by Dani Collins
“Oh, no, I—” Fern was dumbfounded. Part of her went into cardiac arrest at what else she might have betrayed by being “sympathetic,” the rest was screaming in agony at what Amineh had just told her. She did her best to shake it all off. “No, I honestly didn’t realize,” she said. She’d been too obsessed with the possibility she was pregnant herself. “That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
She hugged Amineh and couldn’t help the tears that came into her eyes. Expecting with her friend was so perfect, yet such a disaster.
“Oh, Fern, you really are the sweetest person, crying for me. Honestly, I feel like crying myself. I’m so tired, and look! Barely six weeks and I feel like I’m beginning to show. Nothing fits right. Ra’id is being a gem, making my excuses and promising me that after this, we’re home for a year, but we have another two weeks of this nonsense.”
Fern could only offer a shaky smile, wishing the father of her baby would be a gem and look after her, but he had an entire country to worry about.
And he was getting married.
That night she cried until her throat burned and woke to such a violent bout of morning sickness, she knew she could be found out. As much as she wanted to tell Zafir, she couldn’t. Not like this, from a country where her condition, especially as an unmarried woman, could be seen as a crime. What if someone found out? What if he didn’t care?
Staring at her ravaged face the next morning, she knew what she had to do. She was a terrible liar, but at least her emotions were on such a seesaw, her anxiety so very real, that when she requested a meeting with Ra’id, she looked convincingly distraught.
“I’ve had some bad news from home. A dear friend. She’s like a mother to me.” Miss Ivy was perfectly fine, as far as Fern knew, but as Fern considered the way she’d derailed this wonderful career she’d been given, fresh tears came into her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I need to return to England immediately.”
Amineh was out with the girls and other women from the wedding party. Fern had planned it that way, unable to speak her bald-faced lies directly to someone she considered a true friend. Especially when she’d betrayed that friendship by sleeping with Amineh’s brother.
It was far easier to let Ra’id recoil from her display of feminine emotions, snap into making arrangements and put her on a plane within the hour. She promised she would be in touch about her return, claiming it shouldn’t be more than a week or two.
Her first order of business after checking in to her London hotel half a day later was a pregnancy test. Her life changed completely in the one minute it took to watch the blue positive sign appear. She had known, but now she knew.
Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, she saw her dream job dissolve into a blur, just like her pale reflection in the mirror across from her. She couldn’t face Amineh after this. Couldn’t face Zafir after being so stupid as to let it happen. She couldn’t put him in a position of choosing between his country and her. Not when she knew something of the anguish he and his sister had grown up in, feeling torn between two worlds. She couldn’t do that to her child.
She was having a baby!
Unable to process that reality, she went through the motions of what had to be done. She wrote her resignation letter with hands that shook so badly she could barely type. Then she made arrangements for the agency to forward it on her behalf. Her apologies were profuse, her regret profound, but she was unable to return. The circumstances here at home made it impossible, she said, and wished the girls well in their studies.
After cutting those final ties, the day after her arrival in London, she put herself on a train to the north and took a cab from the station to Miss Ivy’s flat.
“Fern!” her friend gasped when she opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you!”
Fern dropped her cases. “I am. Expecting.” Now came the tears as the magnitude of it all finally hit her. “Oh, Miss Ivy! What am I going to do?”
Six months later
Zafir was preparing for a very private, very delicate meeting. Abu Gadiel had agreed to let Zafir introduce himself to his daughter. They, with her mother and two brothers, were arriving at any minute. The air in his expansive office was already thick with tension and he was the only one in it.
Zafir silently went over his reasons for seeking a union with her, how it would strengthen confidence in his ruling of the country while giving her father a voice near his ear. It would benefit the country they all cared about. He already knew her only reservation: whether she would be allowed to continue her ambitions to become a doctor.
He would encourage her, of course. Offer a long engagement, wait until she’d finished her degree even. It would press him into celibacy, but he would need time to work up the desire to bed her anyway. Sexual hunger tortured him every hour of every day, but he only thought of one woman.
This obsession had to stop. He would not become his father, keeping a mistress in England. That way led to the madness of falling in love, having a family as though they were a proper couple with a future. Q’Amara needed stability. That came from a man with a clear mind, not one tortured by passionate emotions like love.
So he would ignore the fact that Fern had gone back to England, even though the knowledge had sent a rush of excitement roaring through him. The imperative to go and stamp and ensconce had been pacing like an angry lion inside him since Tariq had come home with the news of her departure from Ra’id’s palace. A widowed Mrs. Heath was in residence as Fern’s replacement. She was nice enough, but didn’t make jokes or let them wander off topic. Photos had shown a woman of later years, white hair and a plump body.
“Why did she leave?” Zafir had questioned Tariq, experiencing a pierce that should have been fear, but was too anticipatory.
“Her friend was sick. Auntie said it sounded like what my mother had.”
Zafir’s mind had sheared off the thought that had barely formed, that Fern had had another reason for leaving, and he’d focused on reminding Tariq that rules were relaxed at the oasis. An understatement. Miss Davenport might also have been strict if she’d been in her proper classroom, he’d said, so Tariq shouldn’t be too hard on the new Mrs. Heath.
