Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh

by Meredith Webber

  How terrified I am?

  ‘I would rather finish whatever is going on here,’ she said, hoping she sounded firmer than she felt. ‘You are making me feel like a criminal when I have done nothing wrong.’

  Okay, so the last words had come out a little wobbly and she’d had to swallow hard before she could get them said at all, but behind the polite façade of the two men in the room she could sense a tension—a danger?—she couldn’t fathom.

  ‘May I see the locket again?’

  He reached his hand towards her, non-threatening words but a command in his tone.

  ‘I don’t take it off,’ she said, unwilling to be pushed further.

  Stubborn now!

  ‘It was my mother’s last gift to me. About the only thing I remember from that day—the day my parents died—was my mother fastening it around my neck, telling me it was mine now, telling me it would protect me—my Ta’-wiz.’

  Her fingers clung to it, hiding it from the stranger’s curious eyes.

  ‘They both died?’

  Dr—Sheikh?—al Askeba’s words were gentle but Lila refused to let them sneak under her defences. She’d told the story before and she could tell it again—dry eyed, the anguish that had never left her hidden behind the mask of time.

  ‘In a car accident. The car caught fire, a truck driver who saw it happen pulled me from my seat in the back before the car exploded.’

  ‘And you were how old?’

  Lila shook her head.

  ‘We guessed four—my new family and I—but we never knew for certain.’

  ‘And your mother’s name was Nalini?’

  More worried now the conversation had turned so personal, Lila could only nod, although she did add, ‘I think so, but I had forgotten.’

  The words caught at her and she raised despairing eyes to the stranger.

  ‘How could I have forgotten my own mother’s name? How could I not have remembered? Yet when you said it I saw her in my mind’s eye.’

  She closed her eyes, more to catch wayward tears than to keep the image there.

  Then cool fingers touched hers, easing them just slightly from the locket. She felt it lifted from where it lay against her skin, heard his small gasp of surprise.

  ‘You were burned?’

  ‘The car caught fire.’

  ‘And the locket burnt your skin—some protection!’

  ‘No, I survived!’ Lila reminded him, angered by his closeness—his intrusion into her life. ‘It did protect me.’

  But now he’d grasped her fingers, turning them to see the faint scars at the tips there as well.

  ‘You kept hold of it?’

  The words were barely spoken, more a murmur to himself, then he squeezed her fingers and released them, stepped back, apologising again for the inconvenience, adding, ‘I had rooms arranged for you at the hospital, a small serviced apartment close to a restaurant on the ground floor, but I think for now you should stay at the palace. You will be safe there, and maybe you can help us solve an old mystery.’

  ‘Palace?’ Lila whispered. ‘No, I’ll be very happy in an apartment at the hospital. The sooner I get settled the sooner I can make it a home. I’m sorry, I have no idea what’s going on but whatever it is I don’t like it, not one little bit.’

  He smiled at her then, the exhausted stranger with the even stranger ways.

  ‘Perhaps you are home, Nalini’s daughter, perhaps you are home.’

  * * *

  Tariq knew he was staring. Not openly, he hoped, but darting glances at the young woman who was so like the one he’d loved as a child.

  He’d been eight, and Nalini had been beautiful, brought into the household because she was Second Mother’s sister, to be company for her, someone familiar.

  But very quickly she’d become everyone’s favourite. Back then she’d been like the Pied Piper from the old European fairy tale and all the children in the palace had followed where she led, laughing with her, playing silly games, being children, really, in a place that had, until then, been rather staid and stolid.

  Tariq was pouring coffee as the memories flashed past, handing a cup to their guest, explaining they would be leaving as soon as her luggage had been collected.

  She took the cup he offered her and looked up into his face, her almond-shaped brown eyes meeting his, anger flickering in them now.

  ‘And if I don’t want to live in the palace?’ she asked, steel in her voice as if the tiredness of the long journey and the stresses of her arrival had been put aside and she was ready to fight.

  ‘It need only be temporary but if you are Nalini’s daughter then you are family and as family you must stay in our home.’

  How could he tell her that things had not gone well for the family since Nalini’s—and the locket’s—departure and things were getting worse. He was a modern man, yet it seemed imperative that the locket return to the palace where its power might reignite hope and harmony.

  Not that she could read his thoughts, for she was still fighting him about his decision.

  ‘Because I’m family? Or because you think my mother stole the locket?’ she challenged, setting the tiny cup back on the table. ‘What makes you think it was her? For all you know she could have seen it somewhere and bought it! Maybe she was from Karuba—was the same Nalini you knew—and it reminded her of her home. But stealing from a palace—how could anyone do that?’

  Al’ama, she was beautiful, sitting there with anger sparking in her eyes! The simple cream tunic and flowing trousers—loose clothing the hospital advised visiting staff to wear—emphasised rather than hid a shapely body, the colour enhancing the classic purity of her features and lending warmth to the honey-coloured skin.

