Wanton:. Noelle Mack

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Later, in her own chamber, she sat at a desk inlaid with geometric designs in ebony and mother-of-pearl, writing out a bill for Georgina’s coming sessions. Mary was next to her, settled in a comfortable armchair.

      “Wherever did you get that desk?”

      “It was shipped from Tashkent with the rest of our things. It used to be in my mother’s room. She valued it highly.”

      “That’s why I’ve never seen it. A mysterious female, your mother. No one caught more than a glimpse of her either, not while you and Jehane were girls, according to my sources. Not ever.”

      Mary had an unfortunate tendency to pry, especially when she had a glass of whisky in her hand. She took a large swallow and coughed.

      “Would you like some water?” Severin asked.

      “No, thank you. What was your mother’s name again?”

      “Giselle.”

      “How very exotic. From Persia, wasn’t she?”

      “No. She was French, but raised in Constantinople. Her servant was Persian. There seems to be some confusion on the matter. I cannot imagine who would spread such tales.”

      Mary narrowed her eyes. Severin braced herself for the inevitable rude inquiry. “Oh. Aren’t those women raised to do nothing but obey and be beautiful and bear children?” She gulped the last of the whisky. “And someone said that your father bought and paid for her. In gold. Is that true?”

      “Who told you that?”

      “Don’t be cagey, Severin. Aren’t we friends?”

      “Of course.” Severin concentrated on Mary’s bill, adding an extra charge of several guineas for nothing at all.

      “Then tell me everything.”

      Severin lay her pen down in the slot on the inkwell and blotted the bill meticulously.

      “Please?”

      She sighed as she handed Mary the slip of paper. “My father traveled a great deal. He was not the only Englishman who acquired a wife abroad and a servant or two into the bargain.”

      He’d traded in silks for several companies based in London and Samarkand, and lived like a pasha in Tashkent, to the north.

      “Indeed not,” Mary said eagerly. “There’s a fellow who has five beautiful houris under lock and key in his Mayfair house. A factor in the East India Company, he is. And I heard that he keeps a harem in Calcutta too.”

      Her father had not been that ambitious. He had started out with a traditional wife, European, and kept a harem of one: Ruksana, her mother’s maid, who died giving birth to another daughter, Jehane. Growing up innocent of how others lived, the two girls thought nothing of their domestic arrangements in Samarkand and, later, Tashkent, until they’d moved to England. They had not been told they were half-sisters for a very long time.

      They were as close as twins, and could finish each other’s thoughts before the words that expressed them were spoken. Only when they had left Tashkent to resettle in London, and were permitted the greater liberty of English girls, did they discover that their previous domestic arrangements were regarded as unusual. Even scandalous. Her father’s wealth and eccentricity begged questions wherever they lived.

      Severin could not deny that her mother’s servant had been bought and paid for.

      Her mother, Giselle, hid herself away from the outside world wherever they lived, an unhappy wife. That her maid had become her rival for her lord and master must have galled her deeply, but Severin had been a baby at the time. Her mother had never mentioned it until the last week of her life.

      “The Persian servant was brave to come to London, all the same.”

      Dig, dig, dig. Mary was not likely to stop. Severin made no response. She didn’t have to explain that Ruksana was no longer alive.

      “Veiled, I expect. I had a costume like that once,” Mary prattled. “Had a devil of a time trying to see out.”

      Severin only nodded. She did remember the long voyage over land and sea, and their arrival at the vast and gloomy warehouses of the East India docks. Her father had handled it all. Her mother had been too withdrawn and too miserable to demand much of anything from him by that point.

      In some ways Giselle had not been that different from her luckless servant. She obeyed her husband in everything and followed him, accepting her lot as destiny. At least Severin’s father had made over the house he bought in London into an exotic hybrid of East and West, like his wife’s native city of Constantinople. From the outside the house looked like any other. Though he left Giselle well provided for before his untimely death, his daughters did not mourn him overmuch. Grieving, СКАЧАТЬ