The Pleasure of Your Kiss Read online

  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.

  Chapter Nine

  The 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 th
e 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.

  Ash had been just the opposite. When they were beneath the watchful eyes of others, he had found every excuse he could to touch her, even if it was only to brush her fingertips with his own as she handed him a cup of tea or to politely correct the angle of a crooked ribbon on her bonnet. And in those rare moments when they managed to sneak away to be alone …

  Alarmed by the wayward direction of her thoughts, Clarinda jerked them back to her fiancé. Maximillian would be scandalized by what she had learned, but might he not also be pleased? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine such a scene, but it wasn’t Max’s face she saw looming above hers but his brother’s.

  And he was most definitely pleased.

  Clarinda’s eyes flew open with a guilty start.

  “Where do they keep the men?” Poppy asked, as if she expected a dozen muscular male slaves girded only in loincloths to be paraded into the courtyard at any minute.

  “Oh, Poppy, they don’t use actual men! Except for the sultan and his eunuchs, any man who dared to breach the walls of the harem would be instantly put to death.”

  “Well, then how do they teach you … oh, goody, it must be lunchtime!” Poppy exclaimed, mercifully distracted by the sight of Solomon swinging open the towering iron gate that separated the harem courtyard from the rest of the sultan’s rambling gardens, a bronze platter balanced in one of his enormous hands.

  A stooped, old woman rushed forward to take the platter, and the eunuch retreated to guard the gate, planting his feet in an imposing stance and staring straight ahead. He could have easily been mistaken for a magnificent statue carved from ebony marble.

  “Ah, fresh cucumbers!” Poppy said as the woman rested the tray on top of a low pillar next to the pool. “What a delicacy!”

  Clarinda sighed. “They’re not to eat, Poppy. Well, not precisely.”

  “No man would be safe with the English cow.” Yasmin made sure her husky voice carried to every corner of the courtyard. “To her, everything is to eat.” Spurred on by the laughter that rippled through the ranks of the women, she added, “They should teach that one how to pleasure herself since I doubt any man will ever lend his hand to the task.”

  Poppy inclined her head. She had probably forgotten the mask of mud was hiding her mortified blush.

  “Don’t mind Yasmin, Poppy,” Clarinda said loudly, her temper flaring on behalf of her friend “From what I’ve heard, all she requires is a fish head and a saucer of cream every morning.”

  Was it her imagination or did Solomon’s intractable lips twitch just a fraction?

  The other women subsided into respectful silence as the wrinkled crone chose an impressive specimen of a cucumber from the tray and held it up, her eyes twinkling merrily in their sunken folds of flesh. “The tradition of our forefathers tells us that men are strong and women are weak. But if a woman wants to bring even the most powerful of men to his knees, she need only learn what to do when she is on hers.”

  Clarinda shot Poppy a worried glance. If Poppy’s eyes got any larger, they were going to spring right out of her head.

  “Would anyone care to demonstrate?” the woman asked, raking her hopeful gaze over the women.

  “Allow me.” Yasmin rose and sauntered forward, shaking back her mane of glossy, midnight-black hair.

  She took the cucumber from the woman’s hand and slid one rounded end of it between her pouting lips.

  Clarinda could only gape right along with the rest of the women as it disappeared inch by inch. For a minute she thought Yasmin was going to swallow the thing whole, the way a python might swallow a rat. But after letting out a moan that made it sound as if she were partaking of the most delicious chocolate syllabub in the world, she finally withdrew the glistening cucumber from her mouth, holding it aloft with a flourish and a smile.

  Clarinda cocked an eyebrow, impressed against her will. No wonder Farouk was willing to put up with the woman’s spiteful temperament and churlish behavior.

  Returning the cucumber to the tray, Yasmin slanted Clarinda a triumphant look. “That is just a taste of what awaits the handsome Englishman when I am summoned to attend him in his bath.”

  While the women broke into giggling groups to see if any of them could duplicate Yasmin’s impressive performance, Clarinda was forced to pretend an indifference she was far from feeling. She had absolutely no right to be jealous. Especially not while betrothed to both the sultan and the handsome Englishman’s equally handsome brother.

  She turned back to the pool to discover that Poppy had disappeared. Puzzled, Clarinda looked around until she found her hovering near the pillar. After making sure none of the other women were paying any mind to her, Poppy plucked a rather puny-looking cucumber from the tray and gingerly slid the tip of it between her lips.

  “Poppy!” Clarinda exclaimed, both shocked and amused by her friend’s unexpected boldness.

  Poppy gagged. Offering Clarinda a rueful shrug, she tucked the cucumber back into her mouth and cheerfully chomped off the end of it.
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br />   This time there was no mistaking Solomon’s wince.

  Ash spent the entire day exploring Farouk’s palace, feigning interest in its beauty and opulence while he sketched a map in his head of every wall, every door, every corridor where an armed guard might be stationed. He was searching for any weaknesses in its fortifications, any chink in Farouk’s formidable armor that might allow him to smuggle Clarinda to safety once he figured out a way to get her out of the harem.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t find a single one. His frustration was only compounded when Clarinda failed to appear at supper and he was forced to endure Farouk’s jovial company while smiling through gritted teeth.

  When his restless prowling led him into one of the sultan’s walled gardens late that night, he wasn’t surprised to find Luca soaking in a man-made pool. Fragrant lotus petals floated on the surface of the water, drifting like clouds across the misty reflection of the moon. A doe-eyed, dusky-haired beauty knelt on the flagstones behind Luca, massaging his broad shoulders. He sat with the back of his head propped against the stone lip of the pool, groaning with pleasure every time the slave girl’s delicate thumbs dug deep into the tender muscles on each side of his shoulder blades.

  He opened his eyes to give Ash a drowsy look. “Would you care to join us? I’m sure she has a sister—or perhaps even a twin—somewhere around here.”

  “No, thank you.” Luca’s languor was at direct odds with the tension coursing through every inch of Ash’s own body. “And it might be best if she left so we could speak privately.”

  Ash jerked his head toward the palace to dismiss the woman, but before she could rise to go, Luca caught her slender wrist in his grip. “There’s no need. Farouk’s mandatory language lessons don’t extend to his slaves. She doesn’t speak a word of English or Italian. It’s part of her charm.” He brought the woman’s hand to his lips and kissed each fingertip in turn, eliciting a delighted giggle before she went back to rubbing his shoulders.