by Nora Roberts
“Do you remember your wedding day, Grandmother?”
The sigh came, as thin and fragile as her bones. “A woman does not forget the day she truly became a woman.”
They slipped silk over Adrianne’s body, sheer, embroidered white on white. “How did you feel?”
Jiddah smiled, remembering. She was old for a woman of her culture, but she remembered being a girl. “He was handsome and straight, and so young. You have the look of him, as does your father. We were cousins, but he was much older, as is fitting. I was honored to be chosen for him, afraid I would not please him.” Then she laughed, and her sexuality, undimmed, flashed in her eyes. “But that night I was no longer afraid.”
Jokes were made about the wedding night to come, some with amusement, some with envy. Hands were in Adrianne’s hair, braiding, crimping, curling while smoke from incense was fanned into it. Adrianne couldn’t find it in her heart to object.
Most of the women were shooed out when the couturiere arrived with the wedding gown. With tongue clicking and muttered instructions, Dagmar helped Adrianne into the dress. She had had enough of paradise and wanted Paris, where the worst a woman could expect on an afternoon stroll were a few whistles and propositions. There were oohs and aahs as she fastened an array of two dozen covered buttons.
“You make a magnificent bride, Your Highness. Wait.” Dagmar gestured impatiently for the headdress. “I want you to see the full effect when you look.”
Filmy tulle was draped in front of her eyes. A veil, even now. Only more of a dream, Adrianne thought as she looked out in the misty light. The mirror was turned and she saw herself draped in icy white satin and stiff lace with a luxurious train that gleamed in the light as it poured to the far end of the room. Seamstresses had worked more than a hundred combined hours sewing on the pearls that adorned it. The headdress glittered, a small crown of pearls and diamonds circling before it fell into yards of thin tulle.
“You look stunning. The dress is everything I promised.”
“Yes, and more. Thank you.”
“It’s been a pleasure.” And a relief to be done with it. “I’d like to wish you happiness, Your Highness. May today be everything you want.”
She thought of The Sun and the Moon. “It will be.”
She accepted the bouquet of orchids and white roses.
She was a bride, but there would be no wedding march, no shoes tied to a bumper, no rice thrown. It made it easier somehow to pretend it was only a show, one more part of the game.
With her hands cool and steady, her heartbeat easy, she followed her attendants into the room where she would be presented to her husband and the men of her family.
She took his breath away. There was no other way for him to describe it. One moment he was breathing, thinking like any man, and the next, the moment he saw her, everything stopped. Even his fingers went numb. The nerves he thought he didn’t have reached up and grabbed him by the throat.
She was kissed by each male relative in turn, sometimes solemnly, sometimes joyfully. Then stiffly by her father. Abdu took her hand and placed it in Philip’s. And he was finished with her.
They were blessed. Words from the Koran were read, but in Arabic, so Philip understood nothing except her hand was cold in his and just beginning to tremble.
She hadn’t known he would wear the white throbe and headdress of Islam. It should have made it only more unreal, but somehow it struck her that no matter how much she pretended or denied, the marriage was fact. It would be temporary and easily dissolved, but today it was real.
It was more than an hour before the procession began. It was heralded by a shout, then the traditional clicking of tongues of the bedouin women waiting in the wedding hall. He could hear the drums and the music as they began the long walk.
Tonight they would walk through these halls again, in secret.
“Is that it?”
She nearly jolted at Philip’s whisper, then told herself it was time to see the humor of it. “Not by a long chalk. The wedding guests need to be entertained. Musicians and dancers go down first. You aren’t allowed to see them.” She gave him a quick smile. “It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.”
“And then?”
“The bridal party. We’ll walk down between the chairs. There’ll be a podium of some kind set up. Lots of flowers. We’ll sit up there for the ceremony, then to receive congratulations for the next two hours.”
“Two—lovely,” he muttered. “Do they feed us?”
She wanted to kiss him for that, if only that. Instead, she laughed. “After, at the wedding feast. Why are you dressed like that?”
Because her father had requested it, but he thought it best not to say so. “When in Rome,” he said easily. Then there was no more time for talk.
She hadn’t exaggerated about the flowers. There were walls of them reaching from floor to ceiling. The only thing more stunning were the jewels draped over the women privileged to have been invited. Nor had she exaggerated about the time. They sat under a bower and shook hands and exchanged kisses and good wishes for more than two hours while the scent of roses and heavy perfume had a headache pounding behind his eyes.
But there was still more to come. They were ushered, herded, Philip thought, into a huge room with one narrow doorway. In it were table after table loaded with food, sugared fruits, glossy desserts, spiced meats. In the center was a cake that towered twenty layers high.
Someone had smuggled in a Polaroid camera, and women were gleefully posing then secreting away the pictures. Philip begged one of himself and Adrianne, then tucked it away.
Eight hours after she had put on her wedding gown, she and Philip were ushered to the rooms where they would spend their first night as husband and wife.
“Well,” she managed when the door was closed and the last giggle had died away. “That was quite a show.”
“It was missing only one thing.”
