“Aye.” Alya caught him staring and dropped her eyes. “They are all she has in the world.”
“That could be a problem.” Newt hopped off his barrel.
Henry took his meaning. “Aye.”
If her father’s family rejected her, Alya would be cast adrift with only Bahir. Not if he had anything to do with it. Henry dropped the rope and strode across the deck.
As he drew near, Bahir stiffened.
“Her father wanted me to teach her how to go on in Genoa,” Henry said.
Alya’s head came up. She glanced at Bahir and back at him.
Henry held Bahir’s glare. “She needs to learn.”
Finally, Bahir uncrossed his arms and nodded. “You will teach her.”
“Teach me what?” Alya’s voice had a slight husk, deeper than most women’s, and rich, with a rasp that brought to mind good mead.
He crouched in front of her. “Things are different in Genoa. Different to the way you were raised.”
She tilted her head and studied him.
“Your hijab and niqab.” He pointed. “They will find it strange. Women do not go about covered in Genoa.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I am aware.”
He waited, giving her time to reach the inevitable conclusion.
First she removed her niqab. Slowly, she unwound the hijab from her head, then lowered it to the deck.
She bore the skin of her father’s people, a shade or two darker than his sisters’ but still pale as thick poured cream. Above a full mouth, her straight nose tilted up slightly at the end. Ringed by thick, dark lashes, her eyes tilted up at the corners. Whatever they made of her in Genoa it would not be because she lacked beauty.
Under his scrutiny, she went pink, ducking her head to hide her face from him.
He lifted her head.
Bahir stiffened and stepped nearer.
“You have no need to hide your face,” Henry said. “You are beautiful.”
“English.” Bahir’s deep rumble warned him away.
Henry dropped his hand, and not because Bahir bristled beside him, but more to conceal his reaction to her beauty. “We will need to buy you some other clothes when we reach Genoa.”
Alya nodded. “What else?”
Where to start? His mother, the perfect lady in all matters, had corrected, cajoled and, on occasion, nagged his sisters into proper decorum. When he said nagged, he meant Beatrice, because a simple correction had always been sufficient for Faye.
“The way you are sitting.” He indicated her cross-legged position. “Ladies always keep their…um, knees and ankles together.”
“Why?” Alya frowned down at her legs.
“Skirts.” Inspiration struck him in a dizzying wave of relief. “Skirts confine your movement and you will find you cannot keep your…um, knees parted.”
A low growl emanated from Bahir. If he believed the man capable of amusement, Henry might have called it laughter.
Shifting, Alya sat on her hip. Knees tightly pressed together, ankles stacked. “Like this?”
“Not exactly.” What had possessed him to give his vow to Alif? “Ladies, in general, do not sit on the floor.”
He read the question building, and dragged a crate to her. “They sit on benches and furnishings.”
Now Bahir frowned and stepped forward. “No cushions?”
How long would this voyage take? “Let us start at the beginning.”
Newt slunk closer, leaned against the mast, and smirked. A little help from that quarter might not go amiss, but Newt looked to be enjoying Henry flounder too much.
“Where we live—”
“Angle land?” Bahir said.
“Well, aye, but nobody has called it that for years, hundreds of years. Now we say England.”
“England.” Alya rolled the word slowly over her tongue.
The Good Lord knew how she did it, but somehow, she made it sound seductive.
“England is colder,” Henry said. “We built our castles…homes…first of wood, and then we replaced it with stone because of the winter.”
Bahir snorted. “Stone is cold.”
“Aye.” Henry shivered at the memory of his breath icing on the air through midwinter. “But it also keeps the worst of the chill out. And it’s safer against attack. Easier to defend.
Narrowing his eyes, Bahir appeared to think that over. Then he nodded. “Better against fire.”
“Exactly.” Henry saw his first glimmer of hope. “Anyway, as Bahir pointed out, stone is cold, so we do not sit on the floor.” Now came the part that made him cringe after all these years in Egypt. “Also, the floor is covered in rushes and dirty.”
Sucking in a soft breath, Alya wrinkled her nose. “Dirty?”
“From things people drop.” Henry waved an airy hand, not wanting to delve too deeply into that. “Animals.”
“You allow animals in your homes?” Bahir’s chest swelled. “To live where you eat?”
Alya looked a little sickened, but she said, “I am sure you bathe them before you allow them within.”
Newt threw back his head and guffawed loud enough a gull startled from the mast.
Mother and Nurse had always insisted on bathing within Anglesea, but some did not see the value in it. Indeed, most believed it to invite illness into the body. In Egypt, even the slaves bathed daily. Perhaps the Genovese had a different custom. He hoped for Alya that they did. “We do not bathe the animals.”
Her face fell.
“But the bigger ones are not allowed within the keep. The horses, the cows, and the sheep all live outside in barns and pens. Mainly we keep the dogs within the keep.”
“Dogs?” Bahir spat. “You allow filthy creatures who eat their own waste in your homes?”
“They do not eat their own waste,” Newt said. “But they do eat the waste of everything else.”
Alya pressed her hand to her mouth as if she might be ill. “I do not think I will like England.”
“Which is fine.” Henry put some cheer into his voice. “Because you will be living in Genoa, and I am sure it is very, very different.”
“Actually—” Newt straightened from his slouch.
“Very different.” Henry glared his point home and held out his hand to Alya. “Now, if you will stand.”
Bahir growled.
“It is custom for a man to assist a woman to stand.” Henry kept his hand outstretched. “Skirts hamper the women’s movement.”
She stared at his hand. “Then why do they wear them?”
“Modesty,” Henry said. “Just as you wear your hijab for modesty, so they wear skirts.”
Nodding, Alya took his hand. Her small, soft palm fit his as if crafted just for him. Henry resisted the strong urge to curl his fingers about hers and hold on.
She gasped, glanced at their joined hands and then up at him.
Henry felt the jolt down to his toes. Their gazes locked and Henry lost himself in the sweet heat in her eyes.