Taming Charlotte (23 page)

“Would I have to stay in the harem, like before?” she asked. It must have been the timid note in her voice that caused Patrick to narrow his gaze and squint at her suspiciously.

“Hardly. Do you think I’ve forgotten that last time you bolted over the wall and nearly fried yourself in the desert before Khalif found you?”

She thought of Ahmed, the sultan’s vicious brother, locked up in the small cell in the ancient part of the palace, along with his compatriots, and shivered as she approached Patrick. The conditions were very different, of course, but the principle was the same. She was a captive.

“Where would you keep me, then? In a box, like a pet mouse?”

He drew her to him by holding out a morsel of fruit, touching it to her lips. It lay spicy and cool on her tongue. “As foolhardy as it sounds,” he answered, “I believe I could trust you if you had something to keep you occupied.”

Charlotte savored the tart flavor of the orange even as she fought against the odd feelings of arousal Patrick had generated by feeding her. “Something to keep me occupied,” she repeated. “Like what?”

He lifted her up to sit beside him on the wall. “Cochran will be coming with me, so he won’t be able to doctor Khalif.

I’d feel better, knowing you were here to look after my friend.”

Maybe the captain was serious,
or
maybe she was being hornswoggled, but Charlotte was pleased to be appointed keeper for once, instead of being the one who had to be kept. “Really?”

Patrick touched her nose, and his fingers smelled pleasantly of citrus. “Really,” he answered, somewhat hoarsely. “I’ll come back and carry you off before you’ve had time to miss me.”

Not likely,
Charlotte thought. Her husband’s impending absence was already a sore spot in her heart. “I believe that a woman belongs with her husband, especially if she’s expecting,” she told him, “but since I don’t seem to have a choice this time, I’ll promise to stay here.”

He leaned close, gave her a brief, flirting kiss. “Thank you.”

His words so surprised Charlotte that she swayed slightly and nearly fell off the wall. Gratitude was the last thing she’d expected from him; after all, he’d won that skirmish and could afford to be a little smug.

He laughed at her look of wide-eyed surprise and kissed her again, this time in a more lingering fashion. They
both
nearly toppled to the stone floor of the courtyard when a voice sounded from the doorway of their chamber.

“Excuse me, sir,” Cochran said, in embarrassed tones, “but there’s a ship out in the harbor and she looks questionable.”

Patrick immediately jumped to the ground, and Charlotte felt the tension in his forearms as he lifted her after him.

“Did you recognize her?” he asked. He turned to fix Charlotte with a brief, quelling glare that told her plainly enough what he wanted—for her to stay out from underfoot and keep her opinions to herself.

“Couldn’t venture a guess, Captain—except that I don’t like the look of her, or the feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

Patrick strode past his first mate and disappeared, and even though Charlotte was burning with curiosity about the vessel in question, she stayed behind. It wouldn’t do to defy
her husband at this juncture; he might decide to take away her freedom if she did.

Cochran touched his forehead in an affectionate salute and followed Patrick.

After a few moments of pure agitation—just because she’d complied with her husband’s terse orders didn’t mean she had to like being left behind—Charlotte decided that the best course was to make herself useful. She went into Khalif’s quarters.

Rashad was there, keeping a watchful and worried eye on the sultan. “Is there some disturbance?” the eunuch asked, having heard the commotion in the passageway. His brown fingers were curled around the pearl handle of a knife, and it was plain from his stance that he would fight to the death to defend his master if the need presented itself.

Charlotte wondered at such loyalty; it was a peculiar trait in a slave, especially one who had been emasculated by his captors. She met his gaze. “There’s a strange ship coming into port, and Mr. Cochran’s uneasy.”

Rashad set aside the blade, but he still looked troubled as he took the wet cloth from his master’s head, soaked it in a basin next to the bed and wrung out the excess, then spread it over Khalif’s brow again. “Pirates, perhaps,” he speculated, “or friends of Ahmed, expecting to pay their respects to a new leader.”

Khalif groaned in his sleep and muttered something unintelligible.

“Pirates?” Charlotte asked, after swallowing. She’d already had one dramatic encounter with a band of seagoing outlaws, and she had no desire to repeat the experience. “Surely they wouldn’t be bold enough to attack the palace—”

“I must go and see what is happening,” Rashad interrupted. He picked up the knife again, pressed the handle into Charlotte’s hand. “Please stay here with the sultan. If anyone else comes near him, kill them.”

