To her surprise he gave a little huff of laughter, and Lila had to curb the urge to dance and skip some more.
Head, she reminded herself.
‘So,’ she said, ‘when do we set off on our first big adventure? Can we go today?’
‘I would have thought that a day like yesterday would have left you exhausted. In fact, I know you were exhausted last night.’
She smiled breezily at him.
‘But that was before I had a really good sleep and a walk in the labyrinth.’
He didn’t need to say anything, his face telling her he didn’t believe a word she was saying.
‘I really did sleep well,’ she said, ‘and the test results will take, what? Two or three weeks for detailed analysis? Shouldn’t we be using the time to go out to the nomad camp while the tribes-people are still in the mountains? I imagine they don’t stay in one place for very long, wherever they are.’
Tariq studied the slight figure, still half-hidden behind a hedge, today dressed in a pale colour that reminded him of the butter made from camel milk.
Was it cream?
He let his head run with questions for a few seconds mainly so it could regain a little control over whatever it was in his chest that kept reacting to this woman.
‘Actually, the clinic unit left this morning. I had intended flying out tomorrow but I can do the first visit on my own—well, with the nurse and administrator. Just to see how it all works—find out what doesn’t work, or what could be improved.’
‘So, we can both go tomorrow? If it’s to be my clinic then I’m the one who should be testing it, surely.’
His head would probably have found a good argument against this idea if she hadn’t smiled when she’d said ‘surely’.
And not just any smile, but a kind of teasing smile, as if daring him to argue.
Which, of course, he should.
‘You may not feel quite so fit tomorrow—jet-lag can take time to grab hold of you.’
It was not a perfect argument—in fact, it was a very weak argument—but she’d emerged from behind the hedge and he realised she was barefoot—small slim feet with pale pink toenails glistening with dew, a few tiny shreds of grass clinging to her just visible ankles.
From his mother’s love of Jane Austen and Regency romances, he knew women’s ankles had been considered too erotic to be left uncovered and even in his own culture they were rarely seen.
It had bemused him in the past. During his postgraduate years in England women’s ankles had been on show everywhere, and he’d wondered how they’d ever come to be considered a temptation.
But a fine strip of grass on a pale ankle was doing things to his body that had nothing to do with his head or his heart.
‘Are you looking at my feet? Should I not be out here barefoot? Do you have a list of rules? I don’t want to be offending anyone, even unintentionally.’
‘Your feet are fine,’ he managed, dragging his mind from images of other bits of grass on other parts of her body. ‘Would you like Sousa to accompany you into the city today? Is there anything special you’d like to do?’
Resisting the urge to check if her feet had suddenly turned into claws, or maybe become webbed like a duck’s, Lila looked into his eyes and shook her head.
‘I think if I start work tomorrow today would best be spent getting to know my way around this place and learning its routines. I’ll have to do some washing sometime, and then there are meals—I don’t want Sousa to have to keep bringing meals to my room when obviously there’s somewhere that other people eat.’
‘I should have thought of that,’ he said, looking concerned, although it was a very small matter. ‘If Barirah is free today, she will show you around and introduce you to whatever family is living here at the moment. Otherwise Sousa will do it, and she will also organise your laundry. I apologise for pushing you into a strange environment without making sure you are comfortable in it.’
Lila laughed.
‘I’m in a room that’s like a mermaid’s grotto, I have a woman who sits by my door awaiting orders, I have this beautiful garden to explore—I’m not exactly uncomfortable.’
Was it her laughter or the words that won a very small smile from her boss?
Whatever it was, she discovered that even a small smile was something not to be missed, lighting up his rather stern face and crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes.
Her fingers tingled and she clenched her fists to fight the reaction. Of course she didn’t want to touch those little wrinkles!
But danger lurked in this man in the form of an attraction that was new to her.
An attraction she had no idea how to handle...
Sousa’s arrival to tell her breakfast was in the arbour broke up the meeting, which was just as well, from Lila’s point of view.
‘I’ll talk to Barirah and get back to you,’ Tariq said, but he didn’t turn and walk away, while she, too, hesitated...
It’s just being in a strange place—so many new experiences crowding in on her, Lila decided. No wonder she was confused.
She followed Sousa back to the arbour, and breakfasted on yoghurt and fruit and delicious rolls filled with soft cheese and dipped in honey, then lay back against soft cushions, replete.
‘Are you asleep?’
Barirah was there, smiling down at her.
‘Waking dreams,’ Lila told her, not mentioning that walking through every one of them had been a tall, rather stern-looking sheikh. ‘It’s all so unbelievable, like stepping into a fairy tale.’
‘There’s a phrase I heard in America when I was studying there,’ Barirah said. ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’
Lila laughed.
‘I’ve seen enough to know that’s probably very true. So where do we start? Maybe at the front door—the door I’ve been coming in and out of—and go from there so I get to know my way to my room and back without making a faux pas. I was in the garden without my shoes this morning, and Tariq looked most disapproving. Do you not go barefoot outside? Feel the dew on the grass, the sand between your toes?’