  Not that he could afford to be distracted...

  ‘Nalini lived at the palace because she was family, as you will, if you are family,’ he said firmly, as the door opened and a nod from the man beyond it told him they were ready to leave. ‘Come, there are more comfortable places where we can discuss this, and probably a better time. You must be weary after your journey, and should rest. Later, we will talk.’

  He put out his hand to help her up from the low seat, but she refused it, standing up herself, very straight—defiant...

  Tariq cursed himself. He’d handled this badly from the beginning. A long night searching bone-marrow donor registers had led to nothing, then the call from the airport, when what he’d really needed was a few hours’ sleep.

  So, tired as he was, seeing the woman—a woman called Halliday who looked so like Nalini—had thrown him completely. He’d been thrust into the past and a time of tension, bitterness and even hatred in the palace.

  Added to which, she was wearing the Ta’wiz, the most sacred of the objects that had gone missing at the time of Nalini’s disappearance. Customs and immigration officials had been on the lookout for all the jewellery for decades but the Ta’-wiz was the one they all knew best, for the hollowed-out crystal with the elaborate gold-and-silver casing around it was believed to carry the spirit of the people’s ancestor.

  The immigration officer would not have needed to look closely at it, for he would have felt its power, as Tariq had the moment he’d entered the room, for this simple piece of jewellery was believed to have spiritual qualities—and the strongest of these was protection.

  He waved her towards the door, and followed her, looming over her slight form like an evil jinn.

  Lila, her name was Lila, he remembered, and right now he wanted to go back in time, to have been at the airport when the plane landed, not finishing a despairing computer search for the magic formula that might save his brother.

  He could have greeted her properly, taken her to the hospital, maybe not even noticed the locket around her neck.

  The scars on her fing
ertips told him she’d clung to it as her mother—as both her parents—had died in a flaming inferno. Apart from it being a last gift from her mother, it had protected her, of course she didn’t want to take it off.

  Neither could he take it from her...

  But perhaps with it safely back in the palace—even in the country—some of the uncertainties and ill-fortune of the last decades would diminish and peace could be restored.

  He shook away such thoughts. His country had grown from a collection of nomadic villages to a world presence in a matter of decades and his concern was that it had happened too quickly for many people to adjust and the happiness everyone had expected to come with wealth had somehow eluded them.

  * * *

  Swept along in this surreal dream, Lila followed the man who had first taken her to the small room down more corridors and finally out onto a covered parking area.

  A driver in striped trousers and a long striped tunic leapt from the only car parked there, a huge black vehicle, to open the back door, the tail of his turban dropping forward over his shoulder as he bowed towards her.

  Uncertainty made Lila look back, but the large man—her new boss—was right behind her, sober-faced but nodding as if her getting into the car was the right thing to do.

  Not that she had a choice unless she decided to run straight out into the blinding sunlight and just keep running.

  To where?

  Home and family, and the only safety she knew, were all a long way off. Besides, she’d come here to find out about her birth family—her parents—about their country! So she’d put up with the tall man’s bossy ways and just go with the flow.

  For the moment!

  She tightened her lips then smiled to herself as she imagined her sister Izzy’s reaction to such lip-tightening.

  ‘Beware, the quiet one is ready to erupt,’ Izzy would have said, and usually laughter would have followed, because Lila wouldn’t have erupted.

  But Izzy wasn’t here to laugh her out of it. Izzy was thousands of miles away with a new husband and a new father for her daughter...

  And she, Lila, was on her own.

  Her fingers crept up to touch the locket, shaking it as if she might be able to hear the tiny grains of sand the kind young woman at the University International Day had put into it for her.

  Though not pink sand...

  She knew there’d been pink sand once...

  The man, Dr—Sheikh—al Askeba, was in the vehicle with her now, not close, for the seat was wide enough for four people, but she could feel his presence as a vibrant energy in the air.

  ‘How did you know to come here? To Karuba? Had your parents told you of it?’ he asked, and Lila turned to stare at him—or at his strong profile for he looked not at her but straight ahead, as if someone else might have spoken.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I just kept looking,’ she said quietly, remembering the dozens of times when something that had seemed like a lead had turned to nothing.

  ‘But with your parents dead how did you know what to look for?’

  Now he turned to her, and she saw the question echoed in his eyes. Not an idle question then, not small talk. This man wanted to know, and she guessed that when he wanted something he usually got it.

  ‘I didn’t, not really, but sometimes I would hear a note or phrase of music and it would hurt me here.’ She pressed her fist against her chest. ‘Or I would see something, a design, a colour, that brought my mother’s face to mind. I grew up in a small country town so I had to wait until I went to the city to go to university before I could really start looking. But then, with studies and exams...’

  ‘So, it’s only recently you discovered something about Karuba?’

  Lila smiled.

  ‘You could say that,’ she told him, remembering the joy of that particular day. ‘From time to time I gave up, then something would remind me and I’d be off again. Two days before I emailed to apply for a job at the hospital here, I heard about an International Student Day at a nearby university.’

