The Sultan's Heir

by Alexandra Sellers

  “…necessary if a lie will save their lives!” he interrupted her impatiently. “You are being foolish, Rosalind! What else could I have done?”

  Nothing. There was nothing else he could have done in the moment. It was just that in a part of herself, Rosalind was realizing how much Sam had already fallen under Najib’s spell…and how much she was in danger of doing so. It was so tempting to have someone so strong care so much for you.

  But it was all window dressing. That was the trouble.

  It was a mistake to let his feelings get the better of him, Najib belatedly reminded himself. Since the first moment he had seen her, he had felt the pull of her potent femininity, and since that inexplicable moment in the woods, it had been painful to be near her. Everything in nature then had seemed to be urging him to make love to her, and everything in nature still seemed to be doing so.

  His fingers began to move hypnotically on the bare flesh of her shoulders. Rivers of sensation flowed through her, in no particular direction, and she ached to lean into his body and be enfolded in passionate safety.

  “Don’t,” she whispered protestingly.

  “Rosalind,” he growled, as if the word was torn from him.

  The door opened, and Gazi al Hamzeh came in, his mobile phone in his hand.

  “I just had a call from Hello! magazine.” He glanced at Najib, and then back at Rosalind. “They want exclusive coverage of the wedding. They’ll give us a cover spread. We couldn’t ask for a better opportunity.”

  Back From the Grave!

  A Hero’s Welcome—Five Years Late!

  Someday My Prince Will Come—Back!

  Yes, I’m Your Father!

  The Sunday tabloids had done them proud. A big photograph on almost every front page. Even the broadsheets had liked the story, though they wrote in slightly more restrained terms.

  “Great,” said Gazi, reading through a report with professional detachment and tossing the paper aside to pick up another. “You two are naturals.”

  They were having breakfast at a table outside on the terrace. The day was beautiful, with a soft breeze stirring the banks of flowers all around them. Sir John had gone up to London last night to his club, and this morning his chauffeur had returned with the papers.

  “Natural what?” Najib asked dryly.

  Gazi al Hamzeh flicked him a surprised glance and shrugged. He had a curious birthmark on one eye, and he looked like a pirate. She hoped he wasn’t one.

  “It’s amazing how much Sam looks like you from a certain angle,” Gazi murmured, picking up another paper. “No one’s going to doubt that relationship!”

  It was true. The photos enhanced the family resemblance between the two, and it was easy to believe that Naj was the adult version of Sam.

  “You’re the perfect family group,” Gazi murmured, only glancing at another paper, which had run a shot of Sam standing between the two of them, staring at the camera, his head at an angle that exactly mirrored Najib’s. “Well, we couldn’t have a better launch.”

  Rosalind, less detached than Gazi, was half reading and half listening to them. “…grandson of the deposed sultan. His mother, a beautiful young jet-setter at the time, escaped with the clothes on her back….

  “Members of the al Jawadi family had to go underground for their own protection…Najib, under a pseudonym which, to protect others, still cannot be revealed, came to England….”

  Her own last name, too, had been carefully kept from the media. Rosalind lifted her head to find Najib watching her.

  She knew she ought to be grateful to Najib—his life was being disrupted, too, and for no benefit to him. But it was hard to feel gratitude towards the man whose arrival had triggered the total upheaval of her life. And whose departure would trigger something quite different—something closer to heartbreak, for both her and Sam.

  No, she wasn’t grateful….

  Emotional hurts heal, he had said, but she remembered how long she had carried the hurt of what she thought was Jamshid’s betrayal. Najib had wiped away that hurt, but would he put another in its place?

  She turned a page. “…was seriously wounded, but still alive. He was taken in by a village family who nursed him while war continued to rage…. A head injury caused partial amnesia—he has undergone extensive plastic surgery on his face. Then one day, miraculously, his memory returned and when it did he set out to find his wife…. The couple plan to remarry under Najib’s own name, renewing the vows they took five years ago….”

  Rosalind set the paper down. “How do you like it?” Gazi asked.

