Chapter Twenty-Eight
July 4, 1811
Approximately four in the afternoon. The private baths at Bayt Salem, Mr. Hugh Eglender’s home in Iskenderun, then a province of Syria under the control of the Sultan Mahmud II. Eglender’s decision to live in the foothills, rather than the pestilential marshes of the city proper, explained his longevity in his position.
Sabine was already in one of the niches, removing her clothes. Foye tried not to think about her stripping down to her bare skin, but he didn’t have much success. Visions of her refused to leave his head, visions that were accompanied by indelible recollections of him holding her tight while he came. Inside her. With no attempt to spare them both from the consequences of conception.
He was acutely aware that Rosaline had once found herself at a similar crisis—not as to any possible conception but on the cusp of marriage. He knew too well the outcome of that. He and Rosaline had never done more than kiss—but as to feeling pressured into a marriage she didn’t want and perhaps wasn’t ready for. The result of that had not been happy for him. Engaged to marry a man she did not love, no doubt pressured by her father, Rosaline must have felt a great deal like Sabine did now. Trapped. Resentful. Full of doubt.
He stepped into a niche and removed his travel-stained clothes. He bundled up his fresh clothes but instead of walking out, he sat on the marble bench and wondered what the hell was going to happen to him this time. They were not out of danger, he and Sabine. She’d been through too much, lately, to be sure of anything. Devastated by the death of her uncle, harried by Nazim Pasha, dressed as a boy, and now his lover.
He let his head fall back against the marble wall behind him. He was too damn tired to think straight. He knew if Sabine left him, he would be shattered beyond repair.
“Foye?” Sabine called softly.
He rose and tied a silk pestamel around his hips and slipped on a pair of pattens that would keep him from falling and breaking open his head. He stepped out of his niche. “Yes?”
Sabine stood in the middle of the room with her shockingly short hair and brown face and hands, and he didn’t understand how the pasha or anyone else had ever failed to see her for the woman she was. Like him, she wore pattens on her feet He was reminded of the pasha’s story about the hammam boy, and, Jesus, his mind was so unclear, so fuzzy with exhaustion, he didn’t know what to think.
“I cannot untie this.” Her cheeks were bright pink. She meant the cloth that bound her breasts. She’d wrapped a pestamel around her hips, too; other than that, and the cloth around her bosom, she was nude, and he couldn’t help himself. He looked a very long time at her legs and bare midriff.
Eventually, he recovered himself and helped her unfasten the knot he’d tied between her shoulder blades. He had to work at it because the material was damp and had tightened during the course of their traveling. When he had the two ends separated, she put her hands over her bosom to keep the cloth in place. He trailed a finger along her spine.
She slowly turned around. “Thank you, Foye.”
She wasn’t Rosaline. Sabine would never leave him the way Rosaline had. She would be honest with him if she changed her mind. “If you decide to leave me,” he said, “you will tell me, won’t you?”
Her eyebrows drew together, but she seemed to understand he wasn’t asking her a question. She nodded. “Yes, Foye.”
He stayed where he was. They were both dirty, and they both smelled like they’d been traveling long and hard. Her head did not reach his chin, nowhere near, actually. He put his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs parallel with the nape of her neck. He was glad, fiercely and deeply glad that he’d met Sabine.
“And if you leave me?” she asked.
“I won’t,” he said.
“You don’t know that.”
God, what they needed was two consecutive weeks without disaster. Time to know each other, to learn and love without the threat of death or betrayal hanging over them.
“I do,” he said.
She gazed at him. He knew she was analyzing his every word, every nuance of his expression, looking for meaning within meaning within meaning. Except, it was so very simple. He watched her arrive at the same conclusion. She nodded again. “Of course,” she said. She took his hand and pressed his fingers. He reached out and tugged at that damned cloth. After a bit, Sabine let go and he pulled it away, letting it drop to the floor. She’d already bundled her clothes, the cleanest she had left, as he had, and he reached down to pick up her things and tuck them under one arm.
“Come, Sabine.” He walked into the warm room via a short, right-angle passage constructed so as to prevent a direct line of sight from the first to the second. He heard her following him, and it took all his self-discipline not to look over his shoulder at her. He’d damn near run her into the ground over the last few days, and not a word of complaint had come from her. Not one.
