Dangerous Weakness (13 page)

Chapter 20

A nervous clerk greeted Richard at Horse Guards.

“Fair put out he sounded.”

“Castlereagh always sounds fair put out. What exactly did he say?” Richard demanded.

“You are to call on him immediately. And you—beg pardon, my lord, but these are his words—‘damn well better have your analysis of Malta in your hand.’”

The agitated clerk blinked up at him, anxiety giving him the fidgets. Richard dismissed him with an abrupt gesture.
Malta. Did she sail to Malta? How unsafe are those waters?
He looked at his unfinished report.
If you concentrated on your damned work, you would know.

Messages lay on his desk, more complaints from his parents and what was sure to be an ugly message from Lisle. He went to answer the summons from the foreign secretary and returned with Castlereagh’s anger burning in his ears, irritated with himself over his failure to complete his analysis. He had accumulated notes in fits and starts by collating observations of sea captains with agents on the ground, but allowed interruptions—and Lily Thornton—to disrupt the work. It remained to pull it together for Castlereagh, the prime minister, the cabinet, and, ultimately, the prince regent into a report that could enhance his reputation. He began to write the final report.

While American efforts have subdued the worst of the Mediterranean pirates, waters of the sea between Sicily and the coast of Africa remain unsettled. Unrest in Naples exacerbates the situation so that our forces on Malta—

Malta.
The woman Stewart described embarked to Malta.

Lily of all women should know how perilous the Mediterranean has become. Did she go willingly?
He doubted it.
Either someone coerced her or something horrific drove her to take off on her own. Either way, Volkov is behind it.
He picked up his pen.

—our forces on Malta could feel the impact of shipping disruption.

He began to list actions to be taken, numbers of marines to add to Royal Navy vessels, escalated improvements to the port fortifications, and beefed-up frequency for the Gibraltar packet.

The Gibraltar packet. They are the fastest ships we have
.
I could leave from Portsmouth on tomorrow’s tide
. If he left immediately, he could get home to pack a few items and just make it on a good mount. From Gibraltar, passage to Malta would be easy.

Nonsense. One does not just hare off without planning. Besides, she has at least a week on me—closer to two.

Richard shook the very thought from his head. He owed Castlereagh this report and his father the courtesy of a reply.

Words flowed onto paper rapidly, if not coherently. They skimmed along the surface of the topic. They never plunged to Richard’s customary depths. They flew toward a conclusion.

Richard frowned at it. The report would be presented in the highest circles.
Totally inadequate for the audience.
He had built a career on exactness in all he did, on the quality of his work.
I need to rewrite it.

His eyes lost focus. His words lost meaning. His mind returned again and again to the Gibraltar packet, drawn like iron to lodestone. The seas around Malta churned in his mind, and the dangers haunted him.

Something drove her away, something so strong she knowingly put herself in danger or, worse, was forced into it.

In one swift motion he completed the manuscript with a message for Castlereagh, who wouldn’t like it much.

Intelligence inadequate. I leave for Malta on the tide to see it for myself.

He had to leave London within the hour to make it. He sealed the report in a sleeve and called for a clerk.

“Send this to the foreign secretary in three hours. Not one moment sooner.” The bewildered clerk merely nodded.

His career would be in tatters before he returned. He realized with growing elation that he didn’t care. He picked up his hat and walked out the door.

I’m going to find her on Malta and, if I have to, shake the truth out of her. If I find Volkov too, he’s a dead man, whether she went willingly or not.

The port of Algiers filled the air with odors great and small. Rotten fish and offal, the familiar rot of any port, contended with exotic spices and the cloying scent of dozens of unknown flowers. None of them sat well with Lily’s churning stomach. In a month at sea, her nausea had not abated. Pregnant women, she now knew for certain, did not travel well. That afternoon their ship bobbed at anchor, a condition infinitely worse than forward motion.

Solid ground lay feet away. She had gone above decks to stare longingly at the teeming docks, but she had been forbidden to disembark.

“Covered in veils you would still give yourself away as the English you are. Has no one mentioned to you the slave markets of North Africa?” Sahin had demanded.

Slave markets.
The thought made Lily shudder. The horror of Barbary slavery was the stuff of schoolgirl nightmares. Unlike other nightmares, it was all too real. Still, dry land called to her. She had hoped he would give in and send a guard with her.

Before she could object he added, “These streets are not safe for any woman, even with a bodyguard.”

He had looked at her sadly. “Once inside the Seraglio, you will move freely only within its walls—broad, ornately decorative walls, but walls all the same. This is the life you have asked for, Lily.”

The life you asked for.
Lily lay on her narrow bunk in a room no larger than a linen closet and contemplated her decision.

