The Pleasure of Your Kiss (14 page)

“The lads at Eton used to call me Frankie,” he blurted out, much to his own surprise. “Or worse,” he added in a mutter. “They were all Jameses and Edwards and Charleses just like their fathers before them. No one there had ever heard a name like Farouk before.” He shrugged. “After a while, I just let everyone believe Frankie was my name. It was easier. Once they tied two sacks of potatoes to a pony’s back to make them look like the humps of a camel, then dragged the poor beast into my room and left it there for me to find when I returned from class. When the headmaster heard me trying to wrestle it back out the door and came to investigate, I was the one who was caned in front of the entire class.”

He half expected her to laugh at the absurd tale, but instead she reached over to give his hand a pat, sympathy clouding the misty lavender-blue of her eyes. “Sometimes people can be very unkind, can’t they? Especially when dealing with something they don’t understand and instinctively fear. It must have been difficult for you. How is it that you ended up being educated halfway across the world at Eton?”

She had left her hand resting gently on top of his. He gazed down at it, fascinated by the contrast between his coarse, sun-baked skin and her pale, plump fingers.

“Your Majesty?” she said softly.

Snapping out of his reverie, he jerked his hand out from underneath hers. “My father was a forward-thinking man. He was determined his only son was going to be educated in the ways of both the East and the West.”

“So you had no brothers at all?”

“No. Just seventeen sisters.” He sighed. “There are times when I wish my father had been blessed with a dozen sons. Although if he had, they would have probably slaughtered each other while fighting over which one of them was going to live long enough to be sultan.”

“What happened to your sisters?”

“I found them all fine husbands. They’re all wed now with their own homes … their own children.”

“You have children, too, do you not? I mean with all those wives, I just assumed … ” Poppy trailed off and gazed into her lap, her cheeks blushing to an even deeper rose.

“I do.”

“How many are there?”

Farouk blinked, doing a quick mental tally. “Twelve girls and seven boys. Or is it seven girls and twelve boys? Or four boys and fifteen girls?” He shook his head hopelessly. “I can never remember. They are kept in another part of the palace, just as I was until my father decided to send me off to school in England.”

“I adore children,” she confessed. “I had always hoped to have at least a dozen of them myself.”

“That is not possible. They will require a father.”

Although Farouk failed to see the humor in the observation, she burst out laughing. When he eyed her askance, she laughed even harder, her merriment so infectious he felt the corners of his own lips begin to twitch.

“I may be something of a naïve nelly, but even
I
know that much,” she assured him. “I thought I had found the perfect candidate for the position in Mr. Huntington-Smythe of Berwickshire. But as it turned out, the gentleman’s intentions were less than honorable.”

Farouk frowned. “He tried to seduce you without first making you his wife or his concubine?”

A rueful laugh escaped her. “I’m afraid all he was interested in making of me was sport. It seems he had made a wager among his friends that he could coax me into climbing down the trellis outside my bedchamber at Lady Ellerbee’s house party to meet him for a moonlight rendezvous.”

“And did he win his wager?”

“I’m afraid so. But the trellis was not so lucky. It gave way when I was only halfway down.”

“Were you harmed?”

“Not in the least. Mr. Huntington-Smythe broke my fall, and I broke his leg. Unfortunately, when the rest of the guests came rushing out of the house, drawn by his screams—which, I should add, were rather high-pitched and unmanly for a fellow of his virile reputation—there I was, lying atop him in my dressing gown. As I’m sure you can imagine, it caused quite the scandal among Lady Ellerbee’s houseguests, as well as putting an end to any hope of my snaring a husband … or a father for my children.”

A shadow of wistful sadness passed over her face, and in that moment all Farouk wanted to do was lay waste to the scoundrel responsible for making her merry dimples disappear. “This Huntington-Smythe was a faithless dog! Only a man with no honor would treat a woman so. Had I been there, I would have given the devil a reason to scream by running him through with my sword.”

