Silver Angel by Johanna Lindsey

Author:Johanna Lindsey [Lindsey, Johanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1988-11-01T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-five

Across the corridor from Jamil’s rooms, a eunuch was waiting for Chantelle, sitting there Turkish fashion on the floor. He scrambled to his feet when she burst through the door, putting out an arm to detain her. It was Kadar.

He made no comment on her haste. “I will take you to my master.”

She nodded. At least he didn’t ask what had happened. Haji probably would, though, and so she was dragging her feet before she reached the harem.

Kadar led her to Safiye’s apartment, where Haji was having a good gossip while he waited for her. But he wasn’t expecting to see Chantelle this soon.

“So he truly was impatient, was he?”

Chantelle stood in the doorway, cringing to hear Safiye laugh at this observation. Her fingers worried at the pearls around her throat, and she seized on them as an excuse to avoid giving a reply.

“Will you return these to Lalla Rahine with my thanks for the use of them?”

Haji Agha took the pearls from her, but his expression turned thoughtful at such an obvious evasion. “Did all go well, Shahar?”

She bowed her head to avoid those searching eyes of his. “I would rather not talk about it.”

He accepted that, thinking she was merely upset over the loss of her virginity. “Very well, you may go to your room and rest. Perhaps we will talk later.”

God, she hoped not, but she hurried away before he changed his mind and decided to interrogate her now. Before she reached her room, she was trembling. She dismissed Adamma with a sharp word and curled onto her narrow pallet. The trembling increased.

Oh, God, what had she done? Would the next person to appear at her door be the executioner? Was her stupid virginity worth her life? God, no! She had already discovered that she could survive its loss. She had thought herself raped on board ship. She had felt miserable and shamed, but it hadn’t been the end of the world.

But this just might be. He had been so angry! If she angers Jamil by resisting him…other women have died for less. Other of Jamil’s women, or had Rahine been speaking in generalities? As if it mattered now. She had done the one thing she had been told she could not do. She had refused the lord and master the use of her body. If she angers Jamil by resisting him…She had done both.

Stupid, so stupid! If only she could go back and do it over. So she despised him. So he was a ruthless, coldhearted barbarian. What did that count next to her life? But she couldn’t go back. She could only leave the harem by his summons, and that was unlikely to ever come again. After all, what use did he have for women who found him detestable, when so many adored him?

At this very moment another woman was probably in his bed; Chantelle hadn’t mistaken that rigid bulge she had been sitting on for what it was. Jamil wouldn’t wait long to relieve it, for his rampant desire had been the very reason he had been furious with her resistance.

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