The Winter Thief

94

“Ayali! How wonderful.” Feride clapped her hands at the thought of her brother living in a seaside mansion. Sariyer was north of Bebek, where Yorg Pasha lived, and accessible only by boat, but she knew the wives of several pashas who summered in the area. The mansion Sultan Abdulhamid had given to Kamil had belonged to the late Sultan Abdulaziz’s daughter. When she married and moved to her husband’s mansion, the house on the waterfront had reverted back to the palace. “I’ve seen it,” Feride told Kamil. “It’s lovely, a huge place. Much too big for you,” she concluded with a smile.

Feride was already making plans to visit. Her daughters would love to be closer to the water. Their mansion in Nishantashou had a big garden, but nothing was better than being able to step directly from your terrace into a caïque on a moonlit night and picnic on the water. It would do Huseyin good too to get away from this house that had been his prison for so many months. After his visit to the palace, he had developed a painful cough and for a time had become so incapacitated that she had worried he might die. Now he was on the mend, although still weak. There had been no opportunity for the reconciliation she had planned with her husband, but the tension between them had disappeared, replaced by an awkward caution.

“You’d better put your name on the door, Kamil,” Huseyin joked. “Your sister is already arranging the furniture.”

She leaned over and kissed her husband’s brow, leaving her lips in place for a moment to feel the warmth of his skin against hers. He smiled in return and squeezed her arm, but she saw the hesitancy in his eyes. There was a smear of puckered pink flesh across his cheek. He still walked with a cane, and his body was seamed with scars. He had insisted on sleeping in a separate bedroom. He hadn’t understood her tears and protests over his doing so, she thought. Had she become his nurse and nothing more? Did he no longer wish her to see his body? Perhaps she should have acquiesced quietly, but she was determined to win her husband back.

She stood by her husband’s chair and wondered when, if ever, he would draw her onto his lap again.