  “Will anyone actually believe all that nonsense?” she asked faintly.

  The two men laughed. Gazi said, “Rosalind, they’ll want to believe it, and that’s half the battle. It’s a good story, isn’t it? Tears, laughter, true love gone wrong, an evil villain, and a happy ending.”

  A little silence fell over them, broken by the sound of childish voices from the children playing nearby.

  Najib said, “Five years is a long time, Rosalind. People forget. We haven’t said that I was Jamshid Bahrami, remember. My life fits this story well enough. Even my own friends cannot be completely certain that I did not marry secretly while I was here.”

  Rosalind glanced down at another paper. There was a photo of the three of them, Sam in Najib’s arms. She was struck by how regal Najib looked. He looked just like a sultan.

  It was a bit like a royal portrait.

  With the sudden sensation of feeling a trap close around her, Rosalind said slowly, “You are sure you don’t want the throne yourself, are you? This isn’t some disguised attempt to present yourself as a challenge to Ghasib?”

  It did nothing for her peace of mind that the two men exchanged a glance. Then Najib set down his coffee cup and grasped her wrist, looking straight into her eyes.

  “No, Rosalind,” he said with flat earnestness. “Do you trust no one? That you do not trust me is perhaps understandable, but do you imagine that Sir John would be a party to such a dangerous deceit?”

  She swallowed, and the sudden panic began to ease off. It was true. What reason could so eminent a man as Sir John Cross have for betraying her like this?

  “I have no interest at all in sacrificing my life in such a way,” Najib went on. “Believe me, I would dislike intensely to be on any throne. Do I want to see Ghasib overthrown? Yes. Will I go to desperate lengths to keep him from using Samir as a prop to hold up his terrible reign? Without question. But—do you really accuse me of manipulating you into a dangerous position for the sake of my own ends, wanting to use your son as a springboard for my own political ambitions? No, Rosalind. You must know better than this.”

  He stared into her eyes, as if he was trying to say without words that there was a bond between them and they both knew it.

  She wanted to believe that.

  In the silence that fell, Gazi picked up one of the broadsheets. He searched for a moment, and read, “‘Najib al Makhtoum is descended through the female line, and is not a contender for the throne of Bagestan. It is generally suspected that Hafzuddin handed the honour to one of the sons of Prince Wafiq before his death. Until and unless the heirs reveal themselves, however, no one can be certain if they are alive.’”

  She gazed at Naj, still uncertain.

  “Believe me, Rosalind. We are getting married in order to protect your son.”

  His eyes were dark, his mouth grim. She realized that Najib didn’t like this any more than she did, and a pang of regret stabbed her. She would rather he did not dislike the thought of marrying her, even though the marriage was a lie.

  Ten

  The coast of East Barakat was the most breathtakingly rugged land Rosalind had ever seen. Fingers of naked rock clawed at the fabulous waters of the Gulf of Barakat, creating dozens of bays of various sizes. From the air, in sharp contrast to the pink, brown and black of the land, the water was an entrancing pattern of turquoise and emerald, and so clear she could see the bottom.

/>   Far away in the distance the proud peak of Mount Shir stood guard above the snowy range of mountains which, after descending into foothills, sloped down to meet the sea just here, in East Barakat.

  In the Parvan language, the word shir meant both “lion” and “milk,” and the mountain carried a legend that it was both mother and father to the lands it brooded over. Rosalind could see why. There was a hypnotically protective quality to the mountain that made her feel unconsciously secure.

  “Mommy, Mommy!” Sam was crying, breathless with the excitement of his first helicopter trip. “Wooo!” he cried yet again, as the chopper lifted with a swoosh to climb over a long finger of land. Najib was flying just low enough to make a climb necessary every now and then, because Sam loved the roller-coaster feeling.

  “There,” he said, as they topped the rise. “That is your villa.”

