Taming Charlotte

by Linda Lael Miller

  It was like living out one of the splendid, romantic fancies she’d indulged in as a child, far away in Quade’s Harbor.

  “I promise to be a good soldier,” she told Patrick. She looked around at the men, who were ready to ride and armed to the teeth. “Don’t I get my own gun or a sword or something?”

  The question brought a low ripple of laughter from the riders, but Patrick only rolled his eyes and mounted his horse. After regarding Charlotte for a long moment, his expression unreadable, he reached down and hauled her up behind him.

  It was plain she wasn’t going to have a weapon; she would simply have to depend on her wits. She did wish, however, that she could trade her torn, dirty pink dress for a pair of trousers and a shirt.

  The party was made up of around two dozen men, but Patrick, Charlotte, and the two scouts rode ahead, their horses moving almost soundlessly over the ancient sands. Finally they saw the palace, glowing like alabaster against the dark sea.

  Charlotte tugged at Patrick’s sleeve to get his attention, then whispered, “If you’ll give me a boost, I can climb over the courtyard wall, outside the hamam, and let you in through the south entrance.”

  Patrick turned in the saddle to look back at her, and she could see by his bearing that he wanted to reject the idea, that he was searching his mind for a reason to do just that.

  “Do you have a better strategy?” Charlotte demanded, annoyed. “The main entrances will be locked and guarded, and if you storm the gates, you’ll pay a heavy price for the folly!”

  He scowled at her for a long moment, then said, “I’ll climb the courtyard wall myself—”

  Charlotte sighed with frustration. “And stride right through the harem? That would raise a commotion that would be heard from here to Costa del Cielo.”

  “She’s right, sir,” Cochran put in cautiously. “Mrs. Trevarren knows her way around in there. She could probably find a robe and veils and move about without raising suspicion.”

  Patrick’s jawline tightened, and he glared at Charlotte while he considered. Finally he nodded. “All right,” he said. “But once we’re inside, you’re to return to the harem and stay there. It’s probably the safest place in the palace.”

  Charlotte remembered her frightening encounter with the sultan’s half brother that night, in the hallway outside Khalif’s quarters, and wondered. Ahmed was the sort to abuse both power and privilege, and as the new ruler of Riz, the harem and its women were his property.

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do,” Charlotte said. That was the closest she was going to get to any promise, and Patrick knew it as well as she did.

  He looked at her for a long moment, as if to memorize her features, and then rode on.

  As they approached the courtyard wall, Charlotte looked up at the branches of the elm tree she’d once climbed to escape. At the time, she’d hoped never to see the harem again, and now she was about to risk her life to get inside.

  Cochran and the guides hung back, watching for guards, while Patrick rode close to the wall, then hauled Charlotte forward, so that she sat in front of him in the saddle. He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, and then looked into her eyes.

  “For God’s sake,” he whispered, “be careful.”

  Charlotte smiled bravely, but she was no fool and she was terrified. “Steady me so I don’t slip,” she replied, and then she stood on the horse’s back like a trick rider in the circus, while Patrick held her legs.

  Blessing the days when she and Millie had scrambled up and down trees like monkeys, she swung gracefully onto the wall and perched there for a moment, staring down at Patrick. Then she blew him a kiss and lowered herself silently to the courtyard below.

  There, in the shadows, she paused, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and her breathing to slow down. She listened with all her concentration, then made her way slowly toward the arched doorway leading into the harem.

  Inside, she paused again, letting her eyes adjust. After a few seconds, she could make out couches, and the women sleeping upon them. Some snored, others muttered as they dreamed, but no one stirred.

  Charlotte appropriated a robe and veils from a bench at the foot of one of the couches and hastily removed her ruined dress. Once she’d put on the garment and hidden her discarded gown behind a tall chest, she crept across the harem to the inner doorway.

  If there was a guard, Rashad or a replacement appointed by Ahmed, he would be there. Charlotte had to get through that portal, as well as a series of hallways and a large chamber, in order to reach the southern entrance to the palace, where Patrick and the others would be waiting.

