The Solitary Sheikh
ALEXANDRA SELLERS
A HARDENED, LONELY SHEIKH Prince Omar's heart was as barren as the desert - until beguiling Jana Stewart, his daughters' tutor, tempted the widower's weary soul like an oasis. Though the powerful prince desperately desired Jana's touch, he resisted her, believing that love was merely a mirage… . A WOMAN TO HEAL HIMJana was captivated by the sheikh and his breathtaking inheritance, the Cup of Happiness. But a taste from the goblet had failed to bring him joy. So Jana tempted the prince to touch his lips to hers, and in his unquenchable desire she glimpsed his hidden need to be healed… and loved.Could this beauty restore Omar's faith in family… and make this solitary sheikh lonely no more?Powerful sheikhs born to rule and destined to find love as eternal as the sands… SONS OF THE DESERT
“It’s No Wonder People Fall In Love In The Desert.” (#u6204d2d9-59f8-56f3-9114-b70c4396e67e)Letter to Reader (#u7c53407d-4cca-522a-9574-8d689d408bed)Title Page (#u33a0da16-6717-5131-a766-f48e91262c79)Dedication (#u71547cfa-e9ad-5633-9f71-4bede88adb03)About the Author (#u16f94f14-de40-58a1-89a4-07603d844081)Omar’s Inheritance The Cup of Happiness (#u0dc0ae12-95e8-5542-a4e0-85302af2008f)Chapter One (#uee4c490c-b744-503b-ae8f-b9fa86ef57f6)Chapter Two (#u208c5de9-6f2f-55fa-9d48-403363fb0d72)Chapter Three (#u304634f5-444c-53cf-9273-ef197f006586)Chapter Four (#u6d68474c-d55f-5205-9c1b-37568b9b1778)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“It’s No Wonder People Fall In Love In The Desert.”
Prince Omar’s jaw tightened at Jana’s words, but she was looking at the distant dunes and did not notice. “Do you think so?”
The tone of the sheikh’s voice startled her, so full of cynical unhappiness that she turned and blinked at him. “Don’t you?”
“I have never loved the desert or thought it inspired love,” he said flatly.
She watched him for a moment under the starlight. “What do you love, then?”
He gave a bark of laughter. “You speak as if everyone must love something.”
“A person would have to be very hard not to love someone, some part of the world,” Jana said mildly. “So hard they couldn’t be called human.”
“Oh, I am human,” he replied, reaching through the moonlight to touch her hair. “And I have you to remind me that I am a man....”
Dear Reader,
This May we invite you to delve into six delicious new titles from Silhouette Desire!
We begin with the brand-new title you’ve been eagerly awaiting from the incomparable Ann Major Love Me True, our May MAN OF THE MONTH, is a riveting reunion romance offering the high drama and glamour that are Ann’s hallmarks
The enjoyment continues in FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES. with The Groom’s Revenge by Susan Crosby. A young working woman is swept off her feet by a wealthy CEO who’s married her with more than love on his mind—he wants revenge on the father who never claimed her, Stuart Fortune A “must read” for all you fans of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca!
Barbara McMahon’s moving story The Cowboy and the Virgin portrays the awakening—both sensual and emotional—of an innocent young woman who falls for a ranching Romeo But can she turn the tables and corral him? Beverly Barton’s emotional miniseries 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHERS concludes with Having His Baby. Experience the birth of a father as well as a child when a rugged rancher is transformed by the discovery of his secret baby—and the influence of her pretty mom. Then, in her exotic SONS OF THE DESERT title, The Solitary Sheikh, Alexandra Sellers depicts a hard-hearted sheikh who finds happiness with his daughters’ aristocratic tutor And The Billionaire’s Secret Baby by Carol Devine is a compelling marriage-of-convenience story
Now more than ever, Silhouette Desire offers you the most passionate, powerful and provocative of sensual romances Make yourself merry this May with all six Desire novels—and buy another set for your mom or a close friend for Mother’s Day! Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Please address questions and book requests to
Silhouette Reader Service
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The Solitary Sheikh
Alexandra Sellers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
for my sister, Margaret,
who helped
About the Author
ALEXANDRA SELLERS was born in Ontario, and raised in Ontario and Saskatchewan. She first came to London to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and fell in love with the city. Later she returned to make it her permanent home. Now married to an Englishman, she lives near Hampstead Heath. As well as writing romance, she teaches a course called “How To Write a Romance Novel” in London several times a year.
Because of a much-regretted allergy she can have no resident cat, but she receives regular charitable visits from three cats who are neighbors.
Readers can write to her at P.O. Box 9449, London, NW3 2WH, England.
THE BARAKAT EMIRATES
SHEIKH’S RANSOM, Prince Karim’s story, April 1999
THE SOLITARY SHEIKH, Prince Omar’s story, May 1999
BELOVED SHEIKH, Prince Rafi’s story, June 1999
Available only from Silhouette Desire.
Omar’s Inheritance The Cup of Happiness
To Prince Omar’s lot fell the Kingdom of Central Barakat, a land of sometimes rich, sometimes desolate desert, and the high, rugged, white-capped mountains of Noor with their many valleys. To him also was given the cup of his ancient ancestor Jalal, a magnificent pedestal cup of ruby, emerald and gold that was said to confer happiness on its owner. It had not conferred happiness on Omar. From the moment his father’s will had granted him the cup, his life had seemed a bitter betrayal.
There was once a king of ancient and noble lineage who ruled over a land that had been blessed by God This land, Barakat, lying on the route of one of the old Silk Roads, had for centuries received the cultural influences of many different worlds. Its geography, too, was diverse: it bordered the sea; then the desert, sometimes bleak with its ancient rums, sometimes golden and studded with oases, stretched inland for many miles, before meeting the foothills of snow-capped mountains that captured the rain clouds and forced them to deliver their burden in the rich valleys. It was a land of magic and plenty and a rich and diverse heritage.
But it was also a land of tribal rivalries and not infrequent skirmishes. Because the king had the ancient blood of the Quraishi kings in his veins, no one challenged his right to the throne, but many of the tribal chieftains whom he ruled were in constant jealousy over their lands and rights against the others.
One day, the king of this land fell in love with a foreign woman. Promising her that he would never take another wife, he married her and made her his queen. This beloved wife gave him two handsome sons. The king loved them as his own right hand. Crown Prince Zaid and his brother were all that he could wish for in his sons—handsome, noble, brave warriors, and popular with his people. As they attained the age of majority, the sheikh could look forward to his own death without fear for his country, for if anything should happen to the Crown Prince, his brother Aziz would step into his shoes and be equally popular with the people and equally strong among the tribes.
Then one day, tragedy struck the sheikh and his wife. Both their sons were killed in the same accident. Now his own death became the great enemy to the old man, for with it, he knew, would come certain civil war as the tribal chieftains vied for supremacy.
His beloved wife understood all his fears, but she was by now too old to hope to give him another heir. One day, when all the rituals of mourning were complete, the queen said to her husband, “According to the law, you are entitled to four wives. Take, therefore, my husband, three new wives, that God may bless one of them with a son to inherit your throne ”
The sheikh thanked her for releasing him from his promise. A few weeks later, on the same day so that none should afterwards claim supremacy, the sheikh married three beautiful young women, and that night, virile even in his old age, he visited each wife in turn, no one save himself knowing in which order he visited them. To each wife he promised that if she gave him a son, her son would inherit the throne of Barakat.
