They also drew away, insofar as the crowded quarters and court dress would allow. The hall was the customary seething sea of people, the ladies with their gloved hands down, keeping their hoops compressed—and out of range of the gentlemen’s swords.
He was aware of some of the ladies compressing a little more tightly and edging away from Zoe, as though in fear of contamination. He fumed, but there was nothing he could do except remember the names of each and every lady who did this and resolve that each and every one of them would live to regret it very much, indeed.
He felt a hand on his arm and looked down. It was Zoe’s hand, encased in its long white glove, with diamond bracelets hanging from the wrist. She’d had to draw near to touch him, her elbows being occupied with keeping the hoops out of danger. Her scent wafted up to him, rising, he was all too aware, from the warm flesh abundantly displayed mere inches from his nose and framed in lace and rose-colored satin. The bottommost and largest diamond of her necklace nestled in the inviting valley between her breasts.
“You look very dangerous,” she said in an undertone. “You can’t murder them only because they’re…shy.” She smiled up at him.
“I was not looking danger—‘Shy’?”
“Let’s pretend that’s what it is.”
He preferred to imagine himself knocking their plumed headdresses off their heads.
“Never mind them,” she said. “They don’t trouble me. When first I went into the harem, almost everyone tried to make me feel unwanted, and they were much less inhibited about it than English ladies.”
“I’d always imagined women in the harem as subtle,” he said, trying to match her carefree smile. He was used to wearing masks, but this was beyond him. She put up a brave front, but he knew that the stupid women about them had hurt her feelings—and they didn’t even know her!
“‘Go away you filthy thing,’ they would say,” she said. “‘Why did you come here? No one wants you.’ They called me names. They locked me in cupboards. They played silly tricks. They were like spiteful children. But those women were never allowed to grow up, really. This is nothing.” She shook her head and the plumes bobbed.
“It may be nothing to you,” he said. “It’s something to me.”
“No one here can hinder or help me now,” she said. “You got me here. The rest is up to me.” Her blue gaze shifted toward the staircase. A partition divided it as far as the first landing, where the stairway separated into two branches. One part of the mob was aimed upward on one side while another was aimed downward. Nobody seemed to be actually moving, but that was normal.
“They’ll have a difficult time keeping away when we climb the stairs,” Zoe said. “That should be amusing.”
He didn’t think so.
It took three-quarters of an hour to get from the bottom of the stairs to the top. The parade was making its way slowly through four rooms, and as they reached the corridor, she could see them all through the open doorways: the plumes bobbing, some colored, most of them white, the lacy lappets dangling over the ladies’ shoulders, the jewels blinking in the light, and the billowing gowns in every color of the rainbow.
It was very beautiful, and the sight alone would have made her happy. She was home, among her people—even if some of them didn’t want her.
Marchmont was here, her knight, ready to slay dragons for his protégée. He looked very dangerous, indeed, glowering at the company through those slitted eyes—and with a sword at his side, no less.
But he could not slay any dragons for her now. He could not present her to the Queen. Mama must do that, and Zoe must make herself presentable.
They entered the saloon, and Zoe saw her, finally: an old and clearly unwell lady under a red velvet and gold canopy. She sat on a red velvet and gold chair. The chair was not raised very high, merely two steps above the floor. The princesses and ladies-in-waiting stood nearby.
People walked up to the Queen and bowed and curtseyed. Ahead of Zoe, one girl, who seemed dreadfully young, was being presented. She wore a modest, ivory-colored gown.
But Zoe was not a young girl. She was different, and it would have been silly to pretend she wasn’t.
Today wasn’t a presentation day, though, and Zoe would not stand out so much from all the young virgins in their maidenly gowns. Most of the ladies and gentlemen who paused before the elderly figure on the velvet chair were well known to her. She said a few words to the girl, Zoe noticed, but merely nodded to most of those who made their bows and curtseys.
Zoe watched it all, fascinated.
Then there was no one left ahead of them. Mama moved up to the canopied place and there was Zoe, right behind her. Mama said something, but Zoe couldn’t hear it because her ears were ringing.
Don’t faint, she commanded herself.You’ve come this far,all those miles from the palace of Yusri Pasha,all those miles from captivity.
She glanced away from the Queen and her gaze fell upon Marchmont, who stood among the diplomats. Though his beautiful face was as unreadable as always, she discerned the conspiratorial glint in his green eyes. She remembered how he’d called her “brat.”
The dizziness passed, and she was sinking into her curtsey—deep, deep, deeper than anyone else could do, because she’d lived in a world where one prostrated oneself before superiors, and everyone was a woman’s superior. There a woman was merely a possession to be bought and used and discarded upon a whim.
Here at least a woman could besomebody.
She sank nearly to the floor, and it was like sinking into a dream, so unreal: the elderly woman under the red velvet and gold canopy and the mirrors on either side reflecting the splendor all around: the room’s rich furnishings and the colorful dress of the company and the plumes and glittering diamonds and the sparkling chandeliers.
As she rose, she became aware of the Queen’s puzzled expression and a pause, a stilling of the atmosphere. A silence fell, as though all the world held its breath.
