Page 1 of The Curious Countess (Cloaks and Countesses)

Chapter One

A lara’s aunt had a plan.

That was clear from the way her eyebrows waggled as she ushered herself into the blue salon, where only women were allowed.

Even Sir Theodore Trace, retired from diplomacy these twenty years, respected the boundaries established by his Ottoman wife.

His sister, Mrs. Griffiths, adapted to such requirements her own way. She treated the restriction as a personal quirk, and expected her own personal quirks to be respected in turn. For instance, in her youth Mrs. Griffiths had taken up the habit of replacing her pale eyebrows with ones made of dark fur. She preferred that others not mention this.

She waggled those eyebrows meaningfully now. As was often the case, one was askew.

Alara’s life had been spent in a family full of differences, many of them inexplicable at first glance, and she loved to ask questions. But she never asked where her aunt had got the fur.

“I apologize for my unexpected call,” said her aunt, plumping her skirts around her as if she still wore the voluminous fashions of her youth. “But I wanted both your opinions of this styling of my hair. I don’t wish to look like I’m yearning for attention!”

Alara welcomed any interruption to yet another slow afternoon of needlework and verses. Her mother read aloud every day in Arabic, Turkish, Italian, or French. She wouldn’t stoop to English poetry.

Alara had heard every book in her mother’s library several times. Some days all she hoped for in life was a new book.

In years past, the verses were followed by tidbits of law. What was required for a marriage contract, mostly. Fortunately, Alara asked too many questions; the law lectures had stopped.

“You needn’t yearn for attention, looking that pretty,” Alara complimented her aunt’s fetching heap of light gray curls, topped with a delicate lace cap. The eyebrows might be disastrous but Alara envied the curls.

Not that it mattered, as Alara seldom went out.

“Thank you, dear.” Her aunt accepted the compliment with aplomb before flicking a look toward the door as if trying to shove Alara out of it. “I wonder if you’d fetch me some tea. No one makes it so well as you.”

Alara’s mother kept her attention on her needlework, sparing only a few disapproving glances for Mrs. Griffiths’ entire ensemble . Her own hair was sleek and topped with a little cap that trailed ribbons, echoing her coat’s long split sleeves and sides, all edged with gold braid against the striped gown beneath. Without rising from her low crimson couch, she waved toward a bell rope. “Servants can bring tea.”

“Alara’s tastes best,” insisted Mrs. Griffiths, motioning Alara to go.

Confused, she did.

Then stopped outside to lean her ear against the door and unabashedly eavesdrop.

“Her calling me pretty when she is a rose. It’s not fair Alara never had a proper season. Honestly, Zehra!”

“It would serve no purpose,” came the answer, flat as an iron.

In her own home, Lady Trace was styled Zehra Chaush, as she preferred. Nor did she hold back her criticism of English weather, food, or customs. She measured her motherly love by how firmly she intended her children to have the advantages of life in Ottoman lands, even as she herself never traveled far from her English husband’s side.

All through the years of war, Zehra insisted that next year they’d be over, next year Alara would be on her way home. She’d have a proper education, a proper house, and most importantly, a proper marriage.

Alara wished she could have at least read different books in the meantime.

“Mrs. Griffiths, I have been quite liberal. Alara has attended several social affairs with you, and in English dress! I’ve been too liberal, if you even imagine her making an English match.”

Flattened against the door, Alara’s face grew hot.

Her mother added, “Your fashions are not modest, and I cannot bear to think of the sorts of women who attend a public affair.”

Alara would love to be the sort of woman who attended a public affair. It would be heavenly to be—not someone else, she quite liked herself, but a different version of herself. Someone easy in company, with the prospect of marrying?—

Well, in her dreams, the marriage was quite specific.

Mrs. Griffiths was adamant. “The fashions suit well enough, and my modiste has Alara’s measurements. You might not mind this appalling confinement, but Alara should stir about a little. She’s like a rock in the mud here.”

That didn’t feel quite fair, or perhaps like an underhand comment about how much Alara had eaten last week during Eid. Alara would have opened the door to challenge it, but Mrs. Griffiths went on.

“Alara needs fresh air.”

Her mother’s voice came again. “If you had proper weather, you could build proper houses that let in the air. And you can’t fool me; the air at an assembly won’t be fine at all. In Sultanahmet, Alara’s very fine house will admit warm sea air all the time. My cousin seeks her match right now. I won’t risk her future by marrying her in Britain! Women cannot even own their homes here. It is barbaric. How will she ever feel safe?”

That made Alara’s eyes drop to the floor. The trouble was, she agreed with her mother. She didn’t take risks, and she preferred to feel safe. And yes, it unsettled her that a life in Britain would always be a life under someone else’s roof.

But surely if she married the right man, she could trust him.

British women managed, after all.

Mrs. Griffiths did not yield. “Zehra. You abandoned your own family’s plans for you and chose a British husband. Why do you expect an arranged marriage to make Alara happy?”

Listening on tiptoe, Alara hoped her mother would say something about the one forbidden topic of conversation: her own marriage.

Zehra talked a great deal of marriage contracts, but not of marrying outside her faith.

Nor did she now. “Alara isn’t me. She doesn’t care much.”

Alara nearly sank down to the floor where she stood.

She didn’t care about marriage? Or about whom she would marry? How could her mother think that?

Her mother went on, “I had to fight for the marriage I wanted. I managed precisely because I had my own wealth and knew how to persuade. Alara prefers to take life as it comes, but if she should ever need it, she ought to have the means.”

“She isn’t you,” said Mrs. Griffiths, clearly disgruntled, and it was too much for Alara. She slumped against the door, heedless of whether they heard.