  She made herself a part of the shadows, hardly daring to breathe, and peered into the passage. She saw no one and, after a moment of gathering her courage, stepped over the threshold.

  An instant later, strong arms clamped around her, and a hand was pressed over her mouth. She struggled, and her assailant pressed her against the wall of the palace, holding her throat with the steely fingers of his left hand while reaching up to light an oil lamp with his right.

  The glow revealed Rashad’s face, and Charlotte was so relieved that she nearly fainted. Although she couldn’t be absolutely certain, of course, instinct told her that the eunuch was loyal to Khalif. He might be willing to help.

  “You!” he rasped, his hand still encircling Charlotte’s throat like a manacle.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Charlotte croaked, “let me go. I can’t breathe!”

  Reluctantly Rashad released her, but his gigantic body still made a barrier every bit as daunting as the palace walls. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, keeping his voice low.

  Charlotte swallowed. She had no choice, she concluded, but to risk everything by taking him into her confidence. Rashad was a very intelligent man, and he would accept nothing short of the truth.

  “Patrick—Captain Trevarren and his men are outside the south entrance,” she whispered. “They’ve come to help Khalif.”

  Rashad’s expression revealed nothing of his thoughts, and Charlotte waited in an agony of suspense. What if she’d been wrong about the eunuch’s loyalties? What if he was in league with Ahmed, and he’d been in on the plot against the true sultan from the first?

  Finally he spoke. “I will go and let them in,” he said. “You stay here.”

  Charlotte’s relief was rivaled only by her irritation. After all she’d been through, she wasn’t about to sit quietly in the harem, twiddling her thumbs and missing all the action. She smiled and folded her arms. “I can’t,” she answered, somewhat smugly. “Patrick is expecting me to open the outside doors. If you go instead, he may not recognize you in the darkness. He has a sword and he wouldn’t hesitate to run you through—he’s that intent on finding Khalif.”

  Rashad sighed. “All right,” he agreed, in a hiss, after what seemed like an interminable interval. “Follow me, and be silent!”

  Charlotte offered a private prayer of gratitude as she followed the eunuch along the stone passageways and through the gigantic formal chamber beyond, where the floors were made of marble.

  There was a guard watching the entrance; Charlotte could see his shadow and the red tip of the cheroot he was smoking. She held her breath while Rashad reached back to stop her in her tracks with one massive hand.

  He spoke to the guard companionably, in Arabic, while Charlotte hung back in the darkness, watching. Praying.

  The sentry hesitated, then offered a friendly response. Rashad clasped the back of the other man’s neck, and the guard groaned and sank to the floor, unconscious.

  “Did you kill him?” Charlotte whispered, moving past Rashad to unlatch the outer door.

  The eunuch offered no reply.

  Patrick and the other men entered immediately, and Charlotte was quick to say, “This is Rashad, Khalif’s servant. He’s loyal to the true sultan.”

  After giving her shoulder a squeeze—the simple gesture communicated a great deal—Patrick smiled. “Yes, I know Rashad well.
Where is Khalif?” The smile faded. “He is alive, isn’t he?”

  Rashad looked haggard, but he nodded. “According to those who prepare his food, the sultan is alive. This may not be a blessing, though, for there’s a rumor that Ahmed means to unman his brother. He may have already done so.”

  Patrick closed his eyes for a moment, and Charlotte watched in fascination as a new strength welled up in him, as clear and as mystical as the starlight shining on the snowy sands of the desert.

  “Come,” Rashad said. “He is being held in the oldest part of the palace. I will take you there.”

  Patrick nodded, then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Before Charlotte had time to suspect, let alone react, he had snatched her close and gagged her. Following that, he pulled a length of decorative gold cord from one of the tapestries on the wall and promptly bound her, hand and foot.

  “I apologize for the indignity, goddess,” he told her as he carried her along the hallway, “but this was the only way I could think of to keep you from following me right into battle and getting yourself killed.”

  Charlotte struggled, even though it was hopeless, and she thought she would burst with frustration and fury.

