The Fierce and Tender Sheikh (6 page)

I
n the dream they dressed her in flowing robes of unimaginable beauty and delicacy, embroidered with threads and jewels that glowed and shimmered in the soft light of the magical place that was, miraculously, her home. The face that looked back from the mirror as they fussed around her was mysterious and deeply feminine, and the curls that clustered over her head enhanced the delicate bone structure, and the wonder and gratitude she felt burned her eyes.

In the dream, guards in fabulous dress uniform saluted her as she walked through a huge, arched doorway into a hall so bright her eyes hurt. The hall was jammed with magnificently dressed people, who turned to look up and smile with wide-eyed approval as she approached the broad, short flight of marble steps that led from the dais down to the hall.

In the dream her family were there, and in their faces she saw that they were proud of her, and her heart swelled and was filled with sweetness as she looked at them, and felt a part of that larger whole. Felt how she belonged.

Her eyes searched the crowd, in the dream, without her knowing why. As if she were looking for someone. Someone else. Someone not counted among her family.

He
was there then, though she never saw his face. She felt his strength, fierce and protective, felt his warmth, his heat. In the dream, he approached as she came down the steps, her dress rippling and glittering around her as if the sudden soft breeze whispered through the arched openings from the candlelit courtyard just for this moment, for her. He lifted his hand, and she knew he smiled, though she couldn't see his face.

In the dream she wasn't afraid. She reached out, strong and confident, and placed her hand on his. On her own hand and arm, precious jewels glittered, but no more brightly than the approval in his dark eyes.

I
t was Sharif she wanted. In the utter strangeness of her new surroundings, he was her only link between past and future. He alone knew both what she had come from, and what she was moving towards. It was a comfort to think there was someone who knew her, when she no longer knew herself.

But where was he? She had not seen him since her arrival at the palace. The day had overwhelmed her, in spite of the Sultana's best efforts to soften the impact of the new on her wondering mind. There had been no time to be frightened.

Tonight she had taken a bath in enough water to keep a person alive for a month—warm, and scented with perfumed oil, an unimaginable luxury. She had stayed in the water for an hour, hardly believing it could be true.

But when the servant—her personal maid, the Sultana said—pulled the plug and she understood that the water was being allowed to run away after only one use, Shakira had arrived back in the real world with a bone-breaking jolt. Swallowed up in a lush white towelling garment as big as a blanket, she had screamed at the woman, raining curses down on her head for her wanton waste and stupidity. As Shakira feverishly shoved her aside to stuff the plug back in the hole the bewildered maid had run for help.

Six more staff came into the new princess's apartments, rushing and babbling like people waiting for bags of flour to be thrown off the back of a truck. No one could understand her; it was as if she spoke a foreign language.

“Look, Highness,” a grey-haired woman kept saying, turning on a tap to let even more water gush wasted down the sink hole, “there is water, there is water now. The rains came! The Sultan sits on the throne and Allah smiles on us.”

“Stop doing that!” Shakira had shrieked, by now practi
cally weeping under the combined assault of such terrible waste and not being able to make herself understood.

“The rains came, Princess!” the housekeeper said again.

One of the women, very bravely, had slipped away to the Sultana, and Dana came, bringing instant calm with her presence.

“You are very right, Shakira,” she had said, smiling gently. “Someone should have explained to you that waste water from all our bathtubs and sinks goes into a reservoir for use in the palace gardens. I will show you the tanks in the morning.”

That had calmed her; it was impossible not to feel gentled by the Sultana's rich, warm voice. Still, Shakira wondered if she would ever get used to the luxury of baths and showers.

She wanted to tell Sharif about that—about how amazing it was to have such an abundance of water. He had followed her trail through so many of the camps. He had seen. He knew.

Now Shakira crept from the too-soft bed—where she had lain sleepless for hours, listening and watching while night birds called, the fountains were stilled and the moon climbed the sky—and slipped barefoot out onto her balcony.

The palace was silent, the sliver of moon reflected in the still, smooth water of the pool. Hidden low amongst the flowers and plants, muted lights glowed at intervals, giving the garden an air of magic; above, from one or two rooms, lamplight showed that the occupants were still awake. One of the lights, like a beacon, glowed from the room Sharif had pointed out earlier as his own. Her heart gave a little kick. It comforted her to know that he, too, was awake, even if she could not talk to him.

