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He wheeled round, returning to find she’d walked into the garden and was moving from one rose bush to the next, smelling the blooms. The rose she held to her face now was crimson, and it brushed a little colour into her cheeks. For a moment he weakened—his irritation slipping slightly—because there was something special about the sight of that slim, jeans-clad woman standing among the roses.
‘You might give your serving woman your bank details. If, as you say, payments are taken regularly from your account, it is best I transfer the money direct into it rather than give you cash.’
‘If, as I say?’ she retorted, stepping away from the crimson rose and facing him, anger firing the silvery eyes. ‘Do you think I’d lie to you? Or are you just trying to humiliate me further? Do you think that asking a stranger for wages wasn’t humiliating enough for me? Do you think I wouldn’t care for Samarah out of fondness and compassion if I didn’t have financial obligations? Believe me, if I’d had an alternative, I’d have taken it.’
She stormed away, her body rigid with the force of her anger as she slapped her feet against the paving stones.
There’d been a ring of truth in her words, and the anger seemed genuine, and for a moment he regretted upsetting her. But Bahir’s death had brought back too many reminders of Clarice’s arrival in their midst, and suspicion was a bitter seed that flourished in pain and grief.
She shouldn’t have asked, Alex told herself as, on shaking legs, she escaped the man.
She should have told him she had to leave immediately!
But how could she leave the gentle Samarah when she was grieving and ill? How could she, Alex, just walk away from a woman she’d come to admire and respect?
She’d had to ask, she reminded herself, so she may as well stop getting her knickers in a twist over it. So what if the man thought she was a mercenary female?
She kicked off her shoes with such force one of them flew across the paving, disturbing the neat rows of sandals already there. Muttering to herself, she squatted down to restore them all to order and it was there Samarah found her.
‘You will eat with us this evening?’ she asked in her quiet, barely accented English. ‘I am afraid we have neglected you shamefully, but I was tired from the flight and slept until late in the day. In our country we pride ourselves on our hospitality. It comes from the time of our nomad ancestors, when to turn someone away from a camp in the desert might be to send them to their death.’
‘I would be honoured to eat with you,’ Alex told her, standing up and studying Samarah’s face, then watching her chest to check it was moving without strain. ‘You are feeling all right?’
Samarah inclined her head then gave it a little shake.
‘Hardly all right when my first-born is dead, but it is not the asthma that affects me. Only grief.’
She reached out and took Alex’s hands.
‘That you will understand for I read grief in your face as well. It is not so long since you lost someone?’
Alex turned away so she wouldn’t reveal the tears that filled her eyes. It was tiredness that had weakened her so much that a few kind words from Samarah should make her want to cry. Weakness was a luxury she couldn’t afford—like the pride that was still eating into her bones over her request for wages.
Samarah took her hand and led her into the building.
‘I know I gave you little time to pack, but you will find clothes in the dressing room next to your bedroom and toiletries in the bathroom. We will eat in an hour. Hafa will show you the way.’
Alex thanked Samarah and followed Hafa, who had appeared silently in front of them, back to the splendid bedroom.
Clothes in the dressing room?
Alex looked down at her serviceable jeans and checked shirt, then caught up with her guide.
‘Samarah mentioned clothes,’ she said to Hafa. ‘Are my clothes not suitable here?’
Hafa smiled at her.
‘Because you are a foreigner no shame attaches to you, but I think Samarah has chosen clothes especially for you—a gift because she likes you—and she would be pleased to see you wear these things.’
‘Very diplomatically put,’ Alex responded, smiling at the woman, worry over her request to the ‘new highness’ pushed aside by the kindness of the women she was meeting.
Not to mention the thought of a shower and getting into clean clothes. Packing in a hurry, she’d grabbed her passport, a small travel pack, underwear and two clean shirts, thinking her jeans would do until she returned home. At the time, all she’d intended doing was accompanying Samarah home, but the older woman’s asthma attack on the flight had frightened both of them, and Alex had realised she couldn’t leave.
