Chapter Two
Laura glimpsed the red silk and approached. It was just a thread, but it led all the way across the passage and into the women’s quarters. Strange – they were empty. They should be filled with concubines and odalisques.
The length of silk was now the width of a hair ribbon and it stretched the length of the room. Laura followed it, the slap of her sandals echoing loudly. The brightly-colored cloth widened more. Now it covered the passage floor from wall to wall, until it disappeared under the closed door to Selim Omar’s suite.
She merely touched the timber, and the double doors opened wide for her.
Selim Omar lay naked on his bed, bare arms and legs spread. The red fabric stretched out in front of Laura like a carpet. It traveled up the steps to the bed and then gathered between the sheik’s thighs and extended up to cover his chest.
Laura approached the man cautiously, mindful that at any minute he might grab her. But yet, he remained still.
The red fabric was no longer shiny silk but glistening blood that welled from a hole in Selim Omar’s chest.
“It is not for myself alone that I do this.” It was the voice of Yasmeen, the chief concubine, at her shoulder. Laura turned.
The willowy, black woman stood like an Amazon – proud and defiant, the dagger in her hand dripping fresh blood.
“Look,” said Yasmeen, pointing to Selim Omar’s body behind her. Laura turned back to Selim Omar. The blood was gone. She saw the rise and fall of the man’s naked chest. Then the knife was in her own hand, the ribbed grip on the hilt indenting her palm as she clutched it.
Do it now!
She drove the dagger down with as much force as she could muster. Red blossomed at the wound, becoming first a rose, and then the finest scarlet satin. It flowed down his chest, between his legs and off the bed down the steps below and beneath the closed chamber doors…
Laura woke with a start and, for a moment, had no idea where she was.
In a half-awake state, she waited in the darkness for the sound of the pre-dawn call to prayer. Minutes went by and she did not hear it. Instead, there was the sound of lapping waves and a muted cry of seagulls. Laura forced her eyes open, surprised her stomach didn’t roil as it had done almost every day for a month.
“Sophia?”
There was no answer. She stretched her arm out across the bed. Panic welled once more.
Her eyes became accustomed to the gloom and, one by one, Laura started to see the things around her. There, near the door, was the mapping table. On a side wall was the cabinet with the locked doors, and, on the other side of the bed, a thick velvet curtain covered the mullion windows in the stern.
The Calliope. Not Al-Min.
And Sophia would be reunited with Kit Hardacre, wherever he had made his quarters. Laura closed her eyes and waited until her racing heart returned to its normal rhythm.
She sat up, looked about the room, and spied two small trunks. The first she recognized as Sophia’s; the second was hers.
Hers!
The very fact that her trunk was here after two years brought tears to her eyes. That meant someone – these men – believed they could find and rescue her. She swallowed her emotion and went to open the chest, at last becoming aware of the movement of the ship. She found a day dress she had forgotten she owned. It even fit, if she didn’t tighten the stays.
Laura emerged onto the deck. It was barely dawn. The light was grey and featureless, the sea calm. Fog surrounded the vessel. She looked up at the masts and couldn’t even see the top of the shroud for the mist. Perhaps she still dreamed and was on board the Calliope alone. Laura paused.
No, she could hear soft, disembodied conversations somewhere on the deck, but it was the gentle strumming of a guitar that drew her on.
In the lee of the quarterdeck steps, sheltered from the early morning cool, Elias Nash was slumped in one of the deck chairs, a guitar across his chest. He looked more familiar to her now that he was wearing European clothes – like the ones she had painted him in on that very first voyage on the Calliope.
His eyes were closed, but his fingers found the fingerboard and strings unerringly. The tune he played was unfamiliar to her, but it was beautiful.
Just yesterday, those hands held hers. Hands that created beauty now had also wielded a knife and a scimitar. It was a contradiction to be sure.
His eyes opened. Their hue, the color of dark honey, met hers. For a moment, Laura allowed herself to fall into them. Had she ever noticed his hair was very nearly the same color as his eyes? She must have done and had forgotten.
Was this a man she could be safe with? One with whom she could share her secrets? In this half-light that was neither night nor morning, why should it matter what she confessed to him?
Elias stopped strumming and rose to his feet.
“Miss Laura…” He shook his head as though just coming awake himself. He set down the guitar and picked up a blanket. “Where are my manners? Here.”
She took half a step forward and found the soft wool around her shoulders, the smell of bergamot and rosemary and a fainter odor of cedar. What would his embrace be like?
At this instant, she craved nothing more than to be held by a gentle man. To be protected. To have someone completely erase the memories of the years stolen from her.
Her stomach chose that moment to churn. Laura flushed hotly and felt faint. In a moment, the canvas of the deck chair was at her back and a damp cloth at her forehead.
There were Elias Nash’s handsome eyes again. But instead of looking at her with adoring wonder as he had done yesterday on the shore, there was concern in the faint lines at the corners of his eyes.
