"You won't change your mind?"

Lisaveta turned sharply at the sound of the male voice. Then, seeing her father's old friend Javad Khan, she relaxed visibly. "No. Although it's no reflection on your hospitality," she added with a smile. Javad Khan's hospitality was in fact lavish, but his nephew Faizi Pasha had stopped to billet his troops for two days and had decided Lisaveta would make a fine addition to his harem.

"My apologies for Faizi," Javad said, advancing into the large room, which overlooked a fountained courtyard lush with blooming roses. "His father was Turkish."

This latter statement might seem oblique, but Lisaveta understood all the unspoken and disparaging nuances. Javad Khan, overlord of western Azerbaijan, was wealthy, cultured and Persian. He viewed the Turks as parvenu, perversely orthodox barbarians.

"I can protect you from Faizi," he said. "You needn't leave."

"Thank you," Lisaveta replied, choosing her words carefully. "But I don't wish to be the cause of enmity in your family." She also didn't wish to take the chance that Faizi and his troops might win this particular battle.

Javad shrugged. Family genocide was a cultural reality in his society, where power was often gained at the expense of numerous and bloody rivalries. "My tribesmen are more than a match for Faizi's troops." And as a man with a harem of his own, he couldn't be expected to understand Lisaveta's horror when faced with the prospect of being locked away in a harem herself.

"I don't want any bloodshed over my presence." She smiled again to soften her refusal. "It's best if I leave. Once the war is over I'll return to continue my research in your library. I'm so grateful you gave me the chance." Javad Khan's collection of Hafiz, Persia's greatest poet, was the most extensive in the world, the most lavishly illustrated… and the most private. Only she and her father had ever been allowed access.