would have clawed Fatima’s perfect face for that lie. Instead, she laughed. It was so contrary to what she knew of the honor and character of the man, it was absurd. He wouldn’t have deserted her. “Why?”
With an uneasy frown at her levity, Fatima motioned a thick-necked slave into the room. “He lost interest apparently,” she said, shrugging, her fingers playing with the silk of her sleeve.
She was lying. She’d never been able to lie without fidgeting.
“He thought you’d run off or some such thing.”
A new fear chilled Mari. Had something happened to him and Fatima was lying to hide the fact? “He wouldn’t have left,” Mari said, the world teetering precariously while she awaited Fatima’s response.
“But he did. On a ship called the Bella Maria.”
Mari couldn’t see signs that she was lying now. No fumbling with thread. No playing with her hair. That meant Bennett was alive. Air resumed its flow in Mari’s lungs and she gave thanks to every god she could think of, pagan and Christian.
But if Fatima wasn’t lying, that meant Bennett had truly left. “He wouldn’t leave,” she repeated aloud to herself. He’d promised to protect her.
“He would if—” Fatima tapped her foot, a smile twisting her lips as she enjoyed Mari’s desperation. “I’m not going to discuss this further.”
Mari ran through the possibilities in her head. Either he had been forcibly removed or he thought her gone. But a simple story about her leaving wouldn’t have swayed him. “He thinks I am dead, doesn’t he?”
The surprise on Fatima’s face told her all she needed to know. Mari bolted for the door, desperation giving strength to her steps. She had to find him. Tell him she was all right. He wouldn’t forgive himself for thinking he’d failed her. He’d hide it from everyone, allowing it to eat at him and fester. She wouldn’t let him suffer, not on her account. With an anguished cry, she ducked under the arm of the bulky slave, darting through the door into a narrow corridor.
“Kill the maid,” Fatima called out behind her.
Mari skidded to a halt. Slowly, she turned back toward the open door, loathing temporarily eroding her desperation.
Fatima’s head peered out the door. “Unless you choose to come back. See, without you, your worthless Greek is, well, worthless.” She chuckled at her own wit.
A worthless affront to God, Aunt Larvinia had called them. “You want me to return?” Mari strode back to the cellar and slapped Fatima as hard as she could across the face.
Fatima screamed in rage as the slave grabbed Mari, lifting her off her feet and restraining her from hitting Fatima again. She should have punched her instead and broken her nose. Mari eyed the red welt on Fatima’s face, wishing she’d had the courage to do the same to her aunt years ago.
Fatima grabbed a piece of Mari’s hair and gave it a vicious yank, ripping it from her head. Mari couldn’t stop tears from blurring her vision.
She then grabbed Mari’s face, her nails digging into Mari’s chin. “He will not come for you. He was only too happy to leave.”
Mari growled, snapping at Fatima’s hand, driving her back a frightened step. Although Fatima couldn’t know it, Mari had learned something about herself—now that she’d given her trust to him she couldn’t be shaken. “He will come for me or I will get to him, and you will regret your decision to keep us apart.”
Fatima blanched and lowered her eyes, refusing to meet Mari’s gaze. “Take her to the harem. If she tries to escape again, the maid dies.”
More than anything in her gilded prison, Mari hated the ugly paintings of fruit that covered the walls. The squat, fat apples. The blotchy pineapples. All lying limp in unimaginative displays. She sighed and refocused her attention on the paper in front of her. Fatima’s taste in decor was as deplorable as her morals.
Achilla collapsed with a huff by her side. “He rebuffed me again.”
Mari wrinkled her nose. “Well, he is a eunuch.”
“I know, but I’d hoped when they changed to this new guard last week, we might have more luck.”
Mari hadn’t held out the same hope. She suspected something dire had happened to their old guard after Talat had caught the man speaking with them. This new guard wouldn’t even look in their direction.
After three weeks and four attempts, she’d run out of ideas for escape. The only exit out of the harem was constantly guarded. The only person allowed to come and go as she pleased was Fatima. Her personal slaves never left, so Mari couldn’t try disguising herself to take their place. Even the courtyard was fully enclosed, so she couldn’t attempt to scale the walls as the men who’d abducted her had done. She’d tried tossing notes out the window in hopes a passerby would find one, but one of the other slaves had told Fatima and that had been stopped.
Bennett truly was gone. Her quill shook in her hand, and she thrust it into the ink pot before anyone else noticed. The fact had finally become real when she’d overheard the fate of two missing female slaves. Only then had she stopped pacing in her room until dawn, not daring to sleep for fear of missing some sign of him when he returned for her.
Not that she’d slept once she’d gone to bed. No, instead she had relived that last argument with Bennett a thousand times in her head and finally been forced to admit that he meant what he said. He had wanted to marry her. And not out of duty and obligation.
