The Panther and the Pearl

Prologue

Bursa, Ottoman Empire

August, 1885

"Are you going to rape me?" Sarah asked in English, trying hard to keep her fear from showing in her voice.

Kalid Shah devoured her with the intense dark eyes she remembered from their previous meeting. The eunuchs on either side of her, their oiled black skins gleaming, held her in place with grips of iron.

"If I chose to do so, there would be no one here to stop me," Kalid replied flatly in the same language, with a British accent. He made a slight dismissive gesture and the eunuchs released her, stepping back. He said another short word abruptly and they left the room, bowing their way out.

Sarah looked around the ornate apartment of the Orchid Palace, then into the flowering courtyard beyond, with its splashing fountain, marble bathing pool and cages of colorful birds; it was a smaller, less elaborate version of Topkapi.

The pasha's dismissal of his servants was understandable. There was absolutely nowhere for her to run.

"Why am I here?" Sarah demanded, with as much spirit as she could muster under the circumstances.

"You belong to me now," Kalid said simply. "I may do with you as I please."

"In my country we do not purchase people!" Sarah burst out, indignation overriding caution.

"In your country people were purchased regularly until quite recently--about twenty years ago, I think," he said, smiling slightly.

"Our late President Lincoln outlawed such slavery," Sarah replied, irritated at being corrected. "And anyway, I'm from Boston. We were not involved in that awful trafficking in human lives."

"Boston is not part of the United States?" he said dryly.

"When my cousin hears what has happened to me you will be in serious trouble!" Sarah said angrily.

His smile widened. "I am the law here. Your kinsman..." he snapped his fingers... "is powerless in Bursa."

"The American embassy..." Sarah began.

Kalid threw back his head and laughed, displaying the striking white teeth of a predator. "Talkers," he said contemptuously. "It will take them six months to decide what to do. In the meanwhile, you are mine."

Sarah stared at him mutinously, unable to reply. He had shaved off his short dark beard since she had last seen him, revealing the smooth golden olive skin of a face stamped with the aristocratic arrogance expected of the prince of Bursa. There were twin curves in his cheeks where dimples would appear when he smiled, and he had a shallow cleft in his chin. His nose, slightly beaked, rose above a sculptured mouth with a full, sensual lower lip. His hair, the dense, shadeless black of the east, curled over his high forehead and around his ears, glossy and thick. He stood a head taller than she did, slim and straight, his embroidered white caftan slit open at the throat to reveal the mat of sable hair on his chest. He was, in fact, quite startlingly handsome, which added immeasurably to the uncertainty and confusion Sarah was feeling.

Kalid reached out suddenly and lifted a lock of golden hair from her shoulder, wrapping it around his dusky finger. Sarah stiffened and pulled back; he drew her closer with a slight, but insistent, pressure until she succumbed and stumbled forward.

He let the hair fall and traced the line of her bare throat with his forefinger, down to the cleft of her breasts revealed by the deep neck of her gauzy blouse. Sarah sucked in her breath as he moved his finger and rested the tip of it lightly on her nipple. Rouged with henna by the harem women who had prepared her for him, it was easily visible through the sheer silk she wore. He circled it lightly, then more firmly, until it rose and hardened at his touch.

Sarah dropped her eyes as she felt the color climbing into her face, then forced herself to lift her head and meet his burning stare defiantly. Then she slapped him as hard as she could.

He didn't flinch, merely held her gaze for a long moment, then withdrew his finger. In a flash he had seized her hair again and wound the length of it around his hand, pulling her so close to him that she was trapped against his shoulder, his nose inches from hers. It was extraordinary; he wasn't hurting her, but neither was she able to move. She stared up at him, frozen, as his black eyes with their lush lashes seemed to fill the entire world.

"I could have you killed for that," he said softly. There was no mistaking the menace in his tone.

It was a long moment before Sarah managed a reply. She drew a breath and licked her lips. "But then you would lose your investment, donme pasha," she said levelly.

He released her so suddenly that she reeled; by the time she regained her footing he was regarding her impassively.

"Perhaps I would consider it money well spent," he said.

"Are you disappointed, then?" Sarah said sarcastically. "Am I not as pliant as you anticipated? Perhaps for such a high price you expected a docile horse. You should have examined your prize a little closer before buying. This filly bites."

"Any horse can be broken to the bit," he said quietly. "In time even the wildest, fiercest filly comes to anticipate with pleasure the hands of its master."

"You will be disappointed," Sarah said tonelessly.

"I will not be disappointed," he replied confidently. "This is only the beginning."