Tariq hadn’t agreed, insisting Miss Davenport was superior in every way, but they’d moved on to other things.
And Zafir had spent weeks imagining where he would buy her a flat in London, even going so far as to look at real estate listings. He didn’t even know what she might like. They hadn’t talked much, always too busy quietly eating each other alive. Obviously she’d always lived modestly. He’d gathered that she’d taken care of her mother through a terminal illness. Surely she would appreciate not having to work or worry about meeting her basic needs anymore.
His desire to continue their affair was a type of insanity. An obsession. It had to stop. He tilted his head back, fighting yet again the memory of having her under him, lissome and smelling like heaven, hot and writhing with abandon. Had he known he would have her, he would have taken her from the beginning. All the way, every night.
The knock on his door was like an axe hitting the chopping block. No more thoughts of her after today. His life was moving in a different direction. A necessary one.
But when he called permission to enter, his guest was Ra’id.
Zafir frowned. His brother-in-law never arrived unannounced and never looked so grim. Zafir’s mind instantly whirled into terrible possibilities. He rejected each frightening concern as quickly as it came. Please not his sweet nieces. Let Amineh be well. She was pregnant. Was something wrong with the baby?
“What’s happened?” he demanded as Ra’id closed the door behind himself.
Ra’id lifted a staying hand. “Your sister and the children are fine. But she has insisted I come see you, since she’s too far along to travel and confront you herself.”
Ra’id looked more severe than Zafir
had ever seen him, as if an angry black cloud surrounded him. The accusation narrowing his friend’s eyes suggested he pinned some sort of blame on Zafir.
That took him aback. He tried to think of what Tariq might have possibly done during his stay three months ago. He’d talked of one of Ra’id’s prized horses...
Folding his arms, Ra’id stated belligerently, “My wife and I have been arguing for months. I knew she was keeping something from me, which is not like her at all.” The couched fury in Ra’id’s voice put Zafir on high alert. “And when she finally told me her suspicions, I assured her she was so wrong that this would go down in our marriage as the most unfounded disagreement we have ever had.”
“She cannot be accusing you of an affair?” Zafir said with disbelief. His friend had been married to Amineh long before the formal ceremony had taken place. If Ra’id had had any other lover but his wife, Zafir would be shocked dead.
“Not me, no,” Ra’id said, adopting the full superiority of his station. “You.”
Zafir’s breath stalled. His lifetime of being attacked with denigrations served him well. He deflected this one with a neutral expression and only elevated one eyebrow as he blithely responded, “I’m not married.”
“Miss Davenport left our household rather abruptly some months ago. Amineh is convinced you are the reason.”
“This will go down in history as a ridiculous fight if you’ve come all this way to involve me in your domestic employment issues,” Zafir intoned.
“It has turned into a contest of which one of us knows you better. She thinks you quite capable of an affair with her friend, while I have assured her you have more honor and sense.”
And so they were found out. Zafir’s ears rang as he met his friend’s eyes. It wasn’t comfortable to let Ra’id see that he would not go home crowing about being right. Zafir did, indeed, have less honor and sense than his best friend had credited him.
Ra’id’s face tightened. “Because it was obvious to anyone with eyes that Miss Davenport was not the type to engage in affairs, I said. As much of a hound that your brother can be, he indulges himself elsewhere with sophisticated women who know what they’re getting into. The kind who accept jewelry, but don’t expect a diamond ring. He would never prey on a virgin dormouse and take advantage of her.”
Self-disgust rose like a cloud of grit inside Zafir. He couldn’t hide it.
“You had an affair with my children’s teacher,” Ra’id persisted as Zafir failed to deny the implications. Ra’id’s voice rose with genuine fury. “Do you realize they have just now stopped crying for her? She was under my protection, Zafir!”
“You slept with my sister before you married her. In my house,” he snarled back.
“I wanted to marry her,” Ra’id retorted. “I loved her.”
And there was the slap of truth that made Zafir look away. He had told himself Fern was English. English girls had affairs. His actions weren’t that dishonorable. She had wanted it to be him.
“It was not my best hour,” he acknowledged. “I’ll admit that.” But he wouldn’t try to explain it. There was no explaining it. Sexual infatuation had got the better of him. He couldn’t offer excuses because there were none.
“So Amineh’s intuition strikes where my conviction, my certainty that I knew you better, fails.”
“Yes,” Zafir said with a tight smile. “I’m sorry that you must now go home and tell your wife you were wrong. A fate worse than death for any man. Are we finished? Because that tap on the door means my guests have arrived.”
“No,” Ra’id said with false pleasantry. “Because if she’s right about your sleeping with her, she might be right about something else. You see, the piece that has been really bothering her is the way Miss Davenport has cut off all communication.”
For a moment that made Zafir wonder. Worry. Was she ill? Then he remembered... “She’s nursing a sick friend. People insulate themselves in that situation.” He had, when his wife had been dying. You tired of singing the sad song, giving details that were the furthest thing from optimistic, looking into pitying eyes and facing the inevitability of your own mortality.
