Mel joined the Stapletons on the ottoman, took a damp scented napkin from a young girl standing behind her and wiped her hands, then picked up a plate and carefully chose a few of the exotic delicacies to try.
‘I’m not really hungry,’ she protested, when Jenny urged her to have more. ‘They kept feeding us on the flight.’
‘But you should drink something to keep up your fluid level. Try this juice, it’s made from dates. You’ll love it.’
Then, having urged food and drink onto her friend, she settled back to tell her tale.
‘So I thought, loving him as I did, that marrying Kam just wasn’t possible,’ Jenny said, much later, coming to the end of the saga of her romance. ‘He was the new ruler, he would need heirs and I didn’t know…’
She pressed her hand to her stomach and all three of her listeners understood the gesture—remembering the pain and grief Jenny had suffered when she’d lost her husband and unborn son in a car accident. Worse still had been the news from the doctors who had pieced her back together again. They had doubted she would be able to have another child.
But Jen’s face was still glowing—and she was marrying Kam—so obviously her possible inability to produce an heir no longer worried her.
‘And that was when Arun made his offer,’ she finished triumphantly, beaming at her listeners as if this was the most wonderful news she’d ever imparted to anyone.
Their blank stares must have told her something, for she laughed.
‘Sorry. You don’t understand. Kam had told me something of Arun’s past, you see. Arun married when he was young—his wife was a beautiful young woman called Hussa. He was working in the city while she stayed, as was the custom in their father’s time, in the women’s house in the family compound in the country. She was young and very shy and when she had pains in her stomach she didn’t like to tell anyone, and by the time someone realised she was sick her appendix had burst, peritonitis had set in, and she died before anyone could save her.’
‘That’s terrible, but it does still happen in this day and age,’ Jane said. ‘Even back home, when people put the stomach pain down to something they ate, and the resulting infection resists drug therapy.’
Jenny nodded her agreement.
‘Arun, naturally enough,’ she continued, ‘was devastated, and swore he’d never marry again. He’s so like Kam and yet so different. Kam calls him a playboy, although I’m sure he’s not that bad, but I could understand him not wanting to marry again.’
Mel, contrarily eager to hear more about Arun, had followed the story avidly, but surely it wasn’t finished. She glanced at Jane and Bob, who looked equally puzzled.
‘And Arun’s offer?’ Mel prompted, and Jen smiled again—smiled radiantly.
‘He said not to worry, he’d marry and have children who could be heirs, and my reason for not wanting to marry Kam was swept away.’
‘Oh, dear’ was no longer strong enough. What Mel needed was a really bad expletive, but her grandmother had been extremely old-fashioned as far as even the mildest of swear words was concerned, and though Mel had heard plenty as a student, and still did in Theatre, she could rarely bring herself to use one.
Not even in her head!
But this was a disaster. She could hardly present Arun with her news when he was seeking a new wife, maybe already arranging to be married.
But he also wanted a child…
Their child?
Impossible!
Jen was still speaking and Mel tried to focus on what she was saying. She’d learn what she could then later she could work out where to go next.
‘You have to understand that things are done differently here,’ Jenny explained. ‘People still follow the traditions of hundreds of years ago, so a marriage of convenience, like Arun offered to organise for himself, is not unusual.’
‘And has he done this? Organised it?’ Mel hoped her voice sounded stronger than it felt as she croaked the question out past taut vocal cords. She also hoped the questions sounded natural, under the circumstances.
Apparently they did, for Jenny smiled.
‘He hasn’t said so, but knowing the way he and Kam work—think of something, get it done—I imagine he has it well in hand. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d suggested a double wedding.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t want to take anything away from your big day,’ Jane said, and Jenny laughed.
‘Mum, it’s not really a big day. Kam and I feel married already. This is just a ceremony for the family and an excuse for the local people to party. Although Kam’s tried to explain things to me, and I understand a few words of the local language, the four of us will know nothing of what’s going on.’
Jane looked doubtful but Bob was made of sterner stuff.
‘As long as you’re happy,’ he said gruffly, ‘and I can see you are, that’s all that matters. Now, when do we meet this man of yours?’
Mel watched the colour rise in Jenny’s cheeks and knew Bob had spoken the truth. Jenny was truly happy.
‘Tomorrow night. We’re having a big dinner. It’s traditional the day before the wedding, although I shouldn’t be attending it. But times are changing and I’ll be there. Kam will be back from the refugee camp.’ She turned to Mel. ‘He took the new doctor up there a couple of days ago and was staying to see he’d settled in. You’ll all meet him tomorrow.’
It became a signal for movement, the Stapletons deciding they were ready to retire and Jenny rising to see them to their room.
‘You stay right there,’ she said to Mel. ‘We need to talk.’
But when Mel thought about what that talk would entail she shook her head. Better a small deceit than a larger one.
‘I think our talk will have to wait, Jen,’ she said. ‘I’m bushed. Must be jet-lag.’