The sheikh was more virile than he knew. Each of his new wives conceived, and gave birth, nine months later, to a lusty son. And each was jealous for her own son’s inheritance. From that moment the sheikh’s life became a burden to him, for each of his new young wives had different reasons for believing that her own son should be named the rightful heir to the throne.
The Princess Goldar, whose exotically hooded green eyes she had bequeathed to her son, Omar, based her claim on the fact that she herself was a descendant of the ancient royal family of her own homeland, Parvan.
The Princess Nargis, mother of Rafi and descended from the old Mughal emperors of India, had in addition given birth two days before the other two wives, thus making her son the firstborn.
The Princess Noor, mother of Karim, claimed the inheritance for her son by right of blood—she alone of the wives was an Arab of noble descent, like the sheikh himself. Who but her son to rule the desert tribesmen?
The sheikh hoped that his sons would solve his dilemma for him, that one would prove more princely than the others. But as they grew to manhood, he saw that each of them was, in his own way, worthy of the throne, that each had the nobility the people would look for in their king, and alents that would benefit the kingdom were he to rule.
When his sons were eighteen years old, the sheikh knew that he was facing death. As he lay dying, he saw each of his young wives in turn. To each of them again he promised that her son would inherit. Then he saw his three sons together, and on them he laid his last command. Then, last of all, he saw the wife and companion of his life, with whom he had seen such happiness and such sorrow. To her willing care he committed his young wives and their sons, with the assistance of his vizier, Nizam al Mulk, whom he appointed Regent jointly with her.
When he died the old sheikh’s will was revealed: the kingdom was to be divided into three principalities. Each of his sons inherited one principality and its palace. In addittion, they each inherited one of the ancient Signs of Kingship.
It was the will of their father that they should consult the Grand Vizier Nizam al Mulk for as long as he lived, and appoint another mutual Grand Vizier upon his death, so that none would have partisan advice in the last resort.
Their father’s last command had been this: that his sons should never take up arms against each other or any of their descendants, and that his sons and their descendants should always come to each other’s aid in times of trouble. The sheikh’s dying curse would be upon the head of any who violated this command, and upon his descendants for seven generations.
So the three princes grew to maturity under the eye of the old queen and the vizier, who did their best to prepare the princes for the future. When they reached the age of twenty-five, they came into their inheritance. Then each prince took his own Sign of Kingship and departed to his own palace and his own kingdom, where they lived in peace and accord with one another, as their father had commanded.
One
A black stallion, its tail tossing, galloped over the desert. Its hooves thundered against the hard sand, sending notice of its presence for miles on the silent air. His sweat-glossed sable coat glistened, and gold threads in the embroidered saddlecloth and gold studs in the black bridle were picked out by the rays of the early-morning sun just rising over the rugged white mountains in the distance.
The tall, straight figure of the rider on its back seemed one with the graceful horse as the beast pounded towards a rushing, roaring river. The man’s hair, as black as the stallion’s pelt, waved thickly back from a high forehead, stirred by the wind of their speed. His slim, broad-shouldered body moved in rhythm with the horse as his knees urged it faster and faster, until it seemed that the rider intended to jump the river that now cut across the horse’s path.
The feat would be impossible over the broad, wild torrent. Yet the man urged the horse on towards the wild rush of water, and the horse obeyed. At the last moment, just when it seemed as if its only choice was to dash itself and its rider into the churning waters, he pulled up. The horse reared and snorted; his forelegs danced on air and came to rest a few inches from the edge.
On closer view, it could be seen that both the man’s hair and the horse’s mane were not completely black, but were threaded with strands of silver. The man’s broad, intelligent forehead was pulled into a frown over deep green, troubled eyes.
They paused there, horse and rider, while the man scanned the horizon and the horse stamped and snorted nervously at the noisy river. The frowning eyes seemed to take no pleasure from the sight of the rugged expanse of desert turned golden by the rising sun, nor the vigorous blue-black of the chilly river that rushed by at his horse’s feet, nor the ferocious white-topped mountains in the distance. His small pointed beard and, moustache neatly framed a once-generous mouth that now seemed twisted with sorrow and bitterness. His eyes gazed across the river down towards the ocean, which he knew was there, in the distance, invisible, indistinguishable from the sky.
His brother’s land. The river marked the boundary of the land his father had bequeathed to him. Everything he saw on the other side, including the miles of distant shoreline, belonged to one of his brothers. If he turned to ride west he would, after many miles, come to the border he shared with his second brother.
His brothers. He had no brothers now. His father and mother were dead, his wife was dead, his brothers were lost to him. What did he have left in the world? A land of desert and mountain, much of it inhospitable, and even so, his right to rule over it was disputed by a fool who would stop at nothing to gain power. Two young daughters, whom he scarcely knew and could not love.
He did not love anyone, he realized with the curious enlightenment that recognition of the obvious sometimes brings. He had loved his father, but his father was dead, and had betrayed him in death, leaving him this inhospitable land. If he had ever loved his mother, she had killed that love by her ignorant ambition for him. She had wanted him to be king, without ever thinking of his happiness, and she had destroyed all chance of happiness for him when she had forced him to marry a woman he had found it impossible to love. And her ambitions had backfired when, long after his father had died, leaving him the least share of the kingdom, his wife had borne only daughters.
He had once loved his brothers, but they had betrayed him and their father’s last command. His wife had died as a result, and though he had not loved her as a woman, as the passionate partner of his destiny he had once, long ago, dreamed of meeting, he had felt responsible for her and suffered at the loss.
His heart was cold and hard, as toughened as his body. Except for the basic sexual needs which there were many women willing to satisfy, he had no desires now, no love—only a diamond determination to keep this land, inhospitable as it was, under his own hand, and if possible pass it on to his daughters. He had no desire, even, to love. He wanted nothing that would disturb his hard reserve, his ability to face, without protest, whatever the world handed him.
He had no son. His daughters might be rejected by the tribes, they might never be allowed to inherit. In that case his land would be divided by the heirs of his brothers, and his name would disappear from the earth; but he wanted no wife, and he would not take another for the sake of producing a more acceptable heir. He wanted nothing from life now.
Minutes passed. The sun rose a little further in the sky to his left, disentangling itself from the mountaintops so that their shadow retreated across the foothills, revealing the huddle of houses in the village that had been his resting place in the night. Still the man made no signal to the restive beast.
It was the sound of hooves that roused him at last from his reverie. The faintest signal from the man’s knees turned the horse in the direction of the noise, and then he cursed himself for a fool. They had crept up on him, and now they were spread out in a line between him and the safety of the foothills. Six riders, their white burnouses blowing in the wind as they rode at him, their rifles held in one hand above their heads, their throats giving forth the high ululation of attack.
The horse tossed its head, almost making the man drop the rifle that he swiftly withdrew from its home on the saddle. Urging the horse into a gallop towards them, guiding only with his knees, the reins loose on its neck, the man fired the rifle three times in quick succession without raising it to his shoulder, and three men as quickly cried out. Two rifles and one man fell into the sand, but still three horses came on towards him.
