by Lynne Graham
Heatstroke? Polly recalled the claustrophobic burning heat of that courtyard and suppressed a groan, knowing she should have admitted that she was far too hot out there. She was embarrassed by the fact that she had fainted and caused a whole fuss. Furthermore she had a vague memory of shouting at King Rashad and of threatening to thump him. Her cheeks prickled with mortification and she said nothing until the treatment was complete. The nurse took her temperature and blood pressure and pronounced both satisfactory before she was finally patted dry with a towel. She was then eased into some sort of silky garment and tucked into a very comfortable bed as if she were a young child.
An older man entered and introduced himself as Dr Wasem. He took a sample of her blood and a swab from her mouth before advising her to have a light meal and rest.
As if she were going to just lie there and sleep after all that had happened, Polly thought in disbelief. But once she had drunk as much water as she could manage her eyelids began to slide down as though weights were attached to them, her body sinking into the comfy mattress, and she was asleep before she knew it.
When she wakened, darkness had fallen and she focused in bemusement on the woman seated in a small pool of light near the door. It was Azel, the nurse who had addressed her earlier. Slowly she sat up and voiced her most pressing need. Urged to leave the bed with care in case she felt dizzy, she padded into the bathroom and freshened up with relief. It was after midnight and the silence within the palace walls was unfamiliar to a born and bred Londoner, accustomed to the sound of traffic and the outside glow of street lights.
A knock sounded on the door. ‘Do you want anything out of your case?’ Azel asked helpfully.
Grateful to finally be reunited with her luggage, Polly retrieved the necessities.
‘I’ve ordered a light meal for you. You must be very hungry.’
‘It’s the early hours of the morning here,’ Polly pointed out in surprise.
‘The palace is staffed round the clock. It’s a very convenient place to live,’ Azel imparted with a smile.
A tray was brought and Polly tucked happily into a chicken salad. She wondered what time it was at home, not having yet got her head around the time difference. She would phone Ellie in the morning, she thought ruefully. In spite of her sleep, she still felt ridiculously tired and tomorrow when she got back to her interrupted holiday she would feel better able to explain how her unexpected inheritance from their late mother had brought her nothing but trouble. Her sister would be unsurprised, she thought fondly, for Ellie had a more cynical outlook on life than her older sister.
The next time she wakened, she could see the brightness of day lightening the wall above the curtains and she was alone. Rising, she dug clean clothes out of her case and she went for a shower. Well, this would be a tale to tell, she reflected with rueful amusement, flying out to Dharia in the hope of exploring her parentage only to end up spending the night in the royal palace.
A maid appeared with a trolley once she had returned to the bedroom and she chose a selection of foods from what was on offer and ate with appetite while she planned what she would say to her sister when she called her. She was reluctant to say anything that would wind up Ellie’s fiery temper and more aggressive nature. Placed in the same position, Ellie would have been screaming for the assistance of the British Embassy before they even got her out of the airport.
But when she dug into her handbag for her phone she couldn’t find it even after emptying the bag contents out onto the bed. Her mobile had clearly been stolen. Her money was intact, as was her passport, but her phone was gone. She was furious. It was a cheap phone too, not one she would’ve believed anyone would think worth stealing. Well, she would take that up with King Rashad when she next saw him. In the meantime, she still needed to ring Ellie, who would be panicking because she hadn’t got in touch when she had promised to do so. Honestly, even though Polly was older, Ellie treated her like such an innocent just because she had never been abroad before, Polly mused, shaking her head.
She opened the bedroom door and found a maid and an armed guard standing outside, which took her aback. She was even more disconcerted when the soldier wheeled round and dropped to his knees, bowing his head, muttering something in his own language. Well, good luck with that, whatever it was or meant, Polly decided, politely ignoring his display when it occurred to her that perhaps it was a prayer time of day and he was devout.
‘I need a phone,’ she told the maid. ‘I have to phone my sister.’
The maid beamed and took her back into her bedroom to show her the landline by the bed. Polly suppressed a groan, not wishing to mention that she had wanted a mobile phone to make a free call on an app because she wasn’t sure the young woman’s English would be up to that explanation. With a sigh, reflecting that Dharia with its oil wealth could surely afford one phone call after the ordeal she had been put through, she lifted the handset.
Ellie answered her call at predictable speed. ‘Where are you? Why has it taken you so long to phone me? I’ve been really worried about you!’
And Polly proceeded to give her sibling the watered-down version of the truth that she had already decided on but she did have to explain that their mother had apparently had no right to even have the fire-opal ring, never mind bequeath it to anyone.
‘Well, I think a lawyer would need to decide that, not some jumped-up foreign ruler!’ Ellie exclaimed, angrily unimpressed. ‘You have to fight this, Polly. Are you sure you’re free to leave the palace? Why have they a guard stationed outside your door? Try going for a walk and see what happens. I’m very suspicious about the set-up you’ve described and I think I may approach the Foreign Office to ascertain what your position is and ask for advice—’
‘Do you really think that’s necessary?’ Polly prompted ruefully. ‘Don’t you think you’re taking this all too seriously?’