Her mother was more than a parent. She was a tutor, and a constant companion. Her assessment was not just hard to ignore; it had the weight of received truth. But Zehra Chaush had mixed up her truths.

She disliked English winters and the constant parade of slabs of meat. Fine. Understandable. Alara preferred Turkish cooking too.

But her mother ignored that, food aside, Alara was as English as the rain. She loved London cobblestones and her summer country garden. Loving England didn’t make her passive. Or wrong.

Her mother constantly spoke of Alara’s departure as a voyage home, but Alara had never been to Istanbul. After a lifetime of her mother’s stories she ought to find appealing the prospect of its ancient monuments, palaces of cool blue tile, and all the fruits and fish her mother still missed.

Alara did like the prospect, as somewhere to visit. But not to live.

That didn’t make her timid.

Indeed, others might think her ghoulish if they knew how she’d followed every turn of the war, selfishly glad for every new delay to her journey. Every minute she stayed was another chance for Lord Harman to remember she existed.

For Britain wasn’t just her home, it was his; and of the few men she’d met, none were as gently kind as the boy of her childhood summers.

Lord and Lady Ayles’ ancient home ruled the valley where Sir Theodore’s hunting lodge stood. In the summer, no one hunted. The two couples cooed over their younger sons together.

That left Alara and little Lord Harman, whom she’d called John, to roam the countryside among gentle breezes. He’d built bridges of sticks over the tiny stream and named them all after her.

The last time they’d seen each other, he’d been a gangly boy. Together, walking as far along the stream as they’d ever dared before, they’d discovered a new kind of rock.

By then they knew others found their discoveries boring. And perhaps they both recognized how time had changed them, would change them yet more. They wouldn’t be allowed to wander the countryside together much longer.

Alara had seen it first, and John—Lord Harman—had freed it from the stream bed. He’d offered it to her.

She smoothed a finger over its pink and gray striations. “I wonder if it’s the same inside?”

“Of course it is,” he’d said, all legs and confidence.

“Are you sure?” she’d asked with a little smile, as always trying to rock his constant easy assumptions. He’d never seemed torn the way Alara was between two futures, two worlds. He’d been as certain of his place as he was of how to crack apart the rock.

Which he did, snapping it open against a boulder with strong hands, brown after so much time in the summer sun. Then handed it to her gently the next instant.

It was the way he’d looked at her as he’d presented his gift that had made her heart swoop. He’d looked like she’d given him something.

That had been so long ago. Since he’d come of age, Mrs. Griffiths rarely mentioned him; he moved in higher circles, she said, and spent most of his time with the gentlemen in Parliament.

No doubt he’d forgotten her. She so seldom ventured out, and he, according to scraps of gossip she gleaned from the marketplace and the servants, did nothing but. Assemblies, musicales, even desperately immoral masquerades—Lord Harman was everywhere.

Alara expected every day, every year, to hear that he was betrothed.

She’d hear it third-hand, of course; he’d never appear at the events Alara attended. Those were mostly charitable affairs involving knitting or sheet-sewing, with older ladies of London society. Zehra Chaush was as suspicious of London men as she was of the weather, which was to say very.

Mrs. Griffiths’ disapproving silence moved Zehra to speak again. “Alara has a great destiny. Her marriage will bring Britain and the Sublime State closer together. She will do what I could not.” Her mother’s voice quavered a little behind the closed door.

That made Alara straighten. She’d never heard her mother say any such thing.

But Mrs. Griffiths wasn’t finished. “Pish, Zehra. You cannot blame yourself for that war, or expect Alara to prevent one. Don’t say another word. Destiny or not, she deserves to enjoy herself, and one night won’t hurt. I had to apply for a ticket this morning to the dowager Duchess of Talbourne, and it was not pleasant work. Either you trust me to guard her for one evening, or you don’t. That’s the end of it, Zehra.”

It was an admirable tactic. That was exactly how her mother ended arguments.

Clearly Zehra wasn’t sure how to defend her position against her own tactics. “If you feel so strongly, Mrs. Griffiths, of course I will indulge you.” As if she were doing her sister-in-law a favor. “For one night.”

A little spark of something, maybe hope, ignited in Alara’s chest.

“Excellent. I’ll tell her now, it will be such a selfish pleasure.”

Mrs. Griffiths moved so fast that Alara had barely jumped back from the salon door before it opened.

And she seized Alara’s arm, completely unsurprised that Alara was not on the errand for tea.

“All right, darling, I suppose you heard everything,” she whispered, sailing away with Alara into the depths of the house.

Alara forbore to deny that she was timid, or destined, faced with more important information. “A sponsored affair!”

“ Ssh. It is a masquerade.”

A masquerade .

Her aunt went on. “You have one night. No time to dally. You do wish to stay in Britain, don’t you?”

“You know I do! Do you think I’m timid too?”

Mrs. Griffiths patted her hand with sympathy. “We shall find out tonight. You have one night to find a British husband. No, don’t gasp, she’ll hear. A woman in desperate straits may take desperate measures. Will you trust me?”

Alara’s heart pounded.

There was nothing more wild, barbarca, than a masquerade. All the traits her mother least liked in the English gentry.

Mrs. Griffiths nodded with a challenge in her eye. “You’re a bit quiet, dear, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to catch a British husband, you don’t have much time. At a masquerade, you might well do it in one night. I’ve arranged a gown that will practically do it for you. You must just be brave. Will you do it?”

Alara’s blood raced. She had no idea what to expect, or what might even happen. Her mother might well be right, that English parties were no place for a lady.

But her mother had also given her an adventurer’s blood. Zehra Chaush had sailed to foreign lands for love; and she was quite wrong in thinking Alara would simply accept whatever came her way.

She might even see that sweet English boy again.

“Of course I will,” she whispered back.