Silk and Secrets

  After another, even longer silence, the young Persian said flatly, "I do not understand."

  "Neither do I, Murad. Neither do I." Perhaps, Ross thought tiredly, if he did understand Juliet, it would make a difference. But probably not.

  * * *

  The hour of reckoning came that night, after dinner. Juliet had managed to keep busy and out of sight all day. Several times she checked on Ian, but he still slept and she didn't have the heart to wake him.

  That evening, she and Ross had dined with Saleh's lively family, which meant there was no private talk between them, but far too soon it was time to retire to bed. She could hardly exile her husband to another bedroom when she wanted his company above all things. Even more than that, she wanted the simplicity they had known in Bokhara, when there was only the present, with no past or future.

  Without looking at Ross, Juliet changed into an embroidered green silk caftan. Then she perched on the divan and began brushing her hair while she tried to think of a safe, neutral topic. Perhaps, like Scheherazade, she could postpone disaster indefinitely by talking of other subjects that would fend off the discussion she wanted to avoid.

  Unfortunately, Ross had too much Western directness. Instead of changing out of the plain brown chapan he was wearing, he sat down next to her and said simply, "Juliet, come back to England with me. We're a dozen years older and wiser now, and you don't seem to dislike my company. Surely we can solve whatever problems you found in our marriage."

  She stiffened, the hand holding the brush dropping to her lap. She had mentally rehearsed what she would say to convince Ross that staying together was impossible, hoping that if she were persuasive enough with superficial truths, he would not probe for the deeper truth that she could never admit.

  "I'm afraid that geographical compatibility is one problem that is insoluble," she said with brittle humor. "If you were not your father's heir, you could stay here in Persia. But I know your sense of responsibility too well to believe that you will turn your back on your obligations in England."

  Ross leaned back against the cushions and regarded her with eyes that were cool and dangerous. This was not a battle he would yield easily. "You're quite right. My future lies in Britain now. But why is it so unthinkable that you could live there again? You seemed content there once."

  Her hands started to clench, and she forced them to relax. "I'm afraid I would suffocate in England. There were so many social rules, so many ways to make mistakes."

  "You adjusted to that by mastering the rules that interested you and blithely ignoring the ones that didn't," he observed. "You are a marchioness and in time will become a duchess. To put it baldly, you will be able to do pretty well any damned thing you please. Did I try to censor your behavior that much? You said my criticisms hurt you, and I was surely less sensitive than I should have been, but I really don't think I was a tyrant."

  No, he had not been. It was time for another, more painful layer of truth. "The problem was not what you did to me, but what I did to myself." She looked at the hairbrush without seeing it, turning the handle restlessly in her hands. "I loved you so much that I was crippling myself by trying to please you. My sense of who I was, my independence, all of the things you liked about me—I could feel them eroding away. I didn't want to live that way, and I didn't want to become one of those boring, pliable women whom you said you could never love."

  He crossed his arms on his chest and simply looked at her. At length he said, "It's wonderfully flattering to think that you were that madly in love with me. But even if you were concerned about your independence then, I can't believe that will be a problem now. You're a forceful woman, not an unsure girl. Your character isn't going to crumble because some overbred dowager looks down her nose at you."

  She stood and paced across the room, the green silk swishing around her. "You're trying to reduce what I say to simple issues that can be refuted, but it's more complicated than that." She turned to face him. "The question is not whether I can tolerate England—I can—but I like Serevan better. I've built something of value here, helped people who lived in poverty and fear achieve prosperous, happy lives. How can I abandon them?"

  He sighed. "I feel the shade of Lady Hester Stanhope hovering over us. I can't fault you for being concerned for your dependents, but you have built a strong, healthy community here—it won't collapse if you leave. Give Serevan to Saleh when he returns from Bokhara. He's as capable of guiding it as you are."

  The fact that Ross was right didn't make Juliet's position any easier. Defensively she said, "But I don't want to leave Serevan. I have so much freedom here."

