Eleven

Inside the lush women’s quarters of the sultan’s palace, Colette’s travelling robes were removed. Stained glass windows muted the light filtering into the great room. A fountain built into the mosaic floor trickled a low, lulling sound that blended with the quiet murmur of conversation among the other women—the sultan’s concubines. They watched Colette curiously, whispering among themselves. Colette huddled in a corner upon a cushion and tried to remember her old home by the sparkling sea.

She had been weak several times on the journey and almost had given her body to the evil sultan when under the spell of his lovely voice, but Lilith Dahlgren, the author of this story, cruelly intervened.

The great doors flung open and a tall woman with blazing black eyes and a flowing embroidered robe and veil strode in. She was flanked by two powerful eunuchs. The concubines quickly rose to their feet. This woman paid no attention to them but headed to Colette.

“So you are the slave he speaks of.” The woman’s voice was blunt as a dull knife. “The one who knows how to make Greek Fire.”

Colette lifted her eyes.

“I am the valide sultan,” the woman thundered. “I am the most powerful woman in the land. I manage every aspect of this palace. Humble yourself before me.”

Colette bowed her head. The woman leaned over and hissed in Colette’s ear. “You will never be more than a lowly slave. Not even a concubine. Don’t think you can tempt him by withholding your secret.”

Colette could only laugh at the woman’s threats. “I want nothing of your palace or family. I want to go home.”

“Hah! You will never see your home again, slave. But if you tell the sultan the formula, he may spare your life.”

The valide sultan spun, her flapping robes creating a draft of air as she strode out. “Don’t let her eat or drink or give her her clothes until she reveals the formula,” she ordered the eunuchs. “I am not as merciful as my son.”

Colette buried her face in her hands. Her life was over. It would end here, hundreds of miles from home among strangers.

She felt a kindly hand on her shoulder and raised her head to see a young green-eyed woman. “I’m from Greece too. I was so lonely when I was first captured and sold. But then the sultan took me in and gave me a kind home. Don’t cry.”

“This will never be my home,” Colette said.

“But you can’t leave unless the sultan marries you off to someone else,” the woman replied.

A stunning woman with Nubian features stepped forward. “Or you find the secret box. Its contents will set you free.”

“Shh,” one of the concubines said. “We are never to speak of the secret box. We will anger the sultan, our exalted and kind master.”

But Colette was unconcerned about the sultan’s wrath. He would never be her master. What was in that secret box?

“Muse, no!” Lilith cried. “I know what you are proposing. It’s quite transparent. You want me to go up into the attics to find George’s childhood art that Penelope hid, for the sake of research. Well, I refuse. Now let’s mark through this entire scene and return to the tent where Colette will make a daring escape—with her clothes on—and the sultan will be killed by a tiger or…or…some other deadly animal indigenous to Turkey.”

Lilith kept her pen poised, waiting for her muse to behave. Several minutes passed. Black ink dripped onto the page.

“I told you, Muse, I’m not climbing into the scary and who-knows-what infested attics in the middle of the night, in my nightdress, so you will be inspired to write. I’m going to bed. When I wake up, I hope I find a new and more cooperative muse. You’re horrible.”

She replaced her pages, locked up her portfolio, and then hid it deep in the wardrobe. She placed her Keats volume on the nightstand, extinguished the lamp, and slipped beneath the covers.

Still the muse whispered, Go to the attics. A real writer seeks the truth.

Lilith smashed the pillow over her head, a symbolic gesture that she wasn’t going to listen.

Then the muse turned vicious. Keats would have gone in the attics.

* * *

At two in the morning, Lilith, holding a lamp, tiptoed through the corridors in a nightdress, shawl, and boots.

All those painted ancestors lining the halls took on sinister expressions in the dim, early hours. She ascended round tower stairs to the top floor. No one inhabited these rooms, but the scurry and scratch above her head and the tiny black droppings under her feet indicated that she wasn’t alone. She lifted her lamp, casting an oval of light all the way down the attic corridor crammed with pots, bottles, and trunks. She edged along the tiny path blazed in the rubbish to the back garret room, where Penelope said she had put the art. Once there, she only found more trunks stacked almost to the rafters. Lilith’s ambition flagged.

