by Liz Fielding
Lucy’s room, however, was empty. No doubt she was taking advantage of the cool evening air to enjoy the garden. Which was good.
He crossed to the table to leave the note, saw the book of poems he’d given her lying open. Unable to help himself, he picked it up to see what had caught her attention—
‘…In the Garden of Paradise vainly thou’lt seek
The lip of the fountain of Roknabad
And the bowers of Musalla where roses twine…’
As he snapped it shut a piece of paper, folded in two, flew out from between the pages and fell to the floor. He’d had no intention of looking at it, but as he picked it up it fell open and he found himself looking at a childish drawing of three people.
A family. A father, a mother and a child.
The detail was minimal but even so there was no mistaking who they were meant to represent.
And when he looked up Lucy was in the doorway, hand in hand with the traitorous little artist.
While he had been struggling with feelings that threatened to overwhelm him, threatened to obliterate Noor from his memory, his life, her precious daughter had abandoned her without thought for the more immediate gratification of having someone with arms to hug her.
Someone living, breathing, with a heart that could love her back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘HAN…’
Lucy flinched as he crushed the paper in his hand and flung it into the corner, putting her arm protectively around Ameerah as she turned to hide herself in the folds of her dress.
‘Han, it doesn’t mean anything,’ she protested. ‘She’s a little girl. She doesn’t understand.’
‘But you do. You sat and watched her, encouraged her…’ He stormed towards the door, but she stood her ground. ‘Let me pass, Lucy.’
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded. Demanded! She had no right to ask him what time of day it was…
‘Nowhere. To the desert. A place as empty as I am. A place where the air smells of nothing. Where each day the sand is wiped clean. Where there are no memories.’
Then, somehow he was by her, striding away down the wide corridor, the fine camel-hair cloak thrown over his shoulders flying behind him, shining like gold in the light. It hadn’t been a hallucination, she thought.
He was her angel…
‘It isn’t true,’ she called after him. ‘You carry your memories with you.’ He made no indication that he’d heard. ‘Good and bad. They become part of you, make you what you are.’ She lifted her voice, insisting on being heard. ‘You have to live with them, Han. You have to live…’
But he was gone.
She sighed, wishing she could have made him listen, but he was hurting and, however unintentionally, she was the cause of his pain.
She knelt beside Ameerah, holding her close. ‘It’ll be all right, sweetheart,’ she said softly. ‘He doesn’t mean it. Your daddy loves you; he just can’t allow himself to feel anything right now because it hurts too much. One day he’ll come and take your hand. He’ll pick you up, hug you so hard you’ll think you might die of happiness.’
And she kept on saying it until she wasn’t sure whether it was Ameerah or the desperate, motherless little girl she had once been she was talking to.
Hanif did not return for days.
As the reality of what that meant gradually sank in, she looked at the beauty, the luxury around her in a different way. It had seemed like a refuge, but now… Well, she was the one who’d suggested this was a harem and, despite Han’s suggestion that it was a place of power, she caught a closer glimpse of the truth. He wasn’t keeping her against her will, but without him to authorise it no one seemed capable of doing anything to get her home.
Short of embarrassing the British Ambassador—and she had enough problems without appealing to the Foreign Office to extricate her from the home of the Emir’s youngest son—she was stuck at al-’Arusah for the foreseeable future. And when she asked Fathia—the only other person around who spoke any English—when he was likely to return, her only response was a shrug and, ‘Bukra, insha’Allah.’
Tomorrow. If God wills.
She suspected she should have been more agitated, upset, even angrier than she was, but actually it seemed pointless, a waste of energy. He would return. She would go home.
In the meantime she’d done everything possible to sort out her finances. Had instructed the solicitor who’d handled her grandmother’s affairs to begin procedures to extricate her with the utmost speed from her marriage.
All she could do now was search for a job so that she could take her own advice and ‘live’ and, aware that she was unlikely to impress prospective employers with her black eyes and crutches, she did what Hanif had insisted she do—before he’d lost his temper and stormed out.
