Potiphar's Wife by Mesu Andrews

Author:Mesu Andrews [Andrews, Mesu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2022-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Better is open rebuke

than hidden love.

Proverbs 27:5

Zuleika

Ahira silently applied my cosmetics. I didn’t mind. My thoughts drifted to the husband I’d met on the palace steps. Queen Tani’s whispered threat. The way I’d embarrassed myself in front of Pushpa and the slaves. And Gaios’s promise to earn more silver. I glimpsed the pink sand in my shrine and shivered in horror at the thought of returning to Crete together with Gaios. He must never wear a crown.

“Mistress Zully, should I skip the kohl around your eyes?” Ahira pressed away the moisture with a scrap of linen.

I sighed and looked up, blinking furiously. “No, Ahira. I must be presentable for my husband.”

She dried my eyes once more, and I closed them. “He seemed kind,” I whispered as her steady hand lined my lashes. “What if it was pretense because Pushpa was watching?”

A knock at the door startled me. “Yes?”

“Captain Potiphar has been delayed.” The guard’s report hung in the air, confirming my fears.

“The master was thoughtful to send word, Zully.”

Her hand was poised to apply sparkling green malachite, but I shoved it away. “I hate green, Ahira. Everything in Egypt is either delta green or desert brown. Crete and her people span the colors of the rainbow, vibrant as wildflowers and restless as the sea.”

Ahira pursed her lips, patiently enduring my yearnings as she had for months. “Whether you wear malachite to greet your husband or not,” she said, “you’ve proven wildflowers can survive Egypt’s desert.”

“Why try to please a man who never wrote me a single message while he was away? Minas wrote me dozens of times when he went trading. Pateras wrote Mitera. I realize Potiphar was fighting a rebellion, but…” Dare I voice my most shocking realization? “I saw his arm in that sling and couldn’t bear that he might have been killed, Ahira.”

Her features softened. “He’s your husband.” She calmly pressed my shoulders back against the couch. “Give him a chance to love you.”

“But I don’t want to love him.”

“I remember how that felt.”

Ahira hid her face and offered me the hand mirror, then began applying Egypt’s precious green powder. The kohl liner would serve as boundaries to the windows of my soul. It was as barren as drought-ridden Temehu, but I’d offer Potiphar what I could.

“All done.” Ahira took the mirror and offered her hand to help me stand. “Would you like to wait in the courtyard?”

I nodded. We linked arms and strolled toward the pond as though I had no cares in this world. However, when we entered the courtyard, muffled male voices grabbed my attention. “That’s Potiphar’s courtyard,” I whispered, pointing at crooked tapestries covering a poorly hidden door.

“Are you hungry?” Ahira’s volume and forced brightness reminded me those in Potiphar’s courtyard would hear us too.

The first day in my chamber, I’d noticed the blockaded connecting door and asked Pushpa what lay on the other side. She’d confessed that Potiphar had tried to hide the portal to prevent his new wife’s unannounced visits.

Ahira followed as I meandered to my favorite couch tucked beneath a copse of palm trees.

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