For the next two hours she dug through yellowing household accounts, absolutely hideous clothes from the 1830s full of enormous puffs and pleats, moldy shoes, cracked spectacles, ugly samplers, two sets of dentures, decades’ worth of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, old parliamentary wigs that now made cozy insect homes, and wall ornaments made of human hair, but no paintings or illustrations. At four in the morning, the lamp oil was almost gone and she was coated in dust and other things she preferred not to think about. Her arms and back ached, and she cursed her muse in terms that would have impressed the crustiest of dockworkers.

“One more trunk,” she told the muse. “That’s it. Because this little misadventure is making me question my sanity.”

Penelope hid that art so long ago that a thousand different things could have happened to it.

Lilith slid one inspected trunk atop another to reveal an upturned blue floral chamber pot.

Eww!

She used her foot to slide the pot, but it wouldn’t budge. Hmmm. Something was beneath it. She tipped it with her toes. Inside was a small trunk, the kind made for china dolls and their wardrobes. The words “Kep Out” were carved into the wood.

Lilith drew her lamp closer, her breath quickening.

She undid the latch. Pop. The lid sprang up to reveal another clumsily sewn child’s sampler.

Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.

She pulled out the sampler, assuming she would find more embroidery or doll clothes. Instead, nestled in cotton was a roll of pages bound with a blue string.

Her fingers trembled as she undid the tie and unrolled the stiff paper. A picture in watery blues and lush greens jumped from the page. An enormous oak with sweeping boughs grew over a brook. A little girl in a blue dress sat against the trunk, smiling in the same joyous light that was shining on the water and leaves.

The night turned silent in Lilith’s mind. She carefully turned the page. Written in black ink was one word, “George.”

“Dear God.”

She shifted through the pages as though they were four-hundred-year-old hand-painted holy manuscripts. Below waited a scene of workmen in smocks ripping turnips from the soil. The field was symmetric lines against the men’s rounded, hunched forms. An expanse of blue sky with gossamer whirls of clouds arched over them. Composition that masters had studied for years came instinctually to this young artist.

She had to wipe away tears to view the next painting: a servant girl perched on an upturned bucket before a blackened kitchen fireplace. The image was dim but for the warm gold light of the flames that reflected on the girl’s silver sewing needle and the coppery tones of her hair.

“George,” she whispered. “What did they do to you?”

Beneath the servant girl, Lilith found a tiny book Penelope had described. She smiled as she flipped the pages. George had painted beautiful dolls and playful kittens for his young sister. But the last image undid her. Hiccuplike sobs shook her body. Protected in jagged shrubbery rested a nest filled with vivid blue robin eggs.

She bolted up and cradled the pages to her heart. That sensitive little boy. How could someone be so cruel as to silence this brilliant talent?

She wanted to pull that hurt boy to her heart and assure him he was perfect just as he was. Rip out the seeds of shame that had been planted in him.

Did she possess the strength to help him? George would hurl vicious insults to keep her away. Whatever words or threats had been used to stifle his talent still waited inside him like an uneasy tiger, ready to lash out if threatened. She had felt his sharp claws that night in his study when she first asked about his art. She wasn’t strong enough to break through his defenses, not after Frances and Edgar had left her. She needed to lick her own wounds, not tend to someone else’s.

And George, no matter the sensitive material of his soul, was a Maryle. No amount of pretty pictures could make up for the pain inflicted by him and his ilk. He could have no redemption.

Like the sultan.

She released a long breath while her fingers caressed the old pages. But at least she had to show him the pictures. He needed to see the beautiful parts of himself that he had rejected in order to become the unyielding man he prided himself on being.

However, she couldn’t take the pages back to her room. They wouldn’t fit in her portfolio and she didn’t know how to keep them safe from nosy servants, no doubting working as spies for their controlling valide sultan. The trunk had been safely concealed for over twenty years and that shouldn’t change overnight. She carefully replaced pages and doll trunk in their protective chamber pot shell and then shifted another trunk over them.

How could she lead George up here with an open heart? She couldn’t approach him and say, Hello, Georgie, I’ve found parts of yourself that are painful and that you refuse to admit exist. Care to see?

She needed to be a little more devious.

And she needed an answer soon, for she was about to run out of lamp oil.

She paced in a tight circle. The lamp guttered. As if by instinct, she reached into the trunk of clothes from the 1830s and grabbed a handful of balloonlike sleeves and billowing skirts.

Oh yes! Simply perfect.

* * *

That morning in the breakfast room, George regretted his words the instant they left his mouth.

His mother pressed her clasped hands to her heart. “Oh, George, grandchildren!”

Even Penelope perked up from where she stared glumly at her unbuttered toast.