She cupped her hands protectively over the baby growing inside her and fought remorse. Everything in her upbringing told her she should have accepted the marquess. Her conscience told her so.

“That’s just it, little one,” she said into the gloom, rubbing her abdomen. “If I marry him, your father will always be ‘the marquess,’ never Richard.”
Never beloved, not out loud.

Aboard this ship, she kept them both safe. Inside the walls of the Seraglio, they would be safe. She refused to regret it.

“When your grandpapa comes, he will take us back to England in time, safe and above contempt.” She hoped it would be so. Her hopes lay in her knowledge of Sahin, who failed her only once, and in her loving, though often neglectful, father. She prayed her hopes were not in vain.

Another wave of nausea overtook her. To control it she stared at the ceiling and began listing her qualifications as a teacher: languages, education, and arts. When the interview came with the Valide Sultan, she would be ready.

Richard crawled into Malta on a small boat with peeling blue paint, filthy sails, and the reek of fish.

The Spanish fisherman he hired in Gibraltar gave him an ironic salute when he disembarked and mockingly patted the purse safely stowed in his pocket.

The grizzled old thief had demanded top coin when he realized how badly Richard wanted immediate transportation. No more formal passage to Malta could be found that departed sooner than a week; Richard agreed to the fisherman’s extortionate terms.

It would take days to get the stink out of his clothes. For once he didn’t regret traveling without a valet. His man in London would die of heart palpitations at the sight.

Thirty minutes later Richard presented himself to Sir Thomas Maitland, governor of Malta on behalf of the British throne. The unannounced appearance of the Marble Marquess, dirty and disheveled on his doorstop, stunned the governor. He gaped for a full minute before he barked orders to his staff for “bath water and plenty of it” and ordered lodging for his distinguished guest.

Richard bit back the one question he came to have answered and let a flurry of excitable Maltese servants carry him off to newly aired rooms.

It took Maitland’s staff an hour and a half to assist the marquess with his bath, locate the correct amount of citrus oil to counteract the effect of fish, and truss him into an ill-fitting, borrowed suit.

They hustled him off to the formal dining room where he sat with disgruntled impatience at the governor’s dinner table with a minor attaché, two colonels, an expatriate baroness, and the Anglican bishop of Malta and his wife, all of them eager to meet the Marquess of Glenaire. If Richard found the company less than sterling, the table setting and the cuisine matched that at the houses of the highest society in England.
As it should for the cost of maintaining this pestilential place.

Most of the company cared little for the reasons behind his arrival, wishing only to bask in the presence of the Marble Marquess, luminary of foreign affairs and of the court. Maitland, however, obviously burned with curiosity.

“To what do we owe the honor of your visit, my lord?” he asked over the soup course.

“We are particularly interested in the safety of our shipping in these waters,” Richard explained, staying as close to the truth as possible.
They’ll think me a fool if I tell them I’m pursuing a woman who doesn’t even want my attention.

The governor general looked for a moment as if he might question the need for the foreign secretary’s second to personally research in the field. He did not.

“Were my reports not received?”

“Your reports,” Richard improvised, “were intriguing.”
And damned vague.
“I became curious to see for myself.”

Maitland looked skeptical but let the issue of his reports drop. Richard’s dinner mates plunged into a lively discussion on the topic, each giving a firsthand—although, based on his research, inaccurate—account of the situation.

By the middle of the main course, conversation moved on to much more delicious gossip of amorous intrigue on the island. Over a particularly tasty duckling and beetroot dish, Richard finally saw an opening.

“My men reported a concern recently. Perhaps you can clarify something for me,” he said, drawing all eyes, eager to help their high-ranking guest.

“We had word of a young woman traveling alone this way, a tiny young lady, accompanied only by a bodyguard or servant of Eastern extraction.” He spelled out the dates. The guests looked at one another, puzzled. “With all of the instability, the Foreign Service has concerns about a woman alone. She sailed on the Captain James out of Boston.”

Maitland’s face lit up. “Ah, Miss Dalca, Maria Dalca. She is well. You may rest at ease.”

“She arrived here safely?”

“Yes,” the governor beamed. “But we only had her company briefly. She is bound to her home in Maldavia after schooling with her English grandmother.”

“You spoke with her?”

“Briefly. Polite enough chit. Terribly accented English. Shows some polish from her time in England. Small. Lovely girl with volumes of dark brown hair.”

Brown hair. Not Lily
.

“Excellent. My men worried for naught,” Richard murmured.

“Brown hair,” the baroness chuckled coyly. “Perhaps.”

What the hell does that mean? Was her hair brown or not?

