Free Lady Of Fire by Tamara Leigh

eyes, she was not sure she should have stayed away. She pressed a hand over her mother’s. “You do not seem well.”
    Sabine grimaced, drew fingers through her hair. “Better?”
    “You know that is not what I mean. You look ill.”
    “It is always difficult when Jabbar goes away—worse, when Leila takes advantage of the situation and tries to harm you.”
    That might be some of it, but not all. “What of the cough? You still—”
    “I have yet to speak to Jabbar about what that woman did, but when I have him alone this eve, I shall.”
    “You yet suffer from a cough,” Alessandra pressed. “Has the physician nothing to rid you of it?”
    Sabine looked across the hall. “He says I need not worry, that it will pass.”
    “But he is old. Perhaps we should summon another physician.”
    Sabine sighed. “You weary me with your needless concern. Let us speak of other things.”
    From the set of her mother’s face, Alessandra knew she would get no further. Blowing out her breath, she settled into the abundance of pillows. “Of what would you rather speak?”
    “Khalid tells me you and the new eunuch are getting along better.” Her mother’s smile did not reach her eyes, further convincing Alessandra something was amiss. And Khalid likely knew what it was. Would he tell her if asked?
    No, he would never betray her mother’s confidence, not even to her daughter.
    “Did you not hear me, Alessandra?”
    She met Sabine’s gaze. “It is true. Seif and I are becoming accustomed to one another.”
    “I am pleased. He has guarded you well these past days.”
    “There is something curious about him,” Alessandra mused.
    Sabine stiffened, said tautly, “What is that?”
    Even more curious was her mother’s reaction. Alessandra stole a glance at Lucien and saw he watched Jabbar and Rashid. “I do not know, but I intend to discover what it is.”
    “He is an Englishman, Alessandra. It is his culture that makes him a curiosity. Accept it and leave it be.”
    Had Sabine not been so desperate to impress that upon her, Alessandra might have allowed herself to be led down that path. But there was something here she was not meant to see, and it made her wonder if her suspicions about whether or not Lucien was, indeed, a eunuch were founded. “Mother—”
    “The cloth is for your wedding gown?”
    In the midst of Alessandra’s struggle over whether or not to continue to seek an answer, Leila boasted loudly, “It is me Jabbar desires.”
    Alessandra followed her mother’s gaze across the room.
    “I had but to press myself to him to know,” Leila continued. “I vow, this night he will come to me.”
    The women with whom she surrounded herself tittered and glanced at Sabine.
    Such taunting was not unusual, though Leila’s words often proved empty, but her posturing always angered Alessandra who knew it saddened her mother to share Jabbar.
    Will I be as gracious once Rashid begins taking other wives and filling his harem with concubines? she wondered. Will I be able to subdue my restlessness? Quell the longing to know greater freedom? Overlook my faith that dictates marriage between one man and one woman?
    Sinking her teeth into her lower lip, she looked around and met Lucien’s amethyst gaze. And feared that four times she would fail.

CHAPTER TEN

    What does my mother not mean me to see?
    Over the next two days, the question so often nibbled at Alessandra that she struggled not to snap at annoyances and small offenses. And that it might relate to the question of whether or not Lucien was truly a eunuch further curdled her disposition. Thus, she determined she would have an answer.
    It was bold—and dangerous—but she gathered the courage to do the task she had set herself. Clothed in the colors of night, she climbed out her window and lowered herself amid the garden’s fragrant bushes.
    The moon was high and full, illuminating the path she must parallel to gain the eunuchs’ quarters and making it imperative