“Mud wrestlers?”
“Such a cynic.” He took her hands before she could remove her headdress. “I haven’t kissed the bride.”
She relaxed enough to smile. “There’s still time.”
She leaned to him, leaned on him. Just this once. That’s what she told herself. Just this once she’d let herself believe in happily ever after. The scent of flowers still lingered. Her dress rustled as he wrapped his arms around her. His kiss was warm, solid, and more than anything what she needed.
“You’re so beautiful, Addy. I almost swallowed my tongue when you walked into that room.”
“I wasn’t nervous until I saw you.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “I’ll never be able to pay you back for what you’re doing for me.”
“When things are done for selfish purposes, there’s no reason to pay back. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“But—”
“I’ve already told your father.” After unpinning her headdress, he set it aside. His fingers were already itching to work their way into her hair. “He has no problem with me wanting to take my wife on a honeymoon right away. I made sure he understood we would be in Paris for two weeks, then in New York.”
“You’re right, it’s best. The less I see of my brothers and sisters, the easier it will be not to see them again.”
“You can’t be sure that will happen.”
“He won’t permit them to contact me after this. I know that, and I accept it. I just didn’t know it would be difficult to give up something I’ve had for such a short time.” She reached her hands to the back of her neck to begin undoing buttons. “We should rest, Philip. It’s going to be a long night.”
He replaced her hands with his. “Some things come before rest.” He brushed kisses over her face as he worked his way down the buttons. “I’ve missed you, Addy. I’ve missed the taste of you.”
She pushed the robe from his shoulders. “Just this once, you can taste all you want.”
The dedicated French seamstresses would have winced when the satin slid to a
heap on the floor.
He awoke in the dark and lay still, feeling the weight of Adrianne’s body pressed against his. She was sleeping, but lightly, so that he knew if he moved, or spoke her name in a whisper, she would come alert. There was time for that yet.
It was rare for him to sleep at all before a job. The problem with some professions was that they never became routine or ordinary or boring enough to be taken for granted.
The Sun and the Moon. There would have been a time, in the not so distant past, when the idea of holding it, of taking it, would have satisfied him for weeks. Now he wished the damn thing were over, that he had Adrianne tucked up in Oxfordshire before a cozy fire with a couple of wolfhounds at his feet.
Must be getting old.
Must be, God forbid, becoming conventional.
The truth was he was in love, and it still wasn’t easy to swallow.
He ran a fingertip over the ring she wore, the diamond circle he’d slipped onto her finger during the circus that had passed for a wedding. It meant something, more than he’d ever expected, or wanted, such an ordinary symbol to mean. She was his wife, the woman he wanted to take home, to show off to his mother, to plan the future with.
Plan the future. He lifted his free hand to drag his hair back from his eyes. He’d taken a big leap in a short time from planning the next evening’s entertainment to thinking of children and family dinners. But he’d taken leaps before and always, until now, had landed on the balls of his feet. A good cat burglar needed balance as well as dexterity. He’d need both tonight.
A pity it couldn’t have been a simple wedding night. Champagne, music, and madness until dawn. Though he’d had to admit there’d been madness enough before they’d slept. She’d been like a volcano, smoking, dangerous, and the ultimate eruption had left him trembling like a teenager in the backseat of a car. The hesitations and fears she’d brought to their first bed had been swallowed up by the passions he’d seen smoldering in her eyes. The tensions they’d both lived with since coming to Jaquir had been forgotten, if only for a few hours.
They were partners in bed, and now, for better or worse, they’d be partners in revenge. He touched a hand to her cheek, murmured her name. She woke instantly.
“What’s the time?”
“Just after one.”
With a nod she was up and dressing.
They’d worn white that afternoon. Tonight it would be black. There was no need for words as they checked tools, secured belts. Adrianne slung a thin pouch crossways over her breasts. In it were wire clamps, a remote control, a padded box, her files, and a brass key.
“Give me thirty minutes.” She checked her watch, then punched in the stopwatch mode. “Don’t leave the suite before two-thirty or you’ll risk running into the guard in the east wing.”
“We wouldn’t have to separate if we moved quickly enough.”
Like him, she snapped on surgical gloves. “Philip, we’ve been over and over this. You know I’m right.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Just concentrate on the combinations.” She rose on her toes to kiss him. “Luck.”
Yanking her back, he kissed her harder. “Only the best.”
Like a shadow, she was out of the room and gone.
She had to think of it as she did any job, coolly. She’d planned it that way. She’d waited that way. Now that the night she’d waited for all her life was here, she was jittery as a first-time shoplifter at Macy’s on a slow day. She moved fast, keeping close to the walls and listening, listening, listening.
Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dark, and here and there were patches of moonlight where a window hadn’t been latticed. There were fortunes in the hallways and small parlors—Indian ivory, Chinese jade, French porcelain. They interested her no more than trinkets at a flea market. The guards interested her. Adrianne hurried down the staircase to the first floor.