‘Polly…you don’t pick up on warning signals!’ Ellie condemned with heartfelt concern. ‘You’re always making excuses for the bad things people do… I’m not sure I could trust you as a judge of human character!’
Polly completed the call, her face flushed and sheepish. Now Ellie was up in arms and ready to do battle! Although she believed her sister’s concern was groundless she was willing to test Ellie’s suggestion that she try going for a walk. She grabbed her sunhat and sunglasses and left the room, turning left at random and moving along a stone corridor, pausing to look down at an inner hall covered with the most eye-catching mosaic tiles she had ever seen.
She traversed a wide stone staircase and stilled again to admire a big wide corridor of elaborate arches that stretched away into the distance to frame the far vista of a lush garden at the end. As she set off to explore she noted that the guard was following her but not closely and he was so busy chattering to the maid that had accompanied him that Polly reckoned she could’ve turned cartwheels without him noticing. She wandered down the corridor and peered out into the gorgeous garden that shaded a pool in the shape of a star. The stone arches surrounding the courtyard were as exquisitely carved and detailed as handmade lace. It was truly beautiful and had she had her phone with its camera she would have loved to take photographs.
Her exploration ranged deeper into the building until she finally recognised the main hall where she had arrived the day before, and she was approaching the entrance when the woman who had served tea to her and the King appeared out of a doorway.
‘Miss Dixon?’ she called with a very artificial smile. ‘The King asks that you join him for lunch.’
‘How lovely,’ Polly responded with a rather more natural smile, her face heating as she recalled her first meeting with Rashad, the gorgeous talker of textbook English.
Turning to follow the woman, she faltered only slightly when she finally registered that her guard of one had turned into a guard of six while she was wandering and all of them backed away in concert and flattened themselves back against the wall and averted their eyes as she passed by.
Weird, really weird—maybe it was considered impolite to look too directly at a female, she pondered uncertainly. Certainly, her companion’s jaw had tightened so much in response to that display that it might have been carved from stone.
Lunch was mercifully being served indoors, Polly appreciated as she entered a room with a polished marble floor and contemporary furnishings that fitted in surprisingly well with the ancient walls. Rashad appeared without warning, striding in through a connecting door to the left only to stop dead the instant he saw her. Her feet stopped too and without her meaning to still them where she stood. And there he was, she thought rather giddily, jaw-droppingly gorgeous and breathtakingly sexy. Sexy wasn’t a word she normally applied to or indeed even thought of around men, but it rushed to her brain the minute she saw Rashad and it made her wonder if that was the main drawback of being a virgin and essentially inexperienced. Did sheer curiosity about sex give her a more impressionable response to men? But it had never happened to Polly around any other man, she reasoned, irritated by her wandering thoughts.
‘Please sit here,’ her companion interposed, tugging out a chair at the table Polly hadn’t even noticed ahead of her.
‘You look better today,’ Rashad commented quietly as he settled down opposite her, his attention locked to the delicate colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her blue eyes.
‘Yes, feeling better too. Sorry about the fuss I caused,’ Polly responded dismissively, trying not to look directly at him, utterly unnerved by the effect he had on her usual calm state of mind.
Rashad was disappointed that her hair was braided. He had never seen such beautiful hair before. Simply the novelty of different colouring in a country where most people had black hair, he told himself doggedly. She was wearing trousers again and a loose white top and he would not allow himself to wonder the things that his brain wanted to wonder. He angrily shut that side of himself down and began to make excruciatingly polite conversation of the sort he was accustomed to making at foreign dinner parties.
‘My phone wasn’t in my bag when it was returned to me,’ Polly announced without warning, encountering eyes so dark they glittered like stars in the light filtering through the open doors behind him.
‘Enquiries will be made on your behalf,’ Rashad fielded smoothly, well aware that the phone had most probably been confiscated as a security precaution at Hakim’s order. ‘I am sure it will be found and returned to you.’
‘Thank you,’ Polly said equally politely, wondering why he seemed so different from the man he had seemed to be the day before.
He was more controlled, almost stiff and expressionless, the lean strong bones of his face cool and set, his jawline hard. Wary? Hostile? Offended? She marvelled at the extent of her own curiosity and scolded herself for it. Why should she care? She would soon be taking up residence in her little bed-and-breakfast place near the bazaar in Kashan and she could be fairly sure that she would never meet an actual reigning king again in her lifetime. He could only be lowering himself to sharing a meal with a foreign commoner to pursue the controversial topic of the fire-opal ring he wanted to retain.
‘About the ring,’ she began abruptly.
‘We will not discuss that now,’ Rashad decreed without hesitation. ‘When you have fully recovered from your illness we will discuss it.’
Off-balance at the flat refusal, Polly studied him for several tense seconds. He was the most infuriating man. She could see that he expected the subject to be dropped simply because he had issued an embargo and his sheer level of assurance hugely annoyed her. ‘I am fully recovered,’ she traded quietly. ‘And grateful as I am for the care I received when I took ill and the hospitality which has been offered to me here, I would like to return to my holiday plans as soon as possible.’
‘Perhaps we will discuss that tomorrow,’ Rashad fielded without batting a single lush black eyelash.
