Chapter Twenty-Six
July 1, 1811
Approximately one thirty in the morning. The Nur Mountains. The warm springs about a quarter mile from a small, rather crude inn. on the road between Aleppo and Iskenderun. Foye and Sabine were bathing, with two Druze mercenaries standing guard.
Both the Janissaries were on guard twenty yards down the path from the spring, having been instructed they were to watch for any of the pasha’s men and give a quick whistle if it appeared they would be interrupted by anyone at all. Foye had stripped down quickly and with his help she did the same.
They were alone, naked, and Foye was helping scrub her clean as quickly as he could. Every noise made her jump, every second she expected they would be interrupted by the pasha or one of his men. When they were done, Foye waded out of the shallow pool, and they went to work drying her off and getting her breasts rebound and her dressed in clean clothes. He brought out his ointment and worked more through her hair, concentrating underneath where the blond showed through and along her center part where there were just faint signs of new blond. They left her mostly unclothed, with just the shirwal and shirt over her rebound breasts.
“There,” Foye said with a relieved sigh. “If anyone comes now, you’re Pathros once more.”
She gave a nervous glance over her shoulder. But there wasn’t anyone on the path, only the captain and the other soldier, both with their backs to the springs.
“We will get through this.” Foye set a hand to her cheek. “Come now, Sabine. If he’s not guessed yet, he’s unlikely to now.”
“Pathros,” she said in a near whisper. “I am Pathros.” She was the marquess’s dragoman, a boy who knew how to curse in Arabic and Turkish and walk like he had bollocks and who could make arrangements for their accommodations without anyone thinking he should not. She was competent and self-sufficient.
But when she looked at Foye, standing naked at the edge of the spring, she was Sabine Godard, and she and Foye had been as physically intimate as a man and woman could be. She wanted to throw her arms around him and whisper to him how dear he’d become to her. Most of all she wanted this to be over, this constant tension and fear of being found out.
Foye stood as silent as she was, still touching her cheek, fingers moving gently along the line of her jaw. Shadows and moonlight played over his face, so familiar to her now, and for some reason the very fact that he looked as he did made her heart feel too big for her chest.
Tears welled up, but she refused to cry in front of him. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t disappoint herself and him with such weakness or put them in that kind of danger. Tears gathered anyway, filling her heart and her very soul. How was she to reach across the gulf between them when she was no longer sure of the man who stood on the other side?
The Foye before her was not the amiable gentleman of their early acquaintance. Nor was he the man who’d held her so tenderly last night while he’d made her feel things that had changed her forever. When she accepted his body into hers, he had changed her forever. That made her want to cry, too. She wasn’t the same person who’d fallen in love.
He’d turned into a stranger men followed without question. She knew the difference between a man who was followed because of what he was to others—pasha, earl, sultan, king—and a man whom others followed because of who he was to himself—decisive, honorable, decent, quick thinking. Foye was both, and she had woefully, horribly misjudged him because she had known nothing of men and perhaps remained ignorant still. She would love him until the day came that she drew her last breath, and yet she feared she did not know him nearly well enough.
A sharp whistle cut the air.
“Blast,” Foye said. He stepped away from her, back into the spring. He dunked his head in the water and was bathing by the time several men approached the spring. Nazim Pasha, with two servants and several of his Janissaries, all of them armed. The two Druze separated from the pasha’s men.
Sabine tried to make herself inconspicuous, but that seemed impossible, given she was bareheaded and only partially dressed. Lord, please let her loose shirt and shirwal be enough to hide her shape. She sat down and put on her slippers and boots, ignoring the conversation.
“Marquis,” the pasha said, in French of course. “This is a pleasant place to bathe.” His servant came forward and helped the pasha remove his outer cloak.
“It is,” Foye said. He washed his chest as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Sabine looked away as the pasha continued to disrobe. He was nothing like Foye, not as tall, not as lean. He waved away his servant and faced her, stroking his beard. How well could he see her in the dark? Foye waded out of the spring. That was a distraction. He towered over the pasha.
Sabine scrambled for the satchel containing a towel and Foye’s clothes. As she passed the pasha on her way to join Foye, the pasha stopped her with a question. She turned just her head.
“Have you ever worked in the public hammam in Aleppo?” he asked her in Turkish.
She was about to answer him when Foye said, “You seem quite interested in my dragoman, Pasha.” Sabine put down the satchel and used the towel to dry Foye’s damp skin. He stood as if it were nothing to have someone else looking after him this way. “May I ask why?” Foye said in French.
The Pasha reverted to French. “I asked if he’d been a hammam boy.” He shrugged. “Such a boy as your dragoman could become quite rich, if he were skilled. If he caught the attention of certain men.”
“I’ve no idea,” Foye replied. In English he said, “Pathros?”
“No, Pasha,” she answered in Turkish. She bowed deeply. “My father would never permit that.”
The pasha chuckled as he walked past them to the spring. “There was once a very rich man of Aleppo who fell in love with a bath boy. He came to the hammam whenever he knew the boy was to be there. But another man also admired the bath boy, and they soon became aware they were rivals.” His servant followed him to the water, carrying a jeweled metal box that contained the pasha’s bathing utensils.
