Coming Home for Christmas (12 page)

W
hen she woke the next morning, Lily wasn't sure if she was glad or sad that her ugly gray uniform was gone. Clutching the sheet around her, she raised up on one elbow, looking for the pitiful thing, before deciding it must have crawled away in shame.

I am in a harem,
she thought, and couldn't help the laughter that bubbled inside her, despite the gravity of the situation that had caused it. She folded her hands properly across her stomach, aware that for the first time in ages, she hadn't braided her long hair into tight pigtails before sleep claimed her. Her hair lay all curly and abundant on the pillow. All she wanted to do was lie there and enjoy the feeling of silk sheets on bare skin.

I could maybe like a seraglio,
she thought.
I wonder if someone would bring my meals, scrub my back in a scandalous bathing pool and brush my hair? A massage would be nice, too. So would shaved ice brought by runners from the Caucasus Mountains.
She turned
her head and giggled into the pillow, curious to know if the sultan—bless his elderly, overstuffed hide—liked to dally with his numerous bits of fluff in beds like this one, and probably in broad daylight. Goodness, what wicked thoughts for a straitlaced widow!

That thought was enough to make her draw the sheet tighter around her and look more seriously for her clothing, as pathetic as it was. All she saw was a robe as diaphanous as the canopy overhead, in a lovely shade of pale yellow that she knew would look perfect with her hair and coloring. Of course, every curve and outline of her body would be visible to all, but this was, after all, a harem.

“When in Rome,” Lily murmured as she reached for the robe. She sighed with the softness of it, thinking how much her Mexican mother would enjoy such luxury, living as she did now in Dumfries, home of oatmeal and woolies. She admired herself in the full-length mirror, thinking to herself,
I will be queen this morning, or at least until someone returns my ugly dress, and I'm Cinder Ella among the ashes again.

Shy now, Queen Lillian opened the door to her chamber a crack and was immediately pounced upon by a trio of servants, all speaking at once. Seeing this as an adventure, rather than a trial, Lily let them lead her to another room. It turned out to house a marble-lined bathtub big enough for a discreet dog paddle.

There was no point in hanging back, especially since one woman, laughing, untied the sash to her robe and helped her out of it, while the other two led her to the tub and helped her in. The water was warm and divine and Lily surrendered without a protest.
If they could see me in Dumfries,
she thought, as she offered no
objection to the slathering of soft soap everywhere and a scrubbing of her back that made her close her eyes in bliss.

She sank into the water, a smile on her face, and only opened her eyes to watch an altercation outside the bathing room. Apparently, other servants were trying to tow the redoubtable Sister Marie Clotilde into the bath and she was resisting with all the force of her ecclesiastical stewardship over the Sisters of Mercy in the Ottoman Empire. Lily let her bath attendant dribble jasmine oil across her shoulders. Apparently the Sisters of Mercy had never heard of the concept of “when in Rome,” which seemed a bit ironic.

She had to smile when the bath attendants exclaimed over her red hair. One of the women combed it, while a bolder attendant draped the length of it over her own black hair, then giggled.

Lily could have groaned with dismay when she heard the distant sound of a gong, which was followed by her attendant taking her arm and coaxing her from the oversize tub. She knew it was pointless to insist that she was capable of drying herself, even though she did insist on toweling her own private parts, which made her attendants giggle again.

She knew the party was over when, wrapped in a towel, she returned to her room to find her ugly dress waiting for her, clean, starched and as glaringly out of place in a sultan's pleasure dome as she was. Lily had to smile as she eyed her clothes. Someone had decided her shift was too worn to resuscitate and had substituted a silk one, instead. She could only hope that it wasn't the sultan himself.

 

Not that she was inclined to ask, not even when she had left the harem and was turned over to a different eunuch on guard, who silently escorted her to the dining hall, inhabited by Abdul Wasiri and Major Wharton, looking too amused for his own good. Her hand went automatically to her hair, which yet another attendant had styled into charming ringlets, instead of her customary bun.

