Louise Allen – Desert Rake (страница 3)

‘So that will be Seraglio Point, where courtesans who offended would be tied up in silken sacks and thrown into the water?’ She pointed to where the stranger had indicated.

‘Er… yes.’ Mr Lomax did not seem comfortable discussing courtesans. ‘And not only such… er… ladies. Constantinople is still at heart a violent city in many ways; it is essential that you take the advice of the staff at the Embassy and do not go out without your escort.’

Caroline nodded with a meekness that would have stunned Sir Hubert. But defying her stepson’s pompous demands for respectability was one thing; taking advice from an expert in an alien city was simply common sense. Besides anything else, to travel outside Constantinople she would need a firman, the equivalent of a passport, showing the Sultan’s permission to go freely about the countryside, and to secure that she must behave with impeccable regard to all the conventions.

They remained at the rail as the ship swung into the Golden Horn and slowly glided into dock on the opposite bank to the old city. Above them loomed the hill where the quarters of Galata and Pera housed the Westerners and their embassies.

‘I think we should get back to our luggage,’ Mr Lomax pronounced. ‘If you would just care to take my arm, Lady Morvall, then there will be less risk of you being jostled in the crowd.’

Jostling was the least of her anxieties. Wishing her smart bonnet possessed a veil, Caroline kept her eyes down, only risking raising them as she negotiated the gangplank to the dockside. There, in front of her, a clear head over most of the jostling throng of porters and passengers, was an instantly recognisable pair of broad shoulders and a rakishly tilted broad-brimmed hat. Then she was down on the firm ground and he had gone.

She did not realise she had sighed aloud until Mr Lomax looked at her with some concern. ‘Are you quite well, my lady? Perhaps you are feeling a little unsteady after so much time at sea? I have sent a porter for a carriage; it will not be long coming.’

‘No, no, I am quite well, Mr Lomax. I was merely reflecting on my first Turkish… encounter.’ And hopefully all the rest would consist of colourful sightseeing and interesting exploration. It had, at least, taught her the foolishness of dreaming about taking a lover. I simply do not have the courage for that sort of thing, and it is as well to discover it now. Imagine what I would have done if he had made me a proposition!

The British Embassy was a handsome double-fronted residence, with overhanging enclosed balconies and great double gates through which the carriage bearing Caroline’s party swung, followed by the carts with their luggage.

Feeling slightly dazed by the crush of the streets, the babble of different tongues, the colour and endless details that had her head swivelling from one side to the other until she was dizzy, Caroline was only too glad to allow Mr Lomax to take control. She was going to have to learn to manage affairs herself soon, she knew, for she had only hired him as far as Constantinople, and he would return as soon as he acquired a new client to escort.

‘Lady Morvall—welcome.’ The thin, scholarly man who hastened down the steps of the inner courtyard held out his hand and shook hers with enthusiasm when she extended it. ‘Terrick Hamilton, ma’am, I am the Foreign Languages Secretary to the Ambassador, who sends his most sincere apologies for not being here to greet you in person. Unfortunately there is a tricky matter with some English and Russian traders on the Black Sea coast, and Sir Robert has found it necessary to deal with it in person. Do come in, ma’am.’

He snapped his fingers at a number of men who were waiting in the shadows. Caroline studied the turbans—no two seemed exactly the same—and noted the baggy trousers beneath the knee-length tunics that most of them wore; they would form the first subject for her Constantinople sketchbook, she resolved. The men began to unload the trunks.

‘Dikkat! Yavafl!’ Mr Hamilton called as one or two bags were dropped.

Caroline tucked the words away in her mind: careful and slow. She had seen them written down; now she tried to pay attention to pronunciation, determined to learn the language as much as possible. She would need guides and a dragoman, but the more she understood of what was going on around her, the less vulnerable she would be.

Established at last in her room, with only Gascoyne for company, Caroline cast off her bonnet and light pelisse and flopped down on the bed. ‘Phew! Gascoyne, do sit down and rest a while. The housekeeper says she will send up some refreshments and warm water shortly. How good it is to be in the quiet and to have nothing moving about!’

