by Nora Roberts
She would give parties for the other women and serve them frosted cakes while servants passed trays of chocolate. Her husband would be handsome and powerful, like her father. Perhaps he would be a king, too, and he would value her above all things.
As she drifted toward sleep, Adrianne curled the ends of a lock of her long hair around her index finger. He would love her the way she wanted her father to love her. She would give him fine sons, many fine sons, so that the other women would look at her with envy and respect. Not with pity. Not with the pity they showed to her mother.
The light from the hallway roused her. It slanted in as the door opened, then fell in a harsh line across the floor. Through the gauzy netting that surrounded the bed like a cocoon, she saw the shadow.
The love came first, in a frustrated burst she recognized but was too young to understand. Then came the fear, the fear that always followed closely on the love she felt whenever she saw her father.
He would be angry to find her here, in her mother’s bed. She knew, because the talk in the harem was frank, that he rarely visited here, not since the doctors had said Phoebe would bear no more children. Adrianne thought perhaps he wanted only to look at Phoebe because she was so beautiful. But when he stepped closer, fear rose up in her throat. Quickly, silently, she slid out of the bed and crouched in the shadows beside it.
Abdu, his eyes on Phoebe, pulled back the netting. He hadn’t bothered to shut the door. No one would dare to disturb him.
There was moonlight over her hair, over her face. She looked like a goddess, as she had the first time he had seen her. Her face had filled the screen with its stunning beauty, its sharp sexuality. Phoebe Spring, the American actress, the woman men both desired and feared for her lush body and innocent eyes. Abdu was a man accustomed to having the best, the biggest, the costliest. He had wanted her then in a way he’d never wanted another woman. He had found her, courted her in the manner a Western woman preferred. He had made her his queen.
She had bewitched him. Because of her he had betrayed his heritage, defied tradition. He had taken for his wife a Western woman, an actress, a Christian. He had been punished. In her his seed had produced only one child, a girl child.
Still, she made him want. Her womb was barren but her beauty taunted him. Even when his fascination turned to disgust, he wanted. She shamed him, defiled his sharaf, his honor, with her ignorance of Islam, but his body never stopped craving her.
When he buried his manhood deep in another woman, it was Phoebe he made love to, Phoebe whose skin he smelled, Phoebe whose cries he heard. That was his secret shame. He might have hated her for that alone. But it was the public shame, the one daughter only that she had given him that caused him to despise her.
He wanted her to suffer, to pay, just as he had suffered, just as he had paid. Taking the sheet, he ripped it aside.
Phoebe awoke, confused, with her heart already pounding. She saw him standing over her in the shadowed light. At first she thought it was her dream in which he had come back to her to love her as he once had loved her. Then she saw his eyes and knew there was no dream, and no love.
“Abdu.” She thought of the child and looked around quickly. The bed was empty. Adrianne was gone. Phoebe thanked God for it. “It’s late,” she began, but her throat was so dry the words could barely be heard. In defense, she was already sliding backward, the satin sheets whispering beneath her as she curled into herself. He said nothing, but stripped off his white throbe. “Please.” Though she knew they were useless, the tears started. “Don’t do this.”
“A woman has no right to refuse her husband what he wishes.” Just looking at her, at the way her ripe body quivered against the pillows, he felt powerful, in charge of his own destiny again. Whatever else she was, she was his property—as much as the jewels on his fingers, the horses in his stables. He grabbed her by the bodice of her nightgown and dragged her back.
In the shadows by the bed, Adrianne began to tremble.
Her mother was crying. They were fighting, shouting words she couldn’t understand at each other. Her father stood naked in the moonlight, his dark skin gleaming with a film of sweat that sprang from lust rather than the sultry heat. She had never seen a man’s body before, but wasn’t upset by the sight. She knew about sex, and that her father’s manhood, which looked so hard and threatening, could be used to dig into her mother and make a child. She knew there was pleasure in this, that the act was something a woman desired above all else. Indeed, she had heard this a thousand times in her young life, for the talk about sex in the harem was incessant.
But her mother could have no more children, and if there was pleasure here, why was she crying and begging him to leave her?
