“Perhaps you are unaware that his lordship has departed. He has returned to…” his wife…“to Kent,” he finished lamely, a surge of heat invading his face. Damn DeVere for putting him in this awkward position! He shifted in growing unease.
“But I was not expecting him. I know he has returned to his wife.” She rose, continuing in a soothing tone that caressed his rapidly fraying nerves. “You are mistaken in your presumption that I am his mistress. I come here only to serve him in the hammam.”
“Hammam?” Simon repeated. “You mean a Turkish bath?”
“Yes. I attend him there…or I once did.” Her eyes were again downcast.
“Do you mean DeVere has a private bagnio?”
“Yes. In his travels, Lord DeVere acquired a liking for many Eastern traditions—the hookah, the hammam, Turkish coffee.” She indicated a pair of cups and saucers on a low table beside a small lit brazier. “Is such coffee also to your liking?”
“I don’t know that I have ever tasted it,” Simon confessed.
She smiled and indicated a tasseled cushion. “If you will please sit, it would be my honor to prepare some for you.”
Simon’s heart raced from the sheer effort it took to appear normal, but Ned’s words echoed in his brain. You must learn to live again. Surely for a short time he could act as if he were just a normal man taking coffee with a woman—who made his balls ache.
Although the mental exertion was exhausting, he forced himself to stay. Lowering himself onto a cushion beside the table, Simon watched her every move. Salime knelt by the brazier and went about her task, every movement graceful and efficient. With an occasional sidelong glance, she heaped several spoonfuls of dark-colored coffee powder into a small brass pot sitting atop the brazier and then added a small amount of another substance. Simon inhaled, endeavoring to identify the scent.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Cardamom,” she answered, “a rare and expensive spice. It enhances the flavor of coffee. There are myriad ways to enhanced simple pleasures, but the senses of most English are too dull to appreciate such tastes and smells.”
Not his, by damned! Even from several feet away, his nostrils flared in response to the subtle essences of jasmine and woman, a combination that made him lightheaded with lust. He’d never had such a powerful response to a woman.
“You still have not told me why you are here,” he reminded her.
“Have I not?” She met his gaze with a lift of her brow but delayed answering the question until after she spooned some sugar into the pot with the coffee and cardamom. “I have taken up residence here at Lord DeVere’s request.”
“Why?” Simon gave her a puzzled look. “To attend him in the hammam?”
“No, Efendi.” She glanced up with a subtle smile. “To attend you.”
“Me?” Simon leaped up and angrily stalked the chamber. What was DeVere about? Was this some cruel jest? “I told DeVere! He knows I-I cannot! I mean God only knows how much I need…” He finished with an exasperated sound.
Her brows drew together. “Perhaps you misunderstand, Efendi. I’m only here as your companion.”
“My companion? What the devil does that mean?”
“It means my lord did not wish you to be alone.”
She rose from the brazier and took a step toward him.
Simon recoiled three paces, clawing his hair in a helpless gesture. “DeVere may have good intentions, but he bloody well knows I’m not fit for anyone’s company—let alone that of a beautiful woman.”
“But it is not for you to be fit for me, but for me to suit myself to you. If you do not wish to speak, I shall remain silent. If you desire me gone, I shall depart. But please accept that I am here to serve you.”
“Please sit,” she urged, backing away and gesturing to the brazier. “Your coffee, it will be burned.”
Their gazes locked. Simon struggled just to breathe. “Coffee?” he finally repeated dumbly.
She nodded. “Yes. Coffee…” a hint of a smile touched her eyes. “For now.”
Salime turned her attention back to the coffee, where she doused the brazier and removed the brass pot. “A poet of my country once said ‘a friend is what the soul longs for and coffee is just the excuse’. You seem in great need of a friend, Efendi.” She poured the foaming liquid into two small finely crafted porcelain cups. “It is also said that a single cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship.”
“Are you saying that by drinking this we are pledged to one another?”