So she’d have to send her bank details to the prince, though her stomach twisted at the thought, and she felt ill remembering the contempt she’d seen in his eyes.
The same contempt she’d seen in David’s eyes when she’d told him about Rob’s debt and offered him back her engagement ring, certain in her heart he wouldn’t take it—certain of a love he’d probably, in retrospect, never felt for her.
His acceptance of it had cut her deeply—the one man she’d been relying on for support backing away from her so quickly she’d felt tainted, unclean in some way.
But David was in the past and she had more than enough problems in the present to occupy her mind.
Inside her room, fearing she’d lose the courage to do it if she hesitated, she dug a notebook out of her handbag and scribbled down the information the prince would need to transfer the money. At the bottom she added, ‘Thank you for doing this. I am sorry I had to ask.’
‘This note needs to go to the prince,’ she told Hafa, who took it and walked, soft-footed, out of the room, the roiling in Alex’s stomach growing worse by the moment.
Forget it. Have a shower.
The thought brought a glimmer of a smile to her face and she pushed away all her doubts and worries. If the bedroom was like something out of the Arabian Nights then the bathroom was like something from images of the future. All stainless steel and glass and gleaming white marble, toiletries of every kind stacked on the glass shelving and a shower that sprayed water all over her body, massaging it with an intensity that had been delicious after the long flight.
She stripped off, undid her plait and brushed it out, deciding to try some of the array of shampoos that lined the shelves and wash her hair. The shampoo she chose had a perfume she didn’t recognise, yet as she dried her hair she realised she’d smelt the same scent here and there around the palace, as if the carpets or tapestries were permeated with it.
She sniffed the air, liking it and trying to capture what it was that attracted her.
‘It’s frankincense,’ Hafa told her when Alex asked about the scent. Frankincense—one of the gifts carried by the wise men! Again the unreality of the situation hit her—this was truly a strange and fascinating place.
By this time she was showered and dressed, in long dark blue trousers and a matching tunic top—the least noticeable set of clothing she’d found among an array of glittering clothes in the dressing room—and Hafa had returned to take her to dinner.
‘I’ve heard of it, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever smelt it,’ Alex said, and Hafa smiled.
‘It is special to us,’ she replied, but didn’t explain any more than that, simply leading Alex out of the suite of rooms and along new corridors.
What seemed like a hundred women were gathered in a huge room, most of them seated on carpets on the floor, a great swathe of material spread across the floor in front of them, the material loaded with silver and brass platters piled high with fruit and nuts.
Hafa led Alex to where Samarah sat at what would be the head if there were a table. Samarah waved her to sit down beside her, greeting Alex with a light touch of her hands, clasping both of Alex’s hands together.
‘Tomorrow we will bury my son, my Bahir,’ Samarah told her, her voice still hoarse with the tears she must have shed in private. ‘You would feel out of place in the traditional ceremony so Hafa will look after you, but tonight we celebrate his existence—his life—and for this you must join us.’
‘I am honoured,’ Alex told her, and she meant it, for although she’d only known Samarah a short time, she’d heard many tales about this beloved son.
Serving women brought in more silver plates, placing one in front of each of the seated women, then huge steaming bowls of rice, vegetables and meat appeared, so many dishes Alex could only shake her head. Samarah served her a little from each dish, urging her to eat, using bread instead of cutlery.
‘We do eat Western style with knives and forks as you do,’ she explained, ‘but tonight is about tradition.’
And as the meal progressed and the women began to talk, their words translated quietly by a young woman on Alex’s other side, she realised how good such a custom was, for Bahir was remembered with laughter and joy, silly pranks he’d played as a boy, mistakes he’d made as a teenager, kindnesses he’d done to many people.
It was as if they talked to imprint the memories of him more firmly in their heads, so he wouldn’t ever be really lost to them, Alex decided as she wandered through the rose garden when the meal had finished.