“She transferred to a Russian vessel and sailed for Thessaloniki where her aunt will meet her. Whether they travel overland or continue by sea to Constantinople and the Black Sea I cannot say,” the governor rambled on, filling in details about how much his majesty’s government had been glad to help her on her way. Richard heard only two words.

Russian. Thessaloniki.

Chapter 21

Soon after Richard reached Malta, Ahmet ushered Lily, awkward and clearly with child, into a small audience chamber, and all her preparation flew out of her head.

The door whispered shut behind her, leaving her with only one other occupant in the room, a small woman with regal bearing who turned and unwound veils from her face.

“Mrs. Thornton, is it?” the woman asked in good but heavily accented English.

Lily froze.
“Mrs.” The first lie
.

“Come, come. My nephew tells me of your troubles. Let us be frank here in this room at least,” the Valide Sultan said. She examined Lily with unblinking eyes and beckoned her forward.

“Not ‘Mrs.’, Highness. I am not married.” Truth felt right, but Lily trembled. “And, yes, I have troubles.”

The woman smiled suddenly, a warm, sad smile that soothed. “I can see that,” she said ruefully. “When is this little person to make his appearance?”

“More than three more months, Highness, almost four.”

“Trouble, indeed,” the older woman mused. “And dangers to your father also press in. My nephew told me something of it. Your loyalty speaks well for you.”

“Thank you, Highness. I have not heard from my father in months.”

The Valide Sultan nodded and took one of Lily’s hands sympathetically. “My nephew also tells me you were of service to our country and that he may have caused your troubles.”

Lily’s face grew hot. “Not that! Sahin Pasha treated me with respect always.”
This woman can’t think I’m carrying Sahin Pasha’s child!
“My problems are of my own making.” That certainly rang true. “What Sahin Pasha meant, I think, is that he may have put me in an awkward position and I—”

“You let your heart rule your mind. Foolish.”

Lily dipped her head. A graceful finger slipped under her chin and pushed her face up to look at the sympathetic brown eyes of the Valide Sultan. “Foolishness is why young women must be protected. My nephew knows this, and he failed you.”

The woman switched abruptly from English to excellent, unaccented French. “So, tell me, how do you plan to repay my household if I offer you refuge?”

“I can teach,” Lily answered in the same language.

The Valide Sultan smiled. “What can you teach?”

“Reading, writing, and speaking in five languages,” Lily said in Turkish.

The older woman’s smile broadened. “How is your math?” she asked.

“Mostly tied to bookkeeping but excellent,” Lily answered. “I am well read in the sciences, also—geography, history, and politics.”

“Politics! The Seraglio seethes with it. My ladies must know science and where it leads us. They must understand the geography and history of our empire and of other countries as well.”

“Your women study these things?”

“All members of my household are required to read and write. The ladies of the harem learn more. Those with an aptitude read widely and learn as much as they can.”

“I had no idea—hope, but no idea.”

Valide Sultan gave a dismissive gesture. “Westerners think we are illiterate puppets, locked in prison. They know only what their small-minded diplomats tell them.”

“Pig-headed men,” Lily agreed.

The two women grinned at each other.

“We will do well together, Mrs. Thornton.”

Lily’s brows rose. “Mrs.?”

“Honesty is well enough between us, but it is better if I do not know,” the Valide Sultan said, suddenly all business. “Unmarried pregnancy is a great disgrace. If I am known to condone it, it will reflect badly on me. Among the others, you will be an unfortunate widow.”

Lily nodded numbly in the face of the woman’s grim pronouncement.

“The consequences could be grave. You might be put out on the street.”

Lily swallowed. She could only nod again.

“Good. Now, women enter this place in many ways from many places. Once here, they become Turk. They are given Turkish names. Your name shall be Zambak.”

“Zambak?” Lily mused, “Lily?”

“Exactly. We will hide you in plain sight until your father comes to claim you. He will come, no?”

“May God hear your words, Highness.”

She thought of England then and her home in London. She thought of Richard. She opened a space in her heart and locked England, her father, and Richard Hayden away. She prayed silently for the baby she carried.

Lily turned to leave, but the Valide Sultan had one more thing to say.

“Know this, Zambak. If you are found to not be a widow, I will deny any knowledge of the deceit. You will face the consequences alone.”

Four days of inspecting the vaunted towers that ringed Malta taught Richard two things. First, Malta’s historic fortifications, built by the Knights of Malta during the seventeenth century, were numerous, massive, and crumbling. Few looked suitable for modern gun emplacements, and the sheer number required a larger force than the crown had seen fit to assign. He also learned that, however brilliant Maitland might have been as a land soldier in Ceylon and Spain, naval strategy escaped him.

About “Maria Dalco,” he learned nothing. Maitland met her only the once, found her “plain as a post,” and ignored her ever after. Richard doubted Lily could ever make herself “plain,” but he couldn’t dismiss the possibility.