  ‘And you went along, listening for a scrap of music, seeking a design, a pattern?’

  ‘You make it sound like a plan,’ she said, suddenly wanting him to understand. ‘But it was never that, just a—a search, I suppose, a first clue that might lead somewhere else. You see, when the accident happened, the police tried for many months to identify my parents—to find out who they were and where they were from, looking for family for me, I suppose. But all they found were dead ends.’

  He nodded as if he understood, but all doctors could do the understanding nod so she didn’t put much stock in it.

  But when he asked, ‘And this last time you looked?’ his voice was deepened by emotion, as if he actually understood.

  Lila smiled with the sheer joy of remembering.

  ‘There were stalls everywhere, but I could hear the music and I followed it. And at one stall, beneath a big tree, I saw a small wooden box with a patterned silver inlay.’

  She paused, emotion catching at her throat again.

  ‘Something in the pattern...I mean, I’d seen many boxes over the years but this one took me straight back to my mother, to the little box she had always kept close. Her sand box, she called it. I touched it and the girl—the student—handed it to me.’

  ‘So you asked where it was from?’

  Lila nodded.

  ‘At first I couldn’t speak, I just held it, felt its warmth, felt my mother’s hand on it, my hand on hers. But then I realised that I had the name of the country where my mother might have been born. I had my first real clue.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE SHOULD HAVE let her go, seen her safely to the hospital and forgotten the Ta’wiz, pretended it was just a locket—such things were sold all over the world, like amulets and chains with women’s names written in Arabic, pretty tokens and jewellery, rather than sacred objects.

  He should forget the laughing Nalini of his youth, and the problems of his people. He should let this woman do her job, serve her twelve months’ contract and depart.

  From all he’d heard as he’d chased up her references, she was an excellent paediatrician—what more could he ask of her?

  But glancing sideways at her as she sat, bolt upright, her head turned to look out the window, her shining dark hair in a loose plait down her back, he knew he could no more have pretended she was just a doctor than he could have walked naked through the shopping mall.

  In fact, the second would probably have been easier, because he would have debased only himself, while ignoring this woman’s sudden presence in his country would have been...

  Traitorous?

  He wanted to talk to her, to ask her more, to hear that soft husky voice, but anger at her treatment—deserved anger—was emanating from that straight back.

  Until they reached the wide, ceremonial road that led straight to the palace gates.

  ‘Oh, but they’re gum trees,’ she cried, turning back to look at him, her face alight with surprise and delight. ‘Eucalypts—from home!’

  And several things clicked into place in Tariq’s head.

  First was the confirmation that she was beautiful. Not blindingly attractive as Nalini had been, but with a quiet radiance that shone when she smiled.

  And secondly, the trees!

  Australia!

  Two years after Nalini had disappeared, a gift of two hundred eucalypt seedlings had arrived at the palace, packed in boxes in a container, sender unknown. The only clue had been a picture of an avenue of such trees and his father had taken it that they were meant to be planted on the approach to the palace.

  Had his father suspected they were a gift from the runaway that he had had the trees tended with more care than new-born babies?

  Now they g
rew straight and tall, and had brought a smile to the face of the newcomer.

  A smile so like her mother’s it touched something in his chest...

  Should he explain—about the disappearance of Nalini, about the trees arriving?

  No, it would be too much too soon, although living in the palace she’d hear the gossip soon enough, even if it was close to three decades old.

  Although he could explain the trees.

  ‘They were a gift, sent unexpectedly to my father, and he planted them along here.’

  That would do for now.

  She smiled at him.

  ‘They look great. They obviously like it here. Where I grew up was on the coast and although we had sand, we had rain as well so the trees grew tall and strong. Can you smell them? Smell the scent of the oil? Sometimes at night it filled the air, and especially after being in the city it would tell me I was home.’

  ‘The desert air is like that,’ Tariq told her. ‘Cities seem to confuse our sense of smell, but once we’re out of them it comes back to us, familiar as the sound of the wind blowing sand across the dunes, or the feel of cold spring water in an oasis.’

  Lila heard the words as poetry, and stared at the man who’d spoken them. He’d erupted into her life, caught her at a time when anyone would be vulnerable—new job, new country, new customs and language—then confused her with her mother’s name.

  Seeing the familiar trees had strengthened her, and she decided to go along with whatever was happening, not that she’d had much choice up until now. But she’d come here to find out about her parents, and this man had known her mother.

  Had suspected her mother was a thief?

  So maybe she had to stay in the palace, if only to clear her mother’s name...

  She turned away, catching a glimpse of a large building at the end of the avenue.

  A very large building, not replete with domes and minarets but with solid, high stone walls, earth brown, and towers set into them at regular intervals.

  Guard towers? For men with guns?

  More a prison than a palace, surely?

  Her mother had been a thief?