by Holly Rayner
Zayed took his leave, and Zelda waited for him to go into the hallway outside before she attempted to climb out of the bed.
Her legs felt wobbly and sore as she stood up, but she reminded herself that she’d had worse muscle soreness in her life. She shook her head, remembering the tree she’d climbed, the fact that she had known, almost as soon as she’d started away from the massive compound, that she’d erred in her judgment.
She shuffled to the bathroom, realizing with a mild shock that her quarters in Zayed’s home had started to take on a familiar, almost comforting feeling to her, after only a week of staying in them. She stroked her fingers over an impossibly soft towel—one of a half-dozen she had now—and shook her head. Towels, sponges, soaps, more toiletries than she could have previously imagined owning; on top of more clothes and accessories than she would ever have bought for herself, all within a week of meeting Zayed. An entire life of luxuries.
She started the taps on the bathtub; she felt perfectly clean, but there was something about taking a bath, soaking in hot, scented water that appealed to her.
She sat on the ledge of the tub, thinking about the strange way things had developed; she had to laugh at the fact that she was only just now becoming aware of the depth of luxury in which Zayed lived, the life that he had to offer her as his wife, even if it was a sham marriage. He would support me and look after me, even without romance between us. But was there truly no romance between them?
Zelda slipped into the hot water and felt her muscles beginning to relax. She thought about the way that Zayed had been right there, the way that he had personally come to save her when she’d run away from him, the way that she had woken up to him seated at her bedside, unobtrusive but clearly caring. He was probably there for a long time, too. Maybe all night.
Zayed hadn’t said as much, but Zelda had seen the marks of fatigue on his face, and the information he’d given her about what had happened between when she passed out and when she woke up implied to Zelda that he’d been there for all of it.
“He’s really not a bad guy,” Zelda reflected, tilting her head back against the bath pillow. “Hard to believe that he couldn’t find someone else, someone who wasn’t a stranger to him.”
There had been women on the yacht, but Zelda remembered that every female guest she’d seen seemed to have already been attached to a man. But for someone as attractive, as wealthy, and as powerful as Zayed obviously was to be single…Zelda had to believe that it was completely by design.
She began to scrub herself all over slowly, thinking about the situation in front of her: a sham marriage, as public as possible, before she would go back to the States as if nothing had happened, while Zayed moved on with his own life. There was a sadness to it that Zelda couldn’t quite shake.
“Think of the stories you’ll have to tell,” she murmured to herself, smiling slightly in ironic amusement. She would one day have children, and one day, she would tell them about her brief marriage to a billionaire sheikh; about how she had stowed away aboard his yacht before they’d struck the deal.
By then, of course, they would be long divorced, but Zelda was sure that the truth of her story would be stranger than fiction to her own children.
Maybe we’ll keep in touch somehow, but that’s doubtful.
She tried to imagine emailing Zayed to catch up on his life after their deal was completed; Zelda rather thought that she might not even get a reply. She would have to keep in some kind of touch with the Sheikh to achieve the divorce, but she couldn’t imagine any kind of lasting friendship after Zayed had gotten what he’d wanted. Would she have to tell future boyfriends that, technically, she’d been married for a short time? Would it count?
It surprised Zelda to realize that the prospect of just leaving Zayed behind—not just the luxuries he’d introduced her to, but the man who’d been her companion for so many hours out of any given day—now made her feel sad. She barely knew him, and yet in the most recent few days, she had started to think that he would be a person well worth knowing, above and beyond his wealth.
He was complicated; it was hard for Zelda to know where the charming businessman ended and the caring, emotionally engaged man she’d seen glimpses of began. He’d admitted to his grief over losing his parents and—she thought—had nearly kissed her in the garden while they had been practicing their first dance as man and wife. He was obviously generous, but when she’d made a remark about him not being as aloof as he pretended, he’d brushed it aside without an answer.
Zelda climbed out of the bathtub with no clearer sense of how she felt other than that she wished that things could somehow be different. She wished that she had more time to get to know Zayed; she wished that they could have met under different circumstances, and that they could somehow have had a real relationship to base their marriage on, instead of the convenience of solving her immigration problems and his business conundrum.
“If wishes were fishes,” she murmured to herself, drying off with one of the plush towels and shaking her head. She knew that she was going to go through with the wedding, and whatever her sadness about the circumstances, she was going to go back home at the end of it, and put it all behind her, chalked up to a strange and wonderful adventure.
She began to put on some of what she considered her “heiress clothes” and set her mind to the last few days of preparation for the wedding. There was a lot to get done before she tied the knot with Zayed, and she wasn’t going to put his reputation at risk any more than she already had by being a flake.
Chapter 13
The days after Zelda’s ineffectual attempt at escape passed by in a blur.
In order to keep to the lie that Zayed had told to cover her disappearance from the engagement party, Zelda had agreed to take language lessons, adding another element to the daily list of things that she had to do. Every day was filled with meetings with Zayed’s assistant, meetings with the designer of her wedding dress, sessions with a skincare specialist to make sure that she was flawless from head to toe for the day of her wedding, practicing her background story with Zayed, and practicing their dance until they both knew it so well that Zelda woke up one morning fairly certain that she’d done her half of the choreography in her sleep.