Charlotte was chilled by the cold directness of the order. “You can’t be serious. What if Alev visits, or one of the other women?”

Rashad’s dark eyes were hard as jet. “There are traitors and spies in the whole of the palace,” he said. “The harem is not immune to treachery.
No one
other than myself, the captain, or Mr. Cochran is to set foot in this room.”

“And Patrick thinks this place is safe for a pregnant woman,” Charlotte muttered, once the eunuch had left her alone with the sleeping Khalif.

The sultan moaned again and stirred, and Charlotte drew up a hassock to sit beside him. “There now,” she said, as if comforting one of her younger brothers after a bad dream. “Just rest. You’re perfectly safe.” She inspected the knife, then set it aside with a shudder.

Khalif opened his eyes, looked at her in puzzlement, then smiled. “Rashad, how you have changed,” he teased.

Charlotte put on a front, not wanting the sultan to guess that his palace might be facing a siege, and touched his bare arm. She tried to smile at his joke. “How do you feel?”

The sultan sighed. “As though I’ve been lying unclothed in the desert sun for three days,” he said. “Could I please have some water?”

She poured some from a crystal carafe and held a cup to his dry lips. There was a look of confusion in his brown eyes that dismayed her. “Would you like something to eat? I could send for some nice fruit and cheese.”

Khalif shook his head, collapsed against his pillow of brightly colored, striped silk. “No,” he said grimly. “I am not hungry.” He reached for her hand.

Now that a fortnight had passed, his fingers were no longer bandaged, but there were ugly scabs and the new nails were just beginning to grow in.

“Please,” he muttered. “I do not wish to be alone.”

She smiled and shook her head to reassure him, hoping he wouldn’t end up with a lot of marauding pirates for company.

But that was silly, she thought. Even if the mysterious ship
was
carrying a pack of cutthroats, Patrick and the others would be able to hold them back.

Probably.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she said gently, remembering
how her stepmother, who was a trained nurse, had comforted the sick and injured merely by speaking tender words and staying close by through the worst. Just then, Charlotte missed Lydia with a special keenness.

“Talk to me,” Khalif pleaded, like a fitful child. “Tell me about the place where you lived.”

Charlotte blinked back unexpected tears, waited for a sudden lump in her throat to subside before she replied, “I grew up in a small town called Quade’s Harbor,” she said.

“Quade’s Harbor,” Khalif repeated, clinging to her hand and emitting a long, exhausted sigh.

After a sniffle and a deep breath, Charlotte regained control of herself. When she got back to Washington Territory, she Would gather her brothers and young cousins around and tell them all about the sultan’s palace, and Patrick’s ship, and what it was like to deal with pirates. In the meantime, she would simply have to be especially brave.

“It’s such a beautiful place,” she said dreamily. “There are trees—so dense, you wonder how a squirrel could pass between them. They’re evergreen—mostly fir and cedar and pine—and in a certain light, they take on an inky cast. And the water! It’s blue as can be sometimes—Puget Sound, I mean—”

“Are there mountains?” Khalif’s voice was hoarse, and Charlotte touched his forehead with her free hand, a gesture she’d learned from Lydia. She frowned because his skin was hot beneath the backs of her fingers.

“Yes,” she said. “You can see the Olympics, out on the Peninsula. They’re covered in snow in winter, and even in summer they wear white caps. Sometimes the slopes look purple.” She paused, hearing a vague rattle in Khalif’s breathing. “When you turn inland—if it’s a fair day—you can see the mountain the Indians call Tahoma.”

“I would like to meet an Indian,” Khalif murmured. Then he drifted off into what appeared to be a shallow and restless sleep.

Charlotte went on holding his hand for a long moment, sensing a peril that had nothing to do with pirates, and when she turned she was startled to see Patrick standing in the doorway, watching her. His expression was troubled.

She placed Khalif’s hand gently on the bed before rising and crossing the large room to speak softly to her husband.

“Are we about to be invaded by pirates?”

Patrick went on staring somberly, as if she were speaking a language he didn’t understand.

“Patrick?” Charlotte finally prompted. If she was about to have her throat slit or be carried off to some other harem, she wanted to know about it.