‘You do realise,’ Polly whispered, because that hard-eyed brunette she couldn’t quite warm to was seated only ten feet away, ‘that you are making me want to thump you again? I thought it might be my high temperature that caused my loss of temper yesterday but I can now see that it was merely you being you—’
A brilliant smile unexpectedly stole the grim aspect from his lean, dark, brooding features. ‘Me being me?’ he queried with perceptible amusement in a clear encouragement for her to expand on her feelings.
‘Horribly bossy. And I can see you’re used to people doing exactly as you say—’
‘Because I am the King,’ Rashad filled in helpfully.
‘But you’re not my King.’ Polly made that distinction with a slow sweet smile of mingled exasperation and reluctant amusement.
When he saw that smile, Rashad froze and leant back into his chair, squaring his shoulders while he wondered if she was flirting with him. Probably not, his brain told him. The British women he had been intimate with a few years earlier had used methods that were considerably more direct to attract and hold his attention.
‘But you are still my guest,’ Rashad retorted with lashings of cool. ‘And the Dharian rules of hospitality are strict. One should never make a guest uncomfortable—’
‘But you’re doing exactly that right now!’ Polly hissed at him in frustration.
His long brown fingers clenched taut round the cutlery. He tore his gaze from her lovely face, painfully aware that she made him very uncomfortable. With the discipline of years strengthening him, he studied his plate and he ate in complete silence.
‘In fact, you’re only making me want to stick a fork in you,’ Polly whispered across the table.
And that was it—Rashad lost that minor battle. A wholly inappropriate laugh broke from his lips when he failed to stifle his enjoyment. Polly studied him in surprise and then encountered the brunette’s chilling appraisal, which suggested that amusing the King could well be a capital offence.
‘We will talk again tomorrow,’ Rashad informed her quietly as they vacated the table they had shared.
Polly had to forcibly put a lid on her growing frustration with him. She was being too polite, she told herself. He had blocked her questions and refused to discuss the matter of the ring or tell her when she could leave. But did that really matter? After all, she was being treated like an honoured guest. Staying in the lap of luxury in a truly magical royal palace, another little inner voice chipped in gently, was scarcely a penance. It was a gift to be housed in such a gorgeous building, to be waited on hand and foot and to be wonderfully well fed. How could she possibly form a bad opinion of her host? It wasn’t as though she had been stashed in some primitive prison cell. Moreover she was being granted an intriguing glimpse of a very different and far more colourful lifestyle.
Satisfied by that more positive take on her unexpected stopover in a royal dwelling, Polly wandered off to enjoy all that the exotic palace had to offer. She ignored the troop of men, armed to the teeth, and the maid following close behind her, and roamed from the magnificent desert views available from the recently built rooftop terrace down through the state rooms, with their superb intricate brass-covered arched doors and elaborate interiors, right down to the kitchen, with its army of busy staff, who fell silent and froze in shock when she first appeared.
With the maid acting as an interpreter, Polly ended up seated in yet another shaded courtyard, being plied with chilled strawberry and honey tea and an array of fantastic little pastries. Somewhere about then she decided that she was having a truly wonderful holiday even if it was not advancing her an inch in her unlikely search to find out more about her father.
Possibly that had always been an unrealistic goal, she thought in disappointment. Too much time had passed. How did she even risk voicing the name she had been given when the poor man might not be her father at all and was probably long since married? She didn’t want to upset anyone and the mother she barely remembered had been sufficiently dysfunctional in her relationships even with her own family that she did not feel she could place mu
ch faith in Annabel Dixon’s judgement.
*
Later that afternoon a dialogue that would have very much shocked Polly was about to take place. Hakim had collected the DNA results and had received such a shock that he had passed much of the afternoon at prayer, wrestling with his guilt and with sentiments it was too late to express. Having unburdened himself, he had then received a shock almost as great when events that had taken place a quarter of a century earlier were clarified for him by an unexpected source. Sharing that information with his King was almost more than Hakim could bear but he did not have a choice.
‘Our guest is your granddaughter?’ Rashad repeated with incredulity. ‘How is that even possible, Hakim?’
The older man sighed heavily. ‘At the time my son Zahir died we were estranged. That has been a lifelong source of regret to me. I was aware that he was involved with the nanny but I also suspected her of having other male interests on the staff at the time. I knew that my son wished to marry her and he refused to listen to my objections. I urged him not to marry her—citing the example of my own parents, who married across the cultural divide—and my son took offence.’
Rashad was silent while his trusted adviser unburdened his troubled conscience. Zahir had been Hakim’s only child and that much more precious for that reason, and the day after the death of Rashad’s family Zahir had died heroically trying to defend the palace and its inhabitants from Arak’s squad of hired mercenaries.
‘And now you see the consequences of my miscalculation. I spoke to my son from my head instead of from my heart. He loved this woman and she was already pregnant. He would not have told me that,’ Hakim acknowledged hoarsely, his emotions roughening his usually steady voice. ‘When the nanny vanished after his death I never thought about her again…why would I have? But I have only now learnt that Zahir married her privately and secretly only the day before he died. May I humbly request some time off to go home and discuss this astounding discovery with my wife—?’