“Topkapı looks marvelous, even from a distance,” I said. “Perhaps I shall be kidnapped and given to the sultan and live out the rest of my years there.” A few paces from me, a fisherman pulled up his line and dropped his flopping catch into an already full bucket. All around us, men were doing the same, and the air fell heavy with the oily, salty scent of their bounty.

“He should be so lucky.” Our eyes met and lingered, and the most pleasant sort of warmth pulsed through me. “But you wouldn’t be—the court is no longer at Topkapı. There’s a new palace.”

“I could stand here all day,” I said. To our north, the neighborhoods of Pera stretched to the hills, and the Galata Tower, the last remnant of a fourteenth-century fort, stood tall above tier after tier of creamy rose-and-white houses.

“I’ve other plans for you.” After bestowing upon me a deliciously discreet kiss that in an instant promised untold delights, Colin led me back to the docks, and in short order we had climbed aboard a small caïque rowed by two sturdy men. They moved with a grace I would not have expected from persons so muscular, pulling through water rough enough to make me wish for the stability of a large ship. As the Golden Horn opened to the wide expanse of the Bosphorus, I began to feel queasy bouncing up and down on erratic waves.

Houses packed the Asian shore as tightly as the European, but as we traveled north, they grew larger—yalıs, mansions built as summer homes for the city’s elite. Some were spectacular, others in distressing states of disrepair, but all came right to the edge of the water, which lapped against terraces perfect for watching the light change as the sun set. Colin had rented one for us that was a vision of romantic perfection: bright white with a peaked red roof and elaborately delicate gingerbread trimwork on the myriad windows, pillars, and balconies gracing the eighteenth-century façade. I stepped, unsteady, off the boat, the fatigue of travel exacerbated by the rough crossing. Nonetheless, I was ready to explore the interior.