They did not want to kill him—he had that advantage. They wanted him captive, whereas he did not care whether any of them lived or died. If he killed them, they would lie in the desert until their fellow tribesmen came and collected the bodies. If they escaped, hurt or unhurt, they would return to their desert home and their leader. He wanted no rebel captives in his prisons, providing a rallying cause for the disenchanted.
He fired again as they were almost on top of him, and a horse stumbled into another and two riders were brought down. He galloped past the last rider and quickly urged the black stallion to wheel till he faced his attackers again.
There was one man still on his horse.
“We meet again, son of Daud!” called the bandit, and now the man recognized the rider in the centre of the splintered group.
“For the last time,” Prince Hajji Omar Durran ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi agreed grimly. He raised his rifle, but his attacker flung down his own gun into the dust. “My gun is useless!” the bandit leader cried.
For a moment two men on two heaving, sweating horses faced each other with the desert dust swirling between them. Through the sights and the dust Omar saw the man who wanted his throne, whose attempts to gain it had caused the death of his wife. His finger tightened on the trigger.
“You are a warrior, not an executioner, Prince of the People!”
Not disturbing the aim of his rifle, Prince Omar lifted his head and gazed at the man. The two were close enough to see each other’s eyes.
At last Omar lowered his rifle. “Jalal, son of the bandit, be warned!” he called. “At our next meeting you will be dependent on the mercy of God. I will show none!” Then he wheeled his mount and with urgent knees encouraged it to a gallop again. Once he turned in the saddle to look back at his attackers. None showed any intention of following or firing at him. Beneath him the exhausted horse galloped on.
“Darling, take the Rolls,” her mother pleaded, in her lead-crystal voice. “It’s going to be a very hot day, and anyway, parking will be impossible. Let Michael drive you.”
“Michael will get just as hot as I would,” Jana said. “Why should he take the heat for me?”
“Because Michael is a chauffeur.” Her mother ignored the joke with the irritated calm of one having to explain the same thing for the millionth time but determined not to let it bother her. “It’s his job.”
Well, it was and it wasn’t. For the first seven years of her life, until her parents had separated, chauffeured limousines had been a normal part of Jana’s existence. But then she had moved to Calgary, where her mother had taken a job. There, apart from going to a private school, Jana had led a pretty ordinary life. When her parents reconciled after ten years—an event Jana had longed for every day of those years—she had found that the return to her old life in the Scottish manor house that was her father’s ancestral home was more difficult than she had imagined. She was impatient of the restrictions that both her parents suddenly seemed to want to impose on her, in keeping with her position as the daughter of a viscount descended from the Royal Stewarts.
After university, determined to make some contribution to the world that was a little more intensive than opening the next charity ball or fete, Jana had gone to teach school in an underprivileged area of London. Her parents had not objected too strongly until they discovered that instead of living in their apartment in posh Belgravia, where they kept a housekeeper and chauffeur full-time, she was determined to rent a place not far from her school and drive her own little Mini. But as time passed and no disaster befell her, they had stopped protesting.
Last week the school year had ended, and with it, the teaching career Jana had once looked forward to with such excitement, but which had been an indescribable mixture of joys and sorrows, frustrations and achievement The sorrows and frustrations had won in the end.
Her mother was in town now to discuss Jana’s future. She had been horrified to discover that that future was already all but decided, and in what manner—Jana was preparing for a final interview for a job to go abroad and teach English to a foreign family.
“In any case, he won’t, because the Rolls is air-conditioned.”
Jana sighed. “Why is it such a big deal, Mother?”
“If you will insist on taking a job with some oriental despot he should know who you are.”
“He knows who I am. I’ve never been so thoroughly vetted in my life. I think he’s checked the family all the way back to Robert the Bruce,” Jana pointed out mildly, looking at her mother curiously. “Why do you say he’s a despot? I’ve been told it’s a wealthy family with mining interests.”
“Darling, all important families in the Middle East are connected to the ruling house in any country. It’s simply the way things are.”
Jana forbore to suggest that things were not so different right here in England. “No one has said a word about royal connections.”
Her mother shrugged. “Even so, it beats me why you imagine you’ll meet less restriction there, Jana. In half those countries the women are being forced to wear the veil again.”
“I’ve been assured that the family and the country are liberal on the issue of women’s rights. And after all, the job is teaching English to the seven- and nine-year-old daughters of the house, so they can’t be that backward. And anything will be less restricting than not being allowed to teach with a method that works,” Jana added, with a dark thread of bitterness in her voice.
Her mother frowned worriedly. “You are so impulsive,” she observed for the thousandth time in Jana’s life. “Darling, please think it over. Please don’t go.”
“I want to get away, Mother.” She repeated it doggedly, like a mantra, because she had nothing else to say.
The pain was still raw.
“You are not absolutely prohibited from using these teaching methods, Miss Stewart,” the inquiry board had announced, and she had known then that what was coming was the end of her career in teaching, “but you may not abandon the national curriculum. You must teach first and foremost by the established method but may use your own methods as a supplement if you wish.”
“It isn’t possible to teach both!” Jana had shouted. She had pointed out a hundred times that her method worked, that it actually taught children to read. In addition, because the children were achieving something, there was far less class disruption.
The national curriculum method for teaching reading bored and defeated them, and they became unmanageable. When she had taught it, she, like so many others in the system, had been reduced to acting as a cross between a babysitter and prison guard.
The council had sat impassive while she railed at them for their narrow-minded ignorance and cowardly sticking to ineffective methods, but when she resigned they had accepted it with obvious relief. She had finished out the school year, but as of a week ago, Jana was unemployed.
Of course, the media had been on her side. It was just the kind of story they loved, but Jana had very soon tired of being fodder for the entertainment industry that masqueraded as news broadcasting, and in any case her story had a brief lifespan. It would take more than newspaper articles and talk shows to change the national curriculum, though a generation of children had already emerged from the schools unable to read
Fighting was what was needed, but Jana had temporarily run out of the famous Stewart fighting energy. She felt like her distant ancestor, Bonnie Prince Charlie, after the Battle of Culloden: defeated. Her father urged her to enter politics and run for parliament—that, too, was a part of the family heritage—and one day she might do that. But for the moment, Jana just wanted to get away and lick her wounds.
The ad for a private English tutor to “an important family in the small but prosperous Barakat Emirates” had caught her eye two months ago. The position was for a minimum of one year. She knew it was the escape she needed.
“There are better ways to get away than a job in the Barakat Emirates,” her mother said.
Jana shrugged. Her mother’s suggestion of a sailing holiday in the Maldives or a villa in Greece, either of which friends could be counted on to supply at short notice, had tempted her...until she saw what her mother was really planning. Jana had no intention of taking such a holiday if Peter was also going to be a guest—and her mother would make certain that Peter was a guest. Peter was the man her whole family adored.
“Mother, we’ve been over it.”
“I really think, Jana, that a few weeks in—”
“Mother.”
“Yes, darling.”
“I am not going to marry Peter,” Jana said, slowly and unmistakably.
“Oh, darling, why do you keep saying that? He’s so right—”
Jana couldn’t help laughing. Her mother was completely transparent. Peter was right for her parents, and would be a great brother for Julian and Jessica, her younger sister and brother. She knew all that. Unfortunately, he was not right for Jana. They agreed about nothing in life. She sighed and shrugged. She was so tired of fighting. Please, God, let me get this job, she prayed silently. Don’t let me end up married to Peter.