Marble benches lined the walls in this room. Every few yards was a fountain where one could turn a tap for cool, clear water to rinse off the soap and dirt. In the middle of the room were two shallow pools, one larger than the other, both with patterned marble bottoms and wide steps into the water. He put their clothes and bathing kits onto the marble bench by the nearest pool and immersed himself in the water. Bliss, he thought, as the water surrounded him. Unadulterated bliss. He opened his eyes and, God, he thought he’d never in his life seen anything as erotic as Sabine walking toward him. Other than the pestamel around her waist, she wore nothing. He clearly saw the uneven demarcation of her dyed skin and the pale whiteness of her elsewhere.
At the edge of the pool, he held out his hand. She hesitated. “My love,” he said softly.
She slipped off the pattens and got into the water. He didn’t regret his promise of restraint. He would not disgrace them both by allowing the possibility of one of Eglender’s servants interrupting them engaged in something that must be private between them.
“When we are back in England,” he said while he scrubbed his arms without looking at her—anything to take his mind off all the things he wanted to do to her, “I am going to build a Turkish bath at Maralee House.” That remark required a glance in her direction. She was scrubbing her leg, her head tilted toward him. “Perhaps I’ll even hire Turkish servants to staff the addition. What do you think? Shall we have a Turkish bath?”
“That sounds very nice.” She stared into the water, keeping her back turned away.
Foye put a hand on her bare shoulder. He was far, far gone from trying to pretend he didn’t want her or that he wasn’t going to touch her again. He was. As soon as they were private. Just not now, when they were both tired and hungry and nervous with each other with so many things between them unsettled. “You’re so lovely, Sabine. I haven’t told you that near often enough. Nor how much I admire you.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Thank you, Foye.”
“What you need,” he said, smiling at her, “is your very own hammam boy.”
She laughed at him.
“At your service,” he said.
He stretched for his bowl and used that to scoop water to get their hair thoroughly wet. When he’d done that, he grabbed her hand and walked with her to the bench where he’d set his bathing supplies. She had none of her own, of course. He put his between them and set himself to washing his hair. Sabine did the same. He adored the way her short hair exposed the line of her throat and shoulders.
When he poured the last basin of water over her hair, she let her head drop back and closed her eyes. She let out a sigh. “Heaven. This is heaven. I’ve been dreaming of a bath forever.”
Foye stared at her bare breasts because he was too damn tired not to. She was lovely beyond words. While he stared he knew deep in his soul that she was the woman with whom he wanted to share his life; there was no question in his mind whatever. He wanted them to be married now. Yesterday. This minute.
She opened her eyes and caught him staring. Foye didn’t bother to pretend he hadn’t been. He no longer cared about trying to keep his reactions subdued. Her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t look away from him. He ran his fingertips along the underside of one of her breasts. “When we are alone, Sabine, I will adore you properly, I promise. If you’ll let me. If you want me to.”
“Oh, Foye,” she whispered. “What am I to do with you?”
She was so very young in some ways, with so little experience of men in the usual social sense. She had never been given a season, never been presented to men as a marriageable young lady. She’d had no interactions with men to whom he might be compared so that she could be certain she preferred him to anyone else. She had lived her entire life believing she would always be taking care of her uncle.
“Whatever you like,” he said. He was careful to smile so she wouldn’t read more into his reply than she was ready to hear. He picked up his soap and worked up a lather. Between them, they washed the dirt and stink from their bodies. He didn’t see any reason for modesty between them, so he moved aside his pestamel and soaped himself everywhere. He didn’t dare do the same for her; he knew where that would lead, and this was neither the time nor place for that.
While she stayed in the pool, he waded out and propped the kit’s mirror on one of the ledges above the tap that fed water into the basin. Barton would have been astounded that not even a nick marred his cheeks or throat when he was done. He put his razor under the water to clear away the soap and ended with a thorough rinse of his face.
“There,” he said, rubbing his newly smooth chin and checking to see that he’d not missed any spots. “I am as handsome as ever now.”
