“Did you feel she was insincere in her affection for you?”

“Affection? Her generosity was entirely self-serving, but there was a charm about her, a certain naïveté. She did not understand the art of bribery.”

“Did she try to influence anyone else?”

“She had a friendship with Jemal that grew too close.”

“I met him at Topkapı. Does he work at both palaces?”

“He was sent to Topkapı because of Ceyden. As I said, they’d become too close.”

“Who forced him to move?”

“I am valide sultan,” she said, smiling. “No one in the harem balks at my orders. It is as if they are law.”

“Why did Ceyden’s friendship with Jemal concern you?”

“Because I didn’t trust either of them.” I opened my mouth to ask why, but she did not let me speak. “And for now that is all there is to be said on the topic. It does not, I assure you, have any bearing on the matter at hand.”

“Did Ceyden make any other attempts to circumvent you?”

“There would be no point.”

“The sultan never makes a selection on his own?”

“He could, of course, but petty amusement is far from his top priority. He has an empire to run, Lady Emily. He already has children and their mothers to contend with.”

I tried to squelch the judgment rising through me. Children and their mothers, yet still in need of petty amusement? For a moment, I wished I could return to my romanticized view of the harem. Candor, I decided, was my only option. “Perestu, forgive me. This is all so very foreign. I cannot imagine sharing my husband.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Only a few months.”

“A short time, and you are very young. But this is not relevant.”