Poppy clapped her hands, clearly delighted by Farouk’s bloodlust. “How very gallant of you! Although I daresay that would have created an even greater scandal, not to mention a dreadful mess on Lady Ellerbee’s lawn. I’m not exactly the sort of woman who incites violence in men. No man has ever challenged another to a duel on my account.” She was doing it again, gazing up at him as if she had a question poised on the tip of her tongue that only he could answer.

He was seized by a ridiculous desire to reach down and draw off her spectacles. To see if her eyes would be even bluer without them. “Why do you always look at me like that?” he asked, his voice coming out more harshly than he intended.

He expected her to blush and stammer and deny that she had a habit of staring at him but she surprised him by continuing to boldly meet his gaze. “I would think you’d be accustomed to women staring at you. You are a very handsome man.”

“Yes. I am.”

Her smile softened. “I have dimples here.” She touched one of her cheeks, then reached up to gently press one fingertip into the bearded cleft in his chin. “And you have a dimple there.”

“Yes. I do,” he whispered as her finger lingered against his jaw.

She was very close to him in that moment. Close enough for him to see his own reflection in the lenses of her spectacles. He was shocked to realize his gaze was a mirror of her own. His dark eyes must look exactly as they had when she had offered him a peek at the forbidden pastries nestled in the bottom of her basket.

He couldn’t even have said what he was hungry for in that moment. All he knew was that he was drawn to the fullness of this woman—her full laughter … her full cheeks … her full lips …

As he leaned toward her, those lips parted ever so slightly. He inhaled the breath of her sigh, which was somehow even sweeter than honey and sugar. Oddly enough, that tender little sigh of surrender yanked him to his senses.

He sprang to his feet. “You do not have to give up on your dream of having children. Once Clarinda becomes my wife, I will find a husband for you among the men of my guard. One who will give you many strong sons and half a dozen daughters as lovely as yourself.” Farouk felt a curious twinge as the gracious words spilled from his lips. He had always prided himself on being a man of his word, but this was one promise he would take no pleasure in keeping.

He had finally succeeded in freeing himself from the burden of her regard. She was gazing into her lap, refusing to look at him at all. Her dimples had vanished along with her forthright gaze. “As I said before, Your Majesty, you are ever so gallant.”

If that was true, Farouk thought as he turned on his heel and left Miss Montmorency gazing out over the sea with her unruly curls blowing in the breeze, then why did he feel like the worst sort of villain?

Worse even than the despicable Mr. Huntington-Smythe.

T
he last thing Clarinda felt like doing the morning after Farouk’s banquet in Captain Burke’s honor was lounging by a pool in the courtyard of the harem gardens with a dozen chattering, giggling women. But she was afraid any deviation in her normal routine might be noted and reported to the eunuchs or even to Farouk himself. Yasmin was holding court next to the burbling fountain at the opposite end of the pool, and Clarinda was only too aware that the concubine and her cronies were watching her every move in the hope she would slip up and commit some unforgivable transgression that would cost her the sultan’s favor.

And perhaps her head.

She rolled to her stomach on the sun-warmed tile, resting her cheek on her folded arms. Although she had spent most of the night pacing the confines of her alcove instead of sleeping, she was still too tense to steal a nap. She had dared a single glance back at Ash as she had left the banquet only to find his gaze following her, his face as inscrutable as it had been the first time he had laid eyes on her upon her return from Miss Throckmorton’s. She must have imagined the raw exhilaration that had leapt in them when it was revealed she hadn’t yet gone to the sultan’s bed.

As long as they had to conduct their every exchange beneath Farouk’s watchful eye, it was going to be difficult for her to find out whether Maximillian had sent him or if he had come for her on his own. Not that it should matter one whit, she told herself sternly. Even if he had come for her without any prompting from Max, he was more than nine years too late.

She restlessly rolled back over. A round moon of a face slathered with a thin mask of mud hovered over her, blocking out the sun. She let out a strangled yelp.

The spectacles perched on the tip of Poppy’s mud-caked nose looked even more incongruous than usual. Little else of her face was visible except for her big blue eyes and her pink rosebud of a mouth. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “The nice woman said the mud would make my skin glow like the rump of a newborn babe.”

