Desert Rake

He was going to speak to her. Caroline’s hands closed together in an agonising grip, as though the pain might punish her for her wanton thoughts, and as a reward this man would vanish. It did not work. He kept coming.

He lifted the wide-brimmed straw hat he was wearing to reveal black hair and a tanned face. He was still smiling that devastating smile, half gentle mockery, half unblushing recognition that she was a woman and he was a man and that there could be consequences of that fact.

‘Sir—’ Her voice quavered and she shut her lips tightly before she could add squeaking like an idiot to her tally of embarrassments.

‘Madam,’ he rejoined gravely, replacing his hat. Even shadowed, the grey eyes sparkled with emotions she did not dare contemplate. ‘Might I make a suggestion?’ His voice was deep, easy, like warm honey running over her skin, with beneath it the hint of strength he was keeping tightly under control. His accent told her he was English—and yet something about him had convinced her he was not. She gave herself a little inward shake. What on earth did it matter what nationality he was?

‘Mmm?’ she managed. Oh, heavens, what is he going to say? Is he going to proposition me? He hardly needs to, does he? I must have been looking at him as though I wanted to tear his clothes off. I do want to tear his clothes off, here and now. Shameless… I wished for this, and now I do not know what to do…

‘If you move to the rail on the other side you will get the best view of the city. We are approaching the Sarayburnu, the Seraglio Point. You can see the Topkapi Sarayi clearly now. This is your first visit to Constantinople?’

What? ‘Mmm! I mean… yes. Thank you…’

‘Enjoy,’ the tall man said, with a smile that seemed to touch her mouth. He raised his hat again and strolled off across the deck, to where a man in robes stood guard over a trunk and a pile of portmanteaux.

Enjoy, indeed! Caroline made her shaking legs take her to the spot he had indicated. Mercifully, she found herself screened from the rest of the main deck by a stack of casks. He did not mean Enjoy the sights or Enjoy the food or even Enjoy the shopping. He meant Enjoy doing what you were dreaming about. I wish I could! He must think I have a lover on board, or a husband, or I am travelling to meet one or the other. Could that possibly have been any more embarrassing and awful?

Well, yes it could, she realised ruefully as the hectic colour began to ebb from her face and her thoughts became a little more coherent. He could have come across and made a very crude proposition—or even a tactfully worded one, come to that—and she would not have had the slightest justification for resenting it.

CHAPTER TWO

‘LADY MORVALL?’ The voice at her elbow made her jump.

‘Yes, Mr Lomax?’ It was her courier. Caroline smiled upon the rotund figure with something like affection. Certainly with relief. No one could ever find themselves incorporating Mr Lomax into an improper fantasy, bless him. He was a head shorter than she, with a shiny bald pate under his straw hat, a pince-nez perched on the end of his nose and a little pot belly.

He was also an experienced and knowledgeable courier and had shepherded her and Gascoyne, her maid and dresser, all the way from England with impeccable organisation and without the hint of an unpleasant incident. Unfortunately, he could not be expected to save her from the consequences of her own torrid imagination.

‘I must apologise for having been away so long, Lady Morvall, but the canvas cover of your larger travelling trunk had been torn in the hold and I have had to stand over the ship’s sail-maker to make sure he repaired it properly. Gascoyne has everything packed, and our luggage is over there.’

Caroline followed his pointing finger and located the maid, waiting watchfully by a pile of familiar baggage—right next to where That Man’s robed attendant was standing. Hastily she turned back.

‘Please point out the major buildings, Mr Lomax. I do not wish to go and stand in the crowd before I need to.’ That Man’s directions had been enough for her to orientate herself, given all the reading she had done, but she wanted an excuse to stay apart. Her heart-rate was slowly returning to normal, and she had no intention of raising it again.

‘Of course, my lady. The large mosque on the left is the Blue Mosque, in the centre is Aya Sofya mosque, which was built as a Christian church, and all the rest of the buildings as far as the point are the Topkapi Sarayi—the Sultan’s palace. Very soon we will sail into the mouth of the Golden Horn.’