"Sultan Hammid got the best of your deal, pasha," Sarah said. "He has your heirloom and your money and you have a ringer for a courtesan."

"What is this, ringer?" he asked.

"Useless. No good."

"Ah, but you will be very good."

"So you do plan to force me."

"Force will not be necessary." He cupped her chin in his hand and turned her face to the light. "You will beg me to take you, kourista," he said silkily, "and then beg me not to stop."

"Never," Sarah said through gritted teeth, jerking away from him. "I won't be worth the work, trust me. Just let me go."

"What, return you to the Sultan?" He seemed amused.

"He'll see that I'm released to my cousin. Maybe he'll even give back what you paid for me," she said hopefully.

Kalid shook his head. "It is not a matter of price. Sultan Hammid is unaware that my bargaining was a game, a sham. I would have surrendered anything he asked for you."

Sarah was stunned into silence. Almost despairing, she realized that this man was long accustomed to getting what he wanted, and what he wanted now was Sarah Woolcott.

He clapped his hands suddenly and the eunuchs reappeared, as if from the air.

"What is happening?" Sarah asked, looking around in a panic. What was Kalid doing now?

"They will take you back to your quarters in the harem," Kalid said, turning away. Before Sarah could say anything further she was ushered into the tiled hallway and escorted back to her room.

Kalid listened as their footsteps faded in the distance, then walked over to the samovar and poured himself a cup of thick Turkish coffee. His father would have called a servant to perform even this simple task, but he was not his father, and therein lay his problem. His life formed an uneasy bridge between east and west, like the ancient city of Constantine, and he was at home in neither hemisphere.

Kalid shoved the cup aside disgustedly and reached for the decanter of raki on the table. He poured half a glass of the colorless liquid, added water to turn it white, then dashed it off in one gulp, inhaling as the fire spread through his belly.

It had not gone well. The American woman hated him. Kalid sighed; it was to be expected. The whole world knew how independent they were, Americans and their women. He had accepted the situation when he saw her in the Sultan's harem and heard who she was.

Kalid poured a few more drops of liquor into his glass and swirled it thoughtfully. She would set him a task, but it would be worth it in the end. She was fiery; together they would make a beautiful blaze. He wanted her to reciprocate in the western way, to come to him willingly and meet his fierce desire with her own. There was no triumph in coercing an unwilling woman, that was for cowards; the real victory lay in transforming an initially reluctant opponent into an eager, trembling partner in love.

But that would take time. He'd made a bad beginning, acquiring her as brutally and bloodlessly as he had, but there was no choice. If he had not acted swiftly, she would have ended her stay in the Sultan's harem and gone back home. He would never have seen her again.

The idea was insupportable. He had to have her. His grandmother said he had been bewitched by the blue eye, just like his father, and perhaps it was true. He had a house full of women, and he wanted none of them- none but her. When he'd first seen her in the Grand Hall at Topkapi, she had met his gaze challengingly above her face veil, not averted her gaze in the coy manner of the harem women. He had been riveted. And when he noticed her pale gaze following after him with undisguised interest, he had been lost.

She was not indifferent to him, no matter how haughtily she behaved. She felt something, and it was powerful, even if she wouldn't admit it to herself. He knew his effect on women and he knew he was not wrong. But he must fan that spark hard enough, and long enough, to overcome her outrage at the way she had been taken.

She was proud and willful; very well, so was he. She would be a challenge. He was tired of the tractable harem women, this one would provide some sport. And what pleasure he would take in her when she finally submitted.

Kalid swallowed the rest of his drink and put the back of his hand to his mouth. He wanted her. He wanted her hot, searching mouth on his, her soft, long fingered hands clutching him convulsively in a frenzy of passion, her pale, yielding body opening to receive his like a sheath accepting a sword.

He closed his eyes, the sweat beading on his forehead, his fists now clenched at his sides.

He would make it happen. He must.

Memtaz waited anxiously in Sarah's chamber; set aside for the ikbal, the favorite, it was the most luxurious in the harem, second only to the apartments of the pasha's female relatives.

"What happened?" the little maid demanded.

"Nothing," Sarah replied.

"Nothing?" Memtaz echoed in puzzlement. A Circassian slave long in Ottoman service, she had been instrumental in Sarah's robing for the presentation to Kalid and was most anxious for her foreign charge to do well.

"He looked me over as if I were a prize mare he had purchased at the county fair and then sent me back here," Sarah said.

"County fair?"

"Never mind."

"He didn't touch you?"

"He touched me."