“Lovely as always,” the major murmured, which made Lily's face turn even rosier than his.

“Major, you've been away from society far too long, if you think a gray dress has one iota of style,” she whispered back.

“I meant you, not that burlap sack of a dress,” he said surprisingly. Before she had time to be embarrassed at his unexpected plain speaking, the major performed an impressive salaam to their breakfast host. “Double dog dare you to do better than that,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth.

“You lose, Major Wharton,” Lily replied, as she sank into a deep and graceful curtsy. “Mama taught me this before I was introduced at court.”

The American put his hand to his chest in surrender. “Lily Nicholls, you never cease to amaze me.”

“You're easily amazed,” she teased back, wondering where her polite upbringing had vanished to, and his, too, for that matter. Something about the major was different, but this was not the time to find out, especially since the sultan was watching her so intently.

Lily let the major take her arm and direct her to a low stool, where she sat as gracefully as possible. “Your Highness, it is the greatest pleasure to see you again
and to thank you for your unparalleled hospitality,” she said.

“My dear Mrs Nicholls, it will continue as long as you wish,” he replied in his impeccable English. He tapped the little gong beside him. “And now, I will be pleased if you and the major will join me in a poor repast.”

It was anything but poor, beginning with figs, grapes and rose-scented yogurt, served in crystal bowls on gold chargers. The major put his hand over hers when she reached for a grape. “Let the taster do his unenviable work first,” he whispered in her ear.

She waited as the taster crawled toward his lord and master and dutifully sampled all the dishes first. When he didn't die, the sultan began breakfast with a handful of grapes.

“I've often thought a taster would be a good idea in the average officers' mess hall,” Major Wharton said to their host. “Your Highness, you would be astounded at the lengths to which some junior officers will go to advance in rank.”

The sultan laughed and gestured to the servant. “Then he is yours,” he said.

The major shook his head, with every indication of real regret. “Alas, your Highness, I am not at liberty to accept your generous gift.”

The sultan shrugged. “Perhaps you will win him in a card game.” Then the sultan looked at Lily. “I hear that you passed a pleasant night, Mrs Nicholls,” he said.

And how would you know?
she thought, in suspicious alarm. “I did, your Highness. I thank you for your kindness to me and the Sisters of Mercy.”

“You are welcome as long as you need shelter here,” he replied, after a discreet belch.

“Your Highness, I am happy to report that work is already under way to repair the kitchen and the rooms beyond,” Major Wharton said. “A day or two should see most of the work completed.”

The sultan sighed. “Mrs Nicholls, I had hoped to keep you here much longer.” To her surprise, he took her hand. “I can do one thing for you, my dear lady. Tonight, when you return, allow my tailor to borrow your dress so he can make two or three new dresses to replace what was destroyed in the fire.”

Lily was touched, in spite of her skepticism. “That would be a great kindness.”

She should have known the sultan had more on his mind. “Of course, nowhere in my realm is there a color that ugly. Sad, but true, my dear. I can substitute blue and green, possibly, and perhaps silk.”

You're a sly one,
she thought, impressed despite her misgivings. Still, it would be nice to wear something besides Miss Nightingale's version of sackcloth and ashes. She glanced at the major, who was trying not to smile.
And you are enjoying this, Major.

“Nothing would please me more,” she said to them both.

The sultan gave her a gracious nod; he was just warming up. “If there is anything else I can do for you, lovely lady, anything at—”

“A Christmas tree,” she said, interrupting the sultan, which made the servants gasp.

I have erred,
Lily thought in alarm. She looked at the sultan, who returned a suddenly frosty stare. “It's just a small thing, your…your Excellency, your Worship. I
wanted to have a Christmas tree for the wounded men. It would mean so much…” Her voice dwindled away. “I shouldn't have interrupted you.”

“You should not,” he said severely.

