by Liz Fielding
There were a great many covered dishes and lifting the lids she discovered scrambled eggs, goat’s cheese, olives, tomatoes, slices of cold meat that she thought must be lamb.
Her pathetic inability to just say what she wanted, she realised, had meant extra work for Han’s staff and a shocking waste of food.
She did what she could to make amends.
Keeping her eyes politely averted from the dark, motionless figure of her host, whose gaze seemed riveted to the far mountains, she took a little of the yoghurt, laced it with honey.
Han, she discovered, was difficult to ignore and, unable to help herself, she glanced up. He had not moved, yet the still, warm air seemed to vibrate with his presence and she saw at that moment how a woman could have looked at him for the first time and fallen in love with him.
Every line of his body was charged with power, strength, grace.
His eyes were fierce, his profile carved from granite, yet she was certain that when he had taken Noor’s hand, held her for the first time, he would have been tender.
She could not have helped but love him.
Her throat tightened and her eyes stung. Would Steve have been tender too? If he hadn’t been called away to some emergency, would he have made her feel like a queen? Her reward for being so gullible, so naïve?
She too found it necessary to spend a moment or two contemplating the peace of the garden before forcing herself to eat a spoonful of scrambled egg with a little thin crisp toast.
She was struggling to lift a heavy silver teapot when Han said, ‘Leave it, I will do that.’
Her hand trembled slightly as he took it from her, held her fingers for a moment as if to reassure her that she would regain her strength quickly, before pouring tea into two cups.
‘I apologise for abandoning you. I have black moments when memory overwhelms me and I am not fit company for man or beast,’ he said, placing a cup before her.
She had no comprehension of such grief, but resisted the urge to offer spurious platitudes. Yet to say nothing, ignore his pain, change the subject to something bland and safe was not an option.
‘How long is it, since you lost her?’
For a moment she thought he would not answer, but then he said, ‘Three years. It has been three years since Noor died.’
He sank back into a high cane armchair and closed his eyes, whether to discourage her curiosity or to block out the memory she couldn’t say, and it took courage to press on. ‘Noor? I’ve heard the name before.’
‘It was chosen by the American wife of the late King of Jordan.’
‘Maybe that’s what I was thinking of.’
‘Maybe.’ He opened his eyes, turned to look at her. ‘Once we were married she was known as Umm Jamal. The mother of Jamal.’
Lucy knew that the best thing for him was to talk, that as a neutral listener, someone to whom he could tell anything, safe in the knowledge that she would be gone within days, she was the ideal person. But as if it was not difficult enough that this was an unfamiliar culture and the possibilities for insult were endless, Han seemed to be locked within a minefield of pain; her only way forward was to prompt his confidence with the questions that came to her and pray that they would not explode in her face. She owed him that much.
‘The name of your son was chosen even before you were married?’ she asked.
‘I am the son of Jamal.’ With a barest gesture with one of those long hands, he suggested that was explanation enough. Then, because obviously for her it was not, ‘I will be the father of Jamal, in sha’Allah. It is our way.’
‘I see.’
She sipped her tea.
‘My wife died from leukaemia,’ he said, after a seemingly endless silence in which she sought a way to phrase the impossible question.
‘Leukaemia? But surely… I thought…’ The words escaped her before she stopped them.
‘You thought that this is a disease from which most people recover.’
There was something about the way he finished the sentence for her that made her wary about leaping in. An edge to his voice.
‘You’re right, Lucy; with prompt treatment most people do recover, but Noor was pregnant when she was diagnosed. She refused to accept the treatment that would have saved her in case it hurt the baby she was carrying.’
Lucy’s hand flew to her mouth to block an anguished cry, but no sound could have made it through the painful lump in her throat.
To have cherished an unknown, unseen son or daughter so much; to have made the conscious decision to put her precious baby’s life before her own…
How pitiful her own problems seemed in comparison.
‘I told her that there would be other babies,’ he said, his voice distant, as if he was not talking to her, but to someone unseen. ‘That even if there weren’t it did not matter. That she would always be Umm Jamal.’ He turned to her, his face an expressionless mask, nothing but skin over bones. ‘Nothing would move her. She would not save herself. Not even for me.’
‘And Jamal?’ she asked. A son given at such cost must surely be the most cherished gift. Had the sacrifice been in vain?
‘Her child was born, healthy and strong,’ he assured her.
Her child?
And then she knew. There had not been a son, but a daughter. The little girl she’d frightened with her bruised and swollen face.
‘Ameerah.’ He did not deny it. ‘She must give you such solace.’
A frown creased his wide brow, as if he did not understand. ‘Solace?’
‘She is Noor’s gift to you. A part of herself. A precious daughter.’
‘She knew. All the time she was telling me that she was sacrificing herself for Jamal, she knew the baby she was carrying was a girl.’
‘She was a mother protecting her unborn child,’ she said. Surely he must see that?
‘She lied to me!’
She flinched at the ferociousness of his response, let out an involuntary cry as all the aches that had settled to a low background hum were jerked back into life by the spasm.
‘Lucy, I’m so sorry…’ He reached out as if to comfort her.
