Chapter Twelve
May 26, 1811
About five o’clock in the evening. The Godard rented house in Buyukdere. While a modest home, the house did boast a partial view of the Bosporus. Much of the interior was in disarray since the Godards were preparing to leave for Nazim Pasha’s pashalik in Kilis.
“Sir Henry,” Lord Foye said in a voice that sent a shiver down Sabine’s spine. She did her best to suppress the reaction. She did not want to start crying and have to concoct some explanation as to why she’d grown so unnaturally fond of Buyukdere that she couldn’t bear to leave. She bent her head over her writing; she was working on the Egyptian section of Godard’s book. Supposedly. If she’d written half a line, she was fortunate.
Foye stood in the center of the room, having just been shown into what she and her uncle called the Divan Salon because they had left it furnished, with one exception, in the Turkish style. Asif came forward to take his greatcoat. Foye handed over his hat and gloves first, both of which he had been holding in one hand.
“Thank you,” Foye said as he slipped out of his lightweight coat. Asif bowed and withdrew.
Sabine tried very hard not to be so aware of him. But she was. Terribly aware of what had happened between them at Rumeli Hisari. She sat at her desk, pretending to write about Ibrahim Pasha’s massacre of the Mameluks while her thoughts strayed to the idea of kissing Foye. Even in the abstract, the possibility of such an intimacy with Foye set off butterflies in her stomach. If only they could, just one more time before she and Foye were separated.
Her hand on the desk fisted. Her breath cut off, and she closed her eyes and tried to suppress the tears welling up in her throat and burning behind her eyes. She despised this pretense. Despised it. But Godard had given up too much for her. She refused to leave him. How could she leave him when they were so far from home? Eventually, they would return to England and perhaps there she and Foye could find a way to make a life together.
“My lord,” her uncle said from the divan upon which he sat. Along the windowed wall that overlooked the courtyard and the adjoining wall was a divan on a raised platform. Embroidered and tasseled pillows covered the silk upholstery. The divan was for sitting or resting or even napping. A narghile, or water pipe, sat on the floor, unused at the moment. Her uncle enjoyed Turkish tobacco almost as much as he enjoyed their coffee. He’d become a devotee of both.
Sabine stayed where she was, silent and ill at ease. She unfisted her hand. Her fingers hurt as she straightened them. She spent too much time thinking about Foye—Lord Foye—and the sweetness she felt when he kissed her, the shivery, giddy darkness that ran through her whenever his lips touched her. Stolen moments, every one of them.
Foye had not yet realized she was present or else had a far better command of himself than she did. His attention was on her uncle, and with her desk tucked away in the corner opposite the divan, he wouldn’t have seen her when he entered. He might appear calm, but her nerves were far from settled. What would Godard think of his calling on them? Would he guess what had changed between them?
“What a pleasure to have you call on us before we are on our way,” Godard said from his place on the superior, rightmost corner of the divan.
Sabine relaxed. Of course, Foye would take his leave of them. That was only natural and polite of him.
“I could not let you leave without making my goodbyes,” he said. His gaze flicked to her and then away. So serious, he looked. “Besides, I am to depart myself in a day or two.”
Sabine’s heart lurched. They had so little time left, and yet the hours between now and their parting seemed infinite. A curious paradox. Every moment was to be savored, though. She watched Foye without, she hoped, seeming to stare, drinking him in, memorizing his face, the set of his shoulders, the way he held his body. God only knew when they would see each other again. It might be years.
At last, Foye turned to her, and she forced herself to sit calmly, her expression pleasant and bland. His clothes fit him amazingly well. As always. His taste was impeccable. She felt such a sense of restrained energy from him that she expected he might burst into motion at any moment.
“Miss Godard.” He bowed, rather stiffly. You’d never think he’d ever passionately kissed her or held her close in his embrace. His eyes on her burned with heat. “Good afternoon. Please.” He held up a hand. “Do not stand on my account.”
She stood and curtseyed anyway; as brief a curtsey as his bow had been economical. “Good afternoon, my lord.” Rumeli Hisari might never have happened, she told herself. He had never held her or kissed her or looked at her as though she were the only woman in the world. “I hope you are well.”
“I am, thank you.” He studied her a moment, but she could read nothing in his face. “You should not have arisen, Miss Godard.”
Sabine curtseyed again. Her heart raced on his account and no other. Ruthlessly, she tamped down the reaction. She wanted so badly to slip her arms around his neck and tangle her fingers in his curls and whisper to him that she loved him.
“Do please sit down, my lord.” She sat so that he would be able to do the same.