  "It's the illusory freedom that comes from being a permanent outsider, insulated from the realities of Persian society by money and foreignness," he said, exasperated. "Is that how you want to spend the rest of your life, as a woman who can do what you choose because you're so eccentric that you're dismissed as if you were a force of nature, not a real person?"

  She shrugged. "Lady Hester seems to have managed well."

  "It is time to destroy some of your romantic illusions." He uncoiled from the divan and stalked over to her. "Yes, Lady Hester Stanhope was a remarkable woman, but she was also a monster of vanity and self-obsession. She settled in Syria not for freedom, but because she loved power and it satisfied her sense of self-importance to become a petty tyrant. You've collected stories about her; did you hear about the time your heroine decided it was her duty to avenge the death of a reckless French explorer? She bullied the local pasha into razing dozens of villages, and for the rest of her life she boasted about what a strong, forceful leader she was. She was proud to be responsible for slaughtering hundreds of innocent people!"

  Shocked, Juliet stared at him with widened eyes. "Lady Hester wasn't like that! She was a woman of compassion who sheltered refugees from injustice."

  Ross's mouth twisted. "I'll grant that sometimes she had compassion for the persecuted, but she was totally without consideration for those who were closest and most loyal to her. The greater the loyalty, the more cruelly she rewarded it. She preferred the admiration of ignorant villagers to the respect and friendship of her equals. She was incapable of living on an income several times the size of yours, so she borrowed huge sums that she didn't repay, then complained bitterly that no one would support her in the style she thought she deserved. At the end, having alienated everyone who ever cared for her, she died alone, dunned by her creditors and robbed by her servants."

  Juliet wished she could believe that Ross was lying, but his revelations had a horrible ring of truth. She turned her head, not wanting to hear more, but she could not shut out his hard voice. "Is that what you want for yourself, Juliet? To die alone and loveless, an alien in a foreign land, surrounded by the tattered trappings of power? If so, I wish you joy of it."

  "If Lady Hester was as you say, I am not much like her, nor will I end like her." Juliet made a confused gesture with her hand. "Why are we fighting about a woman I never even met?"

  Ross's chest expanded as he took a deep breath. Then he said in a quieter voice, "Quite right, I wandered rather far afield. It's time to go back to basics, such as the fact that I love you, and in Bokhara you said that you loved me. Was that true, or were you just being effusive in a moment of passion?"

  Juliet felt a rush of dizziness as the emotional ground began disintegrating beneath her feet. She had wanted him to love her. Now that she knew he did, everything was infinitely more difficult. "I was speaking the truth," she whispered. "I love you. I never stopped, not for a moment."

  He closed his eyes and a tremor crossed his face. Then he opened his eyes again, grim determination carved on every feature. Too late she realized she'd put a dangerous weapon in his hands: now that she had admitted how much she loved him, he would fight even more ruthlessly to change her mind, and she did not know if she could withstand him.

  His first volley was as simple as it was unanswerable. "If you loved me, then why did you leave me?"

/>   "I've told you why!" She began pacing again. "Several times, in several ways. Love is beyond price, but it isn't the only thing that matters. If you believed that love was the most important thing on earth, you would stay with me in Serevan rather than go back to England."

  "Actually, I do believe that love is the most important thing on earth, though love comes in many forms besides the romantic kind." His eyes narrowed. "I find myself suspicious of your invitation to stay here. Making the offer gives you the chance to seem reasonable and willing to compromise, but at the same time, it's safe because you know I won't accept. I can't help feeling that there are other, deeper reasons why you left."

  Juliet regarded her husband with horror. She should have known she could not fool him; not Ross, who understood her better than anyone else ever had. Unsteadily she said, "You're looking for mysteries that aren't there. I've told you the truth."

  "Ah, but is it the whole truth? Somehow, I think not." His voice roughened. "God knows I've tried to be fair. I've never threatened you physically or financially. In return, don't you owe me the truth, if nothing else?"