"Nothing more?"

"No."

"He was not pleased with you?" Memtaz said, distressed. "How is that possible? You look so lovely, I don't understand. How could my master think he had made a bad choice?"

"He didn't think that, Memtaz," Sarah said wearily. "He said he would have paid anything to get me. He was satisfied. With my appearance, anyway."

Memtaz stared at her, dumfounded.

"Don't look at me like that, this is your cursed country," Sarah muttered, collapsing on a plush divan covered with satin cushions. She surveyed the opulent wall hangings indifferently and then looked once more at the servant woman.

"How is it that Kalid Shah speaks English so well?"

"His mother taught him, and me," Memtaz explained. "She was a blue eye-gavur..."

"Foreigner?" Sarah said. "A captive?"

Memtaz nodded vigorously. "Yes, captured by the corsairs and sold to the valide pasha, Kalid's father. She was English, like you."

"I'm American."

Memtaz shrugged, as if the difference were of no importance. "The old master loved her very much and had no other kadin while she lived. He indulged her and when she wished her son to be sent to school in England, to learn the ways of her people, the old master complied. There is a university, oh, what is it called, Oxfar... "

"Oxford?" Sarah asked, startled.

"Yes, yes. The young master went to school there before his father died and he returned here to claim his inheritance."

Good lord, Sarah thought. This barbarian who had bought her as if she were a length of yard goods had an Oxford education? His mixed parentage did explain some things, though; his height and the honeyed tinge of his skin as well as his excellent command of her language.

"Memtaz, what is going to happen to me?" she asked the servant unhappily.

Memtaz shook her head. "Who can say? If you had been a gift from the Sultan, my master would have been forced to marry you, as is our custom. But since he gained you in this way..."

"Yes?"

"Most likely you will take your place in the harem as an odalisque."

"What's that?" Sarah asked quickly, but she knew. She had heard the term in the Sultan's Seraglio.

"Female slave."

"Like you?" Sarah asked; she was sure not.

"No, I am gedikli, reserved for household tasks. You would be haseki..." Memtaz hesitated.

"Tell me."

"Reserved for my master's pleasure."

"You mean a concubine," Sarah said dully. She had known it, but saying it aloud somehow made it worse.

Memtaz did not disagree.

Sarah closed her eyes.

"Don't look so sad, mistress," Memtaz said soothingly. "You are really very fortunate. You will have a luxurious life, with nothing to do but bathe in the hamman, anoint yourself with fragrant oils and array yourself in splendid garments, smoke the nargileh and eat the choicest sherbets and sweetmeats."

"I don't want to bathe in the hamman, Memtaz, or smoke hashish. I want to be free."

"And Pasha Kalid is young," Memtaz went on, as if Sarah had not spoken. "He is the most handsome man in Bursa, perhaps in the whole Empire. All the harem women sigh heavily for his touch and pray to be chosen for a night of love. You could be bound to an old, ugly, fat man who stinks of garlic. My master is very rich too, he inherited this palace and all its holdings from his father, the harem and the surrounding pashadom from the Golden Horn down into the Bosporous, and up to the bedouin hills..."

Sarah held up her hand to stop the speech. "Thank you, Memtaz. I know you are trying to comfort me, but I need to be alone now, to think. You may go."

Memtaz bowed.

"And Memtaz?"

The maid turned.

"What does 'kourista' mean?"

Memtaz smiled. "Oh, it is a love term, a great flattering...you understand?"

"A compliment?"

"Yes. When a man calls a woman this it means that she is the object of his aching longing, his strongest... desire."

Sarah looked away.

Memtaz withdrew quietly to the anteroom where she slept. Sarah turned and stared out the barred window of her chamber at the stone walls of the carriage house which connected the pasha's harem to the outside world.

There had to be a way to escape from this place. But how to determine it?

Sarah sighed wretchedly. What was she going to do? She was thousands of miles from home with no way to get in touch with anyone. Even if Roxalena knew what had happened to Sarah, the Princess could do nothing against her father. James was the only western person Sarah knew in the whole Ottoman Empire, possibly the only one who could help her, but her cousin was as lost to her as if she had been swallowed by an earthquake.

Sarah's throat closed in horror at her situation. She had been sold, SOLD, for God's sake, to a man who aroused such conflicting feelings in her that the very thought of seeing him again brought her to the verge of tears. Sarah lay back on the couch and looked above the red tiled roof of the carriage house at the sapphire night sky, thinking back to the series of events that had brought her to this unexpected pass, in this dangerous and exotic place.