Taming Charlotte by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

spirits, and she uttered a soft sigh when she was covered with a blanket as light as an angel’s wing and left to sleep. After that, she drifted, hearing the tinkly music of strangeinstruments, the chatter of women, the splashing of the water in the pool.
    She dreamed she was back on board the
Enchantress
with Patrick, lying naked and perfumed on his bed. And he was touching her…
    “So pretty,” a speculative voice said. Someone smoothed Charlotte’s damp hair back from her forehead, as though she had fever. “So pretty and so far from home.”
    The fact that the words had been spoken in English finally penetrated Charlotte’s daze, and she slowly lifted her eyelids. A blue-eyed, blond woman, probably in her early thirties, smiled down at her.
    The woman’s hands were stained orange with henna, a custom Charlotte had read about. Her robes were of the finest blue silk, and a border of tiny birds and flowers trimmed the sleeves, bodice, and hem, each minute figure worked in silver thread. Her hair tumbled down her back, wavy and soft and just the color of a palomino’s mane.
    “I am Alev,” she told Charlotte. “I am a favorite of the sultan, and I will soon be a
kadin. “
    Charlotte knew her eyes had gone wide, but she couldn’t help it. She and her friends at school in Paris had read every naughty harem novel they could get, and she knew that Alev aspired to be a wife.
    “You will be a favorite too, I think,” Alev went on, assessing Charlotte with troubled eyes. “Perhaps tonight you will dance for Khalif, and if you catch his fancy, you may also share his couch.”
    Charlotte sat bolt upright, forcing the other woman to draw back. She saw then that Alev was heavily pregnant.
    “I’m not sharing anybody’s couch,” Charlotte said fiercely. “I’m a friend of Captain Trevarren’s and I’ll be leaving with him when he sails.”
    Alev looked Charlotte over again, this time with a pitying expression. “You are very naive,” she said, “but you will learn the ways of men and of harems in time.”
    Charlotte blinked, covering herself as best she could with the blanket. It was made of some gossamer fabric, white and loosely woven, smooth against the skin. “I’m not staying,” she insisted.
    Alev patted her hair, which had curled in the humid air. “Whatever you say,” she agreed, with an indulgent sigh. “It’s very nice here, you know. We have every luxury, and Khalif is not a bad master.”
    “Who are you?” Charlotte asked, unable to believe she was in such a place, having such a conversation. She frowned at Alev’s fair hair. “You can’t have been born here, in Riz.”
    The other woman sighed and sat on a nearby couch, smoothing her skirts with elaborate care. “Once, I was called Olive. I was sailing from England to France as a girl, to attend a special boarding school, and our ship was overtaken by pirates.”
    Charlotte’s throat constricted with horrified sympathy. “How old were you?”
    “I was sixteen,” Alev answered, in a detached tone, as though such things happened every day. And maybe in that part of the world, Charlotte reasoned, they did.
    “You must have been terrified!” Charlotte couldn’t help taking one of Alev’s hennaed hands in her own. “Why didn’t the government do something?”
    Alev smiled contentedly. “Governments are not as eager to save individual citizens as we would hope. And yes, I was frightened, but I have since learned to enjoy my luxuries. I’m pampered here—I have a slave and apartments of my own. Khalif sees that I am given all the sweetmeats and chocolates I want, and he is…” She paused, blushing, and averted her eyes. “He is very handsome, and he knows how to make a woman happy.”
    Charlotte blushed, too. She knew about intimate relations between men and women, of course, because she’d grown up in the American West and attended school in Paris. Still, she’d never had what she and all her friends called the Experience,