by Holly Rayner
She didn’t need to ask him why he had not opened the tunnel to archaeologists or historians, the way he was doing with the rest of his country.
When they’d been walking for a few minutes, the Sheikh began to slow down.
“It’s somewhere around here...” he muttered to himself in Arabic, and Lucie was struck by how much fuller and smoother his voice sounded in his native language.
She didn’t have time to linger on that thought, though, as Abdul appeared to have found what he was looking for.
“Here!” he said. “Look at that.”
Lucie squinted, and looked at the wall. It was hard, at first, to make out what she was supposed to be seeing, but then the realization struck her.
“Trilobites!” she said, more loudly than the intended. The sound carried far, echoing off the hard stone walls of the corridor.
“Yes,” he said, quietly, amused by her joy.
They stood and looked at the fossils for a while. There must have been a great many in the area beneath the palace, Lucie thought, for whoever created the tunnel to have come across so many.
After a few minutes, growing tired of squinting in the dark light, they continued down the tunnel. Lucie thought they would go back, but the Sheikh just kept leading them forward, and there wasn’t even the slightest impulse in her to question why.
At long last, she began to notice the tunnel slowly curving up towards the surface. A gentle breeze from somewhere hit her face, and she could see it making the torchlight flicker.
Finally, they came up among an outcrop of rocks. Abdul had to push one aside to allow them to pass, and Lucie’s surprise at his strength much have been written on her face, because he assured her it wasn’t as heavy as it looked.
Lucie took stock of where they were. They’d gotten quite a way from the palace, though they didn’t feel separated from it, as the area where they had come up was connected to the grounds by long, meandering gardens. They were on the edge of the oasis, here, and Lucie could almost have forgotten that they were in a desert at all, with the water on one side, and the trees, flowering bushes, and palace on the other.
“Shall we head back?” the Sheikh asked, offering his arm.
Lucie hesitated. Down in the tunnel, in the light of the torch, taking his arm had seemed like the most natural thing to do. Now that they had joined back up with the real world, it no longer felt that way.
Up here, he was a king, and she a student. Going arm in arm through the gardens, illuminated only by the moonlight, seemed absurd.
She had to remember who she was. She had to remember that, for all the ways she had cracked into their world through sheer determination, she would never really be one of them.
He sensed her hesitation, and strode forward, confidently. Her misgivings at taking his arm didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest, although if wishful thinking could be indulged, Lucie thought she saw just the slightest tinge of disappointment on his face.
So she followed him, off into the moonlight.
“So, I think I know where your interest in archeology came from,” she said, when they had gone along for a while, engulfed by the sweet scents of the desert garden.
“Oh, yes,” he said, as though he’d already forgotten it. “The tunnel.”
Lucie laughed. “I was going to say Indiana Jones, actually, just based on the torch.”
Her laughter, joined quickly by his, carried out over the still night.
“I guess that’s fair. I can’t say that wasn’t what it was. I don’t remember all that much from early on. My early childhood is all a bit of a blur.”
He said the words simply, as though he didn’t recognize the minefield just beyond them. Lucie did, but she wandered in, anyway.
“Because of your mother?”
His stride drew a little slower, and a little closer to her.
“Yes. But not just her. It was… it was more than that. To lose her and my sister in the same day…”
Lucie nodded, though more for a lack of knowing what to do than because she understood what it must have been like. She didn’t think she could understand.
Lucie had never lost anyone important to her. In that way, she figured, she’d always been blessed. When she’d looked into the modern history of Al-Brehoni, she had come across an article about the queen and the only princess of the royal family having died of a quick-acting fever, some twenty-five years before she’d read about it. It had been a perfunctory article, written on the anniversary of their deaths. Just a remark on how much time had passed, and how the nation still mourned, etc. etc.
But meeting Abdul, the truth of those few sentences, read on a dreary afternoon, finally hit home.
“They wanted to have many children,” Abdul said, drawing still closer. “My father told me that once, when I’d asked why I didn’t have more brothers and sisters in such a big house. He said they were going to have them, but they were both so young. They thought they had time.”
They walked along towards the palace, their steps now very slow and in sync.
“It’s a beautiful home you have,” she said, looking up at him. “But it is very big.”
He nodded, and then directed his glance forward, back at the building ahead.
They went in silence for a while.
“It’s good to speak,” he said eventually. “It’s good to be able to talk.”