He loved her.
She stiffened her spine. She wouldn’t give up until she’d had the chance to say yes.
Achilla slouched inelegantly in her chair. “At least you have your art. This idleness is driving me mad.”
Her art. Mari stared at the drawing, a sketch of Esad’s garden, more intricate than any she’d attempted before.
With sudden determination, Mari picked up her drawings. She stalked to the candle in the middle of the common room and held one of her pictures up to it. The page flickered, then ignited.
Achilla rushed to her side. “I didn’t mean for you to stop.”
Mari smiled, allowing the line of orange flame to creep up the paper. Then she dropped it on the ground and stomped out the fire. Immediately, she took the next one and repeated the process. By the time she’d burned the fifth, a group of Fatima’s slaves had gathered around, whispering and watching her with fascinated wariness.
By the seventh, Fatima pushed her way to the middle of the circle. She hated not being the center of attention. “What’s going on here? Have you finally lost your wits?”
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Mari dipped another paper into the flame. “No.”
“Why are you doing that?”
Mari shrugged.
“I saved your life. Talat was supposed to kill you, but I convinced him we might be able to use you against my uncle later.”
Mari shrugged, storing that additional tidbit away. But what would happen when they realized she no longer had any value to Esad? “Whether you saved me or not, I won’t let you profit from my work.”
Fatima scurried closer. “Profit?”
“No one will sell my work but me.” Mari burned another one.
She dodged as Fatima tried to snatch the pile from her hands.
“You drew them on my paper with my ink. Give them to me.”
Mari shook her head.
“Give them to me or Achilla will regret it.” Fatima held out her open hand.
Mari hesitated. That was Fatima’s threat whenever she wanted her way. Mari might serve a purpose, but her maid did not. Achilla had taken ten lashes across the back for Mari’s note attempt, despite Mari’s pleas otherwise. But Achilla had taken the beating and then asked when they’d try to escape again.
Mari waited until Fatima opened her mouth to speak again.
“I said, give them—”
“Fine. Here.” Mari handed her the remaining drawings.
Fatima tucked the papers under her arm. “My generosity has cost me, you know. I pay for your food and lodging with my own funds. It’s not as if I have money to spare. It’s only fair that you repay me. Any drawing you make from now on belongs to me.”
Mari knew she walked a thin wire with Achilla’s safety, but Fatima had to believe she’d won a battle. “Then I’m finished drawing.”
Fatima glanced pointedly at Achilla.
“I am tired of you threats,” Mari said, not needing to feign the hatred in her voice.
“Fifty lashes for the slave,” Fatima ordered.
Achilla glanced at her, eyes wide, begging to know what was happening. The eunuch approached and grabbed her by the arms. Screaming, Achilla struggled wildly.
Mari yanked her maid free. “I’ll keep drawing!”
Two long weeks passed before Mari implemented the second half of her plan. “I don’t know why you bother.”
Fatima, who’d come to collect more artwork, frowned. “You would hardly understand.”
Mari knew Fatima had been hiding the money she’d earned selling the pictures from her husband. Mari had discovered, from gossip she’d picked up from the slaves, that the illusion of wealth that Fatima was so proud of was only that—an illusion.
“How much have you earned since you started this? Not much. You’ve no understanding of trade,” Mari said.
“Of course I do.”
“You’re selling these for what, a copper or two to the natives?”
Fatima’s eyes narrowed as she tried to see the error in that. “Among other people.”
Mari snorted. “Come now, you’re not intelligent enough to recognize how to make significant wealth.”
Fatima stiffened. “Yes, I am.”
Mari drew another arch on her drawing of Topkapi Palace. “You’re not selling these to the rich young aristocrats on their Grand Tours.” She wrote a brief title on the bottom of the page.
Avarice gleamed in Fatima’s gaze as she calculated the huge increase in price she could demand if she altered her where she sold the drawings. “I already thought of that. In fact, that’s what I’m doing with these.” She tugged the still damp drawing from under Mari’s arm.
Fatima tucked the drawings in a pasteboard folder, waved the guard aside, and left.
Achilla handed her a clean sheet of paper. “What are the odds that one of those will make it back to England?”
“Almost nonexistent.” But if Bennett saw one, he would know.
Chapter Thirty-two
“Quite the pair we make, do we not?”
Bennett glanced up as his sister, Sophia, glided into the breakfast room.
Her severe black dress did nothing for her pale skin or golden hair. “I wear black for a man I do not mourn and you wear black for a woman you do not admit to mourning.”