Her laughter cut her mother off. She looked at Jana and lifted her hands resignedly. “At least take the Rolls,” she urged.
Jana gave in. She knew her mother had manipulated her, had made it seem like a small concession when she was holding out on a major issue, and her own weakness frightened her. Her resistance was low. If the whole family started pressing her to marry Peter...Jana clenched her jaw. If she was offered the job she would take it even if the advertiser was’ an oriental despot.
Two
An hour later Jana slipped gracefully out of the back seat of the navy Rolls and into the heat of the city streets, looking as fresh as a spring morning. She stood for a moment looking up at the facade of the Dorchester Hotel. Under the caress of the hot summer sun it had a rich, satisfied glow.
“Thank you, Michael,” she murmured to the chauffeur.
“Good luck, Miss,” he said. “I hope you get the job.”
“Thank you. I do, too,” she said, a little grimly.
She thought her chances were good. Her experience was right for the job. She had had three interviews over the past six weeks—all with intermediaries—and she knew the numbers had been whittled down to a shortlist of three or four. Now the father of the children she would teach was in town and she was meeting him for the first time. She had been told that their mother was dead.
She flashed a quick smile at the doorman as he held the door for her, and he seemed to take in her slim, vibrant figure, her glowing red hair, wide-spaced eyes and dramatic flair with one comprehensive, appreciative glance that managed to indicate that he wouldn’t mind holding the door all day for her.
“Good afternoon, Miss. Lovely day,” he offered.
Then she was being ushered to the enquiry desk, where a stern, handsome, dark-eyed Barakati took her in tow, led her into an elevator, and then, as the doors closed, said, “Forgive me, but may I have your handbag?”
Jana stiffened. “What?”
“I request to search your handbag, Miss Stewart.”
She stared at him down her nose. “Certainly not!” she said, in her best imitation of her mother.
The minion shrugged. “I am sorry, Madame, I must insist.”
“Nothing was said to me at any time about being searched!”
The elevator arrived at the floor and stopped, but he had turned a key in the panel and the doors did not open.
“I say it, Madame.”
“And who are you?”
“I am Ashraf Durran, cousin and Cup Companion to Omar Durran ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi,” he said, with a nod of such regal condescension that she blinked. “Please, Miss Stewart, allow me to search you. He is waiting for you.”
Jana hadn’t run away from the restrictions of her own family life all these years to go to work now for someone who had their staff physically searched and who was apparently worried about assassination attempts. Maybe her mother was right.
She asked with angry amusement, “Whose pay, exactly, does he imagine I’m in?”
“There are many fools in the world. Miss Stewart,” the man said simply. “Please,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture inviting reason.
Her hands tightened on her bag. She was damned if she’d submit to this! “I was invited here for an interview, and no one said anything about being searched. I think there’s been a mistake,” she said firmly.
Ashraf Durran stared at her, shrugged and reached into his pocket. For a chilling moment she thought the narrow black object he pulled out was a gun. She laughed with reflexive relief when he started to speak into it. After a moment he said, “Baleh, baleh,” and put it back in his pocket.
“I must search you and your bag, Madame,” he said.
“Or?”
“Or escort you back downstairs.”
She glared furiously at him. “Well, do tha—” she began, but immediately broke off. She thought of Peter, of the vacation her mother would engineer—for Jana and Peter—if she did not get this job.
She handed her bag to Ashraf Durran, waited as he searched it and handed it back to her. “Excuse me,” he said, and she gasped as he reached for her and then stood in cold, stony fury as he ran his hands lightly, impersonally over her body.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am sorry for the necessity.” Then he turned the key and the elevator doors opened.
She stepped out into a large furnished foyer. A massive mirror directly opposite reflected her image. She was relieved to see that her irritation did not show. In her white dress she was neat and cool looking. There were several men, all in Western suits, but some wearing burnouses in addition, standing and sitting around the room, and they all turned to watch her progress as Ashraf Durran led her across to a door. She had the humiliating conviction that they all knew that she had just been searched.
Ashraf Durran tapped on the door and opened it. As the door opened into the elegantly furnished hotel sitting room, the two occupants turned towards her and got to their feet.
Behind them an expanse of Hyde Park showed green through a wide window. One man, she saw, was the old man with grey hair, tall, thin, and perfectly erect, whom she had met at a previous interview. Hadi al Hatim’s dark eyes sparkled with a smile of welcome.
The other was much younger—in his mid-to-late thirties, she thought—a little taller, lean, a good build. He had sea green eyes, strong cheekbones, a broad forehead, thick black hair and a neat devil’s beard. His expression was hard and closed. He might as well have been carved from stone, for all the feeling she got from him. He did not smile.
“Miss Jana Stewart, Your Highness,” Hadi al Hatim presented her, then put out his hand. Jana shivered as she put out her own hand to take it. “Miss Stewart, it is a pleasure to meet you again. This is His Serene Highness Sheikh Omar ibn Daud, the Prince of Central Barakat.”
“Prince?” she repeated on a wailing note. “My mother was right! Oh, damn it!”
Of course she shouldn’t have said it. His Serene Highness Prince Omar ibn Daud stiffened—Jana didn’t think it was possible to get any stiffer than he already was, but he managed it—and stared at her from eyes as cold as the green, green sea.
“What is the matter, Miss Stewart?” He spoke with an accent, in a deep, hard, unresponsive voice.
“You were described to me as an influential Barakati family with mining interests!” she said.
There was an arrogant tilt to his head. “We own the gold and the emerald mines of the mountains of Noor.”
“Congratulations!” she said dryly. She was irritated by his icily arrogant manner. She realized that she had no idea how to greet a sheikh. Should she curtsey? She was pretty sure that the curtsey was a purely Western tradition, but the Eastern genuflection before princes, if her memory served, was the kind of prostration where you touched your nose to the ground, and that seemed too incongruous, even for the Dorchester.
“But I don’t want to work in a palace. And I do think I might have—”
Been warned, she was going to say, but he cut across her. “Why not?” His voice was flat, emotionless. Not even curiosity showed.
The interruption annoyed her, and she snapped, “Partly for all the reasons that make you think you can interrupt me whenever you like.”
He stared at her. “Miss Stewart, I do not understand your hostility. You seemed to my vizier very eager to take this job.” He glanced at Hadi al Hatim, but the old man, the suspicion of a smile at one corner of his mouth, was saying nothing. “What is the reason for your attitude?”
“I’ve just been body searched in the damned elevator,” Jana said, waving an indignant arm back towards the door. “There’s an army of bodyguards out there, and it turns out to be because you’re a prince, that’s the reason!”
“I have no army of bodyguards,” he informed her flatly. “You are not yet a member of my household staff. When you are, you will not be searched when you approach me.”
Approach me. He sounded like something out of the fifteenth century. “That’s not the point. The point is, I wasn’t told I was applying for a job in a royal family.”
“Now you have been told. You do not want the job?”
Faced with the stark decision, Jana suddenly, belatedly, began to think. To wonder if she was handling this in the best way. Not for nothing did her family and friends accuse her of impulsiveness.
One thing was sure—her mother and Peter would be quick to take advantage of her situation if she agreed with what His Serene Highness had just said and walked out of here.
“Well—I...” She hesitated and bit her lip.