  Rashad paused and opened an ornate door, grinning as he gestured. “She’ll be safe in this closet,” he said.

  Patrick set Charlotte carefully inside, patted her on the head, and closed the door, shutting her up in utter darkness.

  At first, Charlotte was so upset that she couldn’t think, she could only squirm and twist in her bonds. After several minutes, the futility of her situation came home to her and she was still. One angry tear slipped from her eye and trickled down onto the gag.

  In principle, she understood that Patrick was only trying to protect her, but he had done an injury to her pride that would not be easily forgiven. Charlotte was, after all, the product of untold generations of Quades, and she had been bred to be a participant, not a bystander.

  As much as she loved Patrick, she would have vengeance—provided both of them lived through the night, that is.

  Patrick and the others had proceeded only a little way before they were seen and the alarm was sounded. Adrenaline rushed through his veins—it didn’t matter that they’d been discovered, now that they were inside the palace. If it hadn’t been for Charlotte, his beloved weakness, he would have relished the prospect of a fight.

  He tossed a pistol to Rashad, and he and the others formed a large circle, their backs to one another, as Ahmed’s men flowed into the open chamber, brandishing swords and knives.

  The battle was ferocious, and there were times when it seemed they were hopelessly outnumbered, but the circle held, and eventually the onslaught slackened.

  Patrick had not been conscious of the passing of time, but dawn was flooding the palace with crimson light when Rashad led him down into the torchlit passages leading to the cellars. Rats scurried past at intervals, but there were no guards posted at the heavy wooden door where the eunuch finally paused.

  “Here,” Rashad said sadly, gesturing.

  There was a steel lock affixed to the door. Patrick grabbed his pistol back from Rashad, took careful aim, and fired, splintering the metal. Although he was afraid of what he would find when he stepped over the threshold, Patrick didn’t hesitate.

  The chamber was dark, the air thick and fetid.

  “Khalif?”

  There was a groan in the darkness. Rashad struck a match, but the light was small, flickering and faltering in the gloom.

  Patrick strained his eyes, found his friend tied by the wrists to rusted rings embedded in the wall. Khalif had been beaten and starved, and probably tortured, but his smile flashed white as Patrick cut his bonds.

  “You have always had a good instinct for timing, my friend,” Khalif said as Patrick put an arm around his middle to support him.

  “Not good enough, from the looks of you,” Patrick muttered. Now that Rashad had found and lit a lamp, he could see that his friend was in bad shape indeed. A combination of despair and rage sent bile rushing into the back of his throat. “Cochran will tend your wounds,” he said hoarsely. “In the meantime, I’ll see to that brother of yours.”

  Khalif made a sound that might have been either a sob or a burst of bitter laughter. “I owe you my life—not to mention my manhood,” he labored to say as he and Patrick followed Rashad out of the stinking cell. “Still, I must ask you to swear that you will leave vengeance for me. Ahmed’s sins go beyond what he’s done to me, my friend—he murdered my mother, the sultana valide.”

  “Jesus.” Whether the word was prayer or plea, Patrick could not have said. Asking the next question took all his strength. “What about your children? Are they safe?”

  Khalif stumbled beside him, his breathing ragged and hard. “My mother hid them,” he said, and now it was plain that he was weeping. “That is why Ahmed killed her, because she would not tell him where they were. Still, my wives might have known, and they might have been weaker than the sultana valide. “

  Patrick wanted to weep himself, so great was the pain he felt for his friend, but Khalif was depending on his strength now. “Where will I find him?” he asked.

  Khalif folded, unconscious, and Rashad rushed to help. Between the two of them, Patrick and the eunuch supported the sultan.

  “Ahmed will be in the sultan’s private chambers,” Rashad said, his voice harsh with bitterness. “Every night he beds another of his brother’s wives.”

  Ahmed was indeed in Khalif’s room, and there was a woman sharing his couch. He sat up, blinking in amazement and terror, when he saw Patrick and Rashad carry his brother into the room.