Bennett shrugged. His sister had gotten Mari’s name from him, but the wound was still too fresh to discuss more. Two weeks on the ship and more than two months in England had done nothing to ease the rawness of it. Everyone assumed he wore mourning for his brother-in-law. As much as he disliked giving the bastard’s memory even false honor, it spared him questions so he let it pass. If someone else hadn’t beaten him to it, Bennett would’ve had the satisfaction of putting a bullet through him.
His rush to leave Constantinople had been worthless. Sophia’s husband had died a week before he arrived home. A hunting accident, it had been ruled. But there was a new haunted look in his sister’s eyes. Yet it was tempered by a new strength.
“You didn’t need me to protect you,” he’d once said. It was the closest he’d come to asking her what had truly happened.
“I needed you to remind me I was worth protecting,” she’d replied with conviction.
At least she had forgiven him for betraying her secret to her father and Darton.
Sophia lifted up a silver lid from a dish on the sideboard and shuddered at the kippers underneath. “Some of mother’s cousins are stopping by to pay their condolences today.”
“Which ones?”
“The Saunder twins.” She settled on a piece of plain toast and tea as she did every morning.
Must they turn up everywhere? “Do they still dress alike?” He’d make sure to be far away when they came to call. In his current mood, he had no tolerance for popinjays.
Sophia laughed and then looked surprised by the sound. “I don’t know.”
“Do they realize he died over two months ago?”
Over two months. The length of time staggered him. If life in the army had taught him anything, it was to move on. So why did the sound of a maid splashing water into his washbasin startle him from sleep every morning with the same desperate memories of a Turkish bath? Why did he rejoice that the cold autumn air guaranteed he’d not see another damned butterfly? Why couldn’t he accept Mari’s death?
“They were out of the country touring Europe or some such thing. I think Mother wrote you of it.”
The butler cleared his throat. “The Messrs. Saunder.”
Bennett set down his coffee. It was too late to escape.
The young men sauntered into the room dressed in identical puce jackets. “Ah, cousin,” one of them—Timothy perhaps, or was it Thomas—spoke. “Sorry for the early hour, but there’s a race this afternoon, and being family, we knew you wouldn’t mind if we stopped in a bit early.”
Bennett gave thanks Sophia wasn’t truly a grieving widow.
“We’re sorry for your loss.”
His brother chimed in, “Quite.”
Sophia smiled thinly. “Thank you for your concern. How was your travel?”
“Splendid. I quite envy all the time you spent in Europe, Prestwood.”
Bennett picked up the newspaper. “Indeed, army life was ideal for seeing the sights.”
Thomas waved a limp hand. “I’ve always regretted that Mother wouldn’t allow us to purchase commissions. We would have looked smashing in regimentals.”
Bennett didn’t even bother to dignify that comment with a reply.
Sophia filled the awkward pause. “Where did you visit?”
“Everywhere. Although Paris was unfortunately disordered.”
“How inconsiderate of them,” Bennett muttered. Didn’t they have a race they needed to prance off to?
“Tell me where else you visited,” Sophia asked with so much false brightness it was a miracle no one was blinded.
They both puffed out their chests, but Timothy deferred to Thomas. “As a matter of fact, we decided that since you have a dead husband and all, we’d distract you by allowing you to be the first to view our drawings from our trip.”
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Bennett turned his attention back to the newspaper. If these fellows were as clueless in their art as they were in their interaction, he had no desire to endure it.
Sophia made suitably pleasant remarks for a few minutes. Then her tone changed. “That is truly incredible. Which one of you drew it?”
She actually sounded honest.
Curiosity got the better of him and he lowered the newspaper.
It was a sketch of Topkapi Palace.
“Neither of us, actually. We found it at a bazaar in Constantinople. They are all the rage. Anyone who comes back without one is quite the buffoon. Why, Lord Percy bought seventeen of them, so you can see its value.”
It was rather skillfully done. He rose from his seat to see the sketch more clearly. In fact, it was damned good. The artist had captured the stateliness of the building but added a touch of mystery and seduction.
His eyes narrowed.
It couldn’t be.
He studied it again. The sweeping lines and intricate detail melded to create not just an object, but a moment.
It was Mari’s.
Bennett snatched the paper from his cousin’s fingers and stumbled from the room.
Blood pounding in his ears, he locked himself in the library and hurried to the window to look at the drawing again. He’d never seen her draw anything other than plants and insects, but it was hers.
His breath was ragged as he gingerly held the paper. Who was selling her work? What kind of sick, greedy monster would sell the work of a dead woman?
The words at the bottom finally trapped his attention.
Walls of wood threaded with veins of silk.
He’d written that line right after he’d arrived in Constantinople. The paper rattled in his hand, and he placed it on the windowsill before he dropped it. When had she drawn the palace? There were only a few days between when she had rescued his poetry book and her death, and he’d been with her for most of them.
A loud buzzing filled his ears. Had he gone mad?