by Lara Blunte
Spending so much time without Adrian while the baby grew and her body changed made Catherine miss her mother painfully.
She thought of how much she had taken Lady Ware's unconditional love for granted during the months she had been obsessed with Adrian. She prayed that her mother stayed well till her return. And then, she also missed Henriette.
Leila, however, kept her company and was so affectionate and eager to please that Catherine found herself quickly loving the girl. As Leila related, partly in bad English, partly in Arabic, she was an orphan who had been rescued from a harsh master by Adrian, and she was happy in this new household, strange as it was. Catherine gave her sweets, plaited her hair and never mistreated her.
It was Leila who told Catherine what to expect from her pregnancy, as she had lived among women who had many children. Leila would make her the right teas, rub her back, adjust her pillows and tell her not to worry, because everything would be fine.
Once Catherine felt the child move and kick in the middle of the night and sat up, telling Adrian that it was about to be born, and that he should get Leila.
He touched her stomach. "It's only moving. It's normal."
"How do you know?" she asked.
He held her and kissed her, but she was still worried, so he got up, lit a candle and went searching for Leila. He came back with the girl who, upon touching Catherine, laughed and also pronounced it normal.
Adrian was already lying down on the sofa and covering himself with his coat. "Stay by her, Leila," he said. "She will not believe anything unless you say it."
Catherine pulled Leila's hand and made her climb onto the bed. The two girls held each other.
"I'm afraid," Catherine confessed in a whisper.
"La, la, la," Leila whispered back. "You should not be afraid. How did we all come to be here? It's natural."
Her mistress thought they had all come to be there through a great deal of pain, and sometimes the mother or child or both died. Her own mother had miscarried twice and another baby had died at birth.
These fears made Catherine feel ever more protective of the child she was carrying, as if she were its guardian rather than its mother. She didn't know if she loved it yet, as she was filled with confusion about this new life.
In any case, a house full of coarse men, pistols, rifles and knives was no place for her to give birth. When would Adrian come to his senses? Somehow, however, she had lost the will to mutiny. She did not want to do anything that would spoil the times of intimacy they still had together.
Adrian came in after the afternoon prayer. In Constantinople he wore informal clothes: a shirt made of strong cotton, a vest, breeches and boots. He had left jackets and cravats aside, as if he needed somehow to be ready for a fight. She supposed that he had been dressing like this for years.
He laughed out loud as he looked at the state of the room, with clothes strewn all over and dishes with pieces of fruit and sweets that had teeth marks on them. He stepped over a pile, asking Leila. "Can't you keep some order?"
Leila blew her hair off her face with a big sigh as she looked around at the room. "Master, it's so difficult! I put something away and something else comes out."
"Well, if I had something to do..." Catherine said with a meaningful glance at Adrian, “instead of nothing all day..."
He was handing several dishes to Leila, who balanced them in her hands and left, closing the door. He then sat down on the windowsill and leaned his head against the wall, watching Catherine and plucking at a lute. He started to hum, then to sing, “Tu ch’ai la bocca dolce, più del miele, tu che il zucchero porti in mezzo al cuore…”
He knew that she liked him to sing in Italian and she frowned in annoyance when she felt the sharp sting of desire. She got up and went to the mirror to take off her earrings, and disguise the fact that she wanted him to kiss her.
After a moment he swung his legs to the floor. He always seemed to know what she was thinking. He stood behind her and her heart raced as he started nuzzling her neck with his soft stubble. "You look like a brigand," she told him.
"I'll go shave, then. It won't do, to look like a brigand."
She could feel desire coursing through her. "Perhaps..."
"Perhaps?" he asked.
Her eyes were closed and she gasped when his hands brushed the side of her breasts. Her head started leaning back as if it had a will of its own. He picked her up and started carrying her to their bed.
"And what if the evil Edmund decides to come after us right now?" she teased him.
Motioning with his head toward the garden, he asked, "Why do you think we have all these men?"
He stayed with her until the next morning.
IV. Two. A House Asleep
Being cooped up in a house only increased Catherine’s anxiety about the birth of the child. There was too much time to think about it, and she always became fearful when she could not take action. She had successfully avoided becoming a coward by always staring things in the face and meeting them halfway, even when she was a child. It had been necessary.
Now her confinement, a word that could be doubly used for her state, was changing her emotions.
She sat in the evening embroidering a little chemise, her forehead twisted into a turbulent frown. Needlework was not a talent of hers, and she usually made Adrian laugh when she pricked her fingers and cursed in Arabic.
However, when she turned the chemise inside out and held it up to see the result of her work, she stopped cold. It was as if she understood for the first time that this was meant for a real baby. She stared at the chemise, speechless and wide-eyed.
"Kate?"
She started and looked up. Adrian was leaning against the door. He might have been watching her for a while.
He came forward and sat next to her. "Are you afraid?" he asked softly.
Catherine pressed her lips together like a stubborn child before answering, "No."