  His assault splintered her resolution, and before she could stop herself, she cried, "If I told you the whole truth, you would hate me, and I couldn't bear that!"

  He became very still, his face like marble except for the vivid pain in his eyes. "So there is more. Tell me what it is, Juliet, because I can't think of a single damned thing you could reveal that would make me feel worse than I feel right now."

  Folding down on the divan, she buried her face in her hands. "Why can't you just accept that our marriage is over?" she said, her voice raw with anguish. "I've said it before and now I'll say it again: divorce me. Then marry a woman who will love you as you deserve. Forget that you ever knew me."

  "Do you really think it's that simple?" he said bitterly. "No court can dissolve the bonds that hold us together. Years and miles didn't do it before, and they won't do it now."

  "You may believe that today," she said wearily, "but when you are back in England, this whole strange interlude will seem like a bad dream. Now that you won't be haunted by questions about how and where I'm living, you can finally be free of me."

  He stalked across the room and caught her chin with his hand, forcing her to look at him. "Very well, we can end this right now. I understand that divorce is easy under Islamic law—a man merely tells his wife 'I divorce thee' three times. Of course, it won't be legally binding, but here is your chance. Go ahead, divorce me if you think it is so easy."

  When she stared at him in confusion, Ross said savagely, "Say it, Juliet! Repeat 'I divorce thee' three times and I'll go back to England and find some way to make it legal."

  When she realized that he was serious, she swallowed hard, then faltered, "I... I divorce thee." Her throat closed.

  "Again, Juliet," he prompted, his eyes dark with anger. "Say it two more times and I will accept that our marriage is over."

  After licking her dry lips, she tried for the second time. Six more words and she would have done the right thing: set Ross free. "I d-divorce..." Her voice broke and she began shaking violently. "I can't," she gasped. "I... just can't say it."

  "I didn't think you could." He released her chin and spun away, saying with barely suppressed violence, "If you can't bring yourself to end our marriage, don't expect me to do it for you."

  She had always thought his inner strength limitless, but her weaknesses had pushed him to his limits. With agonizing clarity she saw just how much she was hurting him. "Very well, you've demonstrated how wrong I was to think that divorce was a realistic solution," she said unevenly. "But if we can't end our marriage, then let us at least separate peacefully."

  "I find myself feeling curiously unpeaceful." He swung back to face her again. "You talk as if our marriage concerns only us, but have you considered the chance that you might be pregnant? It's certainly possible, considering that we've been going at each other like hares in heat.

  "The subject was briefly touched on in Bokhara, when I thought it highly likely I would die, but now that I have survived, I find myself with a more personal interest in the outcome. If we have a child, will you raise it here, thousands of miles from its heritage? Will I have any say in its future?"

  She had not expected this, and she began shaking her head, not in answer to his questions, but as an involuntary sign of her inability to deal with them.

  There was a taut silence. Then Ross exploded, more angry than she had ever seen him. "I see. I suppose that you're saying that you know this won't be an issue. How naive of me—even if you have been unlucky enough to fall victim to biology, there are ways of taking care of that, and I'm sure you know what they are." He spun away and stalked toward the door. "If you find yourself inconveniently pregnant and decide to end it, don't tell me. I don't want to know."

  Finally Juliet broke, for it seemed as if this whole agonizing struggle had been leading to this moment, when she knew beyond any shadow of doubt that she had been right to believe that their marriage was beyond redemption.

  "Don't act like this, Ross," she begged, the words wrenched from her heart. "You're making everything a thousand times worse." Then she broke down entirely. Beyond speech, she sank onto her knees and buried her head between her arms on the divan, weeping uncontrollably.

  "Damnation!" Ross swore, his voice fractured and helpless. Then he was beside her, crushing her in his arms and rocking her back and forth as if she were a child. "I'm sorry, Juliet," he said in an anguished whisper. "So sorry. I don't want to hurt you, but I find this whole bloody situation incomprehensible and it makes me want to take the world apart with my bare hands. Since I love you and you love me, I just don't understand why we can't be together."