A woman was to welcome her husband into the marriage bed, Adrianne thought as her own eyes filled. She was to offer him whatever he desired. She was to rejoice to be desired, to be the vessel for children.
She heard the word whore. It wasn’t a word she knew, but it sounded ugly on her father’s lips, and she wouldn’t forget it.
“How can you call me that?” Phoebe’s voice hitched with sobs as she fought to free herself. Once she had welcomed the feel of his arms around her, delighted in the way his skin would gleam in moonlight. Now she felt only fear. “I’ve never been with another man. Only you. It’s you who’ve taken another wife even after we had a child.”
“You gave me nothing.” He wrapped her hair around his hand, fascinated by it yet detesting its fire. “A girl. Less than nothing. I have only to look at her and feel my disgrace.”
She struck him then with enough force to snap his head back. Even if she’d been faster, there would have been nowhere to run. The back of his hand smashed across her face, sending her reeling. Driven by lust and fury, he ripped the nightgown from her.
She was built like a goddess, every man’s fantasy. Her lush breasts heaved as terror sent her heart racing. In the moonlight her pale skin glowed, already showing the shadow of bruises from his hands. Her hips were rounded. When passion filled her they could move like lightning, meeting a man thrust for thrust. Shameless. Desire was like a pain in him, like a devil clawing. A lamp crashed onto the table as they struggled, showering the floor with glass.
Frozen in horror, Adrianne watched as he dug his fingers into Phoebe’s full white breasts. Her mother was pleading, struggling. A man had a right to beat his wife. She could not refuse him in the marital bed. That was the way. And yet … Adrianne pushed her hands hard against her ears to block out Phoebe’s screams as he rose over her, as he plunged into her violently, again and again.
With her face wet with her own tears, Adrianne crawled under the bed. She pressed her hands against her ears until they hurt but still she could hear her father’s grunts, her mother’s desperate weeping. Above her the bed shook. She curled into a ball, trying to make herself small, so small she wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t even be.
She had never heard the word rape, but after this night she would never have to have it defined for her.
“You’re so quiet, Addy.” Phoebe brushed her daughter’s waist-length hair with long, slow strokes. Addy. Abdu despised the nickname and only tolerated the more formal Adrianne because his first born was a female of mixed blood. Even so, out of Muslim pride, he had decreed that his daughter be given a proper Arabic name. Therefore, on all official documents “Adrianne” was recorded as Ad Riyahd An, followed by a slew of Abdu’s family names. Phoebe repeated the nickname now and asked, “Don’t you like your presents?”
“I like them very much.” Adrianne was wearing her new dress, but it no longer pleased her. In the mirror she could see her mother’s face behind her own. Phoebe had carefully covered the bruise with makeup, but Adrianne saw the shadow of it.
“You look beautiful.” Phoebe turned her around to hold her. On another day Adrianne might not have noticed how tightly she was held, might not have recognized the notes of desperation in her mother’s voice. “My own little princess. I love you so much, A
ddy. More than anything in the world.”
She smelled like flowers, like the warm, rich flowers in the garden just outside. Adrianne drew in her mother’s scent as she pressed her face to her breasts. She kissed them, remembering how cruelly her father had handled them the night before.
“You won’t go away? You won’t leave me?”
“Where would you get such an idea?” With a half laugh Phoebe pushed her an arm’s length away to look at her. When she saw the tears, her laughter stopped. “Oh, baby, what’s all this?”
Miserably, Adrianne dropped her head on Phoebe’s shoulder. “I dreamed he sent you away. That you left and I never saw you again.”
Phoebe’s hand hesitated, then continued to stroke. “Just a dream, baby. I’ll never leave you.”
Adrianne crawled onto her mother’s lap, content to be rocked and soothed. Through the latticework at the windows, fingers of scented sunlight pushed across the room and into the pattern on the rug. “If I had been a boy, he would love us.”
Anger filled her so quickly, Phoebe could taste it on her tongue. Almost immediately, it turned to despair. But she was still an actress. If she could use her talent for nothing else, she could use it to protect what was hers. “What silly talk, and on your birthday. What fun is a little boy? They don’t wear pretty dresses.”
Adrianne giggled at that and snuggled closer. “If I put a dress on Fahid, he would look like a doll.”