Shakira knelt on the cool tiles, her arms resting on the rim of the balcony, her chin on her arms, and watched the tiny crescent of bright moon. Was it really the same moon she had seen from the camp? Or had the world changed, along with her life?

Nothing was certain. In the camps there had been ruthless certainties, harsh and sharp, always reminding her who she was, where she was, that she was alive.
When you are hungry,
she thought,
at least you are certain of that.
Here she could be sure of nothing, not even what was real and what a dream.

A shadow moved across the lamp in Sharif's room. Her nameless yearning attacked her more fiercely.
He
would tell her. He would understand.

She gazed hungrily at the light from the stormy sea of uncertainty, wanting to reach it and be saved. So close, and yet so out of reach. She had seen little of the palace today, only enough to gain the impression of an overwhelming confusion of corridors and doors. Hani had found a secret way out of Burry Hill, but at the thought of finding her way around those corridors Shakira's courage failed her.

She would never find his room if she went searching, and yet she knew exactly where it was. That contradiction was disturbing, underlining the truth that she was in an unknown world. A world where the skills she had learned over a lifetime were suddenly pointless.

And yet—were they? His light beckoned her. The Princess stood and peered over her balcony into the shadowed courtyard, her hands against the warm, breathing marble. The delicately carved surround of each balcony offered a thousand toeholds to the agile.

And a moment later, her bandaged ankle hampering her hardly at all, she was over the balcony and down. As her muscles took her weight she was suffused with a sense of relief: she was not completely lost in this new environment. Her life skills could still be put to good use.

The tile paving of the courtyard was cool and smooth under her bare feet as she crept among the shadows across to the opposite wing. Then, after a moment to get her bearings, she clambered up again, monkey agile, and slipped silently into the moonless gloom of Sharif's balcony.

His door was open on the night. Inside he sat at a large black desk, bent over some papers. Shakira paused for a moment, a smile pulling at her lips as she watched him. He signed a
paper and moved it to one side, read another. Then he frowned as he searched for something in a stack of documents.

He was different now—his face was stern and distant in the lamplight—and Shakira shifted nervously. Perhaps she didn't know him after all. Perhaps he would not be glad to see her, as she was to see him.

Sharif tossed down his pen to reach for the gold cigar case lying in the lamp glow. It flicked open, and he drew out one of his small cigars and closed it again. The sound of the click was sharp on the night air.

Suddenly, as if he had sensed her presence, one dark eyebrow went up and his head turned towards the dark balcony. For a moment he frowned into the darkness just beyond the circle of lamp glow, then, as if he had recognized her, his face relaxed. He dropped the thin cigar and the case and held out an imperious hand.

“Come,” said Sharif.

She slipped into the light as stealthily as any cat burglar, her eyes huge in the thin little face.

“Can't sleep, little one?”

The tenderness in his voice made her heart leap, and the approval in his eyes was dangerous for the way it melted her defences. But she had been through too much today to be able to resist the melting. She could not be defended now—she could only smile nervously as she moved to his side.

“My bed is too soft,” she confided, moving closer to stand against his arm.

“It's been a very exciting day.” His dark eyes seemed to see into her. How dangerous to be so known, some Hani part of her cried, but she could not turn away from that tenderly piercing gaze.

“I wish you were my brother,” she said, because, for all her linguistic virtuosity with insult, she was awkward expressing any gentler emotion. “He was there, and then they took me away and I never saw him again.”

She looked at him with aching yearning, as if he might suddenly discover a lost history of his own that would make this possible.

“We will look for your brother one day soon,” he promised.

She smiled against the tears that suddenly burnt her eyes. For so many years she hadn't cried at all, and now, suddenly, when tears were no longer necessary, she couldn't hold them back.

“The only thing that's the same is the moon!” she cried suddenly. “How can all this be real, when it's so different—I used to dream it, you know. I dreamed of people calling me Princess, and loving me. I'm afraid…I'm afraid…”

She could not go on, because of the sobs that came tumbling out of her throat. “I'm afraid,” she said again, who had learned never to admit to fear. It was her safety with him that made her weep.

He pushed back his chair and stood. Then he wrapped his arm around her and led her through a doorway to his own bedroom. A thick mat lay on the floor, with cushions and pillows spread around. The sheet had been folded back ready for him, and he bent to lift it for her.

