Shackled to the Sheikh Read online

  ‘Agreed,’ said Kadar, giving his wife a squeeze as he kissed her cheek. ‘This Tora must be some kind of a masochist to volunteer to marry you. What was in it for her?’

  ‘What do you mean, what was in it for her?’

  ‘What, she did it out of the goodness of her heart?’

  ‘I bet it wasn’t for his bedside manner.’

  ‘Maybe it was,’ suggested Kadar.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Rashid, who’d had enough, holding up one hand to silence his friends. ‘So there may have been a financial inducement involved. We made a deal. So what?’

  ‘Alas, poor Rashid,’ Zoltan said with his hand over his heart. ‘Unloved and unwanted, left on the shelf, the only one of the desert brothers who actually had to resort to paying a woman to get her to marry him.’

  ‘Give me a break,’ growled Rashid. ‘Don’t you guys make out you wrote the guidebook on romance—we all know that’s a lie.’

  ‘But none of us had to break out the chequebook.’

  Aisha looked around. ‘Why isn’t Tora here? You did invite her to have lunch with us, didn’t you?’

  He rolled his eyes.

  ‘You didn’t!’ said Marina, eyes wide with accusation. ‘Don’t tell me you treat her like the hired help?’

  ‘She is the hired help.’ But that wasn’t true either, he had to concede. She was more than that. Much more. He just didn’t know what to do about it. ‘Anyway, I did invite her to lunch and she declined—said she didn’t want to get in the way of a desert-brothers-and-their-families reunion. Is that good enough for you?’

  Nobody else thought so, which was why one minute later he was on his way to insist Tora join them for lunch.

  * * *

  Tora turned off her tablet still smiling. Sally had emailed with the news that Steve was installed at the clinic and that treatment had commenced and to keep her fingers and toes crossed.

  Good news. She sent up a silent prayer. At least something was going right at last.

  ‘Excuse me, Tora,’ Yousra said. ‘His Excellency is here to see you.’

  Tora braced herself. She’d known there’d be a fallout from his friends discovering about the marriage, although for the life of her she couldn’t believe how he had ever thought he’d manage to keep them from finding out.

  She expected anger. What she didn’t expect was him insisting she join him and his desert brothers and their wives for lunch.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘It won’t give them the wrong idea?’

  ‘They’ve already got the wrong idea. How about we prove them wrong and show them there’s nothing going on? Besides,’ he added, ‘it seems you’re a hit with the women. They threatened that if I failed to bring you back, then they would come and bodily drag you to lunch themselves.’

  She laughed. ‘In that case, how can I refuse?’

  ‘Did you want to bring Atiyah?’

  Tora shook her head. ‘Yousra will have no problem. Atiyah had so much fun with the children this morning, she’ll probably sleep for a week. I think the children coming is the best thing that could have happened.’

  ‘Speaking of Atiyah,’ he said as they walked down the passageway, past fabulous treasures, brightly coloured urns and dishes set in recesses in the walls, ‘have you thought any more about staying on? At least until you can give me some more lessons in handling her.’

  Tora sucked in a lungful of air. She hadn’t for a moment believed he’d been serious when he’d suggested it and no, she hadn’t given it any more thought. She couldn’t stay longer and he couldn’t expect her to. It wasn’t fair on Atiyah and it certainly wasn’t fair on her.

  As it was, she was struggling to remember all the reasons she shouldn’t care about Rashid. She was only a temporary fixture but the longer she was here, the more she liked him. And she didn’t want to feel that way, not when it would make it harder to forget him when she was gone.

  Not when it would be easier to resist him...

  ‘Rashid—’

  ‘No,’ he said, stopping her just shy of the doors beyond which his friends waited, ‘don’t say anything now. Take your time to think about it. I do want the best for Atiyah, even if it doesn’t seem like it. I’m learning, Tora, what she needs. Maybe too slowly for your liking, but I am determined to do right by her.’

  He took her hand then, wrapping it between his own, warming her skin as his eyes were warm and tugging on her heart.

  ‘Just promise me you’ll think about it. I know it’s asking a lot but I won’t expect you to stay for nothing. We can work something out.

  ‘What I want now is for Atiyah to feel secure, and she feels secure with you. So will you think about it? Will you think about what it would take to make you stay—even just a little longer?’

  Tora looked up at this man, who once she thought was hard and unflinching, arrogant and overbearing, but who she knew to be trying his best.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she promised, although she knew that whatever it would take to make her stay was nothing to how much it would ultimately cost.

  ‘Finally,’ came the cry from inside when Rashid opened the door. ‘We were about to send out a posse.’

  ‘Welcome, Tora, come and join us,’ said another. ‘At last, some adult company for you. It will make a nice change from Rashid, I am sure.’

  Tora smiled and looked at Rashid, who was scowling. ‘My desert brothers,’ he said, introducing the three men, ‘whom I love with my life. Apart from the times I want to kill them, that is.’

  * * *

  Coronation day dawned pink and clear and just about perfect, he supposed, if you didn’t have a spiked cannonball rolling around in your gut.