Phoebe pressed her lips together and tried to ignore the flash of pain. Fahid. The son Abdu’s second wife had borne after she had failed. Not failed, she told herself. She was beginning to think like a Muslim woman. How could she have failed when she had a beautiful child in her arms?
You gave me nothing. A girl. Less than nothing.
Everything, Phoebe thought savagely. I gave you everything.
“Mama?”
“I was thinking.” Phoebe smiled as she slid Adrianne from her lap. “I was thinking that you need one more present. A secret one.”
“A secret?” Adrianne clapped her hands together, tears forgotten.
“Sit, and close your eyes.”
Delighted, Adrianne obeyed, squirming in the chair as she tried to be patient. Phoebe had hidden the little glass ball between layers of clothing. It hadn’t been easy to smuggle it into the country, but she was learning to be inventive. The pills had been difficult as well, the small pink pills that made it possible for her to get through each day. They numbed the pain and eased the heart. Woman’s best friend. God knew, in this country a woman needed any friend she could make. If the pills were found, she could face public execution. If she didn’t have them, she wasn’t sure she could survive.
A vicious cycle. The only thing pulling her around it was Adrianne.
“Here you are.” Phoebe knelt by the chair. The child wore a chain of sapphires around her neck and glittering studs in her ears. Phoebe thought, hoped, the small gift she gave Adrianne now would mean more. “Open your eyes.”
It was a simple thing, almost ridiculously simple. For a few dollars it could be bought in thousands of stores in the States during the holidays. Adrianne’s eyes widened as if she were holding magic in her hands.
“It’s snow.” Phoebe turned the ball again, sending the white flakes dancing. “In America it snows in the winter. Well, in most places. At Christmastime, we decorate trees with pretty lights and colored balls. Pine trees, like the one you see in here. I rode with my grandfather on a sled like this one once.” Resting her head against Adrianne’s, she looked at the miniature horse and sleigh inside the glass ball. “One day, Addy, I’m going to take you there.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Snow?” Phoebe laughed again and shook the ball. The scene came to life once more with snow swirling around the decorated pine and the little man riding in the red sleigh behind a neat brown horse. It was an illusion. All she had left were her illusions and a small child to protect. “No. It’s cold and it’s wet. You can build things with it. Snowmen, snowballs, forts. It looks so pretty on the trees. See? Just like in here.”
Adrianne tilted the ball herself. The little brown horse had one leg lifted as the tiny white flakes danced around his head. “It is pretty, more than my new dress. I want to show Duja.”
“No.” Phoebe knew what would happen if Abdu learned of it. The ball was a symbol of a Christian holiday. Since Adrianne’s birth, he had become a fanatic about religion and tradition. “It’s our secret, remember? When we’re alone, you can look at it, but never, ever when anyone is about.” She took the ball away and hid it in the drawer. “Now it’s time for the party.”
It was hot in the harem though the fans were whirling and the lattices were closed against the power of the sun. The light coming from the shaded filigree lamps was soft and flattering. The women had dressed in their brightest and finest clothes. Leaving their black abaayas and veils at the door, they transformed themselves from crows to peacocks in the flash of an eye.
With their veils the women also had shed their silence and begun to chatter about children, sex, fashion, and fertility. Within moments the harem with its shaded lamps and opulent cushions was filled with the heavy scent of women and incense.
Because of her rank, Adrianne greeted the guests with a kiss on each cheek as green tea and spiced coffee were served in tiny, fragile cups without handles. There were aunts and cousins and a score of minor princesses, who, like the other women, Showed off with equal pride both their jewelry and their babies, the two major symbols of success in their world.
Adrianne thought them beautiful in their long, whispery dresses, color competing with color. From behind her Phoebe saw a costume parade that would have suited the eighteenth century. She accepted the pitying glances cast her way with the same stoic expression that she accepted smug ones. She recognized full well that she was the intruder here, the woman from the West who had failed to give the king an heir. It didn’t matter, she told herself, whether or not they accepted her. As long as they were kind to Adrianne.
She could find no fault there. Adrianne was one of them in a way she could never be.