The morning of the wedding, Zelda awoke to her alarm before the sun was up. The ceremony was going to take place in a garden on the property, and the preparations would take almost half the day—all for a ceremony that would be less than an hour long, and a reception that would go until hours after the bride and groom departed.
It’s not going to be that bad, she told herself.
She lay in bed for a few moments, staring up at the ceiling, feeling the nervousness creep in. She had to do her part of the ceremony in a foreign language that she had only just begun to learn; the officiant had taught her what the words meant, but she was convinced that she was going to somehow mess up her pronunciation and instead of pledging herself to Zayed as his wife and companion, she would end up calling him a chicken or something.
The fact that she and Zayed were not allowed to see each other until the ceremony made Zelda even more nervous; it was a tradition that she could understand, but considering that she barely knew the people who would be preparing her for the wedding, and barely knew any of the guests, the lack of presence from the one person in the country she had come to trust was a real cause for anxiety.
This is probably why most women want their mothers there when they get married, Zelda thought, sitting up in bed.
She had a strict schedule to keep; in a few minutes, Hadya and one or two other household staff members would be in her room, serving her the traditional wedding-day breakfast. Zayed was pulling out all the stops to make their wedding seem legitimate, and Zelda thought with amusement that if the marriage actually was genuine, he probably wouldn’t have tried so hard.
“Good morning,” Hadya called as she came into the room, bearing a tray in her hands.
Zelda smiled at the
older woman, repeating the greeting back to her in the Murindhi dialect.
Hadya beamed at her as she set the tray down, and Zelda looked over the miniature feast that had been prepared for her: dates and figs in a compote with nuts, a kind of sweet custard, and a grain dish with spices and raisins, along with baked cheese and bread. It was, she’d been told, supposed to represent the various virtues she hoped to manifest as a bride; but Zelda was simply glad that she would have a few hours of preparation to go through before she had to put her dress on.
“How is Zayed?” Zelda asked before she began eating, sipping the strong coffee and taking small bites of each item. She had never been much for a large breakfast—she usually preferred a bowl of cereal or maybe a smoothie—but she knew that in agreeing to go through with the ceremony, she was agreeing to the whole process.
“He is awake, and is having his breakfast,” Hadya told her. “He will be spending most of his morning getting ready, too.”
Zelda smiled to herself, taking a quick breath before she started on the cheese and bread; there was enough on her tray to comfortably feed two people.
“Did you go through all this for your wedding, Hadya?” she asked.
The older woman sat down to watch her eat, and laughed. “Not as much,” Hadya admitted. “But some things. Smaller breakfast, but same foods. Simple bath, things like this.” She shrugged. “You are marrying Sheikh Zayed—it is important that all the customs are obeyed.”
Zelda nodded. “I get that,” she said, pausing for a moment to let the food she’d eaten settle. “I guess it wouldn’t seem so strange if I’d grown up with it.”
Then again, she thought, if she compared the traditions of a Western wedding, she was sure that she would find just as many silly little superstitions.
She had thought that she was still years away from being married, and having to worry about such details, and she quickly reminded herself that this wasn’t a real marriage. She and Zayed would part ways almost as quickly as they married once the deal he wanted to make was completed. She would be leaving the reception to go to their “honeymoon” in the early evening, and then she would return home, using the plane ticket he’d given her.
Zelda had finished her breakfast by the time the stylists arrived, and Hadya left them to their work. Zelda wondered just how intensive the preparations for the groom were as the stylist and her assistants scrubbed her from head to toe, working a conditioning treatment through her hair and rinsing her again and again, with water infused with different kinds of flowers.
It was nice being pampered, and Zelda reminded herself that there were women who went to luxury spas around the world to get the kind of treatment that she was receiving just for being the bride-to-be.
She gave in to the treatment, letting the women massage her, letting them make sure her legs were utterly hairless, her eyebrows perfectly groomed, every inch of her body soft and supple. Her hair felt like silk when it dried, and Zelda started to feel more excited than nervous for the first time since her alarm had ripped her out of her uneasy sleep.
Once Zelda was thoroughly clean and softened, the stylist and assistants got to work on decorating her. Her fingernails and toenails had to be painted, her hair had to be done in the style she’d finally picked out, her makeup carefully applied, and jewelry—so much jewelry—had to be put on before the designer even arrived with the dress.
The sun was high in the sky by the time the stylist had completed her work, and the ceremony was only about an hour away. Zelda could hear the movements in the house, could hear the work going on to prepare the garden, and she wondered if Zayed felt as nervous as she did.
There was some rule, an old tradition about how the bride was not allowed to see herself until the preparations were complete, so even as the designer and her assistant began dressing Zelda in the magnificent gown they’d rushed to complete, Zelda had no idea how she looked. The hairstyle she’d chosen pulled at her temples somewhat, and she could feel her silken tresses tickling the back of her neck at the same time. The gown felt tight around her waist, but it was less uncomfortable than she had thought it would be.
