Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Walter Stewart accompanied Richard to a modest cottage on the outskirts of Greenwich four days later. Richard loathed the errand.
If it distracted me from Lily, this damned trip might have value, but it doesn’t. At least it frees me from seeing all the messages from Sudbury House about my “ludicrous behavior.”
A groom engaged in removing the knocker from the door and hanging a black mourning wreath tried to deny them entrance.
“Tell Mrs. Clarke the Marquess of Glenaire wishes to pay his respects.” The man pulled his forelock and went inside to comply.
“She may deny us, my lord,” Stewart mused.
A woman whose husband died with his throat cut in an alley while doing England’s bidding might well choose not to see the man who sent him there. Damn Volkov.
“She has the right,” Richard answered. I hope she refuses us. These things are always messy. Still, to avoid the call would be cowardly.
“Volkov killed him on my watch. It is for me to see to his widow,” he went on.
“Are we certain it was Volkov?” Stewart asked.
“Clarke had him in sight. We know he followed him after he sent notice to us from the tavern.”
Stewart nodded glumly. “About the widow, my lord, won’t the service arrange a pension?” The young man shifted uncomfortably.
“Of course,” Richard answered. But an inadequate one. He couldn’t count the number of pensions he supplemented from his own pocket.
To Richard’s disappointment, the widow didn’t deny them. She served them tea and burdened them with John Clarke’s dedication to England, pride in the Foreign Service, and personal devotion to the Marquess of Glenaire.
“John worshipped you, my lord. He would be proud to know you sit here with me.”
Richard forced a smile he hoped hid his consternation. “We regret the cause of this visit, ma’am.” He cleared his throat and withdrew a packet of paper, anxious to cut the visit short.
The arrangements required little explanation. Mrs. Clarke clutched the papers to herself.
“I knew what he did put him in danger,” she breathed. “Though he made light of it. He always said if anything happened to him the marquess would see to me.” She began to weep silently. “You didn’t fail him.”
I failed him when he went after Volkov alone. Richard needed air suddenly—badly. He rose to leave.
“I know you must leave,” the widow said with a loud sniff to hold back tears, “but I must know. Please tell me.”
“Ma’am?”
“How did my John die? Did he suffer?”
“He died of a single knife blow, swift and easy, Mrs. Clark. He didn’t suffer.” The lie slipped off his tongue with practiced ease; the truth stuck rock hard in his chest all the same.
“It is well you didn’t tell her,” Stewart said when they were safely gone. “No woman should know about such things.”
The doctor’s report had gruesome detail on every line. The man’s throat had been cut, his belly breached, his body mutilated. Either Volkov lost himself in rage over being thwarted or he wished to send them a message.
“Volkov is an animal. We will find him,” Richard said. He had ordered the casket sealed before being sent to the widow for burial.
The two of them walked downhill in sunshine so bright it glinted off the Royal Observatory like a beacon, shone off the trees in beams of green, and shimmered on the Thames where it lapped restlessly in its banks.
“About that, sir. I came here this morning to tell you. A man matching his description sailed for Alexandria yesterday. Our man in Falmouth is certain it is him.”
“Alexandria?” Or any port in the Mediterranean. If they stop in Gibraltar or Lisbon, he can change ships to anywhere in the world.
“Yes, my lord. And sir, there is something else.”
The marquess turned his head to raise an impatient eyebrow but kept walking.
“Lily Thornton,” Stewart said.
Richard could feel his cheeks stiffen from the force of his clenched teeth.
“You didn’t forbid me to follow up, so I thought—”
“What did you find, Stewart?”
“In London, nothing. We’ve kept watch, and she never came back. I thought that since we’re scouring the ports for Volkov—” he gave a dramatic shrug.
Volkov and Lily.
“She left with him.” Richard’s heart stuttered, and he skipped a step.
“No, no! At least I don’t think so,” the man walking beside him went on. “We’re fairly certain Volkov left on the Oceana for Alexandria. But I had people scour recent passenger lists. A woman about Miss Thornton’s description left five days ago for Malta on the Captain James.”
“Her description?”
“Single woman traveling alone with just the one servant. I took the liberty of interviewing some laborers at the dock. They remembered because she came all swathed in shawls. Tiny thing, like Miss Thornton, and the servant was big. Memorably tall.”
“‘Just the one servant,’” Richard mused. “Too tall to be Volkov?”
“That’s the thing, my lord. The laborers thought he was a Muslim, or some exotic from the East.”