They fell hungrily on the buffet, sampling everything, using their fingers as often as she used the little silver spoons. If they grew too plump for their dresses, they would buy new ones. It was shopping, Phoebe thought, that got the Arab woman through the day, just as it was the pink pill that got her through. No man except husband, father, or brother would see their ridiculous dresses. When they left the harem, they would cloak themselves again, veil their faces, hide their hair. Outside the walls there was aurat, things that cannot be shown, to remember.
What games they played! Phoebe thought wearily. With their henna and perfumes and glittering rings. Could they believe themselves happy when even she, who no longer cared, could see the boredom on their faces. She prayed to God that she would never see it on Adrianne’s.
Even at the young age of five Adrianne had enough poise to see that her guests were entertained and comfortable. She was speaking Arabic now, smoothly, musically. Adrianne had never been able to tell her mother that the language came more easily to her than English. She thought in Arabic, even felt in Arabic, and both thoughts and emotions often had to be translated into English before she could communicate them to her mother.
She was happy here, in this room filled with women’s voices, women’s scents. The world her mother told her of from time to time was nothing more than a fairy tale to her. Snow was just something that danced inside a little glass ball.
“Duja.” Adrianne raced across the room to kiss her favorite cousin’s cheek. Duja was nearly ten and, to Adrianne’s envy and admiration, almost a woman.
Duja returned the embrace. “Your dress is beautiful.”
“I know.” But Adrianne couldn’t resist running a hand down the sleeve of her cousin’s.
“It’s velvet,” Duja told her importantly. That the heavy fabric was unbearably hot was nothing compared to the reflection she had seen in her mi
rror. “My father bought it for me in Paris.” She turned full circle, a slim, dark girl with a fine-boned face and large eyes. “When he goes next, he has promised to take me with him.”
“Truly?” Adrianne stifled the envy that welled within her. It was no secret that Duja was a favorite with her father, the brother of the king. “My mother has been there.”
Because she had a kind heart, and was pleased with her velvet, Duja stroked Adrianne’s hair. “You will go also one day. Perhaps when we are grown, we will go together.”
Adrianne felt a tug on her skirt. Glancing down, she saw her half brother, Fahid. She scooped him up to plant kisses over his face and make him squeal with laughter. “You are the most handsome baby in Jaquir.” He was heavy, although only two years her junior, so that she had to brace against his weight. Staggering a bit, she carried him to the table to find him a rich dessert.
Other babies were being cooed over and coddled. Girls Adrianne’s age and younger were fussing over the boys, stroking them, spoiling them. From birth, females were taught to devote their time and energies to pleasing men. Adrianne knew only that she adored her little brother and wanted to make him smile.
Phoebe couldn’t bear it. She watched as her daughter served the child of the woman who had taken her place in her husband’s bed and in his heart. What difference did it make if the law here said that a man could take four wives? It wasn’t her law, it wasn’t her world. She had lived in it for six years, and could live in it for sixty more, but it would never be her world. She hated the smells here, the thick, cloying smells that had to be tolerated day after listless day. Phoebe rubbed a hand over her temple where a headache was beginning to throb. The incense, the flowers, perfume layered over perfume.
She hated the heat, the unrelenting heat.
She wanted a drink, not the coffee or tea that was always served, but wine. Just one cool glass of wine. But there was no wine permitted in Jaquir. Rape was permitted, she thought as she touched a finger to her sore cheek. Rape, but no wine. Camel whippings and veils, prayer calls and polygamy, but not a drop of crisp Chablis or a dram of dry Sancerre.
How could she have thought the country beautiful when she had first arrived as a bride? She had looked at the desert, at the sea, at the high white walls of the palace, and she had thought it the most mysterious, the most exotic spot in the world.
She had been in love then. God help her, she was still in love.
In those early days Abdu had made her see the beauty of his country and the richness of his culture. She had given up her own land and customs to try to be what he wanted. What he wanted, it turned out, was the woman he had seen on the screen, the symbol of sex and innocence she had learned to portray. Phoebe was all too human.
Abdu had wanted a son. She had given him a daughter. He had wanted her to become a child of Allah, but she was and would always be a product of her own upbringing.
She didn’t want to think of it, of him, of her life, or the