“That’s a bit premature, Mama,” he said. “I merely said I’m aware that I need to prepare for my family’s future and will consider, merely consider, courting one of our young female guests.”

“I’m quite champing at the bit to hear the joyous laughter of children and the patter of their little feet at Tyburn again,” his mother prattled on. “You know how I adore children. Penelope, my dear daughter, has kept me waiting all these years. Yes, you have, my darling, you know it.”

George prided himself on keeping a neutral face in Parliament when some cabbage-headed Whig carried on with his fairy tale–like solutions to England’s complex problems. However, his mother’s utterance was more than even a man of his forbearance could stand. He made busy dissecting a sausage to keep his face concealed. Since when did his mother care for children? The minute they broke out in joyous laughter or left tiny mud prints behind the patter, she would be calling for the nurse to whisk them away, complaining of her nerves. And secondly, why did she assume she would continue to live at Tyburn once he brought home a wife?

And then there was the scary concept of being a father. What the hell would he say to his children? All he had was what his own father had told him. He didn’t want to be like that. No child of his should know the pain he had growing up.

“Where is Miss Dahlgren?” Penelope cried in a small, desperate voice. Yes, he wondered the same thing himself. At that moment, he needed her there, but he didn’t know why.

“I’m sure she’s found a lovely new scrape to detain her,” Lady Marylewick said in complete amicability and sipped her tea. “Such an excitable young lady. No doubt she will find our respectable party a dead bore and wish she had never come.”

George heard the subtle threat under the tinkling laugh.

He realized just how frayed his nerves were when he desired to bolt from the table and shout Enough of this stupid house party. Penelope was miserable, Lilith was beautiful, tempting, and insane, among other things, and his mother…well, Samuel Johnson hadn’t precise words for a person possessing such sugar-laden malice. Only Beatrice, who appeared to be studying the water displacement and solvency by adding more and more sugar cubes to her tea, was all right and that was because she was too young to know better.

Then, as if strolling onto center stage of the hilarious farce Lord Marylewick Throws a House Party, or maybe the angst-ridden drama Lord Marylewick is Hanged for Murder, George wasn’t sure yet, Lilith entered.

She wore a vivid pink satin gown that would have fit a woman several inches smaller. Her breasts appeared ready to pop out from the bodice and her ankles were in plain view. Massive puffed sleeves decorated each arm and her hair was piled high, resembling a bird’s nest on the top of her head.

“What on earth!” his mother shrieked.

“Lilith, what…what are you doing?” Penelope cried.

“I’m going to make the 1830s all the rage again!” Lilith swished her abundant skirts. “I shall be big and bombastic. Everyone will talk about it.” She studied her massive sleeves. “Hmmm, I wonder if I pumped these sleeves with hot air, whether I could float about. What do you think, Beatrice?”

The last of George’s self-restraint cracked. He bolted to his feet, toppling his teacup. “Stop making a mockery of this family, Lilith! By God, I should never have let you come. You cannot be worked on.”

Lilith’s features fell. She gazed up at him with large, wounded eyes. “You don’t like it?” she asked like a hurt child.

“Lilith Dahlgren, don’t you dare disgrace us by appearing in those hideous clothes!” his mother hissed, her beautiful features pinched to sharp lines. “George, she intends to ruin everything. It’s her raison d’être.”

“Mama, please,” George said. “I’ll take care of Lilith.”

He grabbed Lilith by the elbow, escorted her into the corridor, and shut the door.

“Lilith,” he began, trying to keep his anger in check, “I thought we had an understanding—”

“Oh, George.” All the mischief drained from her face. She pressed her palm to his chest. The sensation of her touch sank below his skin to the marrow of his bones. “I’ve seen your art. I’ve seen it. You’re brilliant.”

“What?” Just capital. She picked the morning of his house party to truly lose her wits.

“The art from when you were a boy. Penelope preserved it in the attics under a chamber pot. George, you should never have been stopped. It was cruel. The composition, the colors, the light. It’s stunning. You must see.”

Why the hell was she digging into his past?

“A chamber pot is its proper home,” he barked. “I have serious—”

She clasped his hand, trapping it between hers, and held it over her heart. He released an uneven breath as blood rushed to his cock. “Don’t get angry. You must recognize your talent. See all the beauty inside of you.”

He bit back the harsh words waiting on his tongue and said, with all the control he could muster, “I know you sincerely believe your artist mumbo jumbo. But I’ve serious obligations, Lilith. Important men will be arriving at any time. I must persuade them to vote in their best interest. I don’t have time for your silliness.”