‘So that will be Seraglio Point, where courtesans who offended would be tied up in silken sacks and thrown into the water?’ She pointed to where the stranger had indicated.

‘Er… yes.’ Mr Lomax did not seem comfortable discussing courtesans. ‘And not only such… er… ladies. Constantinople is still at heart a violent city in many ways; it is essential that you take the advice of the staff at the Embassy and do not go out without your escort.’

Caroline nodded with a meekness that would have stunned Sir Hubert. But defying her stepson’s pompous demands for respectability was one thing; taking advice from an expert in an alien city was simply common sense. Besides anything else, to travel outside Constantinople she would need a firman, the equivalent of a passport, showing the Sultan’s permission to go freely about the countryside, and to secure that she must behave with impeccable regard to all the conventions.

They remained at the rail as the ship swung into the Golden Horn and slowly glided into dock on the opposite bank to the old city. Above them loomed the hill where the quarters of Galata and Pera housed the Westerners and their embassies.

‘I think we should get back to our luggage,’ Mr Lomax pronounced. ‘If you would just care to take my arm, Lady Morvall, then there will be less risk of you being jostled in the crowd.’

Jostling was the least of her anxieties. Wishing her smart bonnet possessed a veil, Caroline kept her eyes down, only risking raising them as she negotiated the gangplank to the dockside. There, in front of her, a clear head over most of the jostling throng of porters and passengers, was an instantly recognisable pair of broad shoulders and a rakishly tilted broad-brimmed hat. Then she was down on the firm ground and he had gone.

She did not realise she had sighed aloud until Mr Lomax looked at her with some concern. ‘Are you quite well, my lady? Perhaps you are feeling a little unsteady after so much time at sea? I have sent a porter for a carriage; it will not be long coming.’

‘No, no, I am quite well, Mr Lomax. I was merely reflecting on my first Turkish… encounter.’ And hopefully all the rest would consist of colourful sightseeing and interesting exploration. It had, at least, taught her the foolishness of dreaming about taking a lover. I simply do not have the courage for that sort of thing, and it is as well to discover it now. Imagine what I would have done if he had made me a proposition!

The British Embassy was a handsome double-fronted residence, with overhanging enclosed balconies and great double gates through which the carriage bearing Caroline’s party swung, followed by the carts with their luggage.

Feeling slightly dazed by the crush of the streets, the babble of different tongues, the colour and endless details that had her head swivelling from one side to the other until she was dizzy, Caroline was only too glad to allow Mr Lomax to take control. She was going to have to learn to manage affairs herself soon, she knew, for she had only hired him as far as Constantinople, and he would return as soon as he acquired a new client to escort.

‘Lady Morvall—welcome.’ The thin, scholarly man who hastened down the steps of the inner courtyard held out his hand and shook hers with enthusiasm when she extended it. ‘Terrick Hamilton, ma’am, I am the Foreign Languages Secretary to the Ambassador, who sends his most sincere apologies for not being here to greet you in person. Unfortunately there is a tricky matter with some English and Russian traders on the Black Sea coast, and Sir Robert has found it necessary to deal with it in person. Do come in, ma’am.’

He snapped his fingers at a number of men who were waiting in the shadows. Caroline studied the turbans—no two seemed exactly the same—and noted the baggy trousers beneath the knee-length tunics that most of them wore; they would form the first subject for her Constantinople sketchbook, she resolved. The men began to unload the trunks.

‘Dikkat! Yavafl!’ Mr Hamilton called as one or two bags were dropped.

Caroline tucked the words away in her mind: careful and slow. She had seen them written down; now she tried to pay attention to pronunciation, determined to learn the language as much as possible. She would need guides and a dragoman, but the more she understood of what was going on around her, the less vulnerable she would be.