‘I’m fine,’ she snapped, moving her arm before he could touch her.
How dared he talk of love? Of honour.
His anger was not directed at the disease that had killed his wife, but at the woman who had defied him to protect the baby she was carrying. If it had been a boy, she would have been celebrated, honoured. But his anger was eloquent testimony to the fact that a girl child was no compensation for the loss of his wife.
She’d thought him sympathetic, someone with whom she could converse on an equal footing, but her first terrified impression had been right. The man had the surface manners of a gentleman, but beneath the veneer his instincts were still those of a primitive tribal chieftain for whom women were no more than the expendable vessels who provided them with sons.
He grieved not for his wife, but for the son she had promised him.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘LUCY?’
She forced herself to face him.
‘Have you eaten well?’ Unable to speak, she just nodded. ‘Then I shall wash your hair.’
What?
How could he do that? One minute act like a relic of the Middle Ages, the next like some caring ‘new’ man?
Or had she misunderstood him? Misjudged him? Was his anger nothing more than a reflection of his pain that his wife had played on an Arab’s desire for sons. Had not trusted him to accept her decision?
‘If you’d rather not,’ she said cautiously, ‘perhaps Ameerah’s nurse would help me.’
‘Ameerah’s nurse?’
‘I saw her yesterday when she was chasing after your daughter.’
‘I see.’ His dark eyes glinted dangerously. ‘You saw her and now you think I was lying to you when I told you there were no women in my house?’
She tried to deny it—the thought hadn’t crossed her mind until he put it there—but the
one word she needed seemed stuck in transit, somewhere between her brain and her mouth.
‘Why would I do that?’ he asked, taking her silence as affirmation.
She was not deceived by his reasonable tone, his bland expression. Too embarrassed to look at him, she simply shook her head. It was not enough and he reached across the table, hooked a finger beneath her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes.
Never had a touch been gentler or seemed more dangerous. The heat of it rippled through her. As a demonstration of her vulnerability, a warning of how totally she’d placed herself in his power, it had everything and, transfixed, she didn’t move a muscle as his gaze drifted down to where the robe she was wearing over the nightgown had fallen open, unnoticed, as she’d eaten.
‘You think that I am like some predator, perhaps, who takes a victim to his lair to feast upon at his leisure?’
‘No!’ She finally managed to deny it, released from stasis by the desperate need to reassure him that she’d never thought any such thing. The image he evoked was that of a leopard, or a bear. It did not suit him. If Hanif al-Khatib was a predator, he was a hawk, an eagle…
‘No,’ she repeated, but her denial was somewhat undermined by the nervous manner in which she clutched at the fragile silk, holding it together with one hand where it scooped low over her breast.
‘Do you think that if I was the kind of man who preyed on helpless women,’ he continued, the edge of his thumb so close to her cheek that she could feel the down rising to meet it, ‘the presence of a dozen old women would stop me?’
‘No! Yes!’ At which point she realised that there wasn’t a right answer to his question. That the only way to repair the unintended insult was to meet his gaze head on. Match his directness with a clear and unequivocal response.
‘I assure you, Hanif bin Jamal bin Khatib al-Khatib, that you have done nothing to make me feel uncomfortable or awkward. On the contrary.’ He did not move. ‘You have done nothing that a much loved wife could have reproached you for.’
For a moment the only thing that moved was the blood rushing to her cheeks. Then, with the slightest of bows, Hanif let his hand fall to his side.
‘You are right to be careful, Lucy Forrester. You know nothing about me.’
She knew enough. Enough to judge him by his deeds rather than his words. To regret the unworthy thoughts that had filled her head, be grateful that she had not given them voice.
‘I know that you saved my life, Hanif. That I am nothing to you, yet you have not spared any expense, begrudged one moment of your time, to care for me. It must have been out of the goodness of your heart,’ she said as, desperate to convince him, she made a gesture that framed her bruised and swollen face. ‘It certainly couldn’t have been because of my beauty.’
He did not protest, attempt meaningless flattery, but said, ‘The arrival of Ameerah and Fathia, her nurse, was as unexpected as your own.’ For unexpected read unwelcome, she thought. ‘They did not arrive until yesterday afternoon and, as you have already noted, the old woman has her hands full.’
Hanif al-Khatib, she was almost certain, rarely felt the need to explain his actions. She understood instinctively that she had just been shown more than usual courtesy.
‘She does not live with you?’ she asked, as if they were having the most ordinary of conversations. Only the slightest tremble in her voice betrayed how intense the moment had been. ‘Your daughter?’
‘The garden offers no more than a pavilion for a pampered wife, a hunting lodge for her lord. There is nothing here for a child,’ he said dismissively. ‘Ameerah lives in the capital with her grandmother.’ He rose to his feet and she thought the subject was closed, but then his mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. ‘I suspect that when she heard I had taken in a young foreign woman, my mother despatched Ameerah to Rawdah al-’Arusah as a hostage to my honour. Or yours. I leave it to you to decide which,’ he added, and the parody came close to approaching the real thing.