Sabine didn’t say anything to that, and when he looked over, he saw why. She was fast asleep. Her head rested against the tall marble decorations carved above the next basin and tap, and her rinsing bowl bobbed in the basin beside her. Her hair was partially dry. One curl, part gold, part brown, was damp enough to cling to the side of her cheek. She’d refastened her pestamel around her waist. Drops of water glistened on her skin.
Even though he had touched her body everywhere a man could desire to touch a woman, even though he’d had his mouth on her there, he felt he was seeing Sabine for the first time in his life and falling in love with her like some damn fairy tale in which the monster was redeemed by the maiden. Well. He was a beast, and he was in love with her.
His conviction about the state of his heart left him shaky and uncertain. Had he felt this way about Rosaline? He knew he’d believed he loved her. If anyone had tried to tell him he hadn’t he’d have called him a fool. He had loved Rosaline, that was so. He’d been pleased—no, happy, intensely happy—when she accepted his offer of marriage and had only fallen more deeply in love with her afterward. After they were formally engaged, he’d been faithful to her. A changed man compared to his previous ways. There had been no more mistresses, no more affairs with widows or married women.
But had he ever felt that if something were to happen to Rosaline his life would end? He wasn’t sure. He remembered the giddy happiness of loving Rosaline. And how little of himself he had shared with her. Because, he knew, to his shame, that she had not been his equal. Sabine was. And he was quite sure that without Sabine he’d be destroyed. Indeed, he had loved Rosaline, but he loved Sabine in an entirely different way. More deeply. More dangerously.
Foye returned to his belongings, bundled them up, and went to Sabine. He knelt at her side. “Sabine?” he said. She didn’t respond, so he touched her shoulder—God, her skin was soft—and gave her a gentle shake. “Sabine?”
Her eyes twitched under her closed lids.
“Sabine,” he said softly. She opened her eyes, but he could see she wasn’t fully awake. “Sabine, wake up.”
She lifted her head and blinked slowly. “Foye?”
She needed him, he thought. Whatever reservations she had about him, she did need him. She was alone, with no family to worry about what happened to her, no one to keep her safe. Her eyes focused and something in him twisted painfully when he saw how she fought to wake herself up. “My goodness. I fell asleep.”
“Come, Sabine,” he said. He was proud of her and all she had endured without complaint. “It’s time we went upstairs.”
She more or less succeeded in staying awake from sheer force of will. He tucked away his sexual response to her as he picked her up and carried her into the cool room. There, he wrapped a towel around her hair and two more around her shoulders and waist and settled her on a divan while he went back to fetch their clothes and bath items.
When he returned, she was awake and sitting cross-legged on the divan combing out what was left of her hair. She had put on her shirwal but left the towels covering the rest of her. Pity, that. She worked a comb through her hair, then switched to the other side, beginning on the tangles there. When she was done, she set her comb very precisely on the table beside her.
“I need help getting dressed,” she said.
“Of course.” This was accomplished quickly enough. Once they’d bound her bosom again, his primary contribution was to hand her the various parts of her costume. She was all too soon Pathros.
“I’ll arrange to get you more suitable clothes in the morning,” he said while she adjusted her headdress. “Perhaps Eglender knows someone whose wife or daughter is your size.” He threw aside his towel and began dressing. He looked at her sideways while he wrestled to get his shirt right-side out. “I’ll see about finding a ship to get us home. Tomorrow. Or later today. I’ve lost track of the days. After we’ve slept.” He glared at his shirt; one of the sleeves was now wrong-side out. How had he not noticed that? “I can’t think straight anymore.”
She left the divan. “Do you need help, effendi?”
Foye let out a short, hard sigh. “Hell, yes.”
She took his shirt from him, and he ducked his head for her so they could get the thing on him. They succeeded, eventually, in getting him dressed, while he did his best to ignore the intimacy of her hands on him, touching him, shaking out his clothes, smoothing them out, buttoning, fastening, even tying a very decent knot in his cravat. Hell, he even put a hand on her shoulder for balance when she bent to get his stockings on his feet.
He couldn’t wait to get her upstairs and both of them undressed.