The Kadin - Bertrice Small [184]
She sat very quietly, listening to his deep voice.
“There were,” he continued, “several things he said that puzzled me. He spoke of ‘my father, the sultan,’ his Aunt Zuleika who died in the Tile Court, his brother, Suleiman, and his sister, Nilufer. He talked the most of his mother the bas-kadin. He wept because he must leave his mother and father and perhaps never see them again. He worried constantly that no one must know who he really was, or his mother would die. I have never spoken to anyone, even Charles, of these things.”
“I thank ye for that Colin. These things are in the past, and not important.”
“I’m a curious man, Janet I want answers to my questions.”
“Ye hae not the right my lord Hay.”
“But I do,” he replied quietly. Sitting down on the tumbled bed, he drew her down beside him, and turned her so she faced him.
“Last night I told you I had waited forty years to bed you, and ye accused me of a number of things, but the fact is, my dear, I spoke the truth. I watched you every moment I could the weeks ye and yer father were at court all those years ago. I was at the age where girls were beginning to interest me greatly, and you particularly interested me. I remembered playing wi’ ye several times as a child; but now ye were neither a child, nor a woman; and I was on the brink of manhood. God’s toenail! Ye were a pert minx the way ye stood up to the king’s cousin! Leslie’s fiery little wench they called you at court for weeks after you left for San Lorenzo. Then came the word that ye were betrothed to the heir of that damned duchy, followed a few months later by word of yer kidnapping. The king offered to make a match for me, but I would hae none of it. I dinna take my first wife until I was twenty-five, and only then to please my father, for he so desperately wanted grandchildren, heirs to Grayhaven.
“My second wife, Euphemia Keith, was a redhead. I think I married her because I imagined she looked like you would have when ye grew up.”
“Did she?” Janet asked.
“Nay. Not at all. When Charles and I had become friends, he showed me that exquisite miniature you gave him to remember ye by. Who painted it?”
“Firousi.”
“Who was she?”
“My sister-in-captivity.”
“Was she beautiful, too?”
“She was exquisite! Far lovelier than I. A tiny silver-blond with eyes the color of turquoise. Firousi was my best and dearest friend.”
“And Zuleika?”
Janet laughed. “Yer as persistant as a terrier after a rat”
“Tell me!”
“Nay, Colly. There are others involved. Political implications that ye canna imagine.”
“If what I believe to be true really is, then such information in the wrong hands could be very dangerous, my love. I dinna for one minute believe ye were married to a kindly Christian merchant Ye were probably one of a number of wives of some potentate. I imagine Charles is a prince in his own land.”
“Charles is a Scot This is his land” she said sharply. “He has spent more of his life here than there. He would be dead now had I not smuggled him out There are malcontents in every land and if it were known that Charles were alive, his brother could be endangered Enough of this, Colly! I will discuss it no more!”
Before he could pursue her further, Marian bustled into the room. “Madame, that woman is back. I canna budge her from the anteroom.”
Janet rose and calmly walked across the room to a large hanging near the fireplace. Reaching up she touched a thistle carving on the mantle and pulled the hanging aside. A hidden door was revealed.