She relaxed, spent time exploring both the pavilion and the garden. Helped herself to the books in Hanif’s library.
Oh, and she wrote to Jamilla and Dira.
Jamilla phoned her, encouraging her to ask for anything else she needed and inviting her to come and stay when she returned to Rumaillah. She’d been so chatty, informal, charming that Lucy had been bold enough to ask not only for a replacement for her lost Arabic language CD, but for books, toys, anything likely to amuse Ameerah, keep her occupied.
She hadn’t anticipated the difference between her vision of what a three-year-old needed and what a Ramal Hamrah princess might consider appropriate for a tiny princess in waiting.
It wasn’t all bad.
The tricycle, for instance, was a huge hit. The books and jigsaw puzzles filled quiet afternoons, although Ameerah ignored the brightly coloured crayons, clinging instead to the pastels Hanif had provided for her artwork.
The pair of Siamese kittens were, perhaps, a gift too far for a rather wild three-year-old, but Lucy was enchanted with the way they curled up together by her feet as she practised her Arabic, followed her as she walked in the garden with Fathia, listening to her stories about Han. How wild he’d been as a boy. How fearless.
How like him Ameerah was.
She suffered the most painful lurch of her stomach when she heard how he’d nearly killed himself playing polo. Felt a disturbing mixture of sympathy and relief when assured that he’d given up the sport for his mother’s sake, turned to more serious things, taking on the role of diplomat to please his father.
Learned how this man who’d touched her so deeply, had been the adored youngest son, a golden boy who could do no wrong and had, in a few short years of manhood, become a credit to his family and his country.
Which, Lucy thought, explained a lot. When you lived your life in the sun, perfect in every way, it must be cold in the shadows. Impossible to forgive yourself the smallest of mistakes.
They were sitting in the summer house, keeping an eye on Ameerah, who was chasing butterflies around the pool.
Lucy, who suspected that she was supposed to join in the breast-beating at the harshness of fate, at Hanif’s grief, thought there was more than enough of that to go around, but was saved from saying so by the predictable becoming reality.
‘Ameerah!’
Too late. As the child’s attention was caught by the shimmer of a dragonfly, she swivelled on one toe and, as she made a wild lunge towards it, lost her balance and toppled dramatically into the water lilies.
Before Fathia could move, Lucy had waded in, caught hold of the billowing silk of her dress and hauled her out of the water.
‘Brat!’ she said. ‘You did that on purpose.’ Then, ‘Look at your gorgeous dress! If you’re going to behave like a boy you should be wearing shorts and a T-shirt.’
Ameerah, while not understanding every word, certainly got the meaning, just giggled, wriggled free and turned, planning to wade further in.
Lucy, who’d acted without thinking, was standing up to her thighs in water and realised, too late, that she’d run without a thought for her ankle, that she had nothing to hold on to, that both her feet were sinking in
to the slippery mud at the bottom of the pond.
Everything that followed seemed to happen in slow motion, as if to someone else. She saw herself open her mouth, cry out as the pain caught up with her. Saw herself crumple as her ankle gave way, the soft billow of rich blue silk swelling around her as she sank into the water.
Then suddenly it was all too real and very loud.
The pain, the cold water, the mud. Only the shrieking wasn’t coming from her but from Ameerah, who’d flung her arms around her neck and, no longer laughing, was instead crying, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry…’
‘Hush, it’s all right,’ she said, turning to Fathia to rescue them both, but it was Hanif wading through the water towards her. Hanif in dark and dusty clothes, a keffiyeh wound around his head as if he’d come straight from the stables to find her…
Breathe, she reminded herself. Breathe…
She knew the theory, the in-out, in-out basics of staying alive, but somehow the mechanics of it were beyond her and for a moment she thought she might faint.
