Taming Charlotte by Linda Lael Miller

was only too true. She followed the eunuch until they came to a huge chamber, where braziers filled the air with the aroma of incense. Here, there was another dais, this one glittering with thousands of tiny mirrors. There were cushions and couches everywhere, and other women, in revealing clothes like Charlotte’s, danced to the music of the tiny bells tied around their ankles.
    Khalif was seated on a cushion in the midst of the dancers, looking very much the sultan in his costly blue robes. A gigantic sapphire decorated the front of his turban, and his bright, dark eyes were speculative as he studied the new arrival.
    “Charlotte,” he said, and she thought she saw one corner of his mouth curl in a smile, though she couldn’t be certain. He gestured with both hands. “Come forward. I would look at you.”
    Charlotte wet her lips nervously with the end of her tongue and took a few steps toward him.
    “Turn around,” the sultan instructed, not unkindly, but with the kind of casual dispatch only a potentate would have the brass to carry off.
    She made a hesitant little circle in front of him.
    “Ah,” he sighed. “Sometimes honor is a great burden.”
    Charlotte frowned, perplexed.
    “Sit,” Khalif said, with another sigh, gesturing toward a nearby cushion. “Enjoy the dancing. Tonight we are joyous before Allah.”
    Relieved and confused, Charlotte took a seat on the indicated pillow without comment. A servant gave her
boza
in a golden chalice, and she actually began to relax as she watched the dancers whirl past like a flurry of brightly colored birds.
    Charlotte had not been submitted to the training some of the other women in the harem were undergoing, but she had discerned enough about the culture to know she must not speak to Khalif unless he asked her a question. Baiting Rashad was something else—she’d already guessed that the eunuch had the patience of the Almighty—but the sultan held the power of life and death in his hands. Even though he’d been kind to Charlotte, rescuing her from his brother Ahmed that night when she was returning from Patrick’s quarters, she knew he could be ruthless if he chose, even brutal.
    “Have you seen my sons?” Khalif inquired, after clapping his hands and causing the dancers to disband. Talking among themselves, they went to the long, low table next to the dais and began sampling the staggering variety of food displayed there.
    Charlotte was startled for a moment—her mind had been wandering, skipping over the courtyard wall and across the sea in search of one Patrick Trevarren—but then she smiled and shook her head. “I wasn’t allowed into Alev’s apartments, but I heard she’d given birth to twin boys.”
    Khalif nodded, and it seemed that his whole countenance beamed with pleasure. “It is good for a man to have many sons,” he said.
    Swallowing a demand to know what was wrong with daughters, Charlotte tried to look demure. “Are there others?” she asked. “Besides the twins?”
    The sultan looked troubled. “Yes,” he said. “But one can never be sure they are safe.”
    Charlotte felt a chill, despite the uncomfortable warmth of the room, “Surely your children are protected, here in the palace—”
    “There are always spies,” Khalif mused. “There are enemies, and small intrigues among the women.” His pensive expression faded in the next instant, however; he summoned the dancers back from the refreshment table.
    Once again they whirled around him, this man who was the hub of their world, reflections of their yellow and red and blue and green garments fragmenting in the mirrors on the dais.
    Charlotte began to feel dizzy, and looked away. She immediately spotted Ahmed, leaning against a far wall, his arms folded, staring at her. Like Khalif, he wore a turban and robe, but his clothes weren’t of the same grand quality.
    She bit her lower lip and made herself watch the dancers.
    The evening stretched on interminably. There was more