The Moghul

exciting."
    She hesitated again. "And do you know what I like least about you? It's the feringhi clothes you wear."
    He burst into laughter. "Tell me why."
    "They're so . . . undignified. When I first saw you, that night you came to Mukarrab Khan's palace, I couldn't believe you could be anyone of importance. Then the next morning, at the observatory, you looked like a nobleman. Tonight, you're dressed like a feringhi again."
    "I like boots and a leather jerkin. When I'm wearing a fancy doublet and hose, then I feel I have to be false, false as the clothes. And when I dress like a Moghul, I always wonder if people think I'm trying to be something I'm not."
    "All right." She smiled resignedly. "But perhaps sometime tonight you'll at least take off your leather jerkin. I would enjoy seeing you."
    He looked at her in wonderment. "I still don't understand you at all. You once said you thought I was powerful. But you seem to be pretty powerful yourself. Nobody I know could force Mukarrab Khan or Nadir Sharif to do anything. Yet you made the governor divorce you, and then you made the prime minister deceive half of Agra to arrange this. You're so many different things."
    "Don't forget. Sometimes I'm also a woman."
    She rose and began to slowly draw out the long cinch holding the waist of her wrap. Her halter seemed to trouble her as she tried to loosen it. She laughed at her own awkwardness, and then it too came away. She was left with only her jewels and the long scarf over her hair, which she did not remove. Then she turned to him.
    "Do you still remember our last night in Surat?"
    "Do you?" He looked at her in the dim lamplight. The line of her body was flawless, with gently rounded breasts, perfect thighs, legs lithe yet strong.
    "I remember what I felt when I kissed you."
    He laughed and moved to take her in his arms. "But I thought I was the one who kissed you."
    "Maybe we should try it once more and decide." With a mischievous look she caught his arms and wrapped herself around him. As he touched her lips, she turned abruptly and the world suddenly seemed to twist crazily around them, sending his head spinning. In shock he opened his mouth to speak and it was flooded with the essence of rose.
    The pool beneath the platform had broken their fall. He came up gasping and found her lips.
    She tasted of another world. Sweet, fragrant. He enclosed her slowly in his arms, clasping her lean body gently at first; then feeling more and more of her warmth he pressed her to him, both of them still gasping. They seemed to float, weightless, serene in the darkness. Awkwardly he began pulling away his wet jerkin.
    "You're just as I imagined." Her hands traveled across his chest, lightly caressing his skin, while the lamp flickered against the paintings on the walls above them. "There's a strength about you, a roughness." She nuzzled his chest with her face. "Tonight will you let me be your poet?"
    "Tonight you can be anything you want."
    "I want to sing of you—a man I adore—of the desire I feel for you. After we know each other fully, the great longing will be gone. The most intense moment we can ever share will be past. The ache of wanting."
    "What you just said reminds me of something John Donne once wrote."
    "Who is he?"
    "One of our English poets and songwriters. But he had a slightly different idea." He hesitated, then smiled. "To tell the truth, I think I may like his better."
    She lifted herself up in the water, rose petals patterned across her body. "Then tell me what he said."
    "It's the only poem of his I can still remember, but only the first verse. For some reason I'll never forget it. I sometimes think of it when I think of you. Let me say it in English first and then try to translate.

    "I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
    Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then?
    But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
    Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
    'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
    If ever any beauty I did see,
    Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee."

    She listened to the hard English rhythm and then to his translation, awkward and halting. Then she was silent for a moment, floating her hand across the surface of the pond.
    "You know, I also wonder now what I did before I met you. Before I held you."
    She slipped her hands about his neck, and as she did he drew her up out of the water and cradled her against him. Then he lifted her, her body still strewn with rose