Chapter Twenty-Nine
July 5, 1811
About half past seven in the morning. Bayt Salem, in the foothills above Iskenderun. An upstairs room with carved cedar cabinets and a painted ceiling. A finch sat in one of the high windows trying to convince a lady (inch to visit his most excellent perch.
Foye rested his weight on one forearm and looked down at Sabine. It was sometime in the morning since there was enough light for him to see despite the room lamps being out. She was naked and felt remarkably good tucked against his body. Tenderness welled up in him because she was Sabine and the woman who made his heart whole. He would take care of her. No matter what happened or how she did or didn’t feel about him.
She lay on her side, facing him, her hands up close to her face, head bowed toward his chest. His uppermost leg was draped over her lower body. The color on her face, although lighter than it had been, remained darker than the rest of her skin, which was immensely and beautifully pale. So very English of her. Her hair was, of course, still a mutilated walnut streaked with gold.
Sabine, still asleep, moved closer to him, burrowing her face against his chest, and he was touched that she sought him out. He caressed her shoulder with the tip of his finger, tracing a circle on her very pale skin. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, and Foye leaned down and kissed her shoulder. She smelled of attar of roses from the scent bottles left on hand in the cool room, and he was viscerally reminded of how he’d felt when he was inside her, when he was looking into her face, sweat between their joined bodies, and her looking at him as if he were the handsomest man she’d ever seen. There weren’t many women who looked at him like that.
All in all, he was very much at peace with what they must do. He ought to be more bothered by his predicament than he was; marrying a too-young woman when he’d been so certain he did not want to marry at all. He would be doing well by them both if he could make Sabine content in their marriage. And himself. He kissed her earlobe. He looked forward to returning to England to settle into a country life where the most excitement they were likely to face was whether they would walk to church on Sunday or drive.
“Mm,” she said without opening her eyes. “Foye.” She stretched slowly, luxuriously, and his belly tightened with desire for her as her body slid against his. “Is it morning already?”
How sublime it was to hold Sabine in his arms, to feel her against him and know the woman he loved returned the emotion and more. He wouldn’t trade a single day with Sabine for anything. None of the heart-pounding fear, none of the days fighting his feelings for her. Not a minute of any day since he’d walked into Anthony Lucey’s parlor and seen her sitting there.
He shifted himself over her, only partially so that he did not crush her, and slid down to kiss one of her breasts. The minute he did, his cock went full-on hard for her. When his mouth closed over her nipple, she moaned softly and arched into him. She wasn’t, after all, despite her small size, the sort of woman who did not like a large and rather beastly looking man. As he recalled, she liked him very well indeed.
Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Foye felt himself slip away, far from anything that was right or proper or gentlemanly, and into a world where all that mattered was Sabine, who loved him.
She adjusted herself, and he watched her eyes open and focus on him. He was poised to enter her, but didn’t yet. He wanted to be sure she was ready for him and that he had a firm grip on his need for her.
“Foye,” she whispered in a low, desirous whisper. She pushed at his chest, and he submitted himself to whatever fancy she had in mind. He ended up on his back with Sabine over him. Her hair fell forward as she leaned down to his chest, tiny curls almost as unmanageable as his own. Her tongue came out and swept over his nipple, and he felt the pull of that all the way to his balls.
She slid one hand along his rib cage and down to his hip and then across to his aching cock, and all the while she was kissing his body, his chest, his nipples, then his belly, and the, oh hell yes, the inside of his thighs.
“Jesus God, Sabine,” he whispered when her tongue dipped into his navel while her hand was being very bold beneath. She cupped his bollocks in her palm, and by then he wasn’t thinking of much besides whether she was going to take him in her mouth and whether he would go out of his mind before she did. When she put the matter to rest, Foye thrust his pelvis toward her and buried his fingers in her hair. “I am your slave,” he said while he still bad something of his wits about him. “Your abject slave.” Her tongue touched the rim of his cock. “God, help me, yes. Like that.”
He was a damned lucky bastard no matter what because, as it turned out, she was able to take a good deal of him into her mouth, and he couldn’t see any sign that she minded this in the least. She proceeded to send him mad with pleasure. Her fingers, too, stayed quite busy, touching, stroking.