  Rashid rose early, knowing there was no putting it off, watching the layers of the early-morning sky peel away from where he took coffee on his terrace, pink giving way to blue, just as peace would give way to madness.

  The day would be long—interminable at times, no doubt—a breakfast with foreign dignitaries and officials and then a long tortuous motorcade through the city to show off their new Emir before a public feast in Qajaran City’s biggest square. Then while the official party headed to the formal coronation ceremony, the gates of the Fun Palace would be thrown open to the public, the ceremony relayed on big screens, before a state dinner for six hundred, all topped off with cannon fire and fireworks.

  He was exhausted already.

  Exhausted and still more than a little daunted.

  His cup rattled against his saucer when he went to pick it up and he lifted his trembling hand to inspect it.

  God, what was wrong with him? He had studied the books. He had read the histories and pored over enough economic papers and reports to sink a ship, he had listened to the advice of Kareem and Zoltan and the Council of Elders, and still he wondered what he was doing here.

  Duty.

  There came a knock at the door and Kareem entered with two assistants bearing the robes he would wear today. ‘Excellency, it is time to prepare.’

  * * *

  He was dressed and taking his last few breaths as a free man when he heard the soft knock, but it wasn’t Kareem this time. It came from the connecting door to Tora’s apartments, the door he had never opened although temptation in the shape of a seductress lay just the other side. The door opened and a soft voice called his name, a voice that, to his fevered mind, sounded as cool as a waterfall. And then she entered, and for a moment he forgot the pain and the fever and the damnable tremble in his hands, because he had never seen anyone more beautiful.

  She was dressed in a golden robe, exquisitely embroidered, with gold trim similar to his own, and with long sweeping cuffs on the sleeves and a gossamer-thin silk shawl over her hair that framed her face and floated like a cloud as she moved. She looked like something out
of a medieval fantasy.

  His next fantasy.

  ‘Rashid,’ she said, and her eyes opened wide as they took in the sight of him dressed in his unfamiliar robes, the first time she had seen him dressed this way. She blinked and seemed to gather herself. ‘I just wanted to wish you well today,’ she said, ‘before it all gets crazy.’

  As they both knew it would.

  He nodded, because his jaw set too tight to talk and the spiked cannonball in his gut rolled and stuck its spikes in his innards, and he had to take himself to the window to ease the pressure.

  For her gesture, her simple act of kindness, had almost brought him undone.

  She understood a lot for a woman who wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t needed to adopt Atiyah and coerced her into a convenient marriage. Because she had become so much more than simply a convenient wife. Her suggestion of opening the Fun Palace to the public had led to its inclusion in the proceedings today, an inclusion he had been informed had been met by the people with huge anticipation and great excitement. He was sharing some of the riches of the state and it was he who was being lauded for it.

  She understood a lot more than he had given her credit for.

  She would be gone soon.

  And his breath caught, as the pointed barbs of that cannonball stuck their points into his raw and wounded flesh anew.

  * * *

  Tora had never seen Rashid in robes—had never imagined that a man who was so at home and looked so good in western clothes could own a look so traditional and yet he did. His snowy white robes and the tunic beneath were lined with gold trim, his headpiece bound with a band of black that would be replaced with a band of gold, in the final step of the ceremony that would make him Emir.

  Tall and broad-shouldered, his skin looking as if it had been burnished by the sun against so much white, he looked magnificent, as if he had been born of the desert sands—born to rule—and yet Tora could see the battle going on behind his features, could see the slight tremble in his hands that he was at pains to disguise, and she ached for him.

  ‘You have no need to be afraid,’ she said softly.

  ‘What?’ He turned sharply.

  ‘You have no reason to fear.’

  ‘Is that what you think? That I’m afraid?’ But his voice lacked the conviction of his words and he knew it by the way he dropped his head and turned away again.

  ‘You’re strong,’ she said behind him. ‘You’re intelligent and just and a good man, and you want to do the best for the people of Qajaran. They are lucky to have you.’

  He heaved in air, and his words, when they came, might have been blasted raw by the desert sands and the hot wind. ‘I was not brought up for this.’

  ‘But it’s in your blood. Your father—’

  ‘How is finding you’re suddenly responsible for the welfare and futures of millions of people in your blood?’

  ‘You can do this, Rashid,’ she said, more sternly than she’d planned. ‘You would not be here if you did not believe that. Nobody who knows you, nobody here in this palace does not believe that.’

  ‘How can you—someone who I have known for the tiniest fraction of my life—say that?’

  ‘Because I have seen how hard you work. I have seen that a weaker man would walk away and that a greedy man would stay even if the task was beyond him. You are not like that. You can do this, and you will prevail and you will be a good Emir.’

  Kareem interrupted them with a knock on the door. ‘Excellency, Sheikha, if you are ready?’

  She glanced at him one more time before nodding and saying she would check on Yousra and Atiyah, and had turned to go when he caught her hand before she could disappear. ‘Thank you for those words. They mean more than you know.’ He squeezed her hand tightly in his before he let her go. ‘I just hope you are right.’