She’d eaten too much to go straight to bed, and the garden with its perfumed beauty had called to her. Now, as she walked among the roses she thought of Rob, and the bitterness she’d felt towards him since he’d taken his own life drained away. At the time she’d felt guilt as well as anger about his desperate act. She’d known he was convinced that finding out the extent of his indebtedness had hastened their mother’s death from cancer, but Alex had been too shocked by the extent of the debt and too devastated by David’s desertion to do more to support her brother.
Forget David—subsequent knowledge had proved he wasn’t worth being heartsick over—but now, among the roses, she found she could think of Rob, remembering rather than regretting. Here, in this peaceful, beautiful place, she began to reconstruct her brother in her mind, remembering their childhood, the tears and laughter they had shared. Here, among the roses, she remembered Rob’s ability to make their mother laugh, even when the burden of bringing up two children on her own had become almost too heavy for her to bear.
‘Oh, Rob,’ she whispered to the roses, and suddenly it didn’t matter that she’d had to ask the prince for money. She was doing it for Rob, and for the wife and daughter he’d so loved—doing it for the boy who’d shared her childhood, and had made their mother laugh …
CHAPTER TWO
THE last person Azzam expected to find in the rose garden was the stranger, but there she was, tonight a dark shadow in the moonlight, for her fair hair was hidden by a scarf. He watched her touching rose petals with her fingertips, brushing the backs of her hands against the blooms, apparently talking to herself for he could see her lips moving.
He stepped backwards, not wanting her to see him—not wanting to have to talk to anyone—but fate decreed he missed the path, his sandal crunching on the gravel so the woman straightened and whipped round, seeming to shrink back as she caught sight of him.
‘I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t be here,’ she said, and her voice sounded muted—tear filled?
‘There is no reason why you shouldn’t be here,’ he told her, and although he’d been certain he didn’t want to talk to anyone when he’d sought the solitude of the courtyard, he found himself drawn towards her.
‘You like the roses?’ he asked as he came closer.
‘They are unbelievable,’ she said, voice firmer now. ‘The perfume overwhelms me. At home it’s hard to find a rose with perfume. The new ones seem to have had it bred out of them. Not that we can grow roses where I live—not good ones—the humidity gives them black spot.’
Azzam found himself smiling. How disconcerting was that? Was it simply relief that all the details of the funeral were completed that he found a conversation about perfume and black spot on roses a reason to smile?
‘The same humidity that triggered my mother’s asthma?’ he said, coming closer, smelling the perfume of the roses for himself, breathing in the scented air, releasing it slowly, relaxing, but only slightly, made wary by this unexpected shift in his mood …
She returned his smile as she said, ‘That’s it,’ and made to move away.
He was about to put out his hand to stop her—though why he couldn’t say—when she paused, turned back towards him.
‘I had dinner with your mother and her women friends a little earlier,’ she said quietly. ‘I found it very moving that they all offered her their memories of Bahir, as if giving her gifts to help her grief. He must have been a very special person.’
Azzam knew the women gathered at this time, but offering gifts of memories? He hadn’t thought of their behaviour in quite that way. He studied the woman in front of him, surprised by her perception, and caught, again, in his own memories of his twin.
‘Bahir, the dazzling, the brilliant.’
The words slipped almost silently from his lips, while pain gripped his heart.
‘The dazzling, the brilliant?’
The woman echoed the words and Azzam hauled his mind back into gear. He should have walked away, but perhaps talking to a stranger might ease his pain, whereas talking to his family forced him to carry theirs as well.
‘It is what his name means in our language,’ he told her, and saw her shake her head as if in wonder, then she looked up at him, her eyes a shining silver in the moonlight.
‘And your name?’ she asked. ‘Azzam?’
‘My name is less lofty, Azzam means determined, resolute.’
Her lips curled into a smile, and it was his imagination that the ground seemed to move beneath his feet.
‘I am sure you are that,’ she said. ‘When your mother spoke of you, she made it sound as if you were the one who got things done—as if your brother might have had the vision, but you were the practical one who could make things happen. She spoke of a hospital you were building—a hospital for children.’
She was beguiling him—though it couldn’t be deliberate, for how could she have known he’d seek refuge in the rose garden?