Pressing a hand to her still racing heart, Clarinda sat up. “It’s not your fault. My nerves are so on edge I was expecting to find Farouk standing over me with a scimitar. But what are you doing here?” Clarinda stole a quick glance around them to find several of the other women eyeing them with a combination of contempt and amusement. “It was part of my deal with Farouk that you not be subjected to these lessons or ridiculous beauty treatments.”

Poppy plopped down next to her, plunging her bare feet into the cool water of the pool. Not even the mask of mud could hide her wistful expression. “Don’t you think I want to be beautiful, too?”

“You already are. And this is no place for a proper English lady.” Clarinda leaned closer to her friend, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’d like for one of us to be able to go back and take her place in society with her innocence intact.”

Poppy sighed dramatically. “Then I’m afraid it will have to be you because, in case you’ve forgotten,
I’m
the one who left England a fallen woman.”

Clarinda shook her head, marveling anew at the injustice of that. Swiping a fingerful of mud from the bridge of her friend’s nose, she laughed ruefully. “You look exactly like I did when I tumbled down the coal chute at the curate’s house when I was eight.”

“How on earth did you manage that?”

“I was balancing on the open door while I tried to steal a mincemeat pie that was cooling on his windowsill. His wife was a
very
good cook.” Clarinda’s smile faded as she remembered it had been an exasperated Ash who had heard her frightened howls and come to pull her out of the coal chute by her ankles. Come to think of it, he had always been around to rescue her when she required it.

Except for the one time when she had needed him the most.

She was almost grateful when a bloodcurdling shriek distracted her from her thoughts. A short while earlier, one of Farouk’s concubines had disappeared behind a lacquered screen at the far end of the garden with two of the older women.

Poppy shot the screen an alarmed look, the whites of her eyes growing even larger against their mud backdrop. “The poor creature! Are they torturing her?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Clarinda replied darkly.

While she didn’t mind having the hair on her head brushed a thousand strokes every day, she had no intention of letting Farouk’s handmaidens touch a hair anywhere else on her body. Whenever the old women started circling her with their hopeful expressions and pots full of boiling wax, Clarinda would cross her legs and give them an evil look. In England, only women of the loosest moral character would allow the fine down to be removed from their legs, much less anywhere else.

She had already gathered from the stares and whispers of the concubines that her nether curls were a source of unending fascination to the women here. She supposed it had never occurred to them that they would so perfectly match the hue of the hair on her head.

Biting her lip, Poppy peered around the courtyard in reluctant fascination. “So is this where they teach you how to … please a man?”

Clarinda understood her friend’s curiosity and chagrin all too well. Clarinda had never considered herself a shrinking violet or a bashful bluebell, but when she had first begun her lessons with the older women who had once served—and serviced—Farouk’s father, she had wondered if it was possible to actually die of embarrassment.

After a few days of being taught both the English and the Arabic terms for parts of the body a woman wasn’t even supposed to acknowledge she possessed, and poring over erotic etchings whose mere possession would have gotten a man tossed into jail in England, Clarinda had found herself warming to the women’s matter-of-fact instruction. She had always respected common sense, and what could make more sense than explaining to a woman
exactly
what she was going to face on her wedding night … and on all the nights to follow?

“Considering how sheltered women are kept at home, I know this must all seem terribly shocking,” she said. “But if you want to know the truth, I think it’s a shame every blushing bride doesn’t receive such a thorough education. If they did, there would certainly be more happy marriages. And happy husbands. The bawdy houses would also see a decline in business as wives gave their husbands a reason to stay home at night. And I have little doubt prospective husbands would benefit from such instruction as well.”

Clarinda could only imagine how scandalized Maximillian would be if on their wedding night she performed some of the more exotic tricks she had been taught in this place. He had always been so courteous and proper where she was concerned, treating her with the utmost decorum even when they escaped the prying eyes of their family and friends. It was almost as if he were seeking to atone for a sin he had never committed.