Page 76 of Silver Angel

Shahar hadn’t turned from the garden. Her voice hadn’t been raised in the least. Adamma chewed on her lower lip. She should have expected this, but hadn’t.

“Are you ill,lalla?” she asked hesitantly.

Chantelle glanced over her shoulder. “Ill?” She smiled tightly. “No, but that excuse will do as well as any to avoid a battle royal. Have Kadar inform Haji Agha so the Dey can make other arrangements for tonight.”

Adamma groaned and rushed to the front door to find the black eunuch in his customary post outside it. “She’s not going!” the girl blurted out.

Kadar came instantly to his feet. “Is she ill?” He asked the same question.

“No, but you must tell Haji Agha that she is.”

“It won’t work, girl.”

“You better hope it does, because she means it. She’s not going.”

Kadar grunted and hurried away. He should have known the little English wouldn’t remain docile for very long. She was too proud, that one, and too willful for her own good. Perhaps Haji Agha would believe that she was ill.

“I don’t believe it,” the Chief Black Eunuch said after Kadar had delivered his message. “What is wrong with the girl now?”

“I should think that is obvious, my lord.”

Haji frowned. Yes, it was obvious. Shahar was no doubt upset that she had been ignored yesterday. The Europeans always took longer to acclimate themselves to the way of things here. She would be angry and jealous, and her jealousy would probably be worse than her previous defiance had been.

“The Dey will never believe she’s ill,” Haji said more to himself, for he had already concluded that he had to at least try this way. Without the use of drugs, that left only force, and Jamil would not like having her “delivered” to him.

“Perhaps he will accept it even if he doesn’t believe it,” Kadar suggested. “He knows her temperament by now.”

“We can only hope,” Haji grunted. “By the Prophet’s beard, the girl is more trouble than she’s worth,” he added as he departed for the Dey’s apartments.

He should have known it wouldn’t work.

“Isshe ill?” Derek asked suspiciously.

Haji could only stammer, “I—I haven’t seen her myself, but—but her attendants assure me—”

“Ill or not, have her here at the appointed hour, Haji.”

And that was that.

Chapter Thirty-six

Chantelle was the one pacing now. She was still in her bedchamber, but she was no longer calm. Kadar and Adamma both had been browbeating her for the past thirty minutes. Jamil had been told that she was ill, but he didn’t care. He insisted she make an appearance. She refused.

“If you do not go, the Dey will come here,” Adamma told her.

“No, he won’t. You said he rarely bestirs himself to enter the harem because of the commotion it causes.”

“But if he does? And if he does, he will be furious.”

“Good,” Chantelle snorted. “Anger loves company just as much as misery.”

Both servants grimaced simultaneously at such a sentiment. They had been warned to get results or else. It was the “or else” that kept them trying, but they were getting nowhere.

Haji Agha waited in the outer room, too old and set in his ways to resort to mere cajolery with a concubine when so many other options were usually available to him. But all they could do was argue in this case, after the Dey had ordered no punishments for the girl.

“Soon the Keeper of the Jewels will be here,” Kadar said now. “The Mistress of the Wardrobe, too. Do you want them to think you are pouting because you weren’t summoned yesterday?”

That infuriated Chantelle. Pouting? The very idea!