He was quickly at the point of climax and trying to delay the inevitable.
“Sabine,” he said. “Sabine, I want to finish inside you. God, please.”
She stopped but not before he had to exercise every ounce of his willpower not to let himself fall, and even then, be held her tightly because for some time he was in danger of a single touch from her dropping him off the edge. “Did you like that?” she asked.
“Hell, yes.” At some point, he thought, he would have to relearn how to control his language around her. At some point.
“Mm,” she said. She still had her head by his parts, one hand on his thigh, the other on his belly. She had a calculating look on her face, as if she’d been taking mental notes of his reaction, and the thought that she was analyzing what they’d just done, what he’d just let her do, wound him tighter yet. Where might a mind like hers end up on the subject of his pleasure? “Perhaps I’ll do that again,” she said, and hell if she didn’t run her tongue along her lower lip. “I want to see you lose control. I want to know what you look like when that happens.”
“No,” he said, very serious now. He pulled her onto his chest. It was crucial to him that she understand he would never lose control with her. Ever. They would have a very controlled and proper marriage. None of this overlarge emotion that had plagued them. “You would not like that at all.” He buried his hands in her hair and summoned a smile. “A great beast like me, Sabine? I’d terrify you.”
“You wouldn’t, Foye.” She gave a tight shake of her head. “I don’t want you to hold back.” She reached up and pressed a hand to his cheek. “I won’t break. I can promise you that.”
He rolled her underneath him but kept her on her stomach. He kissed his way down her spine before he slid a hand underneath her hips and brought her up so that, with him on his knees and holding her hips with both hands, he entered her from behind. “Is this all right?” he whispered. “Am I too wicked for you?”
“Foye.” She gave a soft moan and pressed back against him.
That was certainly an encouraging development, wasn’t it? He watched his cock disappear inside her, felt the slick tightness of her pressing around him when he was in as far as he could get. He held her hard against him, working himself in her, dying.
Someone, some godforsaken, addlepated fool, knocked lightly on the door. Once and then a second time. Someone said something in Arabic.
Sabine went still. He bent over her, one arm holding his weight, and careful not to let his torso touch her back. He got his breath under control.
“Don’t even think of stopping this,” he whispered. “Not until we are both quite done.” He pushed back and wrapped the fingers of one hand around her hips. He held her tight against his groin while he circled his pelvis. “Pathros,” he said in a voice made rough with passion, “tell whoever it is that I am not fit company yet, but that you will soon make me so.”
She called out something in Arabic, but only a word or two, which was not enough for her to have said anything that would prevent someone from opening the door and discovering Foye was breaking the tenets of his faith and the Mohammedans’, too. At least with her naked, there would be no doubt that his conduct was with a woman rather than his young dragoman.
There was a response from the other side of the door.
“Tell him the rest, Sabine.” He kept his fingers on her soft, soft skin while he continued moving in her. He had to put his other hand on the floor to keep his balance and hold his weight off her while be put his mouth by her ear. “I am not to be disturbed just now. You, personally, will see to my every need and have me downstairs shortly.”
She said something again, several sentences of which he understood not one word. Whoever was on the other side of the door said another word or two, and he and Sabine stayed quiet enough to hear him walking away. He got an arm around her, fingers stroking her hard until he felt the beginning of her climax. Foye pulled out of her and put himself on his back.
“Foye,” she whispered when he was inside her again with her on top. “Foye.”
“You are delicious,” he said. He had the presence of mind to keep his voice low.
“I love you,” she said. She put her palms on his chest and worked her hips on him while he put a hand over her nether hair and stroked her. He wanted this to last, this time when they were both at more leisure than they’d ever been. “Foye,” she said. He heard the strain her voice.
“Make love with me like this, Sabine.” He slid a hand around the back of her neck. He was very close to a climax. It wouldn’t take much more. “I’m going to make our son now,” he said, because he was there, about to come without taking any precautions. “Right now.”
It was remarkable, really, that just over an hour later they rode to the British Consulate to call on his friend Hugh Eglender. He’d spent a preposterously long time getting dressed, but when he was done, he was sartorial perfection, down to the polish of his boots and buttons. He was now conspicuously armed with a pistol and a sword, and Sabine, in her guise as Pathros, wore her pistol tucked into her sash as well as a dagger.