Tahirah stood back to admire her as her assistant put the last few stitches in place, and Zelda met the designer’s gaze through the embroidered veil, wondering what the verdict would be. “Even if you were my own daughter I couldn’t have done better by you,” Tahirah said, smiling.
“Can I see now?” Zelda gestured to the full-length mirror which had been covered with a cloth as soon as the team had arrived.
Tahirah nodded and whipped the fabric away.
Zelda knew that the woman in the reflection was her, but she stared in shock nonetheless, stricken by how utterly different she looked, and yet how she still looked like herself. She turned her head from side to side, taking in the sight of herself, still not quite able to credit the transformation that had taken place in a few short hours.
She was somehow more womanly than she had ever been, but also virginal-looking at the same time, her face hidden but hinted at, her eyes sharper and softer all at once. The jewelry glittered and gleamed, the dress emphasized her figure, and everything about the woman she saw in the mirror made Zelda think that she might just survive the ceremony with its twists and turns and strange language.
“The guests are starting to arrive,” Hadya said from the doorway.
The maid looked up, and Zelda caught the amazement in the older woman’s eyes at the sight of her, which solidified her feeling that she was actually as beautiful as she thought.
“Zayed will be taking his place in fifteen minutes.”
“Someone get her bouquet,” Tahirah said.
Zelda looked in the mirror again, and instead of feeling confident, she felt uncertain; was she being someone she wasn’t? Was she doing the right thing?
Tahirah’s comment about if she had been her daughter echoed in Zelda’s mind. Would her mother approve of what she was doing? In the past, Zelda had convinced herself that she hadn’t put much stock in her parents’ approval, and yet she had nearly ended up dead from trying to run away.
You aren’t running away anymore. You’re going to see this through and then figure out what to do with yourself afterwards.
The bouquet was just as stunning as the dress and veil: cream-colored flowers that Zelda couldn’t quite recognize, with tiny purple and red flowers mixed in, wrapped in a gold ribbon.
She took one last look in the mirror, shook her head at herself, and then it was time for her to leave the room, to take her place and wait for her cue to enter the ceremony. Zelda felt wobbly and unsteady in the high-heeled shoes, but after so much practice dancing in them, she no longer had the certainty that she was going to fall on her face.
She followed Hadya and Tahirah out to the staging point, and heard the soulful music that accompanied the attendants’ progress up the aisle. Her heart pounded in her chest and silently, Zelda mouthed the words to her part of the ceremony.
The music died down, and Zelda took a quick breath, as deep as she could in the tight-waisted dress, closing her eyes for just a moment before beginning to move forward. She reached the doors that separated her from the entry into the garden, and the music started up again, a different song with flutes and guitar and other instruments that Zelda didn’t even know the names of.
She stepped through the doors as they opened, and the attendees all stood to watch her entrance. Zelda pushed her shoulders back and looked up the aisle through the thickly embroidered veil, trying to find Zayed. In the distance, he stepped forward, and for a moment they stood at opposite ends of the aisle, staring at each other.
Zelda’s heart beat faster in her chest in a way that had nothing to do with fear; the Sheikh looked gorgeous in his brilliant white suit, his hair combed neatly, a bright red flower blazing at his lapel as he watched her.
Chapter 14
Zelda shook off her shock and started down the aisle, stepping carefully. The mingled scents of different kinds of
beautifully fragranced flowers rose to her nose with every step; Zelda heard the approving murmurs of the guests in the crowd and saw looks of wonder and intrigue on all of the faces. She matched her footfalls to the slow beat of the song, and reminded herself to breathe as she approached the altar where Zayed waited.
She came to a stop at the end of the aisle and Zayed closed the distance between them. Moving in unison, they faced each other, their sides to the group of Zayed’s friends, associates and distant family, and Zayed reached for the hem of Zelda’s veil. He lifted it carefully, revealing her face, and just as carefully laid it back against her hair and shoulders, taking her hand and turning her to face the congregation.
The officiant stepped between them and declared, in both English and Murindhi, that the ceremony was officially underway. Keeping her hand in his, Zayed led Zelda the final few steps to the altar, while the officiant took up his position just in front of them.
Zelda tried to pay attention to both the ceremony and her husband-to-be, but Zayed looked so handsome in his wedding finery, his expression almost rapt, that she barely caught her cue from the officiant to say her part.
Zayed’s hands tightened on hers as she responded automatically. “I pledge myself to your protection, to be your wife and companion, to bring you joy and cushion your sorrows, to walk with you through the world in trust and faith.”
In spite of the fact that she knew that their marriage would last mere weeks—until neither of them needed the benefits it would confer anymore—Zelda felt her eyes watering at the beauty of the pledge.
“I pledge myself to your dependence, to be your husband and provider, to bring you comfort and support you in hard times and good, to hold your hand as we walk through the world together in trust and faith,” Zayed said, in his part.
Zelda swallowed against the tight feeling in her throat, and the regret that the vows they were exchanging weren’t real. They were legal, but the knowledge that they would be parting ways, and that the pledges were essentially hollow, weighed on her.