“What happened?” Foye asked. He was dressing now, with Sabine’s assistance, in a clean set of road-worthy clothes. Smallclothes, breeches, shirt. She worked as quickly as she could, and when it wouldn’t be too obvious, Foye helped. At least the pasha wasn’t looking at her anymore. He seemed intent on Foye.
“Ah,” the pasha said at Foye’s question. “One of the men became jealous and killed the boy.”
“A tale with a very sorry ending.” Foye shrugged on his coat and let Sabine adjust the garment around his shoulders. He picked up his boots and slid his feet into the slippers. “Good night, Pasha,” Foye said. “Come along, Pathros.”
Sabine knelt to pack away Foye’s dirty clothes and finish putting on the rest of hers.
“Good night, Marquis,” the pasha said.
Sabine, delayed by dealing with Foye’s clothes and her own, heard the pasha tell his Janissaries to follow them.
Slinging the satchel over her shoulder, she hurried after Foye, followed by two silent Janissaries.
At the inn, the proprietor brought them coffee and a narghile as well as a selection of tobacco, which he presented to Sabine. She relayed the choices to Foye, who merely lifted a disinterested hand. She handed over a coin in exchange for some of the honey-infused tobacco Godard had preferred. The Druze captain settled himself in a corner of the room, standing, arms over his chest and staring over the low wall at the Janissaries gathered there.
On the floor by the fire, Sabine laid out Foye’s rug and blanket, then did the same with her own gear. In this tiny room, there was no way to put much distance between them. “Tell the captain he may go, Pathros,” Foye said. “And that I would be grateful if he kept an eye on our friends out there.” She did so, and the Druze bowed and went outside, leaving her and Foye quite alone.
Foye sat on his blanket. He paid no attention to the narghile, but he did take the coffee. Sabine was too tired and anxious to have any coffee herself, though she badly wanted something to do with her hands. He poured coffee into one of the cups and, one eyebrow raised, said, “Pathros?”
She, too, squatted. She leaned forward and took it from him despite not wanting it. “Thank you, effendi.”
Foye shrugged off his outercoat and draped it atop his gear quite as if his doing so was proper between them. Was it? Was he thinking of her as Sabine Godard or as his dragoman Pathros? She leaned her head against the wall behind her back and wished last night had never happened. They were so ill at ease. Well, she was uncomfortable, at any rate. She could not tell if Foye was bothered at all. He reached for his pistols and set them on the ground between his legs.
She had seen him naked, she thought to herself as she watched the tension in his body. More than once. Her palms had felt the shift of muscle and sinew underneath his skin, the slide of his cock into her. “Do you think the pasha suspects?”
Foye thought about that as he reached for the narghile. “He certainly suspects I made away with you somehow. But if he suspected you were not Pathros, he would have acted by now. No. He continues to look for a woman, the fool.” He reached between them and tapped the side of her head. “I thought I’d have apoplexy when the pasha came down that path with you hardly dressed at all.
She took the narghile from him and deftly, from her long practice doing so for Godard, inserted the tobacco and lit it. She handed it back. “Yes, I as well.”
“I think your poor-shorn head convinced him. It’s lucky we trimmed it last night. Or was that this morning?” He, too, had his back to the wall. With one leg extended straight out and the other bent up at the knee, he took back the narghile.
“What did he mean by that awful story of the bath boy?” Sabine watched smoke drift toward the ceiling. Her stomach ached from tension.
Foye laughed softly. “Come now, Sabine—”
“Pathros.”
“Very well then, Pathros. You’ve read the Greeks. You can’t be ignorant of their notions of love in its various forms.” He took another draw at the narghile and blew a smoke ring. “He saw me alone and naked with a very pretty boy and drew his own conclusions.”
She sat up and looked him in the face, astonished. His eyelids were lowered partway, but she could see some of his blue irises. “He didn’t think that,” she said.
“He did.” He laughed. “And if he thought I wanted you, well, Pathros, he was right.”
She sat back and picked up her coffee. She didn’t drink any.
“It’s just as well,” Foye said. He reached for his coffee, too, and emptied the glass. “Better he finds you a convincing boy and think I want my own hammam boy than to have him realize who you are and the real reason I want you flat on your back or on your knees.”
“Foye…”
“Go to sleep, Pathros.”
“You should as well.” She put her coffee down only to have Foye pick it up and empty it, too. She frowned. “You’ll never sleep now.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“No wonder Barton is worried about you.”
“He’s always fussing over me.” He took another draw on the narghile. “Like a mother hen. Don’t you do the same. I assure you, I can handle myself.”
She reached across her mattress to adjust his bedding. “He thinks you’ll overextend yourself. Having watched you today, I must agree.”
“What choice is there?” he said. “The sooner we reach Iskenderun the sooner you’ll be safe. You can disappear into the consulate, and the pasha will not be able to touch you. Until then?” He set aside the narghile so violently he had to steady it lest it topple over. Sabine jumped. “You should have sent for me the moment your uncle became ill. I would have come, and perhaps this might have been avoided.”
