The Sheikh's Wedding Contract

CHAPTER FOUR

‘WE ARE FINISHED, miss.’ Finally satisfied, the leader of the fluttering team of female attendants stood back so that they could all admire their handiwork.

There was an expectant pause as they waited for her to turn and look at her reflection in the enormous, gilt-framed mirror behind her, but Nadia hesitated, needing a second to hold back the nerves that were clawing at her throat. She knew that once she actually saw herself, bedecked and bejewelled in preparation for the ceremony, there would be no hiding from the fact that this was actually going to happen. She was about to marry Sheikh Zayed Al Afzal.

It had all been arranged with such dizzying speed. No sooner had she agreed to Zayed’s wedding contract than she had found herself being led down a series of echoing corridors to break the joyous news to his father. Except of course it wasn’t joyous news; it was a purely practical arrangement. The very use of the word contract had made that perfectly clear and she hated it. But she was hardly in a position to be demanding hearts and flowers, no matter how much, privately, she might have loved them. After all, she was the one with the guilty secret, the one who was so deviously deceiving him. After the wedding she was going to have to confess to him who she really was—none other than Princess Nadia of Harith. And the very thought of that made the heavy knot of anxiety in her stomach start to unfurl and twist around inside her like a venomous snake.

So far no one had suspected anything. Zayed’s father, Ghalib Al Afzal, had asked no questions of her when Zayed had presented her to him as his intended wife. In fact he had barely looked at her, giving her no more than a cold, cursory glance before nodding briefly at his son to acknowledge that he was at last doing something to address his flawed image. But for all his surly rudeness Nadia saw an old man obviously grieving the loss of his wife.

For his part, Zayed had just assumed that she was from Gazbiyaa and Nadia had tacitly kept it that way. She was helped by the fact that few people in the wider world knew she existed, let alone what she looked like. Her father had kept her hidden away, like a valuable possession to be used for bartering purposes only, to be sold for the most advantageous gain. At the time she had hated it, riled against it, despising the way she was treated and infuriating her father by turning down his choice of suitors. But now her anonymity worked in her favour.

At Nadia’s insistence, the wedding invitations had been kept deliberately vague. With so many other things occupying his time, crowding his head, Zayed had taken her adamant statement that she didn’t want her family to know of their marriage at face value, assuming that she knew best and never for one moment suspecting the real reason.

She had seen very little of him in the few short weeks since their marriage had been decided upon. His duties as sheikh of this powerful kingdom seemed onerous and never ending, and it was rare for him to have any time to himself, and even rarer for him to spend it with her. If she felt that she was just another of the projects that he was managing, that was because she was.

A rustle beside her reminded her that several pairs of eyes were watching her, eagerly waiting for her reaction to all their hard work. Taking in a steadying breath, Nadia slowly turned to look at her reflection.

She let out a gasp. Never had she imagined that she could look so beautiful. Her dress fitted her perfectly. Sweeping over one shoulder, it left the other bare as the fitted bodice held her breasts high and emphasised her tiny waist. The metres of silk that made up the skirt and the veil that was pinned to the back of her head were as fine as a dragonfly’s wings and shimmered gently as she turned to look at herself, pooling at her feet when she stopped. A pale, watery green, the colour of a limestone rock pool, the whole garment was hand-embroidered with gold and platinum thread and decorated with thousands of crystals and seed pearls in an intricate, delicate pattern that swept diagonally down the bodice, then scattered randomly across the skirt. The effect was sophisticated and ethereal and utterly breathtaking.

Closer inspection showed that no part of her body had been spared attention or adornment by this group of women. From her delicately hennaed feet that had been eased into golden jewel-encrusted sandals to the stunning collection of antique jewellery, heavy with diamonds and pearls, that had been fastened around her neck, dangled from her ear lobes and somehow swept up into her hair so that the largest teardrop pearl hung perfectly down the centre of her forehead.

‘Thank you.’ She spoke to the collective reflections of the attendants, her long silence now beginning to show as concern on their faces. ‘Thank you very much.’ She would have liked to have said more but didn’t trust herself. Her emotions were already dangerously unstable and she suspected that to open up, even to praise these kindly women for all their hard work, might tip her over the edge.

She sucked in another deep breath. She had to be strong. Today was her wedding day. And what a wedding it was to be.

If Nadia had thought it might be a small affair, with the time scale being so short and the unconventional agreement she and Zayed had reached, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Her prospective father-in-law obviously saw the occasion as a chance to prove to the world the extreme wealth and prosperity of the kingdom of Gazbiyaa, and that meant a celebration the like of which the kingdom had never seen before.

Nadia had wandered around in dazed astonishment at the transformation of the palace into a sumptuous wedding venue. The interconnected staterooms had been opened up and now row upon row of white chairs were positioned in readiness for the ceremony. And on a raised dais at the far end, two gilded thrones were waiting for the bride and groom. Just the sight of them had sent a ripple of alarm through Nadia, that it was actually her that would be sitting on that throne. That this was really happening.

Every room in the palace had been bedecked with exotic flowers, the rarest, most beautiful blooms, flown in from around the world and tended to by a team of florists who had teased them into life-size shapes of peacocks and elephants or gathered them into enormous arrangements and suspended them from the ceilings.

Outside, acres of garden had been transformed into a Bedouin fantasy, with soaring, tented structures, the interiors dressed with the finest, most colourful silks draped and swathed in voluminous abundance, and priceless Persian rugs scattered underfoot. Here the seating was arranged for the entertainment, with comfortable armchairs and enormous cushions positioned for the most advantageous view.

Nadia had seen some of the entertainers arriving, troupes of jugglers, acrobats and stilt walkers. She had even watched the fire-eaters practising from her bedroom window, lighting up the night sky with their extraordinary dangerous-looking feats. She knew there were to be animal processions, too, elephants as well as camels, and even a rumour that a poor tiger had been flown in and was caged somewhere on the premises, a reluctant guest at the wedding.

Well, that would make two of them. Three, in fact, if you counted Zayed. For in no way did the exuberant wedding preparations reflect the feelings of the bride and groom. As far as Nadia was concerned it was a means to an end, something that had to be got through as best she could to try to secure her kingdom’s future. If it meant partaking in this ridiculous charade, then she would do it. If it meant sharing a bed with Sheikh Zayed she would do that, too. For sacrifices had to be made for the greater good.

Although the thought of going to bed with Zayed was not a sacrifice. Far from it. Alone at night she had found herself becoming increasingly obsessed with the idea of what it would be like. The thought of Zayed, in all his naked, muscular glory, taking her in his arms, covering her body with his own, not in anger like last time but ready to make love to her, to take away her virginity, filled her with such a heated desire that it made her body writhe and undulate beneath the cool sheets, her hand even tentatively straying between her legs in an attempt to ease this ache. It shocked her, this totally unfamiliar feeling, this pulsing, burning, hot-blooded sexual awakening that just the thought of Zayed alone could produce. And it frightened her, too. Because with it came a loss of control, over her own body and over her feelings for Zayed. And that was something she could never let happen.

‘You look charming, Nadia.’ Two female elders of the Al Afzal family had swept into the room, and Nadia’s attendants silently disappeared. Leaning forward, one of them carefully lifted the veil so that it now covered Nadia’s face. ‘There. Now you are ready.’

* * *

Nadia nodded, quite unable to speak. In accordance with tradition, these extravagantly dressed women were here to escort her to the nikah, the wedding ceremony, and even though they weren’t unkind, they most certainly weren’t her own mother, who had no idea that her only daughter was getting married today.

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