“You won’t come, will you?”

“No.”

“That part of you, that curious, sensitive artist, is shut away forever. You are all grown up. No room for so-called silliness.”

“Yes. And I would like you to do the same.”

“Would you?” Still holding his hand to her bosom, she started to sway, letting her full skirt swing about her hips. “Isn’t this gown magnificent? I’m sure the guests will adore it. It will be written up in all the magazines. I think I shall perform my exotic Arabian dance in it.” She lifted his hand and twirled underneath it.

Wasn’t she clever? In a fast motion, he braced his arm across the small of her back and dipped her.

She released a surprised squeak.

“You’ve done this on purpose, haven’t you?” He leaned over, keeping her body trapped beneath his. The vanilla and citrus scent of her skin, tinged with lavender soap, exploded in his mind.

“Unless you vow to see your art, this is how I will meet your guests.” Her eyes held a bold challenge. “Do you think I’ll make a good impression? Will I help your political ambitions?”

He took those words as an invitation to examine in the minutest detail how she planned to greet his guests. Starting from the loose locks falling from that ridiculous bun, then to her soft open lips, down the curve of her neck to where her breasts rose over the top of her bodice. He felt her shiver under his gaze, but she kept her dark eyes locked on his face. His cock grew harder. He released an uneven breath through his teeth.

His lips were so close to that silky skin. He was certain that releasing her breasts from this hideous gown, taking the tip of one into his mouth, licking and suckling it, could calm his anxious thoughts.

“I can’t now,” he growled between clenched teeth.

She lowered her head until it dangled beneath his arm. Her breasts slid from her bodice until the very tops of her rosy areolas peeked over the edge of the bodice just below his lips. “Promise me,” she said, all low and creamy. “Meet me in the attics in the fortress wing at two in the morning, when everyone has gone to bed.”

He released a tight groan. “Good God, I promise,” he cried. “Stop this game.”

She was too much. All ivory, silk, and heat. He kissed the mound of her breasts with open lips, letting his tongue taste her tender skin. He heard her whimper, the kind a woman makes when lost in the pleasured heat of a man moving inside of her. He drew her closer; no doubt she could feel every inch of his erection against her thigh as his mouth moved closer to dangerous territory at the edge of her bodice.

He heard the creak of boards under carpet and the turn of a knob. He quickly flipped Lilith up. The door opened; he saw the swish of his mother’s black gown. Dear God, he was as hard as an iron girder. But Lilith, that mysterious, infuriating, and amazing woman, realized his problem and mercifully stepped in front of him, blocking his trousers from his mother’s hot gaze.

“You—you arrogant, unartistic lump-head!” Lilith shouted at him. “I see nothing wrong with my gown. It’s lovely. You are all cruel to stifle my fashion, my soul’s expression, my being.”

“Miss Dahlgren, don’t you dare talk such nonsense to the marquess. Put on a proper gown without delay. You will find that I’m not as diplomatic as my son in dealing with domestic matters.”

Lilith rolled her eyes and stalked away, but when she reached the turn in the corridor, she glanced over her shoulder. “You promised,” she mouthed and then disappeared around the corner.

“She is untamable and sadly misguided,” his mother said. “It’s that low Dahlgren in her. She has never been anything but resentful and ungracious to our kind overtures.”

George didn’t trust himself to answer. He spun on his heel and stormed to his study.

Not ten minutes before, George had been pondering courting a lady guest. Then he kissed Lilith’s breasts. By all measures of correct behavior he should propose. But she could no more be the Marchioness of Marylewick than he could be a Whig.

Some things were simply too horrible to contemplate.

If she made a mockery of his party, he would… What would he do? He was running out of options for her. He threw money and marital threats at her and none of them stuck. How did one hold back a human gale?

He was going to read Colette until the first guest arrived. It was the only way he knew how to prevent homicide at this point.

In his study, he tried to focus on Colette’s story, but his mind kept wandering to the box Lilith had found. Penelope had told him when he was thirteen that she had hidden his work in the attic, but he didn’t care to see it then because it was filled with the relics of the boy he didn’t want to be anymore. Why now at thirty-one did it matter what was up there?

He tried to focus on the page, but soon the words faded behind the memory of Lilith’s beautiful eyes, imbued with awe and admiration, when she said, “I’ve seen your art. I’ve seen it. You’re brilliant.”

Just what was under that chamber pot?