The words were simple, but Lucie thought back to how she had felt talking to him all that day and all that night, and she knew exactly what he meant.
They were so close, now, she could have sworn she had taken his arm back by the entrance to the tunnel after all, were it not for the electric tension she felt between his skin and hers. They were so close, and yet, held so far apart by the impossibility of connection.
She couldn’t touch him. It would be inappropriate. It would be unacceptable. If it ever came out, she’d be a laughing stock. She’d never be taken seriously in her career if she was seen as the type of girl who fell for the rulers of the countries she worked in.
She knew all of these things, and frantically held on to them in her mind, afraid that, if she didn’t, they would evaporate and leave her with no reason to keep herself from reaching out and slipping her arm through his, the way he had offered just a few minutes ago.
But then she felt his touch, his fingers grazing her forearm. It was a thoughtless, accidental movement, and he withdrew immediately as she froze in her tracks. But it was too late. It was like he had sent an electric shock straight from his fingers to her heart, which had begun beating wildly and out of control. Her palms felt wet and her face felt hot.
People like him got what they wanted. They always did. They got the houses, and the fame, and the fortune. Things were easy for them. She could never have what she wanted. Not really. Not with him.
But she could kiss him, just this once.
She stepped forward, already in shock of the boldness of her own impending action. But the wheels were in motion and she could not stop them. She raised up onto the tips of her toes, and put her hands firmly on his shoulders, leaning her whole body forwards and bringing her lips to his.
The same electricity that had run through her with the touch of his fingers ran through her again, only so much more. Her mind was consumed with the white-hot electricity of the connection, and when she closed her eyes, she swore she could see fireworks behind them.
And then, like the ballast on a balloon, the gravity of her actions weighed on her and brought her back to earth. The mantra she’d been repeating just moments before began yelling in her ears. She mumbled something. An apology, she meant it to be. But she could barely hear over the thumping of her heart and her own sickening regret.
She turned sharply and began moving quickly towards the palace. She took the path in long, panicked strides, picking up speed and putting as much distance between her and the man she had embarrassed and wronged.
She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. She’d neve
r been the kind of girl to act thoughtlessly. She’d never been the kind to throw all good sense into the wind and ruin everything in one action.
And now she had.
“Lucie!”
She heard him, calling her name from somewhere far away, and ignored it.
“Lucie!”
Only he wasn’t so far away. His voice was in her ear.
She stopped short, startled. She stopped so quickly that he came tumbling into her. For a long moment, she felt herself falling.
But then she felt his arms grip her tightly, and pull her up. She felt his breath on her cheek as his face came closer to hers.
And then, just like that, he was kissing her. His lips were soft, but fervent. She felt herself melting into him, like the soft pull of the honey liquor. It felt irresistible. Before she knew it, the chorus of doubt in her mind had faded away to nothing, leaving only the two of them, standing there in the moonlight, arms around one another, their hearts entwined.
NINE
She woke up slowly. Softly. It happened so gradually that Lucie didn’t even realize what was happening at first. She was only dimly aware of a lightening around her, and the way she began to feel her face and body bathed in soft sunlight.
Her eyelids fluttered open, and then closed again. She’d never done that before. All her life she’d been catapulting herself out of bed, driven by a great big list of things she needed to learn that day.
But today was different. Today, she felt too warm, too pleased and satisfied to feel there was anything that needed to be done so badly that it would mean getting out of this bed.
She reached her arm out, wanting to feel Abdul’s skin. She’d spent the whole of the night feeling him close to her, luxuriating in how it felt to have his heart beating so deeply and strongly so close to her ear.
But she didn’t feel him there.
She reached out, trying to find him in the huge bed, cluttered with a soft mess of sheets and blankets. But still, she found nothing.
A seed of panic began to form, bringing imperfection into what had been, until then, the best morning of her life. She opened her eyes and began looking around, searching for the man she had been certain would be there when she woke.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Relief flooded through her as Abdul walked towards her, straightening his tie. Lucie grinned; it seemed like such a common, domestic thing for him to be doing after what had felt like such an uncommon, mysterious ride these last few hours.
“You’re already dressed,” she observed as he walked over to her.
He didn’t answer, only leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips.
No sooner had their lips parted she lifted her face up again to his, stealing a second kiss where he had offered one.
He smiled. “I am,” he said. His voice sounded like sadness was trying to poke its way through, but couldn’t quite make it.
“I have some business in the capital that I need to attend to. There