His hot lust sated, he looked to the eunuch. By a flick of an eyelid, Ali Yahya asked dismissal of the girl. Orkhan shoved Mihrimah with his foot. “Go!” She obeyed instantly, getting to her feet and running from the room. “Speak, Ali Yahya. What is it?”

The eunuch fell to the floor and, taking the sultan’s foot, placed it on his bowed head. “I have erred, my lord. I have erred in judgement, and I beg that you forgive me.”

Orkhan was intrigued. Ali Yahya had been his slave for some twenty-five years. He had held his office as chief of the white eunuchs for the last fifteen. His judgements had always been cool, impersonal, and correct. Never before had he asked forgiveness. “What is it, my old friend?” asked Orkhan kindly.

“It is the princess Theadora, sire. I have been wrong about the girl, and so have your wives. She is innocent of any intrigue to better herself. I knew it last night, but it was too late to stop-” He hesitated, allowing the sultan time to reconstruct the events of the previous evening. “This morning,” continued the eunuch, “she begged my ear, and pleaded with me to ask your forgiveness for her ignorance in the arts of pleasing you. She has also asked that I find her tutors to teach her so she may remedy this lack.”

“Has she?” Orkhan was interested. He would not have been surprised if the girl had tried to take her own life after last night. Then, he would not have cared. But now he was fascinated.

“Perhaps it would be a titillating novelty, sire, if it were you who acted as her first teacher. Who knows your desires better? She appears eager to learn, and she really is quite lovely, my lord.”

The sultan’s black eyes narrowed with remembrance and he chuckled. “So she is eager to learn, eh? Even after last night? And you think I should school the little wench?”

“It would be something different, my lord. I would not know, of course, but is it not dull, being continually catered to by the women of your house? As her tutor you could teach her what pleases you best. When she succeeds you will reward her. And if she is slow in her lessons, you will chastise her.”

The sultan’s eyes gleamed. He was known to occasionally enjoy whipping a slavegirl. “You are sure, Ali Yahya? You are sure she did not nag her father and force herself on me?”

“I am quite sure, sire. She would have sooner remained at St. Catherine’s. This was her father’s doing entirely.”

Orkhan smiled slowly. “She will soon change her mind, my old friend. I will teach her to crave my touch. Tell her she is forgiven her ignorance, Ali Yahya, and that tonight I will begin her lessons in love.”

The eunuch bowed himself out, barely able to contain his mirth.

With the princess, however, he would have to be completely truthful. Yesterday he had thought of her as only another girl, like thousands of others. Today, however, seeing her rise so strongly from her despair, he had-with a sure instinct for his own survival-revised his opinion. Ali Yahya was not sure what Theadora Cantacuzene was, but he knew she would be a power to be reckoned with.

Theadora was again bathed, creamed, and perfumed. But this time Ali Yahya brought her silk gauze night garments and simple jewelry. The pantaloons and open bolero were rose-pink, which heightened the creamy fairness of her skin. The anklebands were done simply in gold-thread embroidered flowers. The bolero was edged along the sides and bottom in tiny crystal beads. The chief eunuch had brought her several very delicate little gold chains of different lengths to wear about her neck. He himself put upon her slender finger a rough-cut deep-blue Persian turquoise set in heavy red gold.

“My gift to you, Highness.”

“Thank you, Ali Yahya. I shall treasure it.” Then she looked at him questioningly.

“It will be all right, Highness, I promise you,” he said as he helped her into the litter. He bent over her and fastened gold and crystal ornaments to each of her little earlobes.

She reached up and touched them, delighted. He smiled back at her. Though he sensed greatness in her, she was still a child. The earlobes sparkled prettily, fully visible as her dark hair was drawn back. It had been braided with pale pink ribbons and seed pearls. The sultan would be foolish to mistreat so delightful a morsel, thought the eunuch.

And that was most unlikely. Sultan Orkhan had thought most of the day of the novelty of teaching his young wife the amatory arts: he could barely wait for evening. He hoped she was passionate by nature. But even so, she was likely to resist him at first, her shyness overcoming her. Resistance! The thought excited him. He could not remember the last time a woman had resisted him.