‘Indeed it is, my lady.’ Gascoyne, who had been with her only since William had died, and was outwardly the most conventional and starched-up of dressers, had amazed Caroline by offering to come with her on her journey. She had expressed a desire to visit what she described sweepingly as foreign parts, but, much to Caroline’s secret amusement, insisted on maintaining herself and her mistress in a state which would pass muster in Bond Street.

Suggestions that bonnets might be replaced with sunhats, that corsets need not be laced quite so tight, and that the weather was hot enough to dispense with the lightest of pelisses outside, were met with a disapproving sniff. ‘You are an English lady, my lady,’ Gascoyne would pronounce. ‘And I know what is due to one of my ladies, whatever heathen customs might prevail.’

Caroline had given up explaining that Italy and Malta were far from heathen, and knew she faced an impossible task in convincing the dresser that Constantinople might be different from what they were used to, but its inhabitants were God-fearing, each in their own way, and that it could be considered as sophisticated and highly developed as London. More so in some ways, if what she had read about the baths was true. Caroline was looking forward to trying out a hammam.

With a characteristic sniff Gascoyne shed her gloves, bonnet and pelisse, placed them neatly on one chair and sat, bolt upright, on the edge of another. Even that appeared to strike her as frivolous idleness, for she drew a portmanteau towards her and began lifting out underwear and sorting it onto the camphor wood chest next to the chair.

‘What happens now, my lady, if I may be so bold as to enquire?’

‘We rest here at the Embassy, and one of the secretaries will send a request to the Sublime Porte—the palace—for us to be granted a firman which will allow us to travel. Then I can find a suitable dragoman and porters, and buy pack animals, horses and supplies. Then we set out for Anatolia.’

‘Where’s that, my lady?’ Gascoyne frowned at a minute mark on a camisole and placed it to one side. ‘I thought we were arrived, now we’re in Turkey.’

‘It is part of Turkey—the land to the east.’ Caroline rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin on her hands. ‘It is unchanged for centuries, and there are many beautiful natural features and fascinating archaeological treasures that are hardly known about. This book—’ She pulled over her bulging reticule and dug out the volume she had been carrying around since leaving England. ‘This book tells all about what has been discovered so far. It is by the best-known explorer of the area—Mr Fenton. He writes so compellingly.’

Gascoyne looked down her long nose at the proffered volume. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it, my lady. It doesn’t sound very suitable for English ladies either. How many carriage dresses do you think I should pack? And what about evening wear? Full dress, or only demi?’

‘Neither!’ Caroline rolled off the bed and straightened her gown at the sound of a knock on the door. ‘Come in. Oh, thank you; will you also send bathwater to my dresser’s room, please?’

The housekeeper bowed, and supervised the setting out of a cold collation, while menservants struggled in with a bathtub and ewers of hot water. Disappointingly it seemed that the Embassy did not have its own hammam.

‘No evening gowns, my lady?’

‘No. I shall take two gowns, and otherwise all those riding habits I had made.’ Caroline bit her lip as a thought struck her. ‘Provided I can find a lady’s side-saddle out here. If I cannot, then I shall just have to resort to breeches and a long coat over. It can’t be so difficult to ride astride, can it? Men do it all the time.’

‘Astride? In breeches? But, my lady, that is enough to ruin your reputation!’

‘Amongst whom?’ Caroline enquired tartly. ‘Anatolian shepherds?’

‘But are we not taking a travelling carriage? I cannot ride on any sort of saddle,’ Gascoyne wailed.

‘I will hire a small carriage for you and the luggage,’ Caroline promised, firmly trampling down the thought that roads to run a carriage over might not exist. The idea of Gascoyne on a camel was irresistible, if cruel, but she kept it to herself. Time enough to worry about that if the problem arose. ‘Now, shall we have our baths before we eat?’

Gascoyne, despite an initial protest that she should stay and attend on her ladyship before taking her own bath, was surprisingly easy to persuade—presumably too shaken by the awful revelations about their mode of transport to protest about anything else. She went off, after unlacing Caroline’s corsets and abjuring her to lock the door behind her.