‘Of course we go barefoot inside all the time, and outside, too, when we wish,’ Barirah assured her. ‘Especially to feel the sand between our toes, but that’s mostly at the beach. In the desert, we wear our sandals—I suppose because of scorpions.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’ve told me that,’ Lila said, although she was thinking of the strange expression on Tariq’s face as he’d looked at her bare feet.
He must have been thinking something...
Barirah waited while Lila washed her face and hands and tidied her hair, before leading her to the front door, down a corridor that was becoming familiar, mainly because it was lined with portraits of women, some in the local dress, others looking at if they were going to a very fancy ball.
‘It’s the First Mothers’ corridor, Barirah explained. ‘These are portraits of all the first mothers who’ve lived in the palace since it was built.’
‘And is there a Second Mothers’ corridor?’ Lila asked, and Barirah laughed.
‘Of course, and even a Third Mothers’ and a Fourth Mothers’ but they are smaller, minor passageways in the building.’
Lila was intrigued.
‘As befits their status?’
Another laugh.
‘Not really. Some Second, Third or Fourth Mothers became the reigning king’s favourites, so there are portraits of them in other rooms as well.’
‘And this king’s First Mother?’
‘You want to see if that’s where Tariq gets his stern looks?’ Barirah teased. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been more interested in the Second Mother—your aunt.’
‘We can look at both,’ Lila suggested, but something about Tariq’s behaviour at the ho
spital—ensuring Second Mother wasn’t with her son when they visited—made her wary of meeting the woman, for all that she was probably Lila’s closest living relation.
First Mother looked suitably regal, and haughty enough for Lila to see Tariq in her features. She wore a purple shawl, embroidered with gold thread, over her head and shoulders, and stared down at those passing along the corridor with a certain manner of disdain. But the dark eyes—like Tariq’s with a hint of green in them—looked kind.
But in the next corridor, it was Second Mother who looked every inch a queen, clad in a scarlet ballgown, diamonds dripping from her neck, arms and fingers, a tiara of them on her upswept dark hair.
‘You don’t look very much like her,’ Lila said, turning from the portrait to her new friend.
Barirah smiled.
‘I’m not at all, not in any way. I always tell people I’m from Tariq’s side of the family and I suspect my mother does too. I’m okay to look at, but she was and still is a great beauty and most of my sisters are as well.’
‘Yet you and I are alike—we saw that from the start,’ Lila reminded her.
‘Genetics does strange things.’
They reached the front door and turned, this time to explore the rooms that opened off the corridors.
The first was small—well, large enough to fit in Lila’s Sydney flat with room to spare, but judging from the size of her bedroom at the palace Lila guessed those who lived here would think this room small.
‘It’s a small majlis, a sitting room. We use the same word for our parliament where men sit and discuss things for the good of the country, but here it’s where women can gather to chat. Visitors are brought in here, but off this room is the family majlis where the women living in the women’s house—and the small children who also live here—meet for meals as well as coffee and gossip.’
‘But I haven’t seen anyone else around,’ Lila pointed out. ‘Where are the women and children?’
‘You are in guest quarters, which are separate, and these days so many of the younger women, when they marry, move into their own homes, like you do in the West. First Mother insisted she have her own home after Father married my mother, so she runs her own women’s house, with her friends and family living there. My mother still lives here but she is at the hospital most of the time, and resting when she’s home. I live here, with some younger sisters and our...’
She paused, frowning slightly, then finished, ‘There are always older relations, and friends who have been here so long they seem like relations, but as well as that there are children. Children are important in our country, so children who meet misfortune, whose parents die or cannot look after them, are taken in by other families and treated as family.’
Lila smiled.
‘That’s exactly what happened to me so I guess I was unknowingly following tradition.’
They had entered the larger room, lavishly decorated with gilded arches and intricate carpets on the floor and walls. Comfortable-looking settees lined the walls, while thick, velvet pillows from every colour of the rainbow were scattered on the floor.
Lila walked to a window to look out and saw children playing in the courtyard. She was smiling at their antics when she heard Barirah speaking to someone who’d come in.
‘Tariq would like to introduce you to his mother,’ Barirah told her. ‘He is waiting outside.’
‘Can he not come in?’
Barirah laughed.
‘Into the women’s house? It would be more than his life was worth! Come, I’ll show you back to the entrance.’
He was a sheikh again, in the snowy gown and headscarf with two thick black cords holding it in place.
Restraining the impulse to drop a curtsey, Lila greeted him with a smile.
‘Is this a big deal? Like an official summons?’ she asked him, and he frowned at her. ‘Well, it feels a bit like meeting our Queen,’ she said. ‘I’m not even sure I’m dressed appropriately.’
