Silk and Secrets(18)

After a moment's thought she remembered a richly patterned Kashmir shawl that a visitor had once given her as a return for hospitality. After draping it around her shoulders, she inspected herself again. The dusky blues and grays of the shawl went well with her gown, as well as rendering it more modest

Unfortunately, she now looked respectable to the point of dowdiness, which wasn't quite right either. She was not an English governess, but the eccentric warlord of a Persian manor. She would not face her husband looking like a timid wren, as if she craved his approval.

What the outfit needed was gorgeous, barbaric Turkoman jewelry, and Juliet just happened to have some. Like the shawl, various ornaments had been given to her over the years by grateful travelers, though she had never had a reason to wear them. After careful consideration, she decided on flamboyant multistrand earrings that dangled almost to her shoulders and a matching necklace which filled in some of the bare expanse of skin above her décolletage. Both necklace and earrings were made of gold-chased silver, brightened with swinging, irregularly shaped beads of carnelian and turquoise.

Braving the lavender again, she found a small pot of pink salve, which enhanced her lips. Rouge she did not need, for her cheeks had enough natural color.

The final touch was purely local. In all the desert lands of Africa and Asia, men and women, especially women, blackened their eyelids with a cosmetic made of antimony and oil. Called variously kohl or surma, the preparation had been in use since at least the days of ancient Egypt, both to soothe the eyes and to provide some protection against the sun's glare.

It also looked very dramatic and would be the perfect accent for her costume. Juliet took out a small embroidered pouch of surma and deftly applied it, blinking down on the spreading stick as she drew the cosmetic along her lids.

Finally she regarded her image with satisfaction. She looked like a blend of East and West, certainly not provocative, but also neither masculine nor hopelessly plain.

As ready as she would ever be, Juliet sallied forth to meet her husband.





Chapter 4





An hour after sunset, a polite soft-footed young man escorted Ross to the chamber where he was to dine with Juliet. The lamp-lit room appeared to be a study that had been converted to temporary use as a Western dining room. The Eastern custom was to eat sitting on the floor or on cushions around a low table, but this room contained a wooden table that had been covered with a linen cloth and set with plates and silverware in European style.

The servant bowed and left Ross alone. He didn't mind, for he found it interesting to examine his surroundings, which bore a distinct resemblance to his own untidy office back in England.

Besides unusual bits of pottery and statuary, there were books and scrolls in half a dozen languages, both European and Eastern. Several of the Asiatic texts were so unusual that they filled his heart with scholarly lust. He wondered if there was any chance that Juliet would let him borrow them, or stay long enough to make his own translations.

Recalling his mission, he reined back his enthusiasm. He would have to return alive from Bokhara before he could borrow any books.

Even more interesting were Juliet's own maps and notebooks, where she had recorded her observations of the land and its peoples. There were more than a dozen notebooks, and he thumbed quickly through several. Perceptive and ironic, the journals would be a great success if published in London under some title such as Persian Travels of an English Gentlewoman. They were also an interesting insight into the woman his wife had become.

Lifting the last notebook, he opened it at random and glanced down to see, written in Juliet's distinctive angular handwriting, the words "I wish to God that I had never met Ross Carlisle."

His heart jerked as if a sliver of ice had stabbed into it, and he slammed the book shut and returned it to the shelf. He stood very still, breathing deeply to counteract his incipient nausea. So she kept a private diary as well as a record of external observations, and within its pages she was characteristically frank.

Bleakly Ross regarded the tooled leather binding of the journal. The answers to all his questions about what had gone wrong in his marriage were probably in that book—and he did not have the courage to look inside.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, he turned and tried to look as casual as if he were taking his ease in his own library. Then Juliet pushed aside the door hanging, and he stiffened. She had always had a genius for the unexpected, and now the damned female was doing it again. This afternoon in her Tuareg robes she had looked like a warrior queen. Now, dressed as a cross between a governess and a Turkish dancer, she was every inch a woman.

She paused in the doorway, her expression wary. "Good evening, Ross. I'm sorry that I'm late."