He set his suspicions aside as his disappointment about the hospital flooded his being and forced words from his lips.
‘It was to be a special hospital for children, built to accommodate the families so they do not have to be separated from their sick child. It must be a frightening place, for a child, a large, impersonal hospital, although I know these days all hospitals try to make the children’s wards bright and special. In my mind it needed to be more—low set for a start, maybe two or three levels, not a towering, impersonal, corridor-littered monolith.’
‘It sounds a wonderful idea,’ the woman said. ‘But surely you can still achieve it.’
He hesitated, uncertain why he should be discussing his dream with a stranger.
Or was it because she was a stranger that he found it easy to talk to her?
‘I had hoped to make things happen quickly with the hospital—to make my vision come true—but having to take my brother’s place as ruler will put a stop to that.’
She touched his robe above his arm and he felt the heat of her fingers sear through the fine cotton material.
‘You will do it,’ she said quietly. ‘Determined and resolute—remember that—and although I’m sure you’ll have a lot of pressing duties for a while, surely once you’re used to the job, you’ll find time for your own interests.’
‘Used to the job!’ He repeated the words then laughed out loud, probably for the first time since Bahir’s death. ‘You make it sound so prosaic and just so should I be thinking. I have let all that has happened overwhelm me.’
He took her hand and bowed to kiss it.
‘Thank you, Alexandra Conroy,’ he said. ‘Perhaps now I shall sleep.’
Definitely weird, Alex thought as she watched him move away, the swaying robes making it seem as if he glided just a little above the earth.
Not the burning on her hand where he’d dropped the casual kiss, although that was weird, but the way the man had treated her, like a friend almost, when earlier his voice had held a distinct note of suspicion, and later, when she’d asked about the wages, there’d been a faint note of contempt.
Yet out here in the moonlight it was as if the afternoon’s conversation had been forgotten.
Poor man, he’d be devastated by his brother’s death, and now to have to shoulder the responsibilities of the ruler—no wonder he was confused.
‘And confusing,’ she added out loud as she lifted her hand to her lips and touched them with the skin he’d kissed, the warmth his touch had generated still lingering in her body.
She smiled to herself, delighting, for a moment, in the fantasy in which she’d found herself, alone in a rose garden in a foreign country with a rivetingly handsome sheikh talking to her of his dreams …
What was she supposed to do? Alex had eaten breakfast in her room, checked on Samarah, who’d been pale but stalwart, then returned to what was coming to feel like a luxurious prison cell. Not wanting to get inadvertently caught up in the funeral proceedings, she’d stayed in her room until Hafa had explained that the ceremonies were taking place back in the city, nowhere near the palace.
Now she escaped, drawn by the compulsion of their beauty and perfume, to the rose garden. But wandering there, smelling the roses, reminded her of the strange encounter of the previous evening.
When he’d spoken of his brother, she’d felt Azzam’s pain—felt it and seen it—recognising it because she’d carried a fair load of pain herself over the past few years.
Had that recognition drawn her to the man that he’d stayed in her mind, his almost stern features haunting her dreams? Or was it nothing more than the strange situation in which she found herself, making her wonder about the man and the country he was now ruling?
She wandered the courtyard, drinking in the lush beauty of it, freeing her mind of memories and questions she couldn’t answer. One of the fountains spurted its water higher than the others, and she left the rose gardens to go towards it, ignoring the heat burning down from the midday sun, wanting to hear the splashing of the water and see the rainbows in its cascading descent.
As she approached it seemed to shimmer for a moment, or maybe she was still tired, for her feet faltered on the ground. Soon cries echoing from the buildings surrounding the courtyard and figures emerging out of the gloom suggested that whatever had happened wasn’t tiredness or imagination.
‘An earth tremor,’ Hafa told Alex when she found the woman among the chattering crowd of servants who had remained at the palace. ‘Sometimes we have them, though not bad earthquakes like other countries. Ours are usually gentle shivers, a reminder to people, I think, that there are powers far greater than humans can imagine. For this to happen today … well, there are people who will tell you it is the earth’s response to Bahir’s death—the death of a loved ruler.’