  In a cold part of her mind that was distant from the shattered woman sobbing in Ross's arms, Juliet saw that there was an advantage in this, for she could use his guilt to stop his search for the elusive, disastrous truth. She was not proud of herself for using the knowledge, but as soon as she was able to speak coherently, she did so. "We must stop tearing each other apart, Ross."

  She sat back on her heels so she could see his face. "Accept that this is the way it must be so that we can separate in peace rather than bitterness." Tentatively she reached out and took his hand. "Come to bed, where we can heal some of the wounds we've made on each other tonight. Stay here a little longer at Serevan, until the intensity of the last months has had a chance to fade. Then you can go without hurting so."

  "You don't ask much, do you?" Tiredly he touched the bandage on his head, as if it was paining him.

  "I don't expect being in love with you to fade—it hasn't in a dozen years, in spite of everything. And while I agree that it would be wiser to negotiate a settlement rather than clawing each other to shreds, I am quite incapable of making love to you knowing that it is the last time. It was hard enough this morning, when I still had a little hope, but now it would be impossible." He smiled without humor. "Apparently my sense of self-preservation is still working. While I've done my share of difficult and dangerous things, I'm not fool enough to let you cut my heart to shreds, then stamp on the pieces."

  A chill wave swept through Juliet and she began shivering. So finally the end had come.

  Ross stood, then tugged her to her feet with the hand he still held. Raising her fingers to his lips, he kissed them once, very tenderly, then released them. "I'll sleep in the room I stayed in on my first visit. Tomorrow, if you'll give me an escort, I'll leave for Teheran. The sooner this is over, the better for both of us."

  She bit her lip to keep from crying out, but nodded assent.

  Ross turned and walked across the room, his footsteps inaudible on the thick carpet. She watched his retreating back, memorizing every detail. His height and smooth, controlled stride; the way the brown chapan swung from his wide shoulders; the crisp gold waves of his hair, which needed cutting and almost brushed the top of his shoulders.

  He opened the door, stepped th
rough without looking back, then pulled it shut behind him.

  It was over.

  Chapter 27

  Juliet was not sure how long she sat on the divan staring sightlessly across the room. Knowing that she deserved everything he had said and more didn't make the agony any easier to endure. Strange how many kinds of misery could exist side by side, each separate and distinct. Stranger yet was that in the midst of so many deeper pains, there was still room to feel a very personal kind of humiliation over his refusal to spend the night with her.

  The very walls seemed to radiate the anguish of what had happened in the last hour. Suddenly Juliet felt that she would suffocate if she stayed in the room an instant longer.

  After slipping on a pair of sandals, she went outside and crossed the wide courtyard, then climbed to the top of the massive wall that surrounded the fortress. Like a medieval European castle, the wall was wide enough for several people to walk abreast, and there was a parapet to protect defenders.

  It was late and most of Serevan slept, except for the handful of guards in the watchtowers. Juliet began walking along the wall, distantly grateful for the cooling breeze and the sense of openness. The night was beautiful, the light of a waxing moon silvering the rugged hills, but dramatic scenery was no antidote for a dark night of the soul.

  From the western side of the fortress she could see the hills drop down toward the Kara Kum, whose sands then rolled off to Bokhara. Dully she turned away, not wanting to think of all that had happened since the last time she had paced these walls.

  As she began walking again, she saw that someone else was out prowling the night. When she first saw the tall bareheaded figure leaning against the parapet, her heart gave a lurch of fear that it might be Ross. Then the man heard her footsteps and glanced in her direction. Ian.

  In the week since his rescue from the Black Well, they had scarcely talked at all, and not just because the arduous desert journey had not been conducive to casual conversation. Her brother's imprisonment seemed to have changed him in some fundamental way. He had turned inward so much that it was difficult to remember the exuberance that had once been his most notable characteristic.