“Is she?” Ra’id asked, tucking his hands behind his back and rocking onto his heels. The edges of his gutra swayed around his supercilious expression. “I certainly thought that’s why she was leaving, when she came to me so distressed I couldn’t put her on an airplane fast enough. But Amineh has tracked this friend online and there’s no indication she’s suffering anything but impatience with a wet winter. Miss Davenport has let her own accounts go stale while her friend is cheerfully stating that she has begun a training regime for a half marathon and recently posted photos of her mountain trek in Portugal.”
Zafir didn’t know what to make of that, but he sensed the walls closing in on him.
“Miss Davenport appears to have lied to Amineh. Why would she do that, Zafir? What possible reason could she have to leave so abruptly and fail to return any of Amineh’s emails? Shall I tell you the theory your sister, the amateur detective, has formulated?”
Please don’t. But they both knew what the most logical conclusion was.
“She would have told me,” Zafir muttered as a refutation, wanting to believe it. Because the alternative, that Fern was pregnant with his child and hadn’t told him, was too much to face. The reasons behind choosing not to tell him were too ugly to absorb.
“Another type of woman would have tried to trap you,” Ra’id said. “She would have told you and extorted a lifetime of support. Marriage even. Did this woman even have the sense to use birth control? Did you?”
Zafir’s skin was dark enough to be Arab, but his green eyes were windows into his impure soul. All of him burned in the fire of culpability as he stood there, a man as close as a brother judging him for his reprehensible behavior. He had abandoned any sense of consequence. He was no better than the father who had condemned him to this half life of never belonging.
He had no defense for his actions.
“Ya gazma,” Ra’id spat. You shoe. Zafir felt lower than a shoe.
“She would have told me,” Zafir insisted. Had she been too embarrassed? Or was it shame?
“She quit because she feared running into you again?” Ra’id queried. “Given how sensitive and conscientious she seemed, I could believe that. But you better find out if that’s all it was before you proceed with what you’ve started here.” Ra’id jerked his chin toward the door and the place where Zafir’s proposed fiancée waited.
Zafir’s heart sank like a stone in quicksand, slow and inevitable and irretrievable. He had ruined everything. He was a disgrace.
He ran a hand down his burning face, trying to think.
“What will you do if she’s pregnant?” There was the voice of his friend. Anger had abated and troubled understanding clouded Ra’id’s eyes. He knew what a terrible position Zafir could be in.
Somehow this reaction was worse. Zafir would rather be reviled than consoled.
Why had he allowed something so superficial to go so far? Was it in his blood to be this careless?
He shut down the rage of helplessness. It was done. He had to find out if Fern was pregnant.
“I don’t know,” he responded truthfully, voice as bleak as the rest of him.
“I had time to think on the way here,” Ra’id said. “I have a suggestion.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
FERN HURRIED FROM the bus stop with the collar of her raincoat clutched tightly closed against her throat. With her other hand, she grasped the umbrella in a firm grip against the midday gusts trying to yank it away. The rushed walk made her breathless, partly due to the extra weight, she supposed. Possibly because she needed more iron.
Pregnancy was a lot of work, she had discovered with a small pang of understanding for her mother’s beleaguer
ed outlook. It was disconcerting to feel as though your body wasn’t yours anymore, but she didn’t resent the process, Mother. She didn’t blame this baby growing inside her for the anxiety she felt about their future.
She blamed herself.
Tramping quickly through the puddles in her boots, she felt icy splashes strike her knees through her tights, urging her even faster toward the sanctuary of Miss Ivy’s little flat. Not a whole house. Not even a proper two-bedroom. Fern was on the sofa bed at Miss Ivy’s insistence, saving the nest egg she had squirrelled away during her teaching contract with Amineh. She was even bringing in a few extra pounds with some adult tutoring. She hoped to take over a flat two blocks away when it came available in a few months.
None of this was ideal. In fact, it was the kind of repetition of history she hated to own up to, but she would manage. And her baby would not carry the burden of fault that had been hers most of her life.
As she reached the steps to the converted row house that held Miss Ivy’s flat, the self-satisfied lambent green town car at the curb caught her attention. Its tinted windows and details of chrome where out of place in this village. The driver’s side door opened, startling her into halting.
Zafir straightened and slammed the door with a firmness that made her flinch. As he came around the bonnet, seemingly unaware of the rain that pattered onto his uncovered head, she told herself to run, but could only stand there and stare.
No tunic or headdress, but he was as exotic and resplendent as always, even in a bespoke English suit of cast-iron-gray with a sharp white shirt and a silver tie. His beard was shaved to a narrow line that edged his set jaw and cut a goatee around the uncompromising firmness of his mouth.
His remarkable green eyes were as flat as frosted glass as they traveled to the billow of her overcoat. He flinched, but it wasn’t with surprise. More like, okay then.
The way he moved was smooth and unhurried, but his approach still felt like a blast of hurricane-force wind. He covered her hand on the umbrella and lifted it high enough so he could stand under it with her. Her hearing dulled and became more acute at the same time. Damp, earthy, male scents of aftershave and coffee, wool and warm, masculine skin, clouded into the little space and overwhelmed her senses.