Alex considered this, wondering if it was simply accepted form that every ruler would be a loved one, or if Azzam’s brother had been as dazzling and brilliant as his name.
Certain any hint of danger had passed, the women all returned to the buildings, Alex following Hafa.
‘Samarah has returned,’ the young woman told Alex. ‘The women’s part of the proceedings is done.’
‘I should check on her. I still get lost—can you show me to her rooms?’
Following Hafa along the corridors, Alex felt a surge of regret that she’d probably never get to know her way around this fabulous place. Soon she’d be gone, and Al Janeen would be nothing more than a memory of a storybook bedroom and a white-robed man in a scented rose garden.
Samarah welcomed her, and although the older woman looked exhausted, her lung capacity was surprisingly good.
‘See, I am better in my own land,’ Samarah told her, then, to Alex’s surprise, she turned and introduced a young woman who’d been hovering behind her. ‘And now here is my niece, Maya. She arranged her return as soon as she heard of Bahir’s death so she could care for me. But although she is now here, I would like you to stay for a while as my guest. I would like you to see something of this country that I love, and to learn a little about the people.’
Alex acknowledged the introduction, thinking she’d talk to Maya later about Samarah’s condition, but right now she had to deal with her own weakness—the longing deep inside her to do exactly as Samarah had suggested, to stay and see something of this country. It was so strong, this longing, it sat like a weight on her shoulders but she couldn’t stay if she wasn’t needed—well, not stay and take wages, that wouldn’t be right.
And she had to keep earning money!
Her mind was still tumbling through the ramifications of hope and obligation when she realised Maya was speaking to her.
‘Adult-onset asthma?’ Maya asked, holding up the folder with the information and treatment plan Alex had prepared.
‘It could have been the humidity in Queensland. We’ve had a very hot summer and the humidity has been high,’ Alex explained.
‘That, and the fact that she’s been debilitated since her husband’s death a little over twelve months ago. I ran tests before I went away but found nothing, just a general weakening,’ Maya replied. ‘It was I who suggested a holiday somewhere new—somewhere she hadn’t been with her husband. She was excited about it, and though I suggested a doctor should accompany her, she believed having a doctor in the group would worry her sons and, of course, they must be spared all worry.’
The edge of sarcasm in Maya’s voice made Alex smile. Someone else wondered at Samarah’s attitude towards her sons—the unstinting love that probably hid any imperfections they might have had.
An image of Azzam’s striking features rose unbidden in Alex’s mind.
‘And now?’ she asked, determinedly ignoring the image. ‘Do you think she’s strong enough to get through whatever will be expected of her in the weeks ahead? Is there much for her to do? Will she have duties she has to carry out?’
‘More than she should have,’ Maya replied, moving Alex away from the lounge on which Samarah rested. ‘It is traditional that the wives of the dignitaries who have come for the funeral call on the widow, but this particular widow will make some excuse to avoid anything that might seem like work to her and Samarah will feel duty bound to take her place.’
‘Perhaps the widow is just grieving too much,’ Alex offered, surprised by a hint of venom in Maya’s soft voice.
‘Perhaps!’ Maya retorted, more than a hint this time. ‘But Samarah will find the strength to do what must be done. She is a very determined woman.’
They talked a little longer about the various preventative treatments available, until Alex sensed it was time to leave. She said good-bye to Samarah, promising to see her in the morning, knowing it would be a final good-bye because staying on would be impossible.
The only bright side was that she could send a note to Azzam telling him to forget about the wages, although she’d already been gone three days and if it took a day to arrange a flight and another day to fly home, that made six by the time she got back to work. One week’s wages lost, that was all.
She sighed, thinking how little importance she’d once have placed on one week’s pay. These days she knew to the last cent how much was in her account, her mind doing the calculations of credit and debit automatically. Knowing what went in each week and what went out made it easy, but losing a week’s pay from the two jobs would eat into the small reserve she’d been carefully hoarding.
If the clinic did take her back, all would be well.