“It happened so fast, Foye. There was so much going on. Godard fell ill, and I don’t even know how many hours I sat with him, praying he would recover. But within days he was dead.”
He reached out and hooked his palm around the nape of her neck. “Hush, Sabine. I am out of line with you.”
“I did write you. Every day.”
Still with his hand on her neck, he said, “I imagine he intercepted your mail.”
She shook her head. “I thought the same. It’s why I sent Asif to Aleppo after Godard died.”
Foye slid his hand from her nape to her cheek, curving his long fingers over her cheek and jaw. “That was brave of you. You kept your head about you. Now, sleep, love.”
What she wouldn’t give to have all this upset behind them. Her doubts and trepidations rose up in her, choking her, cutting off her words while she fought to suppress the urge for weak, feminine tears. This would be easier if he wasn’t being so infernally reasonable and gentle with her. “Was this a mistake, Foye, what happened between us?”
“No.” He cupped the other side of her face, too. “I can’t stop thinking about you. You were driving me mad with desire before, and it’s no better since last night. That wasn’t enough. One night with you will never be enough. I want you right now, Sabine, and I will want you tomorrow, too, and for the rest of my life. Do you doubt that?”
“I don’t know what I think anymore.”
“Then think this, Sabine…” Foye bent to her and gently, tenderly, brushed his lips across hers, then again not so gently. “You are a first for me as well.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “This is a damnable time to fall in love.”
“I’m afraid you’ll not want me anymore. After all this. And I’m too young for you.” She was shaking inside. Trembling like a leaf. “You said so yourself. I am not suitable for you at all.”
“Next year you will be older.” He shrugged. “I find that is more than sufficient for me. I’ve not changed my mind. I won’t.”
She turned her face and quickly kissed his palm, then moved away. “This is madness, Foye. Madness.”
“Then let us go straight to Bedlam.” A sharp noise outside made them both freeze.
“You see?” she said in a low voice. “Madness.”
Foye straightened and got to his feet. Sabine did the same, and they ended up standing less than an arm’s length from each other. But the sound was nothing after all. She was quite close enough to see that his beard was heavier than before, still stubble, but growing longer. His face was tanned darker, too. The deeper color made his eyes an even brighter blue. Her heart hurt just to look at him. His expression, while not exactly soft, was at least no longer devoid of emotion, as it had been for most of the day. “Then let me be mad, Sabine,” he whispered.
That could have been anyone coming back. We might have been seen.”
“What will the pasha think?” The corner of his mouth quirked.
“My God,” she said. “You’re impossible.”
“And you are lovely. Even dressed as a boy, you’re lovely beyond words. And brave and quite probably more intelligent than I am.”
“You were on Godard’s list, so it’s doubtful.”
She stayed where she was, too close to him, but unable to move farther away, either. Where else could she stand in such a tiny, crowded space as this? The room was not large enough to get anywhere near far enough away from him, and if she sat on her mattress, then Foye would not be able to sit without them being too close again. The way he watched her made her stomach shiver with the recognition that here stood a man with whom she had been intimate. He had touched her places she generally pretended didn’t exist. He’d made her feel things she didn’t know were possible.
“It’s a pity we couldn’t reach the consulate in Aleppo,” he said. “We’ll have to be married in Iskenderun instead, and that cuts it rather close. Fortunately,” he said evenly, “the vice-consul there is a friend of mine.” He let out a breath. “This will come right,” he said. “We have only to reach Iskenderun and all will come right.” He took her hand in his and gently pressed. “You’ll see. Who but I will appreciate all the arcane knowledge packed into that head of yours? Is there any other man who will be proud to hear you list the plays of Aeschylus?” She made a face at him, but he just laughed and leaned over her, so close. Perilously close. “Come now, Sabine, list them for me. You know them all, and I long to hear the words fall as dewdrops from your lips.”
“The Persians,” she said. She licked her lips.
“Good.”
“Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, these last three being a trilogy, then The Eumenides and likely, Prometheus Bound?
“I adore your mind, Sabine.” He leaned closer yet, then threw a look over his shoulder. “I adore you utterly.” He put a hand on her hip. “Hearing you speak like this arouses me.” He chuckled. “You will keep me amused for the rest of my life.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“Never.” He grew serious. “Never, Sabine.”
Sabine studied the way his cheeks were not perfectly even, the way they slashed down so haphazardly, high and sharp and forcefully there. She remembered, too, the way his skin had felt beneath her fingers, how soft and warm, slick with sweat, the taut muscle beneath. Her stomach had quivered at the sight of his strong features when he looked at her with tenderness—and desire. He touched her cheek, just resting the tips of his fingers on her. The pressure of his fingers brought her head around so that she must either close her eyes or look at him. Their eyes met, and Sabine thought her heart would break just from the simple act of looking at him. “I do love you, Foye” she whispered.
“And I, you. You’re exhausted. Lie down and close your eyes. I’ll wake you in the morning.” Foye reached out and tugged on her hand until she relented and let him hold her hand. They were too close. Too close, considering how terribly she wanted him to hold her. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”