“This is not a dream,” he said, with firm reassurance. “When you wake up you will still be here, in the palace, among your family.”

Something tight inside her unwound suddenly, for he had understood something about her that she had not understood about herself. And being understood, the thing lost its power.

Shakira yawned as fatigue hit her. Without a word she sank down onto the mat and slipped her feet under the sheet as he drew it up over her.

“This is not so soft,” she said, smiling at him. “It is better, isn't it?”

He only smiled, and she yawned again.

“Where will you sleep?” she asked drowsily, tucking her arms around the pillow and giving herself to its soft comfort. “I can sleep on the floor, you know.”

“So can I, little one. Don't worry.”

“My room is very big,” Shakira said, by way of explanation. “I've never been alone in such a big room. This is better, with you here.”

“I won't leave you,” he promised.

Her hand left the pillow and reached out to him, and he sank down and took it in his. Again he felt the assault of that painful thinness, and his heart clenched.

“I'm sleepy now,” she said.

He reached and put out the light, and in the same instant the little hand went trustingly slack in his, and the urchin slept.

 

“It's a shock, but it's a pretty wonderful one when you get used to it,” Noor said, with a warm smile. “Isn't it funny that you were in that camp in Oz all that time, and I was in Sydney, and we didn't know anything about each other's existence? And all the time we were cousins.”

Shakira could only smile at this glowing creature who called her cousin. On her other side, Princess Jalia gently took her hand. “It's very satisfying to find another cousin, when that monster was trying to kill us all,” she murmured.

Shakira sighed as tendrils of happiness branched in her. The three princess cousins were sitting together by the fountain in the courtyard, in the shade of a large tree, relaxing after Shakira's first Friday evening dinner with all her family.

“You have to be a bridesmaid at our wedding, Shakira! Isn't it lucky—I would have been married already, but it was cancelled at the last minute! You'll be hearing all about that, but not now.” Noor laughed and flicked a roguish glance at Jalia, who only shook her head. “Jalia and I are planning a double wedding, and now I think it was fate, because now you can be one of our bridesmaids! We're going to have a
wonderful
time getting you kitted out for it, aren't we, Jay?”

Shakira's panic must have shown in her eyes.

“Don't worry, we've got months!” Jalia hastily reassured her. “Noor and Bari's wedding had to be postponed when Bari's grandfather died suddenly, and we decided to do it together.”

“So—first things first! What you need right now is some serious pampering,” Noor declared. “Haircut, massage, manicure—you name it, I've got the perfect person to do it.”

Shakira was feeling overwhelmed. She licked her lips. “I've never had anything like that,” she said nervously.

Noor's smile was warm in her eyes. “That's no problem,” she said gently. “There's a first time for everything.”

“You'll soon find out that Noor's used to the pampered life,” Jalia said. “She slipped into the princess thing like a made-to-measure glove. For you and me, it's more of a shock.”

“When I was a…young, my—my stepmother always cut my hair. Then it was the camp barber, or I did it myself. And…I don't know what those other things are,” Shakira told them. She glanced uncertainly from Noor to Jalia. She was so much more used to being with men than women. Women were somehow like her memory of her mother—warm, soft, sweet-smelling and a little mysterious. It was hard to believe she could ever be like that.

“I don't really know anything about being a girl,” she confessed.

Noor smiled and nodded as if that were a problem you ran into every day. “No worries. We'll teach you.”

 

There was so much to learn, so much she had missed. When they took her through the palace, telling her about the portraits, the beautiful miniatures, the great bronze trays that formed part of the artistic treasure of the nation and the family she was part of, she was equal parts enthralled by the stories and dismayed that she knew so little of her history.

“This is your ancestor Akram,” Sharif said one day, stopping in front of a haunting portrait of a man wearing an intri
cately sculpted crown. “He fought a war with the great World Burner, Ahmad Shah, and the Emperor was so impressed with his bravery and strategy that, although the empire's superior numbers meant Akram would inevitably be crushed, he offered Akram a truce. As long as Ahmad Shah lived, they were allies, and that is why Bagestan was never conquered by the Moghuls. It must have been his blood in your veins, Princess, that made you so dauntless in adversity.”