  It was Rosalind’s turn to lose her stomach. The house was a low sprawling structure of natural stone and clay surrounded by the only green vegetation for miles. It was built on the Middle Eastern plan: high thick walls surrounded a garden, in the centre of which was the house, an oblong shape topped with little domes and built around internal courtyards—a large rectangular central one with a smaller square one on each side.

  Each of the interior courtyards was tiled, she saw as Najib flew right over the house, and held fountains and reflecting pools. Each also had a display of flowering shrubs and bushes that seemed impossible in this terrain. Between the domes a section of the roof was flat, and she knew that on the hottest nights, the residents probably slept there. Around the house, the garden held shade trees and more shrubs in full flower.

  It was a perfectly ordered oasis.

  A track led down to the sea. In the tiny bay the beach was pink sand and stone, the water was emerald, and a fishing dhow moored to a white buoy danced on the sparkling waves.

  “It’s fabulous!” she breathed. “Like a dream.”

  They had come here so that Rosalind could see her inheritance, but the house also provided an excellent way for them to avoid the press. When all was in readiness they would go to Prince Rafi’s palace in East Barakat, in the mountains, and the wedding was to take place there.

  Najib expertly set down the helicopter on a large flat area near the house. The craggy stone of the nearest finger rose up beside them. The whole landscape seemed to be rocks and bare earth, and Rosalind lost her breath at how inhospitable this stark, beautiful terrain was.

  “Is it only accessible by helicopter?” she asked.

  “And sea.” Najib gestured to the water. “For the hardy, on foot or camel. Kamil…Jamshid had a yacht which he used to sail down from Daryashar.”

  Daryashar was the seaport of East Barakat, she knew. She had boned up on the history and geography of the area in the short time she had had before being pitchforked into what was going to be the adventure of her life.

  Rosalind was still very nervous at the course she had chosen. She had a meeting at Sir John’s house, with two mystery men whom Sir John assured her she could trust. She had hated seeing the look in their eyes when she swore to them that Samir was not Prince Kamil’s son, for to them it could only mean that she had cheated Jamshid. But what else could she do? If she let them believe a lie, and the truth came out at some critical moment in the future…would Sam ever forgive her? Would anyone ever forgive her?

  But she worried about her own motives. Had she had another, unconscious reason for capitulating to the demand for this sham marriage? Was some stupid, dreaming part of her imagining that, by practising the form, she might summon up the content?

  “Marhaba, ahlan wa sahlan!” “Marhaba!” she heard as Najib took Samir from her arms and helped her alight from the helicopter. Several men and women had come out of the house and were coming over to greet them.

  “Shokran jazilan,” Rosalind replied.

  “Alhamdolillah ala assalaamata!”

  The men picked up the luggage with unhurried movements, and the women reached their hands towards Sam and then clapped their cheeks with groans of pleasure at his darling good looks and his strong resemblance to his father.

  Najib set Samir on his feet, and the child insisted on taking a hand each of Rosalind and Najib. The little group strolled towards the house, for in this heat nobody hurried. Rosalind was torn between conversation with the women and a stunned appreciation of the close-up view of the landscape. It was unbelievably raw and rugged, and the sun beat down mercilessly from an endless, wide blue dome of sky. Rosalind, looking starkly elegant in a long cream shift, sleeveless with low V-neck, and sunglasses in her casually tied-back hair, made a note not to come out again without a hat.

  Sam was the only one exhibiting any energy in the heat. The neck protector of his French Foreign Legion cap flapping wildly, he bounced with excitement all the way to the house, pulling at their hands with the joy of a child who is made deeply happy because on one side is the male and on the other the female….

  They had explained to Sam that Najib was going to be his father for a little while. It was the only solution she could think of. She had asked Sam if that would be okay with him, and he had solemnly nodded.

  But how much did a child understand of such concepts? Perhaps he had only taken in the words Najib and father and was believing just what he wanted to believe.

  Rosalind sighed. “What troubles you?” Najib asked softly. He was so quick to pick up her moods, and it wasn’t the first time she had noticed it.

