Feeling as uncertain as a young girl awaiting her first beau, she washed, brushed her teeth, loosened her braid, and brushed her hair. Rummaging in her trunk, she pulled out a corset, chemise, petticoats, wool drawers-no, she did not want to wear drawers, she wanted to be accessible to Muhamed.
Megan pulled out a black skirt and bodice. She realized with dismay that all of her clothes were black. They belonged to a woman who was resigned to widowhood, not to a woman who planned upon demonstrating to a eunuch that he was a man.
No time now to worry about her wardrobe.
Hurriedly, she slipped into her chemise and rebraided her hair.
A sharp knock splintered the silence.
Megan's heartbeat quickened.
"One moment!" she called out, mouth full of hairpins.
The knock came again. Louder.
Stomach roiling with nervous anticipation, she coiled the braid on top of her head and secured it with pins.
A third knock came, louder still.
The entire inn would know that Muhamed sought entrance to her room if he continued knocking.
She jerked open the door. And perforce had to step back to prevent Muhamed from walking over her.
A black cloak billowed after him. He carried a battered bucket.
"They did not have a picnic basket," he said without preamble.
"Oh." She flushed, suddenly, painfully aware of the sunshine that warmed her back and starkly revealed a patch of chipped paint on the wall behind him. Shadow had cloaked her nakedness before; the thin cotton chemise would not conceal the changes that age had wrought in her body-breasts that were too soft; hips that were too rounded. "If you like, you may wait downstairs-"
"I have never watched a woman dress."
Her flush deepened. "I have never had a man watch me dress."
"You will not wear a corset to our picnic."
Megan blinked at Muhamed's peremptory manner. "I beg your pardon?"
"Corsets restrict a woman's circulation."
"Corsets also support their… bosom."
"Your bosom does not need support, Megan."
"That is for me to decide, surely."
"Men, too, have fancies." His black eyes were wary. "I would like to look at you over our meal and know that it is you I am gazing at and not a miracle of whalebones."
Megan mentally struggled with the vicar's wife she had been for so long and the woman she wanted to be for this Arab. She had not worn a corset to his room the night before, but.…
She took a deep breath. "When you returned to your room, did you don trousers?"
"I am as you saw me."
Was he still erect?
Instinctively, she glanced down; his white robe was tented.
He was ready for her; completely accessible if she wanted to flip up his skirt.
Scalding blood scorched her cheeks and pounded in her temples.
"I cannot go outside with nothing on underneath my dress," she said firmly, raising her gaze to his. "I must wear a bustle and petticoats, or the hem of my skirt will sweep the ground."
As it had swept the hallway last night.
Muhamed set the bucket on top of her neatly made bed. "Very well. I will assist you."
And he did.
Megan had never had an abigail. Had not been assisted with her dress since she was a young child, so young that she could not even remember having received assistance.
He buttoned up her bodice, fingers lingering at her breasts.
Desire knotted inside her stomach.
"Thank you," she murmured, suffocating on the tantalizing aroma of spice and masculinity that was uniquely Muhamed's.
When she made to withdraw, he clung to her button.
"You said you weren't from around here." Almond-scented breath bathed her face. "Why did you lie?"
"I've lived in Birminghamshire for the last thirty years," she said truthfully. There was no need to lie, not anymore. She was neither young nor wealthy nor in any way desirable other than to this man. "Land's End is no longer my home."
"Yet you are here."
"Yes, I am here. My husband died penniless. The vicar who replaced him was a bachelor; he was kind enough to let me be his housekeeper. Last month he married. There was not enough work for two women, so I… volunteered to retire my position. My parents left me a small plot of land." Pride intervened; she could not bring herself to tell him that it was a plot of land no larger than a matchbox and that the Branwells, in a place of poverty, had been the most poor. "I had nowhere else to come."
"Did you see your parents, before they died?"
"No," she said. Lingering regret flitted through her. "They died of influenza."
"Did you come back for their funeral?"
"My parents never forgave me for marrying a man who was not a Cornishman. No, I did not come back for their funeral. By the time I was alerted of their deaths, they had already been buried."
"Would you have attended, if you had known about it in time?"
"I don't know."
Or did she?
Megan had not wanted to return to the poverty or the grim austerity of the Cornish people.
"Did you like it when I put my tongue inside your mouth?"
Her breath caught in her chest, remembering the dual penetration of his tongue inside her mouth and his manhood inside her vulva. "Yes."
"I, too, found it enjoyable." Bright color circled his cheeks. He dropped his hands. "The gig will be ready."
Megan grabbed her cloak off one of the rusted hooks that acted as a wardrobe, and the Windsor hat off the bed. Rushing back, she retrieved her gloves and the French letter she had put inside the pocket of the discarded dress.
Chapter Five
Ragged pieces of cloth hung from thorns, mothers' last-year votive offerings torn from swaddling cloths to appease the old gods.
He stared at the clear spring water, and wondered why he had brought Megan to Madron Well.
The truth chuckled and bubbled out from underneath the rock.
Hilla-ridden-to have the stag-was a West Cornish term for a man whose life was riddled with nightmares. Legend claimed that a man could be cured if he washed in Madron Well.
He wanted to be cured.
He wanted to wash in Madron Well and bathe the past away.
"It is said that in 1650 there was a cripple named John Trelilie," Megan said. The brim of her hat and the fold of black veiling hid her face from his view. "He dreamed three times that he should wash himself in Madron Well. But he was crippled, and no one would bring him, so he crawled here to wash himself in the waters. It cured him, they say. They say he walked away from the well upright."
"Do you believe the story is true?" he asked neutrally.
"It is certainly less farfetched than some other Cornish legends." Megan looked up; sunlight sharply illuminated her white skin and the network of fine lines that defined it. "Are there similar legends in your country?"
Arabia was filled with legends. Of genies. Of magical oases.
He opened his mouth to tell her of Arabia. "Eunuchs have been known to marry," he said instead.
It was not what he had intended to say.
Her moss green eyes remained calm. "What did you mean, earlier, when you said that eunuchs such as yourself grow erect? Are there eunuchs who do not… grow erect?"
A bird warbled; the spring gurgled.
It all seemed so far away, the years he had been whole and the day he had been altered.
"There are three types of castration," he said, feeling as removed as the bird's warble. "There is the sandali, or castrati, in which a boy's-or man's-penis and testicles are cleanly cut off by a razor; there are those who have their penis only cut off; and there are those like me, who have their testicles either crushed or removed."
He spoke dispassionately, as if it had happened to someone else other than himself; as if the crimes perpetrated were not monstrous, but were perfectly acceptable.
In Arabia, they were.
The horror he had earlier expected to see in her eyes was clearly visible. "These men who do not have their manhood- how do they relieve themselves?"