  While the eunuch settled the insensate sultan gently on another couch, Patrick pulled his knife, which was bloody from the earlier confrontation in the chamber near the harem, and approached the larger bed.

  “Get out,” he said to the woman, who immediately bounded from beneath the sheets. Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick saw her snatch her robes from the floor, wrap them around her naked torso, and flee.

  Ahmed had recovered his aplomb somewhat, and he glared up at Patrick in defiance. “This does not concern you. You have no right to interfere.”

  Patrick pressed the sharp edge of the blade against Ahmed’s throat. “Nonetheless,” he replied, “I’m interfering. In fact, if your brother hadn’t asked me to save you for him, I would be cutting you into thin slices right now.”

  Ahmed glanced at his senseless half brother, and a gray pallor appeared under his bronze skin. “It would be kinder if you cut my throat!” he gasped.

  Patrick smiled. “I know,” he answered.

  Within an hour, Ahmed and all his surviving henchmen were locked away in the small cell where Khalif had been imprisoned earlier.

  Charlotte slept for a while, there in that cramped space, and when she awakened, her energy was restored, and so was her outrage. The bindings on her wrists and ankles were too tight, and she needed to pass water.

  When the closet door suddenly opened, filling the closet with light, however, it occurred to her that Patrick might be dead, along with all his men and Rashad, too. She looked up to see Alev’s face.

  “There you are,” the other woman said, squatting to remove the handkerchief that had silenced Charlotte all this time. “Rashad said you were in a closet, but he didn’t say which one, and there must be twenty of them in this part of the palace alone—”

  “Did you see Captain Trevarren?” Charlotte blurted. As angry as she was with that man, she couldn’t take another breath until she knew whether he was alive or dead.

  Alev smiled, though the sadness and fear of recent events showed plainly in her eyes. “He is with Khalif. The Englishman, Cochran, is tending the sultan’s wounds.” She untied Charlotte and helped her to her feet.

  Charlotte was amazed at how unsteady she was. “What about Ahmed? Is he running loose somewhere?”

  Alev shook her head and slipped an arm around Charlotte to steady her. “Ahm
ed and his men are in the cellar, according to the servants.”

  A horrible thought came to Charlotte, and she stopped, feeling the chill of the marble floor rise up inside her. “The princes—” she began, and was able to go no further.

  The other woman embraced her and smiled, not quite so sadly as before. “They are all alive and well, thanks to the sultana valide. “ Alev looked somber again. “It is she, the sultan’s mother, who is dead. Ahmed strangled her, in front of all of us, when she refused to tell where the princes had been hidden.”

  Charlotte was ashamed to recall how actively she’d disliked the old woman. She marveled over the sultana’s courage now, and her eyes filled with tears as she imagined what it must have been like to stand by helplessly while another human being was murdered.

  “You’ve been through so much, Alev,” she said softly. “How did you bear it?”

  “Khalif is alive, and so are my fine sons. I try to be grateful for what is good and not dwell too long on what is evil.”

  Alev took Charlotte to the harem, where the other women were abuzz with excitement over the morning’s adventures and the news that Khalif still lived. Charlotte took off her stolen robe and stepped into one of the huge tile-lined baths, letting the water, which was heated by braziers beneath the floor, soothe her aching muscles.

  The others pelted her with questions, most of which had to be translated by the patient Alev, and Charlotte gave a thorough and slightly embellished account of her travels over the water to Riz and across the desert. She told as much as she knew about the actual rescue operation, and added a little that was only speculation.

  Towels and a clean robe were provided when she was finished with her bath, and Charlotte dried off and got dressed. While she ate a large breakfast of fruit, sherbet, coffee, and cheese, Alev brushed the tangles from her hair.

  “Where will you go after you leave here?” Alev asked, and there was a certain wistfulness in her voice.

  “Back to Spain, I’m sure,” Charlotte answered confidently. Although she still wasn’t certain of Patrick’s feelings for her, she knew he would never abandon the Enchantress. “We were attacked by pirates when we left here, you know, and Patrick’s ship was damaged. It’s being repaired now.”