Richard stopped short. “Are you sure?”
Walter Stewart looked back at him without answering.
“Of course you are or you wouldn’t have told me.” They resumed their walk.
“Can’t be one of Sahin Pasha’s people,” Stewart said. “The lot of them embarked from the navy docks in Portsmouth for Constantinople the same day.”
Volkov had contacts in the East. He could hire a thug to—what? Guard? Kidnap? Imprison?
“Sorry I couldn’t find more, my lord.”
She wouldn’t go with Volkov voluntarily. I saw her face at Chadbourn Park. The man terrifies her.
“She might have gone off on her own, you know, my lord,” Stewart continued.
“Yes. She would do that,” Richard answered. Why can’t she just stay put where she belongs? Where I can see to her protection.
They reached the quay. Richard put one foot on the steps to a waiting river taxi and turned to Stewart who waited expectantly above him.
“I’m going back to London,” Richard said. “There’s nothing left to uncover here. Return to Falmouth and see if you can find someone who can place Volkov on the Oceana for certain.” He stepped into the small boat.
“And Lily Thornton, my lord?”
“Unless you discover she went with Volkov, she isn’t the Foreign Office’s concern.” Mine perhaps, but not yours.
The oarsman pulled out into the stream, and the slap of the oars pulled him back toward London, back to the affairs of state. Where are you, Lily? What have you done?
If he couldn’t reach her, he couldn’t change her mind. He leaned back and squinted up where stars that ought to shine lay hidden behind city smoke and foul miasma. Lily wanted to manage her own life. He ought to leave her to it.
Let her try it anyway.
Three days at sea and Lily’s uncharacteristic mal de mer continued unabated. Pregnancy had stolen her sea legs as well.
Ahmet looked down his substantial nose at her, his now familiar sympathy shining in his eyes. “You wish to rest?”
She shook her head. “Could we try something sitting still for a while?” She refused self-pity. You brought this on yourself. You got what you asked for.
The delegation assigned Lily a tiny cabin apart from Sahin and the rest of his entourage, one just large enough for lessons in court protocol. Ahmet had been assigned to teach Lily what she needed to know to impress the Valide Sultan.
He had demonstrated how to bow out of a room for the past half hour. Lily thought she might have it; she knew for certain the bowing contributed to dizziness. The ways of the Ottoman court remained strange, but Lily persisted. The more I learn, the better I will be able to get along.
“I assume we should also skip the protocols for the serving of food?” Ahmet asked rhetorically. Amusement lurked in his eyes.
Lily felt herself pale. “Please,” she managed, swallowing hard.
“Let’s review the hierarchies inside the women’s quarters then.” He began to drone on, listing the hierarchy beginning with the lowliest servant girl or Kalfa.
When he began expanding on the rights and privileges of the various ranks of imperial wives from the Iqbal, who may be favored with the sultan’s attention but have no children, to Haseki, who would be awarded her own quarters and servants once she had given birth, Lily’s head began to spin.
Higher still was the Kadin, who had given the sultan a son.
The concept of such a marriage and the structure of privilege felt as strange to Lily as the words themselves.
Where will I fit? As Kalfa, no doubt, or worse. Surely not wife.
“Repeat the words for me, please Ahmet.”
“You learn quickly, Lady.”
She smiled wanly. “Languages come to me.” Language, she knew, held the key. She could carve out a place for herself as a teacher only with perfectly fluent Turkish.
Kalfa, Iqbal, Haseki, Kadin, Kafir. Kafir—infidel.
“Kafir? That is me. Do you object to teaching a kafir, Ahmet, and a woman at that?”
“I live to serve women,” the man said with a smile. “As to the rest,” he shrugged, “You learn quickly. It is my privilege to teach.”
She smiled back. “So shall I. It is my wish to teach.”
“Then we both serve the women of the sultan’s household, no? Shall we continue?”
Ideas felt less strange with repetition.
The rigid order of precedence reminded Lily of the house party at Chadbourn Park.
Chadbourn’s guests had gathered before dinner and promenaded in rank order to their seats.
The seats had been laid out according to the rules of etiquette and rank.
The two worlds had more in common than someone might suppose.
The Seraglio need not be strange. One need only learn the rules to get along.
Lily would do it. She had no other choice.
She had burned her bridges behind her. If Richard found her background lacking, he would find the scandal of life in the Seraglio insupportable. He would never have her after this.