“No—I mean, I’m not sure. They’re sending a skiff ashore with two men on board. Cochran and I will be waiting for them on the beach.” Patrick’s eyes strayed toward his sleeping friend, came back to Charlotte’s face. “How is Khalif?”

Charlotte folded her arms and met Patrick’s gaze, puzzled by his behavior. “He’s not well,” she replied honestly. “He’s fevered, and I don’t like the sound of his breathing.”

Patrick moved silently to Khalif’s bedside, reaching down to touch the other man’s forehead. “Damn,” the captain muttered. “Do you suppose he’s caught some infection of the blood or something?”

She went to the basin and lifted it from the marble-topped table; the liquid was tepid now, and would bring little comfort to the patient. “It’s more likely to be pneumonia,” she said. “I’ve seen injured lumberjacks succumb to it, and women after they’ve been in childbirth. The malady attacks when the body has been weakened.”

The captain’s glare was as intense, in that moment, as the desert sun. “Khalif could die.” His hissed the realization aloud, and from his manner anyone would have thought the fault was Charlotte’s. “After living through everything else,
he could die.”

Charlotte touched Patrick’s arm, but only after several seconds of hesitation. “We don’t know that it’s pneumonia,” she said. “I was only guessing, and I’m certainly no authority.”

Patrick glowered down at Khalif, as if to challenge the affliction to assemble itself into something solid and come forth to do battle. A long, silent interval passed, and then the captain looked into Charlotte’s eyes, and she saw his despair.

“I’ve got to join Cochran on the beach,” he said, laying his hands on Charlotte’s shoulders. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.

She nodded, still holding the basin. When Patrick had left the chamber, she emptied the brass bowl in the courtyard and pulled a cord to summon a servant.

Rashad returned before Patrick did, and found Charlotte bathing Khalif’s head, chest, and upper arm with cool, fresh water.

“What is happening?” she asked, barely speaking above a whisper. It was late afternoon by then, and the palace was quiet, as it generally was at that time of day.

The eunuch edged Charlotte aside and took over the task of tending the sultan. “I’m only a slave,” he grumbled, his concern for his master making him surly. “I do not know all things.”

“Nonsense,” Charlotte scoffed. “You’re privy to every whisper of gossip in this palace. What are the servants saying about that ship out in the harbor?”

Rashad tried to intimidate her with one of his scowls. “The servants know even less than I do.”

“Very well,” Charlotte said, following the words with a sigh of long suffering. She straightened her hair and smoothed her robe. “I will simply have to go out there to the beach and find out for myself.”

The eunuch stopped her before she was halfway across the room. Charlotte was amazed at his grace and speed, since he was a man of considerable bulk. “The captain wouldn’t want you interfering,” he said.

Charlotte seethed. She was getting damn tired of hearing what the captain wanted. She wrenched her arm free of Rashad’s grasp. “Perhaps you are willing to live as a slave,” she blurted out, “but I am not!”

A bleak look flickered in Rashad’s eyes, and Charlotte regretted her words.

“Some of us,” he replied coldly, “were not given the choice.”

She bit her lower lip and started to apologize, but she stopped when she saw Rashad’s pride glittering in his eyes. She returned to Khalif’s bedside without another word,
which was enough of a concession as far as she was concerned.

After an hour of awkward silence, a servant appeared, bringing a summons from Patrick, and Charlotte joined her husband in their nearby bedchamber.

He looked distracted, impatient, and oddly remote as he tossed the few belongings he’d brought with him into an Arab version of saddlebags.

Charlotte was alarmed. “You’re leaving?” The words shaped themselves into a combination of accusation and demand. “What about Khalif’s condition? What about those pirates out there, waiting to pounce and murder us all in our beds?”

Patrick slung the leather bags over one shoulder, and a sort of dour humor moved in his eyes. “They’re fishermen,” he sighed, “not pirates. They’ve been becalmed for a week and they wanted to take on fresh water, that’s all. As for Khalif, well, I’m depending on you and Rashad to take care of him.”

She was stricken with a kind of grief at the thought of being separated from Patrick, even for a short time. Staunchly she resisted the temptation to use her own vulnerability and that of their unborn child to force the issue. “I see,” she said, with consummate dignity.