The dream image snuffed like a guttering candle, and waking, Lydia had heard Margaret crying, muffled, angry, and hurt. Margaret had had very little to say to her that morning and would not meet her eyes. Since their meeting with Razumovsky over a late breakfast, she had addressed all her remarks to the prince, giggling at his flirtations and responding cheerfully to his effort to draw her out.
There seemed to be storytellers everywhere. They sat on dirty rugs and blankets, swaying with the rhythm of their tales, spreading their arms, using their voices to conjure thunder, rage, love, and wonder. Children and teenage boys sat around them, listening eagerly, and even grown men and a very few black-veiled women stood with the air of those in no hurry to leave. Lydia moved toward one and peered shortsightedly at the wares in the surrounding booths. Lady Clapham had told her that each man had his regular pitch, and the man who worked the street of the coffee merchants would no more dream of shifting to the street of the slipper vendors than she herself would have considered walking uninvited into her neighbor's house in Oxford and appropriating her neighbor's nightgown and bed.
It was simply Not Done.
As she edged her way a little into the crowd, trying to see past the dark backs of the Greek ladies, a man put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Madame Asher?"
She turned, looking up slightly at the Adonis face, the beautiful dark eyes, of a tall man who moved like an athlete within his tobacco-colored suit. At this distance she could see the close-clipped mustache, the long eyelashes, the pearl buttons of his gloves as he bowed to kiss her hand. He wore a gold stickpin in his cravat, a winged griffin that seemed to regard her with a single, baleful ruby eye.
"I've seen your husband," he said quietly, and, while her breath was still stopped with shock, he added, "Permit me to introduce myself. I am the Baron Ignace Karolyi, of the Imperial Diplomatic Service. May we talk?"
He led her out of the crowd, into the dimness before a shop front where an elderly Greek sewed slippers of colored leather and gave them-most uncharacteristically for a merchant of the Grand Bazaar-not so much as a glance. It occurred to Lydia that Karolyi must have paid him in advance for his disregard.
"Is he alive?"
Karolyi nodded. Although she knew he must be at least thirty-five, he seemed younger and radiated a kind of earnest intensity, like a youthful charmer who has put his charm aside to speak of important things.
"Though I cannot guarantee how much longer that will last. He is in the hands of..." He hesitated artistically, studying her face, like one who debates with himself how much of what he says will be believed. And yet, she realized, he was actually watching her, trying to guess how much she knew.
Like Ysidro playing picquet, she thought, peeking at the stock cards and wondering what to appropriate and what would do him no good. Her heart beat harder and she thought, Jamie will die if you botch this up.
"He is in the hands of a man called Olumsiz Bey," he went on after a moment. "A Turk. A truly evil person. Tell no one," he added quickly, as Lydia pressed her hands to her mouth and widened her eyes as Aunt Lavinia generally did before crying out in horror at the presence of death-dealing spiders or the perfidy of the children of her neighbors. "What exactly did he tell you, Mrs. Asher, that brought you to Constantinople to search?"
He must have been talking to Lady Clapham. She wondered how much that redoubtable woman had seen fit to tell him-how much she would have considered not worth the trouble of hiding.
"Oh, where, when?" She didn't expect a truthful answer to the questions and asked them to buy herself time to think, but she had no need to manufacture the panic, the desperation that she threw into her voice. She had never considered herself to be an actress, but any young lady of good society knew how to exaggerate delight or terror, or whatever other emotion was called for. A number of conversations with Margaret over the past week certainly helped her performance.
She clasped her hands to her breastbone. "Did you speak with him? Did he look well?" Has he been in touch with his own department? Do they know I had dinner with Mr. Halliwell? Why would I have come to Constantinople if I didn't know the kind of danger he was in?
"We did not have the opportunity to speak." Karolyi's voice was soothing, a beautifully modulated tenor with the barest trace of a Middle European accent. An eminently believable voice. "He appeared unharmed, though as I said, there is no way of knowing how long that will last. That is why you and I must talk. When you fled from me last night, I feared some rumor or calumny had reached you. I assure you, Madame..." He made his voice earnest, deeply concerned. "I assure you, such rumors are exaggerations, fed by the enmity of our two countries and the suspicions of men who see only threats wherever they look."
"Fled from you?" Lydia steeled herself, produced her eyeglasses from her handbag and put them on to peer at him. "Last night? Were you at the palace reception last night?"
Under the fine traces of mustache his mouth quirked, disarmed for a moment. With two quick gestures of his forefinger he smoothed the mustache, and Lydia noted the fine cut of the pale tan gloves, French kid at six shillings the pair.
"Baron!" Razumovsky's gray and golden bulk appeared from around the corner of a stall and pushed through the crowd, Margaret scuttling in his wake. Lydia's glasses immediately disappeared from her face and into the folds of her skirt.
"Back from your flying visit to London, I see."
"Prince." Karolyi bowed to the exact depth required of a Russian prince rather than an English one. "A flying visit indeed, but one must dress, you know." He laughed rather vacantly and flicked the lapels of his Saville Row suit. "Are you here with Mrs. Asher?"
He believes I've been taken by surprise, thought Lydia swiftly. If I put this off, he'll guess I had time to prepare.
"Will you excuse us for a few moments, Your Highness?" As the Russian moved off she turned her back slightly and put her hand behind it, signaling-and hoping he saw- with her outspread fingers: five minutes.
"From what Mr. Halliwell said I gather you and my husband weren't exactly friends," she said quickly, keeping her voice fast and breathless to keep from stammering with uncertainty and dread. "But it is all really a... a sort of confraternity, is it not? You are all in the same business, no matter what side you're on." She produced her glasses again and put them on, well aware of the air of scholarly ineffectualness they lent to her face. "Thank you so much for letting me know! I knew-I knew-that Cousin Elizabeth couldn't have been wrong!"
"Cousin Elizabeth?"
"Cousin Elizabeth in Vienna," said Lydia, as if slightly surprised that Karolyi were not acquainted with her family. "She lent my husband twenty pounds a week ago Thursday night, to take the Orient Express to Constantinople. She's his cousin- his second cousin, actually-and she lives in one of the suburbs, I forget the name... In any case I telephoned her when Mr. Halliwell gave me the note from my husband..."