Established at last in her room, with only Gascoyne for company, Caroline cast off her bonnet and light pelisse and flopped down on the bed. ‘Phew! Gascoyne, do sit down and rest a while. The housekeeper says she will send up some refreshments and warm water shortly. How good it is to be in the quiet and to have nothing moving about!’

‘Indeed it is, my lady.’ Gascoyne, who had been with her only since William had died, and was outwardly the most conventional and starched-up of dressers, had amazed Caroline by offering to come with her on her journey. She had expressed a desire to visit what she described sweepingly as foreign parts, but, much to Caroline’s secret amusement, insisted on maintaining herself and her mistress in a state which would pass muster in Bond Street.

Suggestions that bonnets might be replaced with sunhats, that corsets need not be laced quite so tight, and that the weather was hot enough to dispense with the lightest of pelisses outside, were met with a disapproving sniff. ‘You are an English lady, my lady,’ Gascoyne would pronounce. ‘And I know what is due to one of my ladies, whatever heathen customs might prevail.’

Caroline had given up explaining that Italy and Malta were far from heathen, and knew she faced an impossible task in convincing the dresser that Constantinople might be different from what they were used to, but its inhabitants were God-fearing, each in their own way, and that it could be considered as sophisticated and highly developed as London. More so in some ways, if what she had read about the baths was true. Caroline was looking forward to trying out a hammam.

With a characteristic sniff Gascoyne shed her gloves, bonnet and pelisse, placed them neatly on one chair and sat, bolt upright, on the edge of another. Even that appeared to strike her as frivolous idleness, for she drew a portmanteau towards her and began lifting out underwear and sorting it onto the camphor wood chest next to the chair.

‘What happens now, my lady, if I may be so bold as to enquire?’

‘We rest here at the Embassy, and one of the secretaries will send a request to the Sublime Porte—the palace—for us to be granted a firman which will allow us to travel. Then I can find a suitable dragoman and porters, and buy pack animals, horses and supplies. Then we set out for Anatolia.’

‘Where’s that, my lady?’ Gascoyne frowned at a minute mark on a camisole and placed it to one side. ‘I thought we were arrived, now we’re in Turkey.’

‘It is part of Turkey—the land to the east.’ Caroline rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin on her hands. ‘It is unchanged for centuries, and there are many beautiful natural features and fascinating archaeological treasures that are hardly known about. This book—’ She pulled over her bulging reticule and dug out the volume she had been carrying around since leaving England. ‘This book tells all about what has been discovered so far. It is by the best-known explorer of the area—Mr Fenton. He writes so compellingly.’

Gascoyne looked down her long nose at the proffered volume. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it, my lady. It doesn’t sound very suitable for English ladies either. How many carriage dresses do you think I should pack? And what about evening wear? Full dress, or only demi?’

‘Neither!’ Caroline rolled off the bed and straightened her gown at the sound of a knock on the door. ‘Come in. Oh, thank you; will you also send bathwater to my dresser’s room, please?’

The housekeeper bowed, and supervised the setting out of a cold collation, while menservants struggled in with a bathtub and ewers of hot water. Disappointingly it seemed that the Embassy did not have its own hammam.

‘No evening gowns, my lady?’

‘No. I shall take two gowns, and otherwise all those riding habits I had made.’ Caroline bit her lip as a thought struck her. ‘Provided I can find a lady’s side-saddle out here. If I cannot, then I shall just have to resort to breeches and a long coat over. It can’t be so difficult to ride astride, can it? Men do it all the time.’

‘Astride? In breeches? But, my lady, that is enough to ruin your reputation!’

‘Amongst whom?’ Caroline enquired tartly. ‘Anatolian shepherds?’

‘But are we not taking a travelling carriage? I cannot ride on any sort of saddle,’ Gascoyne wailed.

‘I will hire a small carriage for you and the luggage,’ Caroline promised, firmly trampling down the thought that roads to run a carriage over might not exist. The idea of Gascoyne on a camel was irresistible, if cruel, but she kept it to herself. Time enough to worry about that if the problem arose. ‘Now, shall we have our baths before we eat?’