Here was silence. She listened to her own pulse. Flowers that had been shipped in from Europe for her wedding added a sweet scent. A pair of white doves slept in a gold cage in the midst of a thousand petals. Adrianne slipped past them, past the salons, the great hall, the offices. The door to the security room was built unobtrusively into a corner. Guests should be protected without being bothered with mundane matters such as alarms and weapons. Holding her breath, Adrianne slid the hidden door aside.
She waited five beats, ten—but the darkness and silence remained constant. Her rubber-soled shoes were noiseless as she stepped inside and closed the door at her back. Here the stairway was steep and open. If her timing was off and she was caught, there would be no place to hide and no excuses to be made. Without a light, with no banister to guide her, she couldn’t go quickly and risk a fall. Cautious, too slow for her peace of mind, she descended.
Because her heart was hammering when she reached the bottom, she forced herself to take long, deep breaths. A glance at her watch showed her she had twenty minutes to deal with the alarms before Philip touched the first dial. Time enough. Taking out a small, wide-beamed flashlight, she scanned the room.
There were packing crates stacked as high as two men. The layer of dust told her they weren’t new. Taking up one wall was a glass cabinet, double locked. In it rifles were stacked like soldiers. Oil gleamed on the barrels. On the opposite wall was the alarm. Trying to ignore the guns at her back, Adrianne went to work.
The system for outside security she left alone. It took her five sweaty minutes to unscrew the plate on the alarm and identify and clamp the first wire. There would be twelve in all, four for each lock. Precisely, with the specs of the alarm focused in her mind, she wove through, going through the color codes in order. First white, then blue, then black, then red.
She glanced up at the ceiling, wondering if Philip was in position yet. Two alarms were disengaged, but the tension remained a solid knot at the base of her skull. The slightest error now, and a lifetime of planning would be dust.
She’d located the last wire and was reaching for a clamp when she heard the footsteps. With no time to panic, she pressed the shield back into place and finger-turned a single screw to hold it before she dove behind the crates.
There were two of them, each armed with a pistol snug in a shoulder holster worn over a throbe. Their voices, pitched at a normal range, sounded like gunshots in her head. Adrianne rolled herself into a ball and held her breath.
One was complaining about the extra night work required because of the wedding and guests. The other was more philosophical and bragged about a recent trip to Turkey where he had sampled the whores brought in from Budapest. His wife now had the syphilis he’d passed on to her.
The lights came on before they stopped less than a foot away from where Adrianne tried to meld with the crates. With a laugh the second man drew out a magazine from under his robes. On the cover was a woman, naked, legs spread, with her hand at work between them. Palace guards or not, if the matawain had discovered the book, they could lose a hand or an eye. Sweat dripped down Adrianne’s neck as the minutes ticked away from her.
A Turkish cigarette was produced and lit while both men pored over the pictures. The smoke drifted over Adrianne and made her head spin with whatever it was laced with. One man reached down to stroke himself before passing the cigarette back to his companion.
She listened to the grunts and the remarks that might have made a long-time prostitute blush. One man shifted so that the hem of his throbe almost brushed her foot. She could smell the sweat on him. Bargaining ensued, good-natured at first, then more intense. She didn’t dare shift, even enough to look at her watch. Philip would be overhead now, perhaps with his fingers on the first dial. At any moment the alarm could scream. Everything would be lost.
Money changed hands. The magazine disappeared. The cigarette was extinguished and the butt secreted away. Through the pounding in her ears she heard their laughter. They moved on and she waited in torment for the light to go out.
The moment it did,
she was up. There was no time for caution now. The dial on her watch showed her she had only ninety seconds to clamp the last wire.
Her mouth was dry. Both that and the nausea were a new experience. When she pulled off the shield it nearly slid through her numb fingers. Forty-five seconds. She braced the shield between her knees and picked through for the wire. Her hand was steady, so steady it seemed to belong to someone else, not the woman whose skin was soaked with sweat. With the delicacy of a surgeon she looped it. Twenty seconds. She slid the clamp over the loop, turned, fastened.
Adrianne rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth before she looked at her watch again. Two seconds. She waited, counting them off. Then she stood, patient, counting off another full minute. No alarm broke the silence. She stopped praying long enough to reattach the shield.
Philip’s fingers were nimble, and his ear was keen. He worked with the patience of a master jewel cutter. Or thief. Part of his brain asked the same question over and over as he listened for the click of tumblers. Where was she?
It was fifteen minutes beyond the optimum time they’d calculated for her passage through the halls to the vault room.
Through her amplifier he heard the satisfying clatter that meant the first lock was freed. She’d dealt with the alarm. It was some small comfort. He caressed the second dial, tilted his head, and kept his eye on the door. Five minutes more, he promised himself. If she didn’t show in five minutes, he’d go find her and the hell with the necklace. He flexed his fingers like a pianist about to arpeggio. The first tumbler fell just before he heard the doorknob turn. He was behind the door and pressed flat when Adrianne stepped in.
“You’re late.”
The giggle escaped and told her how close her nerves were to snapping. “Sorry, I couldn’t get a cab.” She reached for him, held on, and that was enough to steady her.