Adrian reached out tenderly and tucked a lock of her loose hair behind her ear. "You're brave."
The real concern in his eyes disarmed her. She looked down at the chemise and breathed deeply. "It's just so strange...In a while there will be a baby dressed in this little thing. Do you see how little it is? It will be a new person from the moment it's born. A person you and I made." Her eyes met his. "I suddenly have the feeling... I have the feeling that we have done something we had no right to do."
Adrian looked mournful. "You mustn't think like me, Kate. Having children is a joy to most people."
"I mean that I don't know if I can ensure that it will be happy. And that fills me with dread."
It was the first time in years that she had voiced a fear. Adrian took a moment to speak, as he always did when he expressed feelings. She waited, enjoying the now rare moment of closeness between them, at the same time that she was disturbed by her own thoughts.
"You feel like that because you are alone a lot of the time and with too much to think about, things that are frightening and that you've never gone through. But I have to keep you here, because I need you to be safe."
"I am safe, Adrian," she said. "You must believe that."
He shook his head. "I try to think how it was that I allowed this to happen ─ this thing that fills me with dread ─ how I allowed you and to this child to be so near wickedness. You were like a burst of life in an endless desert, but I should have resisted you. I was selfish."
"I made it difficult for you to resist. You might have had to tie me like a sack of potatoes and send me back to my mother on the back of a horse the day I went to you."
He smiled at this, the corner of his eyes crinkling. She added softly. "You didn't decide for me."
"I did decide for you because I know the world and you don't. Even if you think you do."
She touched his arm and he looked at her. "Adrian, I don't regret it. I don't regret one moment of it."
"Didn't you just say..."
&nbs
p; "I would do it all over again, every second."
He only looked more troubled at this. "You’re too generous..." He kissed her hand with feeling and then went on. “You have no reason to fear, Kate. The baby will be fine, it will be happy. We will make sure that everything is all right, you’ll see!"
He pulled her to him and she let herself melt into his embrace. He kissed her lips and her eyelids and she held on to his neck.
"But..."
"Yes?"
"Don't let yourself believe that I am inventing stories, that there is no danger. I beg you with everything I have, help me keep you safe."
Something in his voice, something unguarded, made her reach out and touch his cheek. He grabbed her hand and held it tightly. It took him a moment to overcome his emotion and speak again "You don't understand what it is to lose everything that is precious, you don't know what it's like to live like a ghost."
She saw that he had come to care for her more than he had ever meant to. Fighting her own emotion, in a small garbled voice Catherine said, "You will never lose me."
But two mornings later something happened which could scarcely have been avoided, considering how many precautions had been taken.
Catherine had walked in the garden two hours before, and was now enjoying the warmth of a fire in her room. Tea and delicious cakes had been brought by Nabil, but Leila had decided to dress her hair differently, and neither woman had paid attention to the tray.
They were laughing at Leila’s creations, which Catherine would inspect in the mirror above the fireplace, only to sit down again so that the girl could invent something else.
Catherine felt almost sleepy as Leila tugged softly on her hair. And yet, it was the very silence that suddenly made her sit up; her ears almost pricked as she listened.
“What is it?” Leila asked.
“Sss-h!” Catherine held her hand.
Where were the usual noises, the talk between the guards down at the gate, the bustling in the kitchen, where they always seemed to be preparing something, the barking or whining of the dogs that wanted to be constantly fed?
There were no noises at all.
Catherine stood up and ran to the window: there were no guards at the gate, but she saw two of them asleep on the ground, and a dog asleep next to them.
“Hide, Leila!”
“Lady?”
“Hide!” Catherine cried more urgently as she heard booted steps coming up the stairs.
She recognized Nabil’s step, the whispering of his flat sandals on the stone; she had little to do all day but listen to steps and movement, and she knew that the persons coming up with Nabil were two, and that she had never heard their steps before.
Leila had tried pulling her by hand, but Catherine had pushed her and frowned at her till she obeyed. Leila hid in the wardrobe, a hand to her mouth so she would not give herself away. The people coming meant mischief and they would not leave without her, but the girl could still be saved.
Catherine knew that Leila would be able to see whoever the strangers were, and tell Adrian what had happened. She took the knife that was under the mattress and waited.
There was a quick knock on the door and then it opened. She did not have to see Nabil’s face to know that he looked nervous. When he spotted her, his eyes widened in panic.
“Lady, why did you not drink your tea?”
“Why do you ask, Nabil? What did you put in the tea?”
The boy was pushed aside and she saw strangers enter the room; it was clear that she was being abducted. They seemed in a hurry, but she would not go obediently.
“She has a knife,” the traitor, Nabil, cried out.
“You little…”
Catherine hardly knew what she would have called the boy, as the men had reached her and twisted her arm to get the knife which she tried to draw on them. It fell to the floor.
She began kicking forward and backward, and biting. One of the men cursed and the other laughed, saying in Arabic, “She’s like a cat!”