The great double doors to his rooms were flung open, and he could see his new wife in the corridor beyond, being assisted from her litter. He watched with open approval as she moved gracefully toward him, her lovely head bowed modestly. She stopped-and knelt to prostrate herself before him in the gesture of humble submission.

“No!” he was amazed to hear himself say. “You are a princess born, my Theadora.”

“But you, my lord husband, are my master,” her low, melodious voice replied as she touched her forehead to his slippered foot. He raised her up and pulled her veil away from her face, tossing it to the floor. “Look at me,” he commanded. And she raised her head to him. The clear amethyst eyes did not waver under his dark glance. “Your manners are flawless, my young wife, but your beautiful eyes speak differently from your posture!”

For a moment her white teeth caught at her lower lip. She flushed becomingly, but her gaze did not falter. “I am,” she replied, “as Your Majesty has said, a princess born.”

The sultan laughed heartily. The girl had spirit. Surprisingly, he did not mind. She was a breath of cold, crisp air after an overheated, overscented room. “Leave us,” he commanded the waiting Ali Yahya and the other slaves. When they had gone, he turned to her. “Are you afraid, my Theadora?”

She nodded. “A little, my lord. After last night.”

He cut her short with a wave of his hand, saying fiercely, “Last night did not happen! We begin tonight!”

Remembering the rape by a wooden phallus she seethed but quickly said sweetly, “Yes, my lord!”

He drew her down to the pillows on the large divan.

“You are an unexplored garden of delights, my bride. For the present, I shall seek to please you.” He pushed the little bolero off her, and, cupping her breasts in his hands, kissed first one and then the other. “Your breasts are like unopened roses,” he murmured deeply against her silken, perfumed skin.

A streak of lightning ripped through her at his gentle touch, and she gasped with shock, instinctively raising her hands to fend him off. But he was too quick for her. Pushing her back amid the pillows he covered her bare breasts with hot kisses. His tongue lapped at her large nipples, sending wave after wave of shivers over her trembling body. Then his mouth closed over one hard peak, and sucked hungrily. “My lord,” she moaned. “Oh, my lord!” She was close to fainting by the time he finally stopped.

“Did you like it?” he asked. “Did you like what I just did to you?”

She could not answer, and he took her silence for maidenly modesty, which delighted him. What she could not tell him was that she had liked what he had done. She liked it as much as she had liked it when Prince Murad did it to her. This confused her terribly. Did she not then love the prince? Was love a different thing from the delicious feelings that rippled through her body when she was touched in this way? She did not understand.

What she did know was that she liked a man’s hands on her, and she was, after all, this man’s wife. So where was the harm? But as his arm encircled her and his free hand stroked her again, she remembered last night-when he had coldly ordered her precious virginity wasted upon a lifeless piece of polished wood so that he might not waste his time. He only wooed her now because of Ali Yahya’s intervention. Without that intervention, she would again have been bound to the bed and mated like an animal.

Her beloved Murad had never hurt her. He had touched her gently, with tenderness. He had wanted her for his wife, and she in turn had wanted him for her husband. She had wanted to please him. That had been love! Fragile, barely born-but love!

She did not love the sultan, but she did enjoy his attentions and, God have mercy on her, it was all she was going to get in this life. Princesses were not expected to enjoy their marriages.

Sighing, she gave herself over to his ministrations, delighting him by drawing his head back down to her breasts, and begging prettily that he do again what he had just done. He could feel his own desire rising fast, for she excited him greatly. It took all his strength to remember how very unskilled she really was. Like a green youth, he fumblingly drew her pantaloons down over her hips to where she might easily kick them off. His fingers eagerly sought for her mound of Venus, and found it already moist. Panting, he tore open his robe and flung himself on her, feeling with ecstatic pleasure her youthful warmth.

His fingernails scratched the insides of her thighs as he pulled her legs apart. To her amazement he was nearly sobbing his hunger for her. His eagerness astounded her. She had no fear of him. She wondered if she closed her eyes, and pretended he were Murad…

Moving provocatively, she whispered huskily, “Kiss me, my lord. Kiss me, my husband.” He quickly obliged her, and to her delight his mouth was firm, and strangely familiar. It was-oh, dear God!-like Murad’s. He kissed her deeply, passionately. First he was the aggressor and then, to their mutual surprise, she was. She allowed his mouth to sweep her into a purely physical world of sensual pleasures.