The vizier intervened. “Miss Stewart, before this meeting, His Highness and I had decided that you were very much the best candidate for the job. If you are now determined not to take the job, there is nothing to be said. If you are in doubt, I suggest you sit down and discuss the matter.”
It was a very gracious way out.
“All right,” she said gratefully.
Prince Omar indicated the sofa and they sat down, the prince in a chair set at an angle to her. Hadi al Hatim retired to a window embrasure.
“In your last interview, I think, you were informed that the job requires that you will live with us, teaching two girls,” he said. “You are aware of their ages and their level of proficiency.” Although his use of English seemed very good, she sensed that he did not really feel comfortable with the language, and she wondered why.
“The only thing I wasn’t told about them, I think, was that they are princesses.” Jana looked into his eyes, and was locked by a gaze that seemed to both draw and repel her at the same time. She felt the surge of a mixture of feelings—surprise, confusion, discomfort, nervousness, irritation. “I’m right in that? They are your daughters?”
“Yes, they are,” he said, without any hint of parental feeling. Just stating a cold, hard fact. Jana wondered if there were someone with a little more warmth of feeling closer to the girls. “If you have questions, you may ask them now.”
“How much would you personally expect to dictate terms in my teaching?”
“Terms?” he repeated, frowning slightly. “We do not have school terms. The princesses are taught entirely by tutors within the palace. Most of them are now absent for the summer. I prefer that you start now because the princesses have been without English lessons for some months.”
She laughed lightly at the misunderstanding. “No, no, I meant...” She flailed for another way of explaining, and then gasped as his face hardened and his eyes glinted with cold rage.
“My English is very far from perfect, Miss Stewart. I hope you will not be moved to laugh at every error I will make.”
Jana sat up straight. “I was not laughing at any error!” she said indignantly.
Prince Omar raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “No? What caused your amusement?”
She gritted her teeth. “The mutual misunderstanding!”
“I see.”
“Do you forbid laughter in the palace?”
He sat for a moment watching her. She didn’t think she had ever seen such resignation in a human face.
“No, I do not forbid it,” he answered, but she could see that laughter rarely happened, even if it was not actively forbidden. She was starting to feel seriously sorry for his daughters, raised with such a curb as this cold-hearted father must place on their spirits.
“What are your daughters’ names?” she asked involuntarily.
His dark green gaze flicked briefly towards Hadi al Hatim and then back to her. “Masha and Kamala are their usual names.”
“Kaw-meh-leh,” she repeated carefully. “Masha. They’re both very pretty names.” She smiled. “Masha. Isn’t that Russian?”
“Masha is short for Mashouka, which means beloved in Parvani, my mother’s tongue. It is true that I spent many years in Russia. There it is short for Maria. But I did not intentionally give my daughter a Russian name.”
He sounded as though it would be the last thing he’d do. “If you hated it so much, why were you there?” she asked impulsively. Speaking without thinking was one of Jana’s most determined faults. By the time she reminded herself to think before she spoke, Jana had usually already spoken.
“I did not say I hated it.” Another glance at the silent vizier. “I attended univ—”
“But you did hate it.”
His eyelids drooped, as if to hide his reaction from her, and, released from his gaze, she suddenly was free to notice how physically attractive he was. His face and head were beautifully shaped, and both the curving eyelids and the full lower lip held a sensual promise. His beard gave him the look of a Hollywood pirate. But the coldness in his eyes seemed to undo all that.
He heaved an impatient sigh.
“Yes, I did hate it. Why do you insist on this, Miss Stewart? Is it important to you?”
Jana’s cheeks were suddenly warm. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He was watching her curiously. “Do you yourself have some connection with Russia?”
“None at all,” she replied hastily, hoping he would not press the point. She could hardly confess that she had felt an impulse to make him admit to some feeling! So the Prince of Central Barakat was withdrawn! It was not her business.
“Do you have a picture of them?” she asked.
“Of the princesses?” He frowned, as though the request was unusual. “I don’t know—” He turned in his chair and called to his vizier, “Do we have such a photograph, Khwaja?”
Hadi al Hatim smiled and crossed to the table in front of the sofa where they were sitting. He pulled a file out of a briefcase and extracted a colour ten-by-eight photograph, handing it to the prince. At that moment the Cup Companion who had searched her appeared at the door, and the vizier crossed the room and went out with him, closing the door behind him.
“Baleh,” Omar replied to something the vizier said as he left. He hardly glanced at the photo before passing it to Jana.
With a little shiver of response at his clinical coldness in looking at a photograph of his daughters, Jana leaned forward to take the picture. In one of those slightly awkward moments of misjudgement, both she and Prince Omar moved a few inches more than either expected the other to do, and their hands brushed. She drew in her breath with a little shock.
Two young girls half smiled at the camera, their arms around each other. They were very pretty, and would probably be beautiful when they got older. Wide dark eyes, delicately shaped eyebrows, their father’s curving eyelids and full mouth. Beautiful, but lacking confidence, their gaze at the camera shy, their smiles tentative. Jana found herself feeling as protective towards them as she had for any of her schoolchildren from troubled homes. Wealth and position had never protected children against misery, she reminded herself, and these two had lost their mother, and, if His Serene Highness’s attitude was anything to go by, had never had a real father.
And yet, one was called Beloved. She wondered who had chosen that name.
“They are very lovely. You must be proud of them.”
“They are like their mother. She was considered a great beauty,” he said, as if he were discussing a database or import duty.
“What does Kamala mean?” she asked, looking up from the photograph to discover that he was watching her.
“It means perfect, Miss Stewart.” He paused, and they looked at each other. In the silence, they were abruptly aware that they were alone together in the room. Prince Omar lifted a long slender hand to his dark beard and stroked it, and she watched the motion of his fingers without being aware that she did so.
She could not think of anything to say. There were words, but they seemed caught in her throat. She stared at his mouth, full but held so firmly in check. His lips moved, and she caught her breath on a silent gasp.
“Your own name has a meaning in our language,” he said. “Jana.”
He lengthened the first a. Jahn-eh.
Jana swallowed. “What does it mean?”
“Soul,” he said. “Really, ‘the soul of’—it is incomplete. Jan-am means my soul, for example. What is your middle name?”
Jana shivered. His deep voice had softened on the words, and he was watching her as he said them, and her skin responded as if to a touch.
“Roxane.”
“This also is a Parvani word. Roshan means ‘light.’ Therefore your names together mean ‘light’s soul,’ or ‘a soul of light.”’
Jana swallowed and nodded. “I see,” she said. “Thank you.”
There was a pause while the prince considered the sheaf of papers in his hand. She recognized her resume and application, but the rest was written in the Arabic alphabet.
“You are descended from the royal family of Scotland.”
“We lost that battle many generations ago, Your Highness.”
“But you will have an understanding of royal life that the others did not have. This is always the problem, that the foreign teachers cannot understand the restrictions. You, I think, would understand.”
She thought, Oh, yes, I would understand. It’s just what I’ve always fought against, the restrictions. She looked down at the photo of those two questioning, uncertain little faces, and a well of pity washed up in her.
“Yes,” she said.
“And your work in the poorest schools tells me that you understand the nature of duty. The princesses must also understand their duty.”
Poor, poor little princesses. She looked again at the photo still in her hand. He was going to offer her the job. And in spite of everything, she realized, she still wanted it. Not entirely for the sake of the little lost-looking princesses. But for her own sake, too. However cold the sheikh was, however restricted the environment, it would only be for a year. If she ended up married to Peter...that sentence would last much longer.