They were in Iskenderun proper now, with the scent of the sea on the air and the cry of seabirds over the harbor, and they were very nearly safe from Nazim Pasha.
Had he ever thought that his wedding day would be like this?
She brought her mare even with his mount and bowed her head before she addressed him. She sat her native saddle easily now, quite used to it. “Foye, are you absolutely certain of this?”
He kept them moving, though his heart had gone still.
She was quite clever enough to argue her way out of this, if she’d changed her mind. There was always the possibility that she would refuse to go along. It was difficult to marry a woman who would not say “I will.”
Foye was not without mental resources of his own. He’d been on Sir Henry’s list, for pity’s sake. “Am I to be jilted again?” he asked. He meant to sound harsh and so he did. “That is badly done of you, Sabine, if you intended this all along.”
“No, Foye,” she said. “No.”
“Then it’s tedious to repeat myself,” he said. He leaned toward her, keeping his voice pitched low. “I made no effort to prevent conception, Sabine. None whatsoever. I will not sail to England knowing we might well discover halfway there that you are in an inconvenient situation and unmarried. And you cannot stay here, you know I won’t have you in that sort of danger when we do not know yet where Nazim Pasha is or what he plans to do.”
“Perhaps nothing,” she said.
“Nazim Pasha has leveled entire villages from a perceived slight to his honor. He will seek revenge against me if he realizes what’s happened before we are safely married and on our way home. That’s a given. Even if that were not so, we have very little choice in the matter now, Sabine. It’s what’s done in situations such as this.” He speared her with a glance. “It’s what’s done. What’s proper and honorable.”
She pressed her lips together.
“Sabine.” He allowed himself to relax. “I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife.” They were now mere yards from the consulate. He drew up and sat his horse calmly. “If you are having doubts, consider, Sabine, that you are alone in the world. I will take care of you. As my wife, you’ll want for nothing.”
“That is unfair—”
“Though it was not my intention to return to England anytime soon, I am happy to do so now, with my bride on my arm. I will tell you now quite bluntly that it was never my intention to marry a woman who is too young and too intellectually blind to see the facts before her.”
“Intellectually blind?”
“Fear not, my love.” He kept a straight face, but the urge to laugh at her outrage was nearly irresistible. “I am in charity with all your shortcomings. Be assured, Sabine, that if this madness of ours has given us a child, then you and my child will have the protection of my name. Do not suppose for even a moment I would let you bear me a bastard. There is no counter-argument to that.”
She opened her mouth to object and didn’t. Because, after all, he was right. “This cannot end well.”
“A disguised attack ad hominem, Sabine? That does not become you. I submit this will end quite well. I shall have a legal wife, very young and very pretty, to bear the Marrack scion, and you shall have a husband who tolerates your many eccentricities.”
“You will regret this.”
He shook his head. “In fact, my love, I doubt it. You read my fortune in my tea leaves and, if you will but recall, my fortune was to be lucky in love,”
“So you resort to absurdities.” But she was smiling, and that was something. “Really, Foye. That does not become you.”
“Consider our marriage a condition of my plucking you from the pasha’s harem or preventing you from becoming a gift to be installed in the Seraglio to await the sultan’s whim. Or, if you prefer, consider this my just reward for everything I have done since I went haring after you.”
“Why did you?”
He shrugged. “Because I realized I had not laid my case before the one person whose approval you required. I went to Kilis intending to convince Sir Henry that you must be my wife. I intended, if you must know, to tell him that he would not lose you if you were to become mine.” He let out a long breath. “Or, if you must, Sabine, consider our marriage your burden to bear for your sins with me.
So long as we put an end to this ridiculous discussion and attend to our wedding day.”
“Very well, Foye.” She lifted her chin. “I merely wished to point out there might be alternatives.”
“Duly noted. I reject them, of course.”
“Entirely out of hand,” she said.
“Yes, Shall we then?”
“Mr. Eglender might refuse to marry us, you know.”
“He won’t. You may rely on that, my dear.”