‘Don’t move,’ he said, catching her around the shoulders, hunkering down to steady her, but this time his voice was gentle. This time she was not afraid. ‘Don’t even think about trying to move.’
‘No,’ she finally managed. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
And for a second it seemed the world stood still.
Then Fathia’s anxious voice shattered the silence and Lucy, suspecting that she’d been calling for some time, said, ‘If you could just take Ameerah?’
It seemed for ever before he straightened, a lifetime before he bent and took the child from her, holding her, dripping, at arm’s length.
No! Not like that! Lucy thought fiercely. Hold her close to you. Hold her against your heart…
As if he heard her, he slowly drew the child to him, tucking her against his shoulder. Then, with his arm protectively around her, he waded to the edge of pool.
Fathia said something to him, reached out to take her.
It seemed for ever before he surrendered her. Lucy heard him murmur something, whether to the woman or child she had no way of knowing.
She released a long slow breath as he turned back to her and thought Yes! but all she said was, ‘Rescuing me is getting to be a full-time occupation.’
‘Am I complaining?’ Before she could reply, he bent, scooped her up as easily as he’d picked up Ameerah and said, ‘This is nothing.’
‘Believe me,’ she said, trying to ignore the closeness, the fact that the silk of her dress had soaked up the water and that it was now clinging tightly to every curve, ‘the alternative, crawling back to the side of the pool on my knees, would not be nothing.’
‘But you could have done it. Rescuing me is another matter. A miracle…’
Was he talking about Ameerah? About the fact that he’d held her the way a father should?
Then, realising that he was carrying her into the summer house, ‘Han! No, I’m soaking! The mud… The carpets…’
Ignoring her protestations, he laid her on the sofa, propping her up with pillows at her back before kneeling beside her to unfasten and discard the ankle splint and its soggy lining. Then, having eased off her ruined sandals, he unwound his keffiyeh and carefully wiped the worst of the mud from her feet, her ankles, before tossing that too aside.
Only then did he sit back on his haunches, look at her and, on the point of scolding him for ruining the cushions, she held her tongue. Without the sun at his back, she could see how gaunt and hollow-eyed he looked, as if he hadn’t slept or eaten in days.
Her fault, she thought, her fault and, without thinking, she reached out, wanting to comfort him, tell him how sorry she was, as he would have comforted her. For everything.
He caught her wrist before she could touch his face, held it in a grip of steel.
For what seemed like a year he held her there, an inch away from him. It was not enough. Heat fried the air between them, sucked Lucy’s breath from her body, licked along her limbs, reducing to ash all the hellfire lectures she’d been read about what happened to girls who succumbed to their wanton desires.
There was no defence against the power of such feelings, no barrier made that was strong enough to withstand this yearning to be held, kissed, possessed.
She hadn’t understood, until this moment, what all the fuss was about.
She felt her mouth soften, her lips part, as his hand loosened its grip on her wrist, slid along the length of her arm until his fingers reached her hair, pulled loose the pin that held it back from her face, slid his hand beneath her hair to hold her, his willing prisoner.
The moment stretched endlessly as he lowered his mouth to hers. Then, as he brushed his lips against hers, she felt something deep inside her dissolve, melt.
All pain was forgotten as he leaned into the kiss, deepening it as a thirsty man might drink at a well and Lucy, blown away, matched his need with a passion, a desperate need, beyond her wildest imaginings and she rose to meet him, wanting to feel the heat, the strength of his body against hers.
As if he knew, felt it too, he caught her at the waist, lifting her, holding her to him as if she were the last woman on earth, while his mouth—hard, almost desperate—obliterated everything but the sensory seduction of his body—the silky sweep of his hair against her cheek, the touch of his fingers at her nape, the salty, dusty taste of his skin.
And finally she understood the force that drove men and women to cross continents, conquer nations, give up their lives.
It ended.
It had to end; the fervour of it was too intense, too powerful to be sustained.