She looked at Prince Omar and decided not to point out for him the significance of those ten formative years in Calgary. “I see.”
“This method you have for teaching children to read. You developed this yourself?”
“Only partly. It’s really a variation of the old phonetic system, which everyone over the age of forty in this country learned by. But it was thrown out and now they teach English as if it were Chinese—as though we had no alphabet, but only pictures depicting words. It’s a terrible waste of an alphabet.” She could feel the soapbox forming under her feet and forced herself to shut up.
“The princesses—” she noticed that he hadn’t yet said “my daughters” “—can speak English quite well. But they cannot read. They read Arabic and Parvani and French very well, they are intelligent, but they say they cannot understand English reading. Is this the reason?”
“Well, without knowing who my predecessors were...” She shrugged.
“These children you taught—their mother tongue was not English?”
Jana nodded.
“What language was it?”
“Nearly any language you care to name.” She smiled. “I can say very good in fourteen languages.”
“Khayli, khoub,” said Prince Omar.
Jana raised her eyebrows.
“That is how we say very good in Parvani, Miss Stewart. I hope you will have reason to say it to the princesses many times.”
Three
A week later the royal party filled almost the entire first-class cabin of the small Royal Barakat Air jet. Only half a dozen seats were empty, one of them beside Jana, and so she read, and ate, and contemplated the amazing step she had taken, in lonely luxury.
Her parents had remained nominally opposed to this career move, even while secretly impressed by the thought of the Barakat royal family. Their opposition had faded quickly in the face of her determination. And as for Peter’s —it had never materialized. Had he ever, Jana wondered, wanted to marry her? Or had it been, for him, the “thing to do”?
Someone slipped into the seat beside her, disturbing her train of thought, and she looked up from the book she had not been reading to see the old vizier.
She smiled a welcome, and they chatted about nothing in particular for a few minutes. Jana had been deeply impressed by the old man from the first time she met him. He had an air of humility that would make it very easy to underestimate him, she thought, and she was sure it would be a mistake to do so. Those calm black eyes saw into human motives, and she was a little afraid of him.
He chatted to her about her new charges, Masha and Kamala, and how tragically unnecessary their mother’s death two years ago had been. If she had been taken to the hospital—but Prince Omar had been away, and in his absence no one had dared to take the responsibility.
Jana frowned. “It can’t have been much of a decision to take a sick woman to a hospital!” she said.
“She did not want to go. No one had the authority to overrule her.”
“You mean, no one would take the risk of defying a sick queen to save her life?” she asked in disbelief.
“Would you have done so?”
“Well, I hope I would have! My God, is the place really that protocol bound? What was Prince Omar’s reaction when he got back? He must have been furious.”
“He was very distressed indeed. But it was impossible to blame anyone.”
Jana wondered why he was telling her this story. To help her understand the princesses...or the prince?
She said tentatively, “Was...was Prince Omar very much in love with his wife?”
The vizier smiled and lifted his hands. “Who can look into the hearts of men in such a matter?” he asked rhetorically, and Jana thought, You probably do it all the time. “He has said that he will not marry again.”
Jana stared at him. “Are you—?” she began, but Hadi al Hatim was already slipping out of the seat, and with a friendly nod moved on up the aisle.
She puzzled over his motives for a few minutes. She had almost said, “Are you warning me off?” but it was ridiculous to think that anyone could imagine she had her eye on Prince Omar! He was as cold as—but then, what was his motive for telling her? She had too much respect for the vizier’s capacities to think that he had spoken at random.
It was a minute or two before she thought to ask herself why she had asked the question. It was no business of hers if Prince Omar’s heart had died with his wife.
Prince Omar stayed in his seat at the front of the cabin throughout the flight. People came and went around him, bowing over his chair, kissing his hand, handing him papers, staying to talk. Jana got up once to go to the toilet, which was at the front of the cabin. She passed by Omar’s seat at a moment when he was sitting alone, going over some papers. He must have noticed her pass, because when she came out of the toilet, he looked up and called her name.
She obediently stopped in front of him. “Your Highness,” she murmured.
It was the first time she had seen him since their interview at the Dorchester. She had been ruffled and irritated then, but now she was cooler, and behind the coldness in his eyes she saw a bleak look that she had not seen before. Or perhaps it was just because of what Hadi al Hatim had told her about the queen’s death.
“I have only been out of England three hours and already I hear no English spoken,” he said. “Sit and speak to me.”
She thought how much more pleasant the command would have been if he had troubled to smile while issuing it, but the man looked grim enough for a hanging judge. She sat in the seat beside him, still uncertain about what was the protocol for such near contact with the monarch.
“Why should you hear English spoken?” she asked.
Looking a little surprised at the question, he said, “It is a language I have always wished to speak well.”
“You sound pretty fluent to me.”
Prince Omar shook his head. “No. Compared to my...my brothers, I have only a poor grasp of English.”
“Then your brothers must be native speakers,” Jana said with a smile.
There was no response. “One studied at a university in the United States, the other in France. In both places they had the opportunity to perfect their English.”
“While you learned Russian?” she guessed, remembering what he had told her about his time in that country.
“Yes, I learned Russian. It was my father’s thought that a small country should be able to. communicate with the leaders of powerful nations in their own language and understand their culture.”
“And I guess you can’t really blame him for not knowing what would happen to the Soviet Union.” True enough, but she supposed it wasn’t much consolation.
“I do not blame my father in any case. But it was not—”
He broke off suddenly, and blinked at her, as though wondering why he was speaking to her so personally. “Well, it is not important.”
“Where did you learn your English?” Jana asked quickly, and the impersonal question seemed to put him at ease.
“From my father’s first wife. He married a foreigner. She learned to speak Arabic after she married my father, but she said that English was a useful language and she spoke to us only in English. It was my father’s wish that we spend time with her.”
“No wonder you speak so fluently.”
His eyelids dropped in a brief negative. “When several people are speaking, I find it hard to follow. Very hard sometimes.”
He was such a closed man it was hard to accept that the purpose of this conversation was really what it seemed on the surface, but Jana said it anyway.
“If all you need is practice—” she shrugged “—I’d be quite happy to provide conversational English whenever you wish.”
She was prepared for a rebuff, but instead he fixed her with a look of surprise. “Will you have time?”
They had agreed that, as well as teaching the princesses to read English in formal lessons, she would supervise them at certain other times, so that they would learn spoken English as a part of their daily lives. But it still didn’t amount to a full working schedule. “I suppose it depends on when you’re free. We would have to organize it for times when the princesses are at other lessons or something.”
“Yes,” Prince Omar said slowly. “Yes, this is an idea I shall consider. Thank you.”
“Didn’t you have such an arrangement with previous English teachers?” Jana asked in surprise.
“No.”
He was looking stiff and kingly all of a sudden, but she had seen behind that facade, however briefly, and she wouldn’t let it put her off so easily “Do you mean they refused?”
“The subject was never mentioned.” He paused. “Only with you.”
In the curious way that sometimes happens, the words rang with significance. The silence was broken only by the droning of the plane’s engines as they looked at each other. Jana’s heart pounded in her ears. “I see,” she said at last, for something to say.