When in doubt, cry,
Lily thought, as her eyes welled with tears, almost—but not quite—of their own accord. She dabbed at her eyes delicately, not looking at the major, who was probably seeing right through her subterfuge. “Forgive me,” she said, head down, voice meek. “I was just thinking of the wounded and their longing for a symbol of the season, something to raise their spirits. That's all.”

Silence. Then, “What kind of tree?” the sultan asked, his voice tender now.

She looked up into his face. Her late husband had once complained that she was the only woman he knew who could cry and still look lovely, which meant he was putty in her hands. Perhaps sultans in the Ottoman Empire were equally susceptible. Lily glanced at Major Wharton, who was regarding her with some skepticism.

“A pine tree. Our Queen's consort is from Germany. He brought Christmas customs from his native land, when he married Victoria Regina,” she explained. “Just a tree. We would decorate it for the men who have done so much to defend your empire, and who now languish in the hospital, far from home and family. That's all,” she concluded. “I know there are pine trees in your lovely land.”

“Hmm,” the sultan said. “Hmm.” He looked at her for a long moment and Lily watched a crafty look come into his eyes. “And what, my dear Mrs Nicholls, would you give me in exchange for such a favor?”

“My undying gratitude,” she said promptly.

“Hmm.” Again.

And then breakfast was over. With a bow and an offhand wave in her direction, the sultan left the enormous dining hall. Lily looked at Major Wharton. “I shouldn't have said anything,” she admitted.

The major nodded and helped her up from the low stool. “Lily, I used to be a trusting soul, convinced, in a childish way, that no one would ever wish to mistreat a Wharton.” He laughed. “Especially not in Philadelphia!” He sobered immediately. “And then I came here to the Black Sea, with people's labyrinthine, devious ways.” He leaned closer, his words for her ears only. She enjoyed the way his breath tickled her ear. “And met Captain McClellan.”

Lily burst into laughter, delighted at this side of a shy man. She attempted a severe look. “Major, you jest. I know enough about men to suspect that my injudicious comments to the sultan—who already thinks I am lovely, lonely and reluctant to become a fourth wife—render me vulnerable to his advances.”

“I agree,” he told her, as they walked down the long hall, preceded by yet another eunuch.

She retrieved her wrap from a servant at the door. Outside, two carriages waited, each filled with disapproving French nuns. Major Wharton handed her into the less crowded one and swung himself up beside the native driver.

I should never have said anything to the sultan,
Lily thought.
Is this going to come back to haunt me?

H
er misgivings grew as the day passed, especially when a servant from the sultan's palace delivered a basket of fruit addressed to her, with a note reading: “Dear lady, I will find a tree. The price will be high. Wasiri.”

Worried, she distributed the fruit among her wounded soldiers and took the note to Major Wharton, busy at his desk. He looked up with a smile when she knocked and entered.

“You've come to save me from report writing.”

“Not precisely.” She handed him the note. “Should I worry?”

He read the note and nodded, then read the note again. He blushed predictably. He took his time to speak, obviously weighing his words on some scale of delicate balance. “Mrs Nicholls, I don't pretend to understand the Oriental mind.” He tapped the note on his wrist, then grinned, his shyness forgotten for a
moment. “Or the mind of Excelsior Penrose, who has summoned me this afternoon to a scolding, I fear.”

“For heaven's sake, why?”

“He's practically turning purple, just thinking about ‘the flower of European womanhood'—good Lord, he is a proser!—‘subjected to a godless harem.”'

“We were perfectly safe last night in the harem!” Lily exclaimed.

“I know.” He looked out the window. “Still, I wish I understood the sultan's game. Surely he can't seriously think you'd be willing to become wife number four.” He looked back at the report in front of him, shaking his head.

And here I am, adding to your worries,
Lily thought. She quietly let herself out of his office.

 

Lily spent the rest of the day tending to her patients, part of her mind on them, part on her son, so far away from her…and another part on Major Wharton, who was going to get a dressing down for nothing. She directed the able-bodied patients to help the more feeble soldiers into the many-windowed, enclosed pavilion that she had renamed a solarium. When everyone was seated, she told them about the hopeful Christmas tree and was rewarded with a smattering of applause.

