Laura Kinsale by The Dream Hunter

is married to an uncle of the emir,” a handsome young nomad offered earnestly. “Her cousin is a lovely girl, they say, and ready to be wed.”
    “The tribes are not in harmony. The Muteyr will not stay to fight the Saudis,” someone commented. “Already they fold their tents, even before the queen comes.”
    “Aye, there is bad blood between Rashid and the Muteyr. They will not fight for him.”
    “But they hate the Egyptians.”
    “If the queen comes, God be praised, they will fight for her!”
    “Will Rashid marry the queen, do you think?”  
    “Nay, she is a Christian!”
    “No!” The chorus of denial on this point was vehement. “She is not Christian, or she would not come to help the Moslemin!”
    A wizened old man wandered over and sat smoking silently next to the fire. In a pause, he reached to finger Selim’s pearl. “Ay billah,” he murmured. “If the young prince does not care for the virgins of Hayil, I have a cousin in Mogug who has a daughter... it is said, by God, that she is worth a string of pearls!”
    Arden lowered his coffee and met the old man’s eyes. Hoots of derision arose about them. “Mogug!” the others shouted. “There is no such girl in that poor place!”
    The ancient made a deprecating gesture and rose, withdrawing. “Allah send me peace! Perhaps it was at Aneyzah, then.”
    Arden smiled at him. “When you remember, O my Father, yallah, hasten to come and tell me.”
    The old man touched his forehead and ambled away. Arden accepted another thimbleful of coffee, playing the part of a courteous guest, but while he sat with the rest on the carpet-covered floor, his mind was distracted elsewhere.
    He felt quite certain that he would receive a visit from the old man—it was with that purpose he had braided the pearl, the token designated in the intercepted letter to Abbas Pasha, behind Selim’s ear, and ruthlessly compelled the reluctant bridegroom through his paces. But it was the other revelation that forced itself into his reckoning, that made him stare so severely at a slave offering him more coffee that the servant moved away for fear of the Mogreby’s Evil Eye.
    Arden was angry at himself. He had never considered himself an intolerant man, certainly not a righteous one, but he found that he was intensely discomfited by this new intuition. At the same time he thought himself a simpleton not to have considered it—the boy’s air of delicacy had been plain from the start, and many of the Ottomans viewed such things with complacency, even considered the love between a man and a boy to be on some finer plane than that between man and woman. Arden made a conscious effort to view it in the same spirit, but he felt as if he had smacked face-on into a stone wall—there were many things he could accept, and a number of things he could deeply admire in the Eastern culture, but he found that he could not bear that Selim had come to think of him in that way.
    Now that he was attentive to it, he saw that at least one man, a sleek-looking camel broker from Damascus, stared at the boy with something beyond mere curiosity—with a hungry look of recognition. Selim’s anxious fingers clung to Arden’s arm with even more apprehension than usual. Arden scowled at the fellow fiercely to warn him off. The camel buyer smiled and made a brief bow as he turned away.
    When the mejlis was called, all rose to attend the emir’s daily gathering in the wide street outside. Arden walked with Selim instantly behind him. He did not, could not bear to look at the youth as they found a place in the shade of a wall, settling down cross-legged with the Shammar, but he felt the Bedu and the townspeople observing him and Selim, some with a hard curiosity that he distrusted. He was fully appreciative of the company of his Shammar, for such looks could turn ugly.
    The prince arrived, taking his place on a raised platform, a mud bench built into the wall and covered luxuriantly by Baghdad rugs and