Just then Ashraf Durran came up to the prince, and a minute later Jana was back in her own seat, trying to figure out what, if anything, had just happened between her and Prince Omar.
At the airport in Barakat al Barakat, the party was met at the aircraft by limousines. Everyone stood around calling and shouting for a few moments, organizing the stowing of a mountain of baggage, and as Jana stood waiting by the car she had been directed to, she noticed that Prince Omar slipped away from the group and went striding across the tarmac alone. She watched him for a moment, until he arrived at a helicopter parked some distance away and began to check it over in a very professional manner.
As the convoy of cars pulled away, she heard the beating of metal wings, and watched out the window as the helicopter slid by above their heads and headed out over the desert.
The palace looked as though a genie had just responded to her wish for a magic castle. Arches, minarets, terraces, domes—all in white, blue and terra cotta—seemed to cascade down the sides of the rocky rise on which it sat, brooding over the city. The late sun was throwing a golden mantle over the whole horizon, and the desert glowed.
Behind, palace and city were encircled by the magnificent snow-peaked mountains that, in the distance, curled around the broad desert plain from north to east.
Jana rubbed her eyes and looked again. It hardly seemed possible that this would be her home for the next year—or more. She had spent ten years in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies, but this scenery was harsher and far more rugged. Not so picture-postcard scenic, but every bit as stunning to the senses.
She saw a helicopter landing pad as they swept up the curving drive to stop at the palace, but no sign of the black helicopter. Ashraf Durran came over and asked her to identify her bags, and a few minutes later, as they followed the servant leading them to her room, she took the opportunity to say as casually as she could, “Prince Omar did not return to the palace?”
“Ah, no. He had.. other business to attend to. He will be away a matter of a few days, perhaps.”
So he had not troubled to stay and introduce the new English teacher to his daughters. It was ridiculous to feel disappointed, and of course she didn’t. But she found herself wondering where he had gone.
Her “room” turned out to be a beautiful apartment with a wide terrace looking east out over the desert. On her left, far away, the mountain range curved protectively around the desert; on the right she had a glimpse of the city and of a long, rushing, sparkling river.
The rooms were full of what seemed to Jana magnificent pieces of Oriental art: carpets and bronze jugs and miniature paintings and beautifully carved furniture and openwork shutters. Ashraf Durran introduced her to the woman waiting there.
“This is your personal servant, Salimah. She speaks English. Salimah, this is Miss Stewart.”
“Hi,” said Jana, as Salimah bowed and murmured more formal greetings.
“Salimah will help you unpack. Is there anything else I can do for you at the moment?”
“I would like to meet the princesses,” Jana said. She would not meet the other tutors for several weeks. The princesses normally had a long summer holiday while the tutors returned to their homes.
He lifted one hand and smiled. “Salimah also will arrange that. If you wish, she will show you around the palace. But first, perhaps, you would like a cup of tea or coffee or other refreshments. I leave you in good hands, Miss Stewart.”
With that, he bowed and was gone, his air an indescribable mixture of formality, humility, and arrogant nobility that left her breathless.
When the door closed behind him, Salimah smiled. “Shall I help you unpack?” she asked, leading a resistless Jana through a broad doorway into the bedroom, where a huge double four-poster bed was draped with beautiful greens and blues, and a magnificent wardrobe was covered in the tiniest mosaic work Jana had ever seen.
An hour later, having unpacked, showered and drunk a deliciously cool fruit drink, Jana told Salimah, “I would like to meet Masha and Kamala now.”
Salimah bowed. “Yes, Miss. I will take you to their nurse.”
She led Jana through such a series of halls and rooms that Jana thought she would never find her way unguided. She noticed the curious fact that, like the stately homes of so many of her parents’ friends, there were discoloured rectangles on the walls. Several of the glass-fronted cabinets that mostly held antiques and treasures were empty, too, or had empty spaces where something had once lain.
In Britain the cause was always the same—death duties that forced the sale of family heirlooms. She wondered what had put Prince Omar under financial pressure.
“But where are the princesses’. rooms?” she asked, as they turned yet another corner.
“They are beside their nurse’s room, of course.”
Beside the nurse’s, but a mile from the English teacher’s. Jana raised her eyebrows over the arrangement, but Salimah was not the person to argue the matter with.
Umm Hamzah, the old woman who, Salimah explained, had been the personal servant of the princesses’ mother and was now their “nurse,” was a short, stocky, dark-skinned woman with thick, grizzled grey hair hanging in a braid down her back, a wide unsmiling face, and dark suspicious eyes. She had about half her teeth remaining, and her wrinkled face had seen the burning sun of many, many summers.
She greeted Jana in Arabic, and then explained through Salimah why it was not possible just at this moment for her to meet the princesses. Later it would certainly be more convenient.
Jana nodded. “Where are the princesses now?”
“I think they are having a bath, Miss,” said Salimah uncomfortably.
Jana smiled at Umm Hamzah and asked exactly when she should return.
“Someone will bring the princesses to your room later, Miss,” Salimah translated.
But no one brought the princesses to her room later. Jana was served a delicious dinner in her apartment, watched the sun’s rays fade and the sky darken, watched the lights of the city come on, watched the fat, heavy moon rise and sparkle on the dark river, and went to bed with a book.
For two more days it was not “convenient” for Jana to meet the princesses. Salimah grew more abashed and embarrassed with each-explanation, and the old nurse less voluble, as if victory in this senseless battle made her less and less polite.
“The princesses are sick, Miss Stewart,” Salimah offered, her eyes on the beautiful glazed tile floor. “They are in bed.”
“That’s all right, take me to them in bed.”
“La, la!” shouted the old woman, waving both her twisted hands as Salimah made the suggestion, and shouted at Salimah.
“She says it is very...easy for someone else to get it,” Salimah translated.
“Contagious,” Jana supplied automatically. “That’s all right.” She had gotten the picture long ago, but she still wasn’t sure how to deal with this hostile old woman. “I never get bugs, I’m not worried. Take me to them.”
Again urgent shouts and waving hands greeted Salimah’s words “They are too sick to be seen by anyone, Miss.”
Jana felt her blood starting to boil. “Well, in that case,” she said carefully, taking a shot in the dark, “I must call Prince Omar immediately on his mobile phone and urge him to return to the palace instantly. He is on urgent business, but he would not like to be absent at such a dangerous time. I will call him now.”
If the old woman called this bluff, what could she do, Jana wondered? She didn’t even know if Prince Omar had a mobile phone, let alone the number. But she saw Umm Hamzah’s jaw clench and her eyes widen in alarm as she spoke, and knew she had won. Jana wondered how much impact this old woman had had on her queen’s decision not to go to the hospital when she was so ill, and how frightened she was of Omar’s displeasure.
Half an hour later the princesses, healthy, clean and neat, were brought to her apartment by a servant. The two pretty little faces gazed at her in fascinated alarm as the introductions were made, and as soon as they were alone, Jana asked, “What is it?”
“Are you the devil’s handmaid?” asked Masha, her eyes wide.
Four
Jana kept her calm. “No,” she said, “I’m not. Did someone tell you I was?”
Masha, her eyes dark, nodded speechlessly. She was the elder by only about eighteen months, Jana knew, and except for a little difference in height, the two perfect little faces could almost have been twins.
