Desert Rake. Louise Allen
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Название: Desert Rake
Автор: Louise Allen
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon Short Stories
isbn: 9781408981542
isbn:
‘I have sent a note to the official at the Sublime Porte who deals with such things. I expect an answer within a few days.’
Caroline told herself that she should not expect an instant response, and requested the loan of an interpreter who could show her around the city while she was waiting. Mr Lomax had departed even more promptly than he had expected, in the service of a returning diplomat rendered temporarily lame as a result of an injury.
She had been promised a guide for the afternoon, and had retreated to the sitting room placed at her disposal to con her notebooks for those sights she wished to visit first, when the Secretary reappeared, an expression of mixed alarm and satisfaction on his face.
‘The most extraordinary thing, Lady Morvall. A message from the Topkapi Sarayi: the Sultan will receive you personally in audience.’
‘The Sultan? But I did not ask for an audience! How has he even heard of me?’
‘Possibly officials dealing with your application for a firman were intrigued by the fact that a titled English lady is asking for such a thing. Lady Hester Stanhope caused no little stir, you know—she still does, for all that she is now in Syria.’
‘Well, I am no Lady Hester.’
‘Indeed not, I am glad to say,’ Mr Hamilton pronounced, reminding her forcefully of Hubert for a moment.
‘I presume declining is out of the question?’
‘Most certainly. I beg you would do nothing so deleterious to British interests, ma’am. This is a great honour.’
‘But what should I wear? How should I behave?’
‘Dress and behave as though you were summoned to a daytime audience with the Prince Regent, Lady Morvall.’
‘Should I wear a veil?’
‘No—His Majesty will want to meet an English lady in her native habit, as it were. His Majesty the Sultan Mahmud has a French mother, you know. She is a great influence upon him.’
‘His father married a Frenchwoman? I had no idea.’
Mr Hamilton coughed discreetly. ‘Not… er… married as such. Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, the Queen Mother, was captured by slavers and sold into the harem. She is the cousin of the late Empress Josephine.’
‘My goodness.’ Caroline was virtually speechless. It was like a sensational novel. But this was real. ‘When must I go?’
‘Tomorrow, after morning prayer. I will send a guide with you who can then take you on a tour of the old city, if you wish. Or you can return here if the visit has wearied you.’
‘Thank you.’ Just getting through an audience in a palace where the Queen Mother was a captured French slave was as far ahead as she could think. ‘I must go and tell my maid, and decide what we are to wear.’
‘Your maid is not included, Lady Morvall. To take her would imply a lack of faith in the protection His Majesty is able to extend to a visitor.’
‘Oh.’ One could only hope that in 1817 keeping female visitors was not considered an acceptable way of filling vacancies in the harem. ‘Well, I had better choose a gown and practise my court curtsey, Mr Hamilton.’
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