‘If your mother could see the state of me,’ Lucy assured him, wincing as her own attempt at a smile—just to demonstrate how it should be done—pulled at a cut on her lip, ‘she wouldn’t give the matter a moment’s thought.’
‘You are right, of course. Let us hope that Fathia will make time to call and reassure her.’
Oh, nice!
About to point out that a gentleman wouldn’t have agreed with her, she thought better of it.
‘I’m afraid that what should have been a simple rescue mission has caused you far more trouble than you could ever have bargained for.’
‘Mash’Allah,’ he said, handing her the crutches. Keeping close in case she needed help. But not, she noticed, making any attempt to assist her.
‘Mash’Allah,’ she said, repeating the words to herself as she swung herself back in through the open French windows, then, looking up at him, ‘God’s will?’
‘You have been learning Arabic?’ he enquired with interest.
‘I bought one of those teach yourself language CDs. I was…’ She stopped. She had been planning to surprise Steve, determined to learn enough to help him run the business. ‘I was hopeless,’ she said.
‘It’s difficult to learn anything on your own, but in four weeks you can learn a great deal.’
‘Four weeks?’
‘Since you wanted to know how long it would take for your ankle to heal, I spoke with the doctor. He thought three or four weeks.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, thank you, but I promise that I won’t be imposing on your hospitality for more than a few days.’
‘It is no imposition. And what will you do in England, alone in your cold, empty house? How will you manage to buy food, cook, take care of yourself?’
The one thing she wouldn’t be doing was expecting help from the congregation of her grandmother’s church. They had lost interest the minute they had discovered that there would be no more money. Besides, they all knew she was the devil’s handmaid, born in wickedness, headed for hell.
‘It’s not cold,’ she said.
‘Everywhere in England is cold.’ Apparently taking her silence for assent, he continued, ‘You will stay here until you are fully recovered, Lucy.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, ‘Or until your husband comes to find you.’
He picked up a chair and took it through to the bathroom, setting it with its back to the sink.
‘Sit,’ he said. ‘I will try not to get you too wet,’ he said, lifting the shower head from its holder and turning on the water.
She remained on her feet. ‘You don’t have to do this. I’m sure I could manage.’
He clearly did not think her protest worthy of a reply, but instead ran the water, adjusting the temperature. Or maybe it was a test of her trust. Of her sincerity when she’d assured him that he’d done nothing to offend her.
She sat down, did her best to scoop up her hair, lift it over the edge of the basin.
‘Leave it. I will do it.’
She ignored him. She was not helpless. Another day, two at the most, and she would be on her way, however tempting it was to stay and be treated like a princess.
She had debts to deal with, a living to earn, a husband to divorce.
Han tucked a towel around her shoulders, then said, ‘That is not too hot?’ She shook her head without thinking and barely felt a twinge as warm water began to soak into her hair.
The lack of fuss with which he washed, then combed through her long difficult hair while it was slick with conditioner, left her in no doubt that he’d done this many times for a wife grown too weak to do it for herself.
The man seemed a muddle of contradictions, but then what did she know? She hadn’t needed her grandmother’s exhortations to purity to keep her chaste. There had been nothing about her to attract a man, even if she’d had the chance to meet one, until she’d inherited her grandmother’s house and Steve had turned up on the doorstep.
Hanif was a man so far outside her experience that she had no right to judge him,
or the standards by which he lived his life. Only the manner in which he treated her.
‘I used to hate this,’ she said afterwards, when they’d gone back out on to the balcony so that her hair could dry in the sun.
‘Having your hair washed?’
‘The washing wasn’t so bad, but when I was a child my grandmother had this horrid scratchy comb and very little patience with tangles.’
‘I will not hurt you,’ he said, refusing to surrender the comb he’d brought with him but, taking infinite care not to hurt her, continued what he’d begun. ‘It is unusual to see such long hair on a European woman.’
‘Gran belonged to a dogmatic religious sect which believes it’s a sin for women to cut their hair. She used to make me wear it in painfully tight plaits when I was little.’
‘Plaits?’
She took a piece of hair and demonstrated what she meant.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I once hacked them off with her kitchen scissors.’ She used her fingers to show how she’d cut them as short as she could.
‘She was angry?’
‘She wasn’t pleased,’ Lucy admitted. She’d never told anyone about the beating she’d been given. Ghastly as her hair had looked, it had been less painful than the weekly agony with the wet tangles. The bruises had long faded before her hair had grown enough for plaits again and by then she’d taught herself to do it herself, putting it into a single French plait that was tight enough, unflattering enough, to keep her grandmother happy, grown up enough not to provoke cruel teasing at school. ‘I was not a good child,’ she said.
‘Children are not supposed to be good. They are supposed to be children. You had no mother?’
‘Somewhere.’
The truth slipped out before she could stop it. It wasn’t her usual response. She usually told people that her mother had died when she was a baby. So much less painful than the truth. But she couldn’t bring herself to lie to Han, who had a truly motherless child.
‘I had—have—a mother somewhere. She abandoned me. Left me with her mother, ran away.’ She didn’t blame her for running. Only for leaving her behind. ‘She was sixteen. Unmarried.’