  “How is he going to take it when you aren’t there anymore? Maybe it would be better if you didn’t get too close to him, Najib.”

  He shook his head. “Rosalind, the worst thing for him would be for me to withhold love from him deliberately for such a reason as that. If I am not to be there as he grows up, all the more reason for me to love him now.”

  “But—”

  “If you knew you were facing a time in the desert, would you refuse to drink water now, to get yourself used to it? Or would you rather drink as much as you could, to carry you through the coming lack?”

  The words shivered through her, because of what they said about her own condition. Should she resist what she felt for Najib now because she would have to do without him sooner or later? Or should she try to store up as much as she could against a deprived future?

  And more important, would she get the chance?

  It was much cooler in the house: the thick walls and domed ceilings, the fountains and flowers, provided a cooling system that was very effective.

  They were led to one of the smaller courtyards, where the fountains were now playing, creating the suggestion of a breeze. A table was laid, Western style, beside a bank of lush green shrubs under the colonnaded, shade-giving cloister that ran around all four sides of the courtyard, so picturesque it took her breath away. The play of intense light and shade was indescribably attractive.

  They were brought a light lunch of fresh herbs with naan, followed by a main course of several delicious salads, and then by iced lemon sorbet, a traditional Eastern way to soothe weary travellers, and some delicious honeyed sweets.

  They sat for a while in silence, talking only now and then as they ate. Rosalind was absorbing her surroundings with deep appreciation, from the delicate stone arches that linked the columns all around the perimeter of the courtyard, to the delicate perfume that seemed to hang over everything, to the sparkling fountain, to the strong masculine presence of Najib.

  Sam was silent, too, tucking into the sorbet with utter absorption. He had eaten tabbouleh, and several other dishes that were completely new to him, with a voracious appetite. “He’s not always so adventurous with food,” Rosalind said in answer to Najib’s comment. “The heat has made him too hungry to be picky.” She smiled and, entranced by Najib’s dark eyes, added absently, “Or maybe it’s just genetic predisposition.”

  Najib swirled some sorbet around on his own tongue and lifted an eyebrow. “Your other lover was also from this part of the world?�
�� he murmured quietly.

  “My other—” Rosalind began, mystified, and then broke off, understanding him. She felt an angry heat in her cheeks. There was nothing else for him to think, but did he have to put it that way?

  She was saved from having to answer by the appearance of one of the women, who clucked around Sam and urged a nap. When Rosalind nodded her agreement and prepared to rise, Najib said, “Go with Tahira, Sam. She will show you your room. She will look after you very well.”

  Sam nodded and climbed obediently down from his chair. Rosalind, a little jealous at this ready obedience, said, “All right, Sam?” but he merely nodded and reached a hand confidingly up to Tahira. He waved a drowsy farewell.

  “He’s more tired than I realized,” Rosalind said. “The heat and excitement—it’s all so new to him.”

  “You can check on him in a few minutes. Tahira is an excellent child’s nurse, by the way. She trained in Barakat al Barakat, at the Queen Halimah Children’s Hospital.”

  Rosalind felt her own fatigue catching up with her. A few minutes later she stretched and yawned. “I’m more tired than I realized, too. I think I’d like to go and lie down myself.”

  “I will show you the way,” Najib said, getting to his feet.

  She followed him under the cloistered walk and up a short flight of steps into a cool, shadowed hallway that ran straight through, connecting the large courtyard to a smaller one.

  There they stepped into the shade of another canopied walk, which skirted a small, circular pool of water. A short flight of broad stone steps led through huge windowed doors into a long, cool room where, on the opposite side, venetian blinds over open windows made the most of a through breeze. At one end was a bed, a wide, low divan type, at the other, a cluster of low divans and tables. Tapestries and paintings hung on the walls, in which several niches held trays, jugs, pitchers and other decorative objects in bronze or brass. Along one wall was a large embroidered cloth with beautiful Arabic calligraphy picked out in gold, of a type that she recognized as a name. She supposed this was Hafzuddin’s, although the design was too intricate to read easily.