Sensational literature had never been to Catherine’s taste, so she still held hope that there was some mistake, or that these people had only come to rob them; if so, Nabil would know where everything of value was.
But no one was making a move toward her jewels. Instead, one of the men was holding her hands behind her as the other said, “Well, then she needs to be tied up like a chicken!”
Her hands and feet were tied even as she struggled. She saw that Nabil looked around for Leila, but did not give her away. There was greed in his face but also fear: perhaps he was beginning to understand that whoever had paid him meant business.
Catherine hoped that Leila would not be found. When her head was covered by a black cloth she thought of Adrian and his despair when he came home and did not find her; but then, because she had always hated confined spaces, she became sure that she would not be able to breathe, and her lungs started begging for air. She lost consciousness just as they lifted her.
IV. Three. A Tall, Fair Man
Catherine's eyes flew open and she saw that she was in bed and that it had all been just a dream, an awful dream that seemed to have lasted a long time.
Yet, when she got used to the darkness, she realized that this was not her room.
It was a large and opulent bedroom that she had never seen before. She was lying on an enormous bed surrounded by red curtains. Someone had removed her outer garment, and when she lifted her head cautiously, her hair moved freely down her back. The latticed shutters were closed, though there were rays of light coming through the cracks that told her it was still day.
Everything came back to her: she had been abducted, and it was Nabil who had betrayed them. She hoped Leila was safe. Her blood froze at the thought that she was a prisoner, but she had no time to think, as a key was turning in the heavy wooden door.
A girlish face peeked in and Catherine stood still.
"Lady?" the girl said in English. She held up one hand, showing that she meant no harm, and brought the other hand into the room. She was carrying a bowl of water and a towel. "Lady, may I enter?"
Catherine asked suspiciously, "Are you alone?"
"Yes," the girl said in her high, sweet voice.
She walked in. Catherine eyed the door quickly, ready to run, but someone outside pulled it, shut it, and locked it.
The girl moved to the table, setting the bowl down. She then went to the window and opened the shutters. Bright light flooded in. Catherine narrowed her eyes and looked away. When she managed to look at the window again, she could see blue sky and the tops of palm trees. She must be on the second floor of a house.
"Where am I?" she asked the girl. "And who are you?"
"I'm Fatima," she said. "I'm here to serve you."
"Serve me?"
Catherine approached the table and looked at the bowl. She could smell a scent in the water, something like jasmine, though it was the middle of winter. The towel was made of expensive linen
"I'd like to know where I am and why I'm here!" Catherine said sharply.
"The master is waiting for you in the garden," Fatima said, almost in a whisper. She didn't seem eager to say anything else.
Telling herself that it was better to seem composed when she met her abductor, Catherine plunged her hands into the warm water to wash her face. She snatched the towel from Fatima, who looked startled. The girl made a move as if to help her with her hair, but Catherine backed away and bound it behind her neck with the ribbon that she was offering.
Fatima knocked on the door and it was opened by a man with an unfriendly face. Catherine threw him a glance out of the corner of her eye: he was dressed like a house servant and seemed very protective of his keys. She watched him hang them from his waist.
The girl led her through a long corridor with closed doors and then down a stone staircase. They passed a large drawing room, but Catherine only had time to glance inside as they proceeded out the door of the house to a garden
where some hardy plants and trees had resisted the February chill.
Two men stood at the entrance of the house. She thought she recognized the brute who had abducted her, but neither of them looked at her. By their dress they were both Arabs. She saw they had belts with daggers and would have found that detail ridiculous if she weren't legitimately frightened.
A European man was waiting for her at the end of the garden by a round table. A tall, fair man.
Edmund.
As she approached him, she saw that though he must be only a few years older than Adrian, there were deep furrows on his forehead and around his lips. His blue eyes were extraordinarily intelligent as they bore into hers, and there was neither arrogance nor menace in them.
She steeled herself to keep calm. He moved toward her and she saw that he had a bad limp and walked with the aid of a cane. "Good afternoon, Lady Catherine." He bowed gracefully. "I have only spoken a few words to you and I must already ask for your forgiveness."
She looked at him steadily, hiding her fear. "You are Edmund Lawson," she stated. He bowed again. "You look quite healthy for a dead man."
"Ah!" he smiled and said pleasantly, "The underworld must agree with me!"
It was strange to be in the presence of the ghost that had haunted Adrian for years. He was looking at her with a conciliating smile and did not seem like a cold-blooded murderer, in spite of having had her brought to him by force.
"Mr. Lawson, the rules of civilized behavior cannot wholly escape you," she finally said. "You have abducted me in the most preposterous way! I must demand that you set me free at once."
He leaned on his cane with a regretful expression. "Alas, Lady Catherine, it is my cousin who doesn't observe the rules of civilized behavior ─ so how can I?
"What have I to do with whatever bad blood there is between you and Lord Halford?
