Taming Charlotte by Linda Lael Miller Page B

the palace, each casting a curious look in Charlotte’s direction. When she was finally alone, she hiked the skirts of her robe and shinnied up the trunk of the elm.
    It had been years since Charlotte had climbed a tree—before she left Quade’s Harbor to be educated in Paris, in fact—but it all came back to her. In two minutes, and with only a few scrapes on her knees and the insides of her thighs, she had gained a high branch.
    Clinging to the gnarled old trunk with one arm, she turned to look out over the wall, and the startlingly beautiful spectacle of a turquoise sea met her gaze. A few hundred yards from shore, the
Enchantress
rocked gracefully at anchor. There was nothing to be seen in three directions except for more ocean, so Charlotte eased her way around to look to the south.
    Desert, for as far as the eye could see.
    Charlotte sighed with discouragement and, in the next moment, nearly fell from the tree when a female voice screeched at her from below.
    She did not understand the language, but the tone was plain enough. She was to climb down, immediately.
    Flushed with indignation at being treated so summarily,Charlotte nonetheless complied with the dictum. When she reached the ground, she found herself face-to-face with a small, robed woman with a huge beak of a nose.
    The crone shook a henna-stained finger under Charlotte’s nose and carried on her shrill diatribe.
    Charlotte’s patience, already taxed by events of recent days, suddenly snapped. “Now, just a minute! Whoever you are, you
will not
speak to me this way—”
    Just then, Alev came to Charlotte’s side and silenced her by putting an arm around her and squeezing hard enough to compress her shoulder blades into one crackling mass of bone. She spoke rapidly, and from her tone Charlotte knew Alev was trying to placate the old woman.
    Finally Alev turned to Charlotte and said sternly, “If you would not be beaten with a strap, you will stop being so—so
stubborn.
This is the
sultana valide,
Khalif’s mother, and she has great power here!”
    Charlotte’s natural impulse was to rebel, for she had never in her life been beaten by anyone. The very idea rankled, and yet some sense warned her to listen to Alev and keep her opinions of this backward society to herself.
    “Make a curtsy and tell her you’re sorry,” Alev instructed, giving Charlotte a subtle but bruising pinch in the upper arm to emphasize her earnestness.
    After swallowing a throatful of scathing invective, Charlotte managed the slightest of curtsies and muttered an apology.
    Alev began to chatter again, elaborating, no doubt, making Charlotte’s words seem much more abjectly remorseful than they had been. Finally the sultan’s mother narrowed her eyes at Charlotte in eloquent warning, then turned and tottered away on her ridiculously high sandals.
    “You actually want that dreadful woman for a mother-in-law?” Charlotte marveled, shading her eyes to watch as the little crow disappeared into the palace.
    Alev made a sound of pure exasperation. “No,” she answered, rather sharply, “but I must win her approval if I would have Khalif for a husband. What were you thinking of, climbing that tree?”
    Charlotte gave Alev a look meant to let her know sheconsidered the question a silly one. “I was trying to see over the wall, obviously. It seems to me it would be easier to escape Devil’s Island than this place.”
    The other woman took Charlotte’s arm and hustled her toward the high, arched doorway the
sultana valide
had just passed through. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!” Alev exclaimed, apparently having forgotten, for the moment, her conversion to the Islamic beliefs of Khalif’s people. “Are you insane? First you speak of rebellion, then of escape! Do you
want
to be punished?”
    Charlotte tried to pull free of Alev’s grasp, but the pregnant woman was stronger than she looked and she wouldn’t let go.
    “Of course I don’t want to be punished!” Charlotte