Jana was pretty sure she knew who the someone was. “She made a mistake,” she told them calmly. “Don’t you know what my name means? My full name is Jahn-eh Roshan,” she prompted, pronouncing it as Prince Omar had done.
They both frowned in thought “Soul of light!” shouted Masha, and Kamala repeated the words in childish excitement, as if she had discovered them herself.
“That’s right. So how could I be the devil’s handmaid?”
It wasn’t all that convincing, as logic goes, but it seemed to impress the princesses, who stood there nodding, relieved smiles on their faces. “But your name is Parvani,” Masha told her gravely after a moment. “Nana doesn’t speak Parvani, only Arabic.”
Nana was Umm Hamzah.
“Oh, well, that’s how she made the mistake, then,” Jana said pityingly. “Poor Umm Hamzah. She just didn’t know.”
They were satisfied with that, and Jana decided to leave it there. But she understood that Umm Hamzah had declared war, and she intended to keep her guard up.
Over the next few days, Jana spent time getting to know the princesses. Umm Hamzah went on making efforts to restrict Jana’s access to them, but with Salimah interpreting Jana simply said that it was Prince Omar’s command, and would allow no excuse to get in her way.
She soon became as determined to get the girls away from their grim nurse as the nurse was to keep them away from the foreign devil. Umm Hamzah was a superstitious, uneducated, illiterate woman, and some of the stories that Kamala and Masha relayed to Jana made the hair lift on her scalp. She was sure the old woman’s preoccupation with sin, death and the devil was not good for them, and she did her best, in a mild, unconfrontational way, to counteract Umm Hamzah’s influence.
Both the little princesses already spoke good basic English, and so, although she gave them formal lessons in reading, almost anything she did with them could be considered an English lesson. So they played games, and went for walks, and fed the sheikh’s horses apples, and watched the desert tribeswomen washing clothes in the river, and swam in the palace swimming pool.
“This water is not so...good the water at my father’s special place,” Kamala, searching for the words, said nostalgically the first time they swam. Jana was a good swimmer, and she was already devising water games that would teach them English and how to swim at the same time.
“Not as nice as the water at your father’s special place?” she repeated. “Where is that?”
Both girls sighed longingly. “In the mountains,” Masha told her. “The mountains of Noor,” she explained further. She pointed, and Jana turned to look at the mountains in the distance. She saw a stretch of desert, and then the tan-and-pink-coloured foothills, and above, those snow-capped, beautifully inhospitable peaks.
There must be a kind of country residence up there, and why not? Summer down here on the desert would have been close to unbearable on some days without the cooling system in the palace. Jana’s skin was already a warm shade of tan after only a few days in the sun.
“Do you go there every summer?”
Both princesses shook their solemn little heads at her. “No,” Masha said, sighing again. “Two times we go there. It is very beautiful, Jana. Very beautiful. We had such lovely time.”
“We saw our father every day. It was not like here at the palace. Here we do not see Baba.”
“He spoke to us and took us riding and showed us many things.”
“He did not go away and leave us during the whole time.”
They were so pathetically eager to tell her about it, so sad at the loss of their joy. Her heart ached for them. Poor little princesses, who never had their father to themselves.
“Perhaps your father will take you there again,” Jana suggested, wanting to comfort them.
The girls smiled, lifted their shoulders and sighed. By which she understood that they had given up hope of such happiness.
“Is the house still there?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Baba is there now,” said Masha.
Jana was startled. “Is he?”
“We saw the halikuptar. When he goes in the halikuptar, he goes to the lake,” Masha said, as if it were a fact of nature. “But we do not go.”
“Shall I ask him about it?” Jana asked. She was curious about the place, and about why there was apparently to be no repetition of holidays that the children remembered with such pleasure.
They stared at her as if she had transmogrified into a magician as they watched. “Can you?” Kamala breathed.
“Oh, Jana!” Masha said.
“I can try. I’ll mention it, first chance I get,” she promised.
From that moment on, she could do no wrong. Devil’s handmaid? They knew from first-hand experience that Jana was an angel.
Prince Omar returned two days later, a fact she learned because the sound of the helicopter drew her out onto a terrace that had a vantage point over the helipad. She saw him disembark, and her heart kicked with satisfaction. For her as for his daughters, it seemed, the palace was incomplete without their father.
She remembered their conversation on the plane, and waited to be summoned to Prince Omar’s presence. But the hours and days followed one another and she got no summons.
Then one hot evening, after the princesses were in bed, Jana went to the pool for a late swim as was her custom and found Prince Omar there, alone, swimming up and down the length of the pool in a fast, strong crawl. After a momentary hesitation, Jana stripped off her robe and dived in.
When she had done a few more leisurely lengths she stopped at the deep end, and found that he was sitting on the edge not far away. The water was still streaming down his skin, so she guessed he had only just pulled himself out of the water. Maybe he hadn’t realized till now that she was even in the pool.
“Good evening, Your Highness,” she said, blinking water from her eyes.
“Good evening, Miss Stewart.”
“I hope you don’t mind me breaking in on your solitary use of the pool. I often swim here in the evening, and no one told me—”
“It is quite all right. I told no one of my intentions.”
His voice was remote, and she thought he did mind. Since he was the sheikh and could have whatever he commanded, she wondered why he didn’t just tell her to go.
In the next moment, he had agilely leapt to his feet. He was clearly going to leave.
“Your Highness,” she called softly, but her voice had an urgency on the hot desert air.
He stopped and turned to her. “Yes?” he asked, as graciously condescending as any fairy-tale monarch in his throne room.
He had a fabulous body, she noticed by the light of the moon. Slim muscular thighs, strong arms and chest, tall and lean. There were one or two scars. His hips were narrow, his swimsuit small and snug, a racing suit, and she couldn’t help noticing, since he was practically standing over her, how generously he filled out the fabric between his thighs.
It wasn’t really like her to stare at a man’s sexual equipment. Jana dragged her eyes up to his. “You’ve been in the palace for several days, but you haven’t asked me for any English conversation.”
“Oh!” he said, and frowned. “Yes, I had...forgotten.”
She was sure that he had not forgotten, that he had changed his mind for some reason, and a curious kind of panic overtook her. “Well, if you’re free now, I have time. Maybe you’d like...”
She faded out. She pulled herself out of the water and stood dripping before him, and they stood staring at each other, without recognizing how much time passed.
Her figure was graceful and supple, and very sexy, with long smooth lines at shoulder, waist and hip, and beautifully delicate ankles. She was wearing a plain white onepiece that cupped her full breasts like a pair of masculine hands, and her nipples pressed against the thin wet fabric, visible even in the near darkness.
Omar thought of his ancient ancestor, who had been so proud of his wife’s beauty that he hid his best friend in a closet so that he could see her as she disrobed and know how fortunate was the king in his wife. He had always thought that ancestor a fool, rightly deserving his wife’s wrath when she discovered the ruse. But now he found himself wondering if his ancestress had perhaps been as beautiful as this. If so, no wonder her poor fool of a husband had been so besotted.
But he had no intention of trying to bed-his daughters’ English tutor, he reminded himself, no matter how lovely she was. Omar did not allow sex to complicate his life. He chose his sexual partners carefully and made sure they knew exactly what they could expect if they submitted to his proposals. This woman was much more valuable—be cause rarer—as English tutor to the princesses than she could possibly be as mistress, a role that many women could fill.
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