Jonathan nodded in understanding. “I know he’s a man who deserves to die for the crimes he’s committed against the women under his control. I know you want to see him dead. I know you want to go to sleep at night without seeing his face or wondering if you’ll be next, but my dear Lady India, none of your reasons for wanting him dead—as valid as they are—change the fact that killing him like this would be murder. And I’m not going to allow either one of us to use your need for revenge to compel us to become as cold-blooded as he is.” He took hold of India’s shoulders and forced her to face him. “You can hit him, kick him, bite him, spit on him, and carve your initials on his forehead for all I care. You can vent your spleen in any way you choose, short of murder. I can’t let you become the thing you despise, eternally haunted by the blood upon your hands.”
India buried her face against Jonathan’s chest and sobbed.
Jonathan bent at the knees, scooped her up into his arms, and carried her out of the cottage to the stable. He entered the stall next to his horse’s stall and carefully lowered himself and Lady India down onto the red silk pallet. He held her in his arms, cradled against his chest, and rocked her like a baby while she sobbed, and when she’d cried the five years of tears she’d
been holding back, Jonathan encouraged her to talk. “What happened?”
“I incurred Mustafa’s wrath the very first day in the women’s quarters,” she related. “And he’s never forgotten it.”
“What did you do?”
“I bit him on the hand when he ripped open my clothing and began his inspection of my . . .” She faltered. “My person. I had already been thoroughly inspected by the pirates who took us from the Portsmouth. We all were.”
“How many of you were abducted?” According to the newspaper accounts Jonathan had read, eight passengers, including Lady India Burton and her governess, had been taken off the Portsmouth alive. The whereabouts of the other passengers were unknown.
“Eight of us,” India replied. “Miss Annabelle Southwick, her brothers, Gordon and Craig, Miss Helen Winston and her companion, Miss Nancy Phillips, Patrick Joiner, Miss Dorinda Lockwood, and me.”
“The newspaper accounts named seven passengers,” Jonathan said.
“Patrick wasn’t a passenger,” India told him. “He was cabin boy on the Portsmouth.” She closed her eyes and remembered the handsome cabin boy with white-blond hair and blue eyes and a youthful body bronzed by the sun. At four and ten, Patrick was two years India’s junior and had been a cabin boy since the age of nine. “He was the only crew member taken alive. The other crew members were already dead or put to the sword.” She shuddered at the memory.
“What happened to Patrick?”
“We were all sold to the dey of Algiers,” India explained. “He decided our fate. He sent me and Miss Lockwood and the Southwick boys to Sultan Hamid as a gift. He kept Patrick for himself and sold Miss Southwick, Miss Winston, and Miss Phillips at auction.” She exhaled sharply. “I never saw Patrick or the other ladies again.”
“What about the Southwick brothers?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Once we entered the women’s quarters in the Topkapi, the only males we saw were eunuchs and the sultan. But I heard whispers that the older one didn’t survive his punishment for trying to escape, and that the younger one was presented to one of the sultan’s ministers as a gift.”
Lady India had accounted for all the passengers taken from the Portsmouth except her governess. “What about Miss Lockwood?” Jonathan asked gently.
India’s voice was wooden. “Mustafa strangled her with the red silk cord he keeps in his pocket.”
The same red silk cord India had pulled from the eunuch’s pocket and handed to Jonathan to use to tie Mustafa’s hands behind his back. “What did she do to offend him?”
“Nothing,” India replied.
“Then why?” Jonathan asked the question, even though he was afraid he already knew the answer.
“To punish me.” India began to tremble uncontrollably. “For biting him.”
Jonathan hugged her close. “Oh, my sweet . . .”
“She told me not to cry. Not to show any weakness.” India closed her eyes. “And he murdered her. He murdered my friend and my teacher. He murdered Miss Lockwood.” She looked up at Jonathan, and he saw the horror in her face. “Oh, God . . .” She began to cry once again. “He killed her because of me. . . . He killed my friend, and he made me watch while he did it—even though I begged his pardon. Even though I fell to my knees and begged him not to hurt Miss Lockwood. Even though I promised to behave. He laughed as he strangled her. He enjoyed it. And Miss Lockwood . . . Oh, God, Miss Lockwood . . .” India’s breathing grew ragged as she struggled to talk. “She was so brave. So wonderful. When we were on the pirates’ ship, she made me promise to survive, made me promise to do whatever I had to do in order to survive. When Mustafa wrapped his red cord around her neck, she looked him in the eye and spat in his face. Mustafa tightened the cord until she was dead, then dropped her body like a rag doll. I crawled over to her and held her until he ordered the other eunuchs to strip me and beat me with rods upon the soles of my feet.” She choked back a sob. “The sultan was very angry with Mustafa when he heard about Miss Lockwood and about my punishment because we were English and because the dey had sent us as gifts and Mustafa had disposed of one of the gifts before the sultan had the chance to see her and had damaged the other without the sultan’s permission.”
“Who told the sultan about Miss Lockwood?”
“I did,” India said. “When I was sent to the sultan’s bed a fortnight after Miss Lockwood’s death, when I had recovered well enough from my beating to walk again. Mustafa had told the sultan that Miss Lockwood died but not how she died.”
A muscle in Jonathan’s jaw began to twitch when India mentioned being sent to the sultan’s bed. “You were able to communicate with the sultan?”
India nodded. “He speaks perfect French and considers himself a very progressive ruler and a social reformer.”
“For an absolute monarch with the power of life and death over his subjects . . .”
“Yes,” she answered. “He thinks he’s progressive, but his private world is no different from the previous sultans’. He wants to be enlightened, but he’s as superstitious as the women of his harem. He is fascinated by blue eyes, light skin, and the red and blond hair color of European women. . . .”
“Yet your blue eyes troubled him . . .”