  She smiled up at him in a way that warmed him from the inside out in a way the sun had never done. ‘I know I am,’ she said, and her words and her warmth gave him the courage to believe it.

  * * *

  It was exhausting but it was exciting, too. Tora sat alongside Rashid on a sofa under the shade of a tent that had been set up on a dais before a huge square that was full of the longest tables she had ever seen. They had breakfasted with the foreign dignitaries at the palace and now it was the turn of the people to meet their soon-to-be Emir before they returned to the palace for the coronation proper. Bright banners in the Qajarese colours fluttered in the air, competing with the cheerful holiday colours worn by the women and even some of the men. There was a party atmosphere as the feasting got under way, musicians and dancers providing the entertainment, and the sound of laughter was everywhere.

  And not even the knowledge that theirs was a marriage of convenience, and that soon she would be heading home and no longer the sheikha, could not diminish her delight in being part of the proceedings. For now, legally at least, she was the sheikha and she would do the best job she could, even if her stomach was a mass of butterflies. But this wasn’t about her, it was about Rashid, and the coronation of a new Emir, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and she was going to lap up every single moment of it.

  And then a young girl climbed from her seat and approached the dais, in her hands a posy of flowers, her eyes wide and a little in awe as she stood waiting at the steps. Kareem leaned low over Tora’s shoulder. ‘She has flowers to welcome the new sheikha, if you so wish.’

  ‘For me?’ Today was supposed to be all about Rashid, she had thought. But still she smiled and held out her hand to urge her up and the little girl smiled back and climbed the stairs and bowed before handing over the flowers and uttering something in Qajarese.

  ‘What did she say?’

  Kareem leaned low again. ‘She wished you many sons and daughters.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tora said, suddenly embarrassed, before adding thank you in Qajarese, one of the few words that she’d learned, feeling guilty because now she wasn’t just observing the proceedings; she was a participant in them.

  There were more children after that, and more blessings and more flowers, until their table was transformed into a sea of flowers, and Tora smiled at all comers, girl or boy, and their faces lit up when she thanked them.

  She glanced across at Rashid at one stage and felt a sizzle down her spine when she found him watching her, his gaze thoughtful and filled with something that almost looked like respect.

  * * *

  Rashid watched her accept another bunch of flowers, touching her fingers to the child’s face as she thanked her, and the girl skipped back to where her family were sitting, almost luminescent with delight. Tora was a stranger to this pomp and ceremony as much as he was, an observer caught up in a world not her own, but you wouldn’t know it.

  She was a natural with the children just as she was a constant for him, always at his side, looking calm and serene and so beautiful that his heart ached. And it was hot and there were hours to go before they could escape, and she so easily could have resented having to take part in the ceremony at all when she was no real wife of his, but she made it look easy.

  She made him think anything was possible.

  He could do much worse for a wife.

  And later, when they were back at the palace during the coronation, when Kareem removed his black headband and lifted the gold igal to replace it, it was her words from this morning that he remembered. ‘You’re strong... You will be a good Emir.’

  Kareem then uttered the ancient words to install him and placed the crown on his head and it was done. He was the Emir.

  Cheers and applause broke out across the banquet room, the loudest coming from the quarter where his desert brothers and their families were sitting, and he smiled as he let go a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

  He turned to her and saw the moisture t
here in her eyes—the tears she’d shed for him—and he was moved beyond measure.

  But before he could tell her, before he could thank her for this morning’s words and for her quiet strength today, first there was another feast, another party complete with cannon fire and fireworks, a display above the palace that was echoed all over the city and in the tiny desert and mountain villages of Qajaran.

  * * *

  It was after midnight by the time the festivities wound down. Yousra had taken Atiyah back to her bed hours ago—a day of formalities interspersed with playing with the children had worn her out—and now Rashid walked silently beside Tora towards their suites.

  And it seemed to Tora that the very air around them was shimmering, there had been so much energy generated by the celebrations of today, energy that now turned the air electric as they moved, into currents charged by every swish of robe against robe, every slap of leather against the marble floor a metronome, beating out the time she had left.

  And all she knew was she didn’t want this night to end. She didn’t want this feeling to end—this feeling of being at peace with Rashid, of being part of his life...an important part...if only for a day. She wanted to preserve the magic of this moment and hold it precious to her for ever.

  For soon her time in Qajaran would be over. Soon she would be back in Sydney in her black skirt and buttoned-up shirt and there would be no more robes of silk to slide against her skin, no more frangipani on the air.

  No more Rashid.

  Her heart grew tight in her chest.

  He was nothing to her really. A roll in the hay and then a quick buck—a deal made with the devil—with plenty of grief along the way. He was nothing to her—and yet her heart had swelled in her chest when he was crowned, she’d been so very proud.

  Nothing to her?

  And her heart tripped over itself in its rush to tell her she was a liar.

  All too soon, it seemed, they were at the door that led to her apartments and she turned and looked up at him, so handsome in his robes, his features a play of dark and shadow against the stark white, the gold igal on his head gleaming in the low light. ‘Thank you for seeing me to my rooms.’