“Yes, Efendi.” Her lips curved into a teasing smile. “For forty years. It is a lifetime for some.” She offered a cup to him with both hands.
Sweat beaded Simon’s brow from the effort of will it took just to stand there. He was unable to take it from her, unable to overcome his irrational aversion.
Her brows furrowed. “You do not wish to accept this pact?”
“Bloody hell!” he blurted. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Please, could you just place it on the table?”
“As you wish, Efendi.” She set the cup and saucer down in front of him with a perplexed look.
Simon didn’t even reach for the cup until she’d retreated, but once she settled onto her cushion, he nearly scalded his tongue in his eagerness to drink it.
Salime covertly studied this unusual man as she sipped. She didn’t know what she’d expected but certainly not this slovenly specimen of manhood, with his long, lank hair and bushy beard. He was exceedingly unkempt even by English standards.
He also maintained a curious distance from her, yet watched her with the intensity of a predator. The way he looked at her, devouring her with his eyes, made her resonate with awareness. She had experienced the desire of many men, but she had never been so affected by the sheer intensity of a man’s gaze. He brought to mind a feral cat who hungered for a taste of cream—her cream.
“Shall I read your future, Efendi? It is a Turkish method of soothsaying, to read the sediment that remains in the cup.”
“So my life is to be reduced to the dregs at the bottom of a cup?” He laughed bitterly. “Somehow that seems apropos.”
Salime tilted her head with a frown. “Do you mock me, Efendi?”
“No, it is not you but myself that I mock, Salime.”
“I am sorry for your great distress, Efendi, but it is in the past. You must learn to live in the present and look to your future. Drink,” she urged, “and it shall be revealed to you.” She took a sip, encouraging him to do the same.
“You waste your time. I have no future.”
He spoke as if he believed this. There was something strangely arresting about his stormy-colored eyes. They seemed as unfathomable to her as the deepest ocean.
“Please,” she cajoled. “If you will only humor me.”
“All right,” he capitulated with a sigh. “What would you have me do, oh great seer?”
“You do ridicule,” she accused, then moved to snatch his cup away.
“No!” He shrank back.
She stared at him, perplexed, unable to understand his extreme reserve. His reactions to her seemed at times almost fearful. “Then do you wish me to proceed?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Please forgive my boorishness, Salime. It has been far too long since I’ve had the pleasure of a woman’s company. I seem to have forgotten how to conduct myself.”
“Very well then.” She accepted his apology and knelt beside the table. “You must do precisely as I say. Drink all the coffee from only one side of the cup.”
She sipped delicately, eyeing him over the rim as Simon drained his cup and returned it to the saucer. “No. You must place the saucer on top. Like so.” She demonstrated. “Now you must make a wish,” she said.
“A wish?” Simon repeated with a dubious look.
“You promised to humor me.”
His hungry look had returned. “There is only one thing I wish at this moment—”
She arrested him with a raised hand
. “You must not speak it aloud if it is to come true. Hold the cup thusly, with the saucer still on top.” Salime held her cup at chest level. “Rotate it three times, counter-clockwise, like so. Then return it to the table.”
She placed her cup and saucer upside-down and waited for him to do the same. She then tore a brass coin from her girdle and placed it on top of each cup. “To dispel bad omens,” she explained. “We shall wait a moment, then I will read the shapes that form inside.”
“You would have me believe these random clots of coffee will divine my future?”
“The shapes are not random,” she said. “They reveal your past and your future for the next forty days.”
“Why forty days?”
“I do not know. One just accepts that it is so.” She gingerly separated the cup from the saucer, exclaiming in delight when a clump of sediment fell onto the dish. “It is a sign of the best possible kind!”
“Is it indeed?” Simon remained skeptical.
“Yes, this means you will soon be rid of all troubles and sadness.”
“Really?” His mouth twisted with renewed cynicism. “Gone, just like that?” He snapped his fingers. “And pray what other happy tidings does this oracular piece of porcelain reveal?”