Maitland’s aide responded to Richard’s discreet questions with, “We saw nothing unusual. Why is she of interest to the Foreign Service?”
Shrewd observer, that one. Avoid him now but make note for the future.

None of the troops, even those around the harbor itself, laid eyes on the woman. It had been foolish to ask, particularly the day Maitland overheard him and raised a questioning brow.
I need freedom to poke around on my own.

It took him three more days to arrange a meeting between Maitland, one British admiral, and a group of captains that included a captain of an American merchantman. Richard arranged the effort to accomplish two things: allow the naval forces to explain their view of Malta’s defenses and to distract the governor for a day so as to make himself free to investigate something other than stone and cannon.

As soon as the discussion between colonels and captains came to its predictable boil, Richard took his leave, climbed the long granite staircase to the guest wing, and rummaged through his things.

The clothing he had arrived in lay under citrus-scented linen. He couldn’t easily scour the docks looking like a London beau. His impulse to order the excitable Maltese footman assigned to him to not burn the clothes proved correct. Though aired, his suit still smelled of fish. He discarded the coat.
That will be burned.
The stained shirt needed only a tear and some garden dirt to give him an adequate disguise; the trousers looked unspeakable without assistance.

He took the servant stairs and avoided being seen by anyone but a startled parlor maid. He slipped out through the French doors of the governor’s private breakfast room without notice. The docks lay a quarter mile downhill.

Taverns lined the lanes around Malta’s port. Like seaport taverns anywhere, they teemed with seamen and dockworkers deep in their cups. The latter were his quarry. His disguise may have passed, but his upper class accents would give him away in English. He tried his imperfect French. It seemed to work.

“Lots o’fancy folk come through here,” he said to a burly dockworker. “Bring trunks with ‘em, do they?”

“Great fancy pieces. Scurry about like ants shouting at a body not to drop ‘em,” the man answered. He gave his name as Spiru.

“Did you hear about that puffed up marquess, though?” another broke in. “Let some fisherman cheat him into sailing two days in the hole with stinking fish. Mario at the big house says his clothes stunk all the way to the attic.”

The entire tavern rocked with laughter. Richard looked down at his shirt and joined them.
The damned thing cost more than this man makes in a year.
The absurdity of it tickled him, and he laughed harder.

As he hoped, a raucous discussion about the foibles of the rich and favored broke out, with tales of eccentrics, bullies, and dandies in abundance, but no single woman.

“Your Mussulmen travel just heavy as your Englishman,” Spiru said at last.

“Yes, but they keep their women quiet,” another retorted. Richard remembered his name as Gorg. “English women fairly flay a man’s skin off his back if he’s rough with their precious trunks.”

Richard saw his opening to ask about women travelers, but before he could push his luck, a booming voice echoed through the tavern. “Work to be had, lads,” he shouted, and the tavern emptied out.

Spiru slapped Richard on the back and led him toward the disembarking ship. Before he had time to think, the Marquess of Glenaire found himself unloading cargo from an Egyptian vessel. Pride in his own fitness, honed in hours at Jackson’s Pugilistic Club, faded quickly when his shoulders began to ache. He saw Gorg and Spiru exchange an amused glance and redoubled his efforts.

In spite of the ache, Richard felt elated. When his friends went to war, he served from a desk at Horse Guards. Will told him he saved more lives than the lot of them put together, but Richard never saw it, never had the heat of battle. When he dispatched Andrew to France, Richard had the worry but not the elation of actual danger. When his agents took the field, he sat at a desk, sifting and sorting and finding truths other men missed, protecting England with a machine-like mind and cool judgment.

Physical exertion is damned liberating
. He thought of the months he spent buried in Britain’s paperwork. He thought of the months he faced his parents to be spoon-fed his father’s goals for the estate. He thought of the months he sleepwalked through the boring rituals of London society.

Better than good.
I haven’t been this energized since the Congress of Vienna.

Richard helped Spiru heft a final box onto a lorry, straightened, and rubbed his shoulder.

“Now there’s a fierce one,” Gorg said.

“Fierce?” Richard asked.

“Always come with the big guards. That ‘un’s a Berber,” Gorg answered. He pointed to a tall dark man in a turban glowering down on them. His charge, a cluster of heavily veiled women, stood by the railing.

“Do you ever seen one travel alone?” Richard asked.

“Not often. Had one a month ago. Little thing in English dress with a bodyguard as big as that. But the woman was small. Somewhat stout. Brown hair all piled up like it might give her neck an ache,” Gorg said.

Stout. Not Lily. All this way and it wasn’t Lily.

“Not like the other one.”

“What other one?”