“What I say! It is the only way you can escape. The Sultan told me last night that he was receiving guests this morning. Because he does not wish to see them until late, since he wishes to be with me first, he is sending one of them, I did not hear his name, in the Royal Caïque to a ship that is anchored out in the Bosporus.”

“And you mean – that I shall – go with him – in the trunk?” Yamina asked.

“It is the only way,” Mihri said. “But the ship is English!”

Yamina looked at her wide-eyed.

The word “English” sounded ominous in her ears. At the same time she knew that even to be a prisoner of the English was at this moment preferable to being taken to the harem of the Black Eunuch.

She had not wasted her time these last few days since Mihri had told her what was intended.

There had been odalisques who were only too willing to tell her stories of what happened in the Black Eunuch’s household.

Of screams that were heard in the darkness of the night, of women who disappeared after it was known that the Kizlar Aga was angry with them, of beatings, torture and cruelties that were so unpleasant that Yamina tried not to listen to the details of them.

It all added up to a horrifying picture that had made her even more terrified than she was already!

She knew with desperation born of despair that, if eventually the Black Eunuch asked for her and persuaded the Sultan to give her to him as a present, then she must kill herself.

It would not be difficult, there were innumerable ways available in the harem of taking one’s own life – but something young and resilient within her rebelled at the thought of dying.

She wanted to live!

There was so much she wanted to do, so much she wanted to learn, so much she wanted to feel.

Always in the past there had seemed an endless future ahead, years of living, so that there was no need to hurry through the present, but now she had begun to count every minute as if it was her last.

The sunshine through the windows made her long for a freedom that she felt would never be hers again.

She would think of herself galloping round the estate at Balaclava on one of the fine horses that her father had provided for her.

She would even think to herself of the horse she had last ridden, sitting in front of Lord Castleford.

His arm had been strong and protective and, although he was a stranger whom she had never seen before, she had known that she was safe with him.