She set them to making paper chains and looked about for tin snips. “Any shape you want,” she assured the men who were flattening tin cans. She supervised the work. One rogue of a soldier tried to pass off a tin phallus as a candlestick, but his fellow patients threw their pillows at him. The maneuver was successful, particularly the pillow in which someone had stuffed a
thick book. His roar of outrage turned into a whimper of pain, which Lily wisely ignored.

As the afternoon passed, she glanced out of one of the windows to see Major Wharton walking on the lawn with Captain Excelsior Penrose. Their body language said everything. She felt her face grow hot as she watched the major's steady stride, hands behind his back, and Penrose's irate gesticulations. She couldn't help a sigh. Probably nothing Major Wharton could explain would ever head off a vitriolic letter destined for the British High Command, complaining about the American sending sheltered ladies to a harem.

As if any of them were sheltered now, not after a year and a half of washing filthy bodies, superintending basic needs or listening to soldiers and their longings for England and families. When all was quiet in the solarium, Lily sat on a window ledge in the hall, thinking of her own sacrifice and that of her young son. And there was the major walking beside the captain, who seemed to have a mountain of complaints to unload on a conscientious, caring man. It seemed unfair.

But maybe she was wrong. As she watched, just out of their view, something changed. The major was talking now, leaning toward the British surgeon, intent. She stared as Penrose reared back at some comment from the major and stalked into the hospital. She swore she heard the door slam, two floors below.

“My goodness, Major, what did you tell him?” she asked her own reflection in the window.

 

She didn't want to embarrass Major Wharton, but she had not overcome her curiosity as they met that evening in the small diet kitchen, piled high now with bowls and
pans from the ruined kitchen. The nuns had returned to the seraglio, assuming she would arrive later.

Major Wharton joined her at the sink, drying the pans she handed him. She stopped, a sponge in her hand, which made him pause.

“I couldn't help noticing what you were attempting on the front lawn this afternoon,” she said, dabbing at a bowl and not quite looking at him. “You were brave to try to explain the situation, but I fear Captain Pompous is even now writing a nasty note to the high command in Sebastopol.”

The major gave her a winning smile, one without any shyness in it this time. “Then you would be dead wrong, Mrs Nicholls. True, I explained why I felt it best for you and the sisters to stay in the seraglio for another night. And as you can imagine, he reacted precisely as you must have seen, full of outrage, manly affront and Christian indignation.”

“Yes! But won't you…aren't you…?”

“In a world of hurt, as we say in America?” he asked, taking the bowl from her. “Here's what you couldn't have heard from the window.” He smiled at her, glee just barely jostling aside shyness this time. “I reminded him I was well aware of his continued dalliance with one Maeve O'Grady. You probably thought she was a respectable widow and a laundress, eh?”

Lily nodded, her eyes wide. “Isn't she? She's been so kind as to launder some of my…” It was her turn to blush this time. “Well, some of my dainties.”

The major dried the bowl with a flourish. “I assured Excelsior that if he said one word about a perfectly reasonable solution to a difficult situation for you and the nuns, everyone in Sebastopol would know about
Mrs O'Grady, who—ahem—also rejoices in the name of Stephen O'Grady. Such a scandal that would be.”

Lily stared at him, her mouth open. “How did…how did…?”

Humor triumphed over circumspection this time. “Close your mouth, Mrs Nicholls! I doubt the flies in the Crimea are healthy to ingest, especially after that long siege of Sebastopol.”

“
Stephen
O'Grady? Heavens! Who…?”

“Told me?” He laughed then, and spread his dishcloth across a chair back. “Mrs Nicholls, I have told you this before: I am one of five members of the U.S. Army who has a paper stating he is an observer. It's signed by the president of the United States. I observe; it's official. I am a certified observer. Sometimes it's even useful. Imagine the scandal, should I reveal that little stinker. And so I told Excelsior Penrose.”