How would he feel if he knew the reason for her illness? Disgust? Anger?
All of a sudden, she didn’t want to see pity born of misplaced chivalry; she wanted to see the truth. She wanted to see the horror and disgust she felt in herself mirrored in another’s face.
This man would do as good as any.
“I’m pregnant.”
She held her breath and studied his face. His eyes never fell away from hers, those lips didn’t curl in anger or disgust. His only reaction was a reflexive swallow that moved his Adam’s apple. Elias Nash didn’t say a word.
No, no, no!
That’s not want she wanted. She wanted to see thunderous fury and angry declamations; she wanted to see the man lose his temper, to become violently angry as a proxy for the wrath and hatred that burned within her.
And he refused to give it to her. So she sat up and turned her anger on to him.
“It’s not really spoken about in polite society, certainly not in front of men, which I never really understood since they’re the ones who force themselves on to women and burden them with their odious lusts…”
Laura spat the words out and waited for Elias’ reaction. If it had been Selim Omar before her, he would sneer at her tantrum and slap her face with the back of his hand once, perhaps twice, for her insolence.
Instead, Elias held her gaze a moment longer, until the hair on the back of her neck rose. It was she who broke eye contact first.
Eight bells pealed, announcing the end of the watch.
“Laura…”
She swallowed against the pain in her throat and felt the warmth of his hand on hers.
He paused. Laura saw the vestiges of raw emotion in his eyes evaporate.
“I have to go,” he whispered.
Laura returned to the captain’s quarters to find Sophia already there. She was at the wash basin, her glossy, black hair tied in a knot, wearing little more than a peaceful smile that suggested everything – in her world, at least – had found its proper orientation.
Sophia looked up and addressed her in the mirror’s reflection. “There’s more hot water, if you want to wash.”
“We’re not moving.”
Sophia seemed to take the change of subject in her stride. “We’re at anchor because of the fog. Kit says it should burn away in a few hours. He’s hoping that mid-morning should bring some wind with it.”
Sophia finished dressing in a gown of Mazarine blue and presented Laura her back.
“Would you?” she asked, indicated the laced opening at her back. Laura reached out and took hold of the ends of the ribbons.
“What if they come after us?” she asked.
“Then there’s no better place to be than on the Calliope. Kit and his men will do everything necessary to keep us safe.”
Her cousin answered with a confidence Laura wished she shared and, still, she sensed hesitation. Sophia turned and took her hands. Laura noted the contrast – her cold, pale hands against Sophia’s warm, olive ones. Sophia led her to the bed and with a tug of her hand, urged her silently to sit.
“Laura.” There was that pause again. “I told Kit about your condition.”
Laura pulled her hands away. Heat stained her face. “You had no right!”
“He’s family. We’re family, and we’re going to need his help.”
She was right, of course. Sophia was always right. It wasn’t just their complexions that were different, so too were their temperaments. Laura swallowed, taking her pride with her.
“I don’t want everyone staring at me, treating me like a… a… well, I don’t know what.”
Sophia smiled, which didn’t make her feel any better. It was the same benign, indulgent look she wore when she thought her younger cousin was being foolish – or childish.
“I promise you, they won’t.”
Sophia rose. She unlocked one of the fitted cabinets and pulled out a volume in blue leather.
“Have you ever wondered why I married Kit so suddenly, and in secret?”
Laura shrugged. As she recalled, everything had happened so quickly on that summer’s day two years ago. Hardacre announced he and Sophia were married following Sophia’s accident with a runaway horse, which he claimed had been spooked deliberately. Her brother, Samuel, had been so outraged at their cousin’s deception he disavowed her and refused to allow her name spoken in his presence.
“It was obvious you liked each other right from the beginning,” Laura recalled.
Sophia smiled as though her memory was somewhat different.
“The Calliope is more than just a little merchant ship. Kit had her built especially to fight the Barbary Coast pirates.” Sophia held up the volume. “In these journals are names of people rescued by Kit and his men, when it happened and the tales they told. There are no horrors the men of the Calliope haven’t seen, no stories they haven’t heard – including ones like yours.”
Laura wished she could believe it. She let out a shuddering sigh. Sophia returned the volume and sat beside her once more.
“I so wish this was just a bad dream,” said Laura. “I wish I could just wake up, home, safe in my bed in London, with no more worries than what to wear to next week’s soiree.”
She felt Sophia’s arm about her. Laura rested her head on her cousin’s shoulder. “And then I’m afraid this is the dream and when I wake up, I’ll still be in the harem.”
She accepted Sophia’s embrace as she had done so often during their ordeal together.
“Shhh,” Sophia whispered. “You are stronger than you believe.”
Laura swallowed against a lump in her throat “I’d have killed myself long before this, if not for you.”
“Do you think I could have survived, if not for you?” Sophia herself was close to tears. “I spent a year in that place thinking my husband was dead.”
Tears, hot and cathartic, flowed and mingled as they poured down both women’s faces. They were free. They were free, indeed.