Once more ignoring his mockery Salime concentrated on the blobs remaining inside the cup. “I see a lion, Efendi. This sign represents a friend of power and influence.”
“That can only be DeVere.”
“Because he is powerful?” she asked.
“He it that, but there is quite another reason I associate him with a lion.” A smile hovered over his mouth, briefly softening the harsh line.
“Why is that?” she encouraged.
“It goes back to a foolish prank from our youth.”
“A prank? Involving a lion?”
“Yes. The creature mysteriously escaped from the Royal Menagerie.” A flicker of mischief appeared in his eyes only to quickly vanish. “’Twas a youthful misdeed, best forgotten.”
“As you wish.” Disappointed, she turned her attention back to the cup. “I also see an apple.”
“Ah, the forbidden fruit. It has always been my favorite.” He plucked an apple out of a basket on the table, polishing it on his sleeve and then holding it between his palms as if it were a crystal ball. “Pray tell me, what does this prophetic fruit indicate?”
Though his persistent mockery annoyed her, she was encouraged by the hint of humor and the glint that flashed once more in his eyes.
“The apple represents creative achievement,” she replied.
“Then we are definitely speaking of my past.” With a scornful display of sharp white teeth, he took a vicious bite of the fruit, tearing it almost in half.
“No, Efendi.” She pointed inside the cup. “You see how this image straddles both the left and right side? This position indicates both past and future.”
“The future being the next forty days?”
“Yes.”
“My creative endeavors are dead! This little game of yours is no longer amusing. I have quite done with it.” He shoved away from the table, knocking the cup from her hand and smashing the fragile china on the floor.
“That is not so!” she exclaimed. “You need only let go of your bitterness…your grief to move forward again. Your passions will not flourish until you have purged your soul of the poison of self-pity.”
He raked her with a look of pure virulence, his anger charging the very air surrounding him. “DeVere put you up to this, didn’t he? This entire sham positively reeks of that meddling DeVere!”
“You are wrong,” she replied softly. “One need not be a sage, when all reveals itself in your eyes.” At this moment they were the color of a brewing tempest and his body visibly quaked—signs that the storm threatened to erupt full force.
“What can any of you know of my bitterness…my grief?” Simon snarled.
“I can see that you suffer from it, Efendi. ‘And he that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it’.”
“You all think it is so easy but you know nothing.”
“Forgive me, Efendi.” She clasped her hands and bowed her head. She had pressed him too far, expected too much. “It was never my intention to distress you.”
Turning his back, Simon stalked off, much like an injured beast retreating to lick his wounds.
Even as he withdrew into himself, his injured spirit had cried out, moving her deeply. What must it be like to carry such a burden? She had come here as a simple bargain to repay her longstanding debt to DeVere, but was now gripped by a powerful surge of compassion.
Suddenly Simon’s needs had become her own. She murmured almost inaudibly, “Forty days, Efendi… also means forty nights.”
Any soul that drank the nectar of your passion was lifted
From that water of life he is in a state of elation.
Death came, smelled me, and sensed your fragrance instead.
From then on, death lost all hope of me.
-Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Chapter Five
Simon spent the day pacing the floors and tearing at his hair like a madman. Lying on the silken counterpane, he replayed the morning over and over. He cursed himself for a bloody fool.
What a pitiful specimen of manhood he’d become. DeVere had given him a gift beyond his wildest fantasies, and now he feared he’d driven her away. The old Simon would have charmed her. He wished he could resurrect the devil-may-care Simon of his youth, but that version was dead. Snuffed like a candle flame.
Salime had offered him companionship and like an arrogant ass, he had all but spurned her. Had he lost her forever with his boorish behavior? Dear God, he hoped not! In their time together he’d been enchanted and mesmerized to the point that he’d almost forgotten himself. The thought inspired the faintest ray of hope. He prayed she hadn’t left DeVere House.