‘I’d say it’s more she wants to check you out,’ Barirah teased. ‘She’s heard Tariq’s squiring around a new woman and a foreigner at that, and wants to take a look at her.’
Tariq shifted his frown to his half-sister.
‘Take no notice of her,’ he said to Lila. ‘She was a troublemaker from the moment she was born.’
Barirah laughed again.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said. ‘Good luck, Lila.’
Good luck?
Why on earth would I need good luck?
The woman could hardly suspect me of having designs on her son when we met for the first time yesterday.
Tariq was grumbling under his breath, probably about Barirah’s jibes, so Lila hurried along beside him, skipping now and then to keep up. Except one skip went wrong, and his arm shot out to save her from falling.
‘Why can’t you just walk like a normal woman?” he demanded, glaring down at her.
‘Because you stride along as if all the hounds of hell are on your heels, and I have to run to keep up. Or should I be walking two paces behind you in some form of deference?’
He glared at her for a moment but did modify his pace so they crossed the courtyard together, entering an area devoted to roses, the perfumes mingling in the air so strongly Lila had to pause to breathe them in.
‘How beautiful,’ she murmured, and Tariq’s demeanour softened.
‘They are my mother’s passion,’ he said quietly. ‘Come, she will be in the arbour outside her room. She likes to be close to them at all times.’
As they approached the rose-covered bower, Lila saw the woman, dressed in a deep pink tunic with a scarf on the same colour wrapped around her head.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Lila murmured, more to herself than to Tariq, although he heard the words.
‘She is,’ he agreed.
But as Lila drew closer she saw—or maybe felt—a coldness in the beauty, an impression magnified when the woman gave her a look of haughty disdain.
‘My son tells me you are Nalini’s daughter,’ she said, her voice carefully moderated to conceal any emotion.
‘It seems I might be,’ Lila replied. ‘I was young when my mother died so I remember little about her except as a mother, but the name Nalini rang a very distant bell.’
‘And are you here hoping to claim some birthright?’
Lila felt her lips tighten, but the woman was elderly, and she, Lila, was a guest.
‘I am here to work in the hospital and in the mobile clinic that will be looking after children who live far from the city’s facilities,’ she replied, well aware she could do cool disdain better than most people. ‘I am leaving tomorrow to visit the nomad camp in the mountains.’
‘With my son?’
The steely question shook Lila for a moment, but she came good and looked directly at the woman.
‘And a nurse, an administrator, a driver and a guide. I think your son will be suitably chaperoned.’
To her surprise the woman smiled.
‘So you’ve got some spirit, have you?’ she asked. ‘Maybe you are Nalini’s daughter.’
Tariq, who’d been about to step in when his mother had asked about his and Lila’s trip to the nomad camp, decided it was better to leave with his mother smiling than risk her reverting to her regal hauteur.
‘Well, now you’ve met Lila, maybe you could visit her sometime in the guest quarters. Barirah has put her in Nalini’s old room.’
‘I can hardly be visiting if she’s out at the nomads’ camp with you, now, can I?’ his mother responded with her usual asperity.
Tariq smiled.
‘We’re not going out there to live, we’ll be back in a few days, a week at the most.’
‘Then maybe you will do me the honour of dining with me when you return
,’ his mother said to Lila, so graciously Tariq couldn’t help but feel suspicious.
Time to get the visitor away!
They walked back through the gardens—well, strolled as far as Tariq was concerned—but, surprisingly, he, who usually strode from place to place, job to job, found it surprisingly easy to stroll with this young woman by his side.
‘So, tomorrow?’ she asked, looking up at him as she asked the question. ‘What time do we leave?’
He was about to suggest eight o’clock when he remembered the sheer joy of seeing the sun rise over the dunes.
‘How early could you be up?’ he asked, and saw a slight frown draw her eyebrows closer.
‘That’s the kind of question one should never answer without asking why,’ she said. ‘Like what are you doing Saturday night, and if you say nothing someone invites you to hear a rock band that blasts your eardrums out. So why?’
He had to smile at her caution, although he knew exactly what she meant. Hadn’t he been caught out too many times with an incautious answer?
‘Because if we leave early, we can fly out to the Grand Sweep—one of the big dunes—and see the sun come up over the desert.’
Her smile would have rivalled the sunrise and once again he felt something moving in his chest.
‘At home a sunrise over the ocean is special, but to see one over the desert? Could we really do that? How early would we have to leave? Not that it matters, I can get up anytime you say.’
The delight of her smile was echoed in her voice and what could he do but smile back?
‘Not so early—maybe ready to leave by five-thirty? I will let Sousa know, and arrange for us to take a breakfast hamper.’
‘Five-thirty. I’ll be there. Front door again?’
He nodded, already wondering if he was mad to have even suggested such an outing.
But it was too late to back out now. Besides, she was a visitor, and all he was really doing was showing her one of the special sights of Karuba.
Engaged to the Doctor Sheikh Page 6