Foye nodded curtly, and remained standing with one hand behind his back and the other gripping the lapel of his coat so hard his knuckles were white.
Sabine wasn’t any less held by strong emotion than Foye. What a wretched state in which to exist, to feel—to know that she had met a man she could admire beyond all others and yet, they could not be together. She had imagined once or twice what it would be like if she left Godard. She could. She could confess to her uncle that she was desperately in love. There was nothing, objectively, to stop her from doing so. Except for obligation. Godard had raised her. He had been the best parent to her that he knew how to be. He had loved her and raised her and sacrificed for her. No one knew better than she did the sacrifices he’d made on her behalf. No matter how bitter his disappointment over what had happened in London, Godard had never blamed her for the damage to his career and reputation.
Now that his gout was debilitating, her uncle relied on her. He needed her to write his letters and organize his papers. She was his voice in the written world Without her assistance, he would never be able to write his book. For all the peculiarities of his character, he needed her, and she loved him for every moment of the life she’d had. How could she abandon him now?
Foye returned his attention to her uncle, and Sabine was left to her desk and papers. She continued observing Foye without her uncle being aware she did so, with her right hand on her cheek and her head turned to one side while she held a pen in the other, making desultory lines on the reverse side of a sheet containing her description of the Ibrahim Pasha’s slaughter of his political rivals in Cairo. Ibrahim Pasha had invited his enemies to a celebration of the birth of his son and then slaughtered them all. Every Mameluk in Egypt.
Her desire to sketch Foye remained as strong as ever. There were so many angles from which she might decide to draw his face. She could, she should, before she left. Then she’d have something to remember him by.
The table at which she sat was cluttered with papers, pamphlets, correspondence, and several pages of Godard’s manuscript besides the chapter on Egypt. There was a mountain of books, too, some of them brought with them from England, others acquired during their travels. Not all were in English. Sabine was making a study of written Arabic. There was such beauty in the characters. There was also blank paper, pen and ink, pencils, even a nub of charcoal. In short, all that she needed to draw Lord Foye.
In the meanwhile, Godard slid off the divan and laboriously pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. She knew what it cost him to stand, but he was stubborn, and if she didn’t wait for him to ask for help he would refuse any assistance at all. She wished Asif had stayed, for he was one person whom Godard reliably permitted to assist him.
“I hope,” her uncle said to Foye with a grimace as he stood, “that you do not mind we preferred to keep this room as would the sultan himself.”
“Not at all,” Foye said. Quite sincerely, Sabine thought. There were many reasons to admire Foye. More than admire. She loved him. Not the least of those reasons was his decency to her uncle. Godard was not always a pleasant man to be around, particularly when his joints were hurting him as they were today. He had done too much this morning and now paid for it in pain.
Godard gestured at the divan. “Won’t you sit my lord? I assure you, you will never be more comfortable in your life as you are on a Turkish divan.”
He smiled at Godard. “And I assure you, Sir Henry, that I find the Turkish style as comfortable as you.” Foye’s voice was amiable, and so lovely to hear. One day, she thought, she would ask him to read her poetry. The sonnets of Shakespeare, Donne, and Plutarch. Perhaps verses of Milton or Dante.
With both hands pressing down on his cane, Godard arched his back. Every degree of movement was painfully achieved. As his illness progressed, their lives narrowed with the incremental restriction of his mobility. There was so little time left for him to travel. One day, he would not be able to walk or even stand. Her heart broke for him as she watched for signs she must intervene in his moment of independence. Though he swayed a little, his hands, both gripping the top of his walking stick, were steady enough. She was ready, though, to insist he sit down again, his pride be dashed.
At last, Foye sat, just as another of the native servants brought in tea, coffee, and a selection of delicacies. Foye took the left corner of the divan. There was as much precedence involved in where one sat in a Turkish room as in any salon in London. Or Oxford, for that matter.
The two men settled in, declining tea in favor of smoking. Another servant prepared the narghile, filling the bowl at the top with the honey-soaked tobacco her uncle preferred to use. Since she was unnoticed for the moment, she slid her sketchbook from beneath the post that had arrived just this afternoon, found a pencil she had not worn down to a stub, and sketched Foye because she wanted to remember his face and their time together.
She made light strokes to capture the power in the line of his cheeks. There was a great deal of character in his uneven features. For so large a man who had expressed some dissatisfaction with his size, he was quite at home in his body. She would love to sketch him in the nude, to capture the leonine majesty of him. A brazen notion, but true. How marvelous it would be to draw him from life.