He eased back, broke contact despite the fact that her mouth refused to let go, shamelessly caught at his lower lip, reaching out with her tongue, greedy for more of him.
Eyes closed, he rested his forehead against hers, said, ‘You were right, Lucy.’
‘R-right?’
‘We cannot pick and choose from our memories. Cannot erase them like files from a computer, no matter how profoundly we wish it. They make us what we are.’
It took a moment for his words to sink in. Memories could not be erased. And then, as if someone had turned on a light in her brain, she understood what he’d meant by ‘rescue’. He’d turned to her in desperation, hoping that, by some miracle, she could overwrite the memory of his dead wife with her mouth, her body. Drive her from his head.
Rescue him…
The pain that swept through her was a revelation. Until that moment she hadn’t realised just how much she felt for this tortured man. How could she have known? She knew nothing of love, of tenderness, of passion.
Steve had romanced her but she’d had no yardstick by which to measure him as a man. She’d mistaken his easy charm for genuine feeling, had mistaken her gratitude, relief at having someone take responsibility for her future, for love.
In one touch, one brief moment of conflagration, she had learned the difference.
This might not be love—how could she know?—but these raw emotions were real enough. She knew that because they touched her, hurt her in a way that her ankle never could. That Steve never could. He’d stolen money from her, but that was nothing. He hadn’t changed her life in any way that mattered.
Hanif al-Khatib had stolen her heart and, whatever happened, nothing for her would ever be the same.
Except, of course, she had to act as if the world hadn’t just exploded in a rainbow of bright colours. As if the scent of the roses, the cypress trees wasn’t suddenly richer, more intense. As if her skin didn’t sing with his touch.
She had to pretend it was exactly the same.
‘M-memories…’ She struggled to speak, had to speak. ‘Memories make us what we are, Han.’ She did a reasonable job of keeping her voice steady. Not perfect, but under the circumstances, not bad. ‘We cannot escape our past. All we can do is use our experience to make a better future.’ And, summoning up every fibre of willpower, all the hard-learned self-restraint of her upbri
nging, she pressed her lips against his forehead, letting them linger a second more than she should have, before, with her hands on his shoulders, she gently pushed him away.
For a moment he continued to hold her, look at her. Then, as if suddenly aware of what he was doing, what he had done, he pulled back, stood up, walked away from her, keeping his back to her until he had himself under control.
When he turned his face was once again expressionless. ‘I’m sorry…’ he began, stopped. ‘I cannot find the words; there are no words—’
‘Please…don’t. I understand.’
She understood that he was apologising for kissing her. Could not decide whether it made things better or worse.
No.
She knew.
Worse. Infinitely worse.
‘I will, of course, make immediate arrangements to have you moved to the protection of my mother’s—’
‘No! Thank you, Han.’
Oh, right. That made sense. Now he was back and ready to do as she’d asked, to send her to Rumaillah so that she could sort out her documents, leave Ramal Hamrah, leave him in peace, she was resisting it.
She would go. Of course she would. She had no choice. But not like this.
Not with Hanif feeling yet more guilt for having kissed her. Besides, if she left, she had no doubt that he’d use the excuse to send his daughter away too, which was the last thing she wanted.
He’d held her, made a start. He mustn’t be allowed to step back now.
‘I don’t need protection from you,’ she said. He neither confirmed nor denied it and, emboldened, she said, ‘And I’d rather stay here, where it’s cooler, until Zahir has sorted out my papers.’ Lying back like a princess against silk pillows, it seemed perfectly natural to make the kind of imperious gesture she’d seen him use a dozen times. ‘He is sorting them out, isn’t he?’
Han considered mentioning that his family had installed air conditioning some time ago, but discovered a hitherto unsuspected selfish streak in his nature.
Here the air was warm, sultry, laden with the scent of roses. In another world, he would lie here with this woman, they would end what they had begun, make love by moonlight, read poetry, share food and the world would, once again, be a place of promise. Something he had never imagined possible.