There was no way Lily could stifle the mirth inside her, so she didn't even try. She sat down at the table, rested her head in her hands and laughed until she ached. The major calmly finished the dishes as her laughter eventually wound down into an occasional undignified snort, and then she dabbed at her eyes.

“I haven't laughed like that in years,” Lily said, when she could finally speak.

“Does the body good,” the major said. He took out his timepiece and observed it for a moment. “Mrs Nicholls, it is—”

“Major Wharton, my first name is Lillian, but I prefer Lily,” she said.

He blushed predictably. “I do, too, Lily,” he said. “You're right, of course. After all that candor, I suppose we should be on a first-name basis. Call me Trey. Silly
name, but my parents were hoping that, after two sons, I'd be a girl and had nothing better to offer!”

When they had both finished laughing, he pocketed his watch. “Let me arrange for a dog cart to take you to the palace, before it gets any later.” He laughed. “Unless you'd rather have Mrs O'Grady keep you company here for the night.”

She shuddered in mock horror and was taking off her apron when she heard someone running. Lily glanced at the major. “I hope nothing else is on fire.”

The major opened the door as the night orderly practically threw himself into the room. He gasped a few seconds until he could speak, and he looked directly at her. “Mum, the hemorrhage in Unit Four…?. 'E's spouting again!”

“Then you'd best run for Captain Penrose,” she said, retying her apron and starting for the door, every nerve alert.

The orderly shook his head. “I did, mum, but he's drunker than a lord. And Surgeon Guilford took the steamer to Yalta just this morning!” He grasped her arm, all propriety thrust aside. “Mrs Nicholls, can you help? Please say you can!”

She could and she did, running after the orderly to Unit Four, where the sergeant in question stared at his spouting stump in horror and his comrades looked on helplessly. She sat beside him, elevating his ruined arm and staunching the flow with pressure and styptic, all the while speaking calmly and telling the man that these things always looked worse than they were. She hoped it was true; she knew it was something her own father would tell a terrified patient.

With the orderly holding the lamp high and Trey
assisting her, Lily threw in a half-dozen more sutures. She had never done such a thing before, and admitted it in a low voice to the major when the job was done, and the invalid's eyes had closed in weariness and relief.

“I did the best I could,” she murmured, looking at her bloody hands, which shook slightly now the emergency was past.

To her surprise, Trey knelt beside her as she still sat on the sleeping sergeant's cot. He covered her shaking hands with his own and just held them, until she felt the heart return to her body and her hands were still.

“You're an observer, too, watching Captain Penrose at work,” he whispered.

“I suppose I am,” she whispered back.

“I'm proud of you, Lily Nicholls,” he said. He stood up and pulled her up, too. “It's too late for you to go to the sultan's palace. I don't trust anyone afoot at this hour. You're taking my bed tonight.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he put his finger against her lips.

“No argument, Lily. I'll see that you're comfortable, then come back here for an hour or so. If things look calm, I'll put the orderly in charge and stretch out on the sofa in my office. No argument,” he said again.

Lily nodded, quite unable to feel shy about the matter, because she suddenly knew this man's heart. She had known for more than a year how decisive and organized he was; now she knew how kind.

After a few words with the orderly, the major escorted her to his quarters next to his office and left her there. Before he returned to Unit Four, Trey knocked on the door. When she opened it, he held out a nightshirt. “Granted, it is worlds too large for you, Lily, but
I suspect you're not choosy right now, considering that your entire wardrobe is singed beyond resuscitation.”

She took it gratefully. “Perhaps I should have taken my chances in the seraglio. Didn't Sultan Wasiri promise me a new dress or two?”

Trey nodded. He looked around to make sure no one was listening, then leaned closer, like a conspirator. “Tell you what—when he sobers up, I can ask Captain Penrose if Stephen O'Grady could spare a frock.”

She heard his laughter down the hall, and was still smiling when she closed her eyes.