Foye and Godard talked a great deal between pulls on the narghile, which gave her time to work. She stared at her sheet of paper, unhappy with the result. She had not captured his essence, the beauty that shone from his eyes and took up residence in the way he arranged his body on the divan. She began again and quite lost track of the time.
“I had another purpose in this call, sir,” Foye was saying to her uncle when she surfaced from her period of concentration. She blinked and looked down at her page. So inadequate, her efforts at drawing him.
“Sabine,” her uncle said, “would you send for more coffee, please?”
“Of course.” She slipped her so inadequate efforts beneath a book and went to the door to speak to the servant waiting outside. When she returned, she could not shake the notion that Foye had watched her all the way there and back. She wished he would not. Or perhaps she wished he had. She retook her seat until the servant came with fresh coffee.
She poured their coffee into one of the small ceramic cups made expressly for the drink. Unlike the tobacco, which she found unpleasant, she loved the smell of coffee. She brought a cup to Foye.
“Thank you,” he said as he took it from her. Their eyes locked, just for a moment, and he didn’t do anything to soften the impact of what she saw there. Oh, unfair. How unfair to break her heart again.
“You’re welcome.” She served her uncle next, taking care that he had a firm grip on the cup before she let go. She moved a tray, with its pistachios and oranges and other sweets, within reaching distance for the marquess. For her uncle, she prepared a plate of his favorites, taking care to shell the pistachios for him. He could have nothing that required dexterous motion. His fingers lacked agility and strength. That done, she retreated to the other side of the inlaid table and sat on a pillow on the floor, her legs curled to one side.
Foye glanced at her. “The weather is quite mild today, don’t you agree. Miss Godard?”
Her uncle laughed. “More days than not, the Levantine climate agrees with me,” he said, still laughing. “But, my dear Lord Foye, you needn’t make polite conversation on account of Sabine. Think of her as a man, and we will all get on better. You may speak frankly before her.”
“But she is not a man.” Foye looked at Godard with raised eyebrows. “And one always speaks politely in the presence of a lady, sir.”
“An hour in her company and you will soon forget her gender.” Godard said. He waved a gnarled hand. “We shall have a very dull time of this visit if you insist on considering her a woman, my lord. The kind of insipid conversation one must endure on account of female sensibilities? Bah. No talk of the weather here, my lord. We may indulge in any subject.”
“Very well, Sir Henry.” Foye drank some of his coffee. “I will speak frankly to you both.” Godard gestured for him to continue. “You must not go to Kilis.”
“Why the devil not?” Godard’s eyebrows drew together. “We have been invited by Nazim Pasha himself.”
“I have had a most interesting and revealing conversation with Anthony Lucey. There are reports, Sir Henry, of violence in the north. Three Germans robbed and killed. And I have heard, on the very best authority, that not far from Aleppo, Bedouins attacked a native family on their way to a wedding. I urge you to cancel your plans. It is not safe for you to travel north, no matter who you intend to visit while you are there. If you find Buyukdere and Constantinople dull, you are welcome to join me on my way to Palmyra. There are Roman ruins there as fine as any at Serjillo.” He glanced between Godard and her. “There is just as much that is fascinating and new in the south as the north.”
“We will be traveling with Nazim Pasha himself,” Godard said. “Who, pray tell, do you think will have the nerve to attack him?”
“And later—when you leave Kilis?”
“What interest will anyone have in a crippled old man and a woman of no consequence?”
Foye clenched and unclenched his fist. “You are English, Sir Henry. Infidels. For some, that is more than enough.”
“Bah.”
“Is there really no dissuading you? No swaying you with reminders of the dangers to which you expose your niece?”
“Have some pistachios, my lord.” Godard pushed a bowl of the nuts toward Foye. “They were a gift from Nazim Pasha himself.”
Foye stilled. “No, sir.” He leaned over and put down his empty cup before he stood. “I have another engagement. I hope we will meet again before one of us leaves. I beg of you, for your niece’s sake if for none other, to reconsider.”
“We were in Egypt during the recent unrest there, my lord,” Godard said. “The violence is between the natives.”
“Folly, sir.” He bowed again. Sabine tried and failed to catch his eye.
Godard waved a hand. “What sort of travelogue can I write if I do not travel? I cannot write of the East without including the north. Shall I leave out descriptions of the Syrian province?” He rested his hands on his lap. “I thank you for your concern, my boy. Now, good day.”
Foye went to Sabine but did not offer to take her hand. She was at once nervous about him being so near and distraught at the thought of not seeing him again. He bowed and looked her straight in the eye. In a low voice pitched so that her uncle would not overhear, he said, “May we have five minutes alone? I’ll wait for you by the fountain.”