If he sent for her now, would she come? What would he do if she did? Would she touch him if he asked? Could he even bear what he so fervently longed for? It didn’t matter. He yearned for her presence even if he could only gaze upon her.
She said she wasn’t DeVere’s mistress but only attended him in the hammam. He closed his eyes, imagining himself in DeVere’s place with her beautiful hands caressing his body. The vision sent a hot surge of blood to his groin.
Instantly hard, he shed the silk banyan and lay on the bed, resigned to the brief and ultimately unsatisfying experience of tossing himself off. He massaged up and down as he envisioned her naked body with every sumptuous curve revealed in its natural glory. He tightened his grip as she took to her knees, her soft plush breasts pillowed on his thighs. Her long, delicate fingers wrapped around his shaft while her other hand fondled his stones.
She commenced sucking, drawing him deeper and slowly releasing. She clutched his buttocks, gazing up at him with hooded topaz eyes as she sucked him off. It had been so bloody long since he had known the pleasure of a woman’s mouth. The erotic visions had him near bursting. He was on the brink of climax…covered with sweat… chest heaving… but the final euphoria eluded him. Bugger it all!
He released himself with a curse. The fantasy just wasn’t enough when the real thing was so close. The irony of his situation mocked and tortured him. She was his for the taking, but he could not bring himself even to touch her.
He ached with frustration from his fruitless exertions. Simon stared into the billowing crimson canopy, filled with the need to smell her arousal, hungering to taste her essence, and throbbing with the need to sheath himself inside her. Yet his soul cried out as much for intimacy as for sexual release.
He wondered for the first time what she had seen when she looked at him. Her expression had been as veiled as her face. He rose from the bed, padding to the looking glass, where a gaunt stranger greeted him. His hair hung almost to his shoulders and the face that stared back at him, buried beneath months of beard growth, was in dire need of a wash and shave. The old Simon, a true beau of the ton in
velvets and lace, would have shuddered with revulsion. The stranger in the glass simply grimaced. It was a wonder she hadn’t fled from him in horror.
During the years of his imprisonment, he’d rarely had access to a razor and virtually none to bathing. He’d lived so long infested with vermin and deprived of even the basics that he’d come to pay little heed to his appearance. Immediately following his liberation, Simon had drunk himself into a stupor to have his entire body shaved from scalp to bollacks to rid him of vermin. He hadn’t touched a razor since—not that any blades had been offered to him once he’d refused the services of a valet. He suspected this wasn’t an oversight, but his family’s concern over his melancholia.
Now his appearance suddenly mattered. Immensely. Simon vowed to improve it, to show her that a man lurked beneath the hairy beast. He rang a servant for hot water while he stripped off the dingy shirt he hadn’t changed in days. Foraging in the dressing room, Simon located DeVere’s shaving kit.
His friend’s wooden-faced Major Domo arrived promptly with basin and steaming pitchers of water. “Would you care for any assistance, milord?”
“No. Thank you,” Simon dismissed the offer. “I’ll manage.”
But the mangled condition of his right hand greatly impeded the delicate task. The scissors felt awkward in his left hand as he trimmed the overgrowth of beard. He proceeded to strop the razor blades, happily succeeding without slicing his good hand to bits. He hoped he would be as fortunate with his face.
Using a hot towel to soften his remaining beard, Simon swirled the boar’s hair brush in the shaving soap and then applied the thick lather to his face. With no small degree of trepidation he tilted his head back, pulled the skin tight, and wielded the razor against his cheek. He made the first tentative downward swipe with a slow exhale as the blade cleared a tract of smooth skin. A second pass exposed a broader patch of white flesh.
Gaining confidence, he made a third and longer pass with the blade, only to nick the tip of his earlobe. He winced with a muttered curse at the first drops of blood. The next sweep cleared half of his right cheek of bristle, but sliced the angle of his jaw. Damn it all! He’d bloody well botched it again!
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