Jen’s look was disbelieving but she didn’t argue, leading all three of them back through the wide entrance, taking her parents to one room then showing Mel towards another further down a corridor.
‘This small place is going to be your and Kam’s house?’ Mel teased. ‘I should be dropping breadcrumbs so I can find my way back to the front door.’
‘Keira will show you where to go. She will be your personal attendant while you’re here, and will be sleeping in a little alcove off your room, so anything you want, just ask.’
‘In English, or do I need a few words of Zaheer?’
Jenny smiled.
‘Kam and Arun have made sure all the attendants—I know that’s a strange word but they are more like family than servants, although they serve the family—have had good schooling, and that includes learning English. The twins have also paid tuition costs for any of the younger ones who want to go to university, whether here or overseas.’
As if to confirm Jenny’s words, Keira was waiting in the room—far too large to be called a bedroom—set aside for Mel.
‘I have unpacked for you,’ she said, in clear, un-accented English. ‘You would like a drink of something, tea perhaps, or milk, before you go to bed?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ Mel told her, following the young girl into a splendidly opulent bathroom, admiring its beauty, then assuring Keira she could manage to shower on her own.
Shower and shroud herself in her voluminous nightgown—she certainly didn’t want word of her pregnancy spreading through the house before she’d told Arun.
Or Jenny!
She slipped into the big bed, feeling the softness of the sheets—surely not silk—wondering how Jen must feel, living in this house after her years in tents and mud huts in war-torn countries or refugee camps.
Not that luxury would change Jen…
But as hard as she tried to concentrate on Jenny and her future in this country, Mel’s mind kept slipping back to Arun and to the new dilemma she now faced—his approaching marriage…
And as she listened to a distant clock chime three times, she decided. She would stop thinking about it, stop putting it off, just get up
in the morning, go out to the stables where she knew he’d be, and tell him.
Let him decide what he wanted to do with the knowledge…
Arun was leading Saracen out of the stables when he saw her approaching, an anxious Keira by her side.
‘Melissa?’
He paused, aware of many things. In the kind, pearly light of dawn she looked pale and tired, yet his body still responded to her.
Her usual confident stride was hesitant, and now, as she drew nearer, he read indecision in her face.
‘You wish to ride?’
She shook her head, then nodded.
‘I know you prefer to ride alone, but I thought…’
She stopped and looked around in a desperate fashion, as if seeking escape from the compound.
‘I’d be happy to have you accompany me.’ Good manners had saved him in many an awkward situation and this, with the confident Melissa looking positively haunted, could be classed as a very awkward one.
‘I’m not really dressed for it. Didn’t think to bring jeans or jodhpurs, thinking they might not be acceptable…’
Arun took in the loose trousers and tunic Melissa was wearing, not regular riding gear but surely unexceptional. He glanced towards Keira, wondering if something in her expression might shed some light on Melissa’s uncertainty, but Keira’s face was devoid of all expression, although doubtless she was wondering if all foreigners were as strange as this woman she was watching over.
‘If you don’t mind me riding with you, that might be best,’ Melissa finally said, and Arun called back into the stable for one of the men to saddle Mershinga, a gentle mare his sisters often rode.
‘It will be my pleasure,’ Arun said, then he added to Keira, ‘I will return Dr Cartwright to the house later.’
The young woman nodded and departed, Melissa turning to watch her move away before swinging back towards Arun.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t ride—maybe we could just go somewhere and talk,’ she said, the words rushing out in a super-fast stream, as if she needed to get them said.
Saracen, perhaps picking up tension in the air, began to prance and Arun soothed him with a hand against his neck and a few quiet words.
Would that such a touch would soothe the visitor!
He handed Saracen’s bridle to a young boy who was hovering nearby and stepped towards her.
‘Melissa,’ he said, coming close enough to see the evidence of a sleepless night in the blue-tinged shadows beneath her eyes, taking her hands gently in his. ‘Come ride with me. Relax. Enjoy the desert. Later, if you wish, we will talk, but for now forget your cares and concerns and let the rhythm of a horse and the clean morning air of the desert work their magic.’
He touched his fingers to her chin and tipped her head so he could look into her eyes.
Then regretted it, for what he saw was anguish—an anguish so deep it touched his heart and made him want to hold her against his body, hold her safe in his arms, and promise her that everything would be all right.
Some promise, when he didn’t know what ailed her—what was causing her such distress.
‘Come!’ he said instead, taking her hand and leading her to where another young man held the pale grey mare. ‘This is Mershinga. She will carry you surely and safely.’
He held the horse’s head while Melissa lifted herself lightly into the saddle, then he adjusted the stirrups for her, being careful not to let his hand linger on her ankle—on any part of her—for, in spite of his knowledge of her troubled state, he still felt the attraction between them.
Surely and safely! Arun’s words repeated themselves in Mel’s head. Maybe Arun was right. Maybe she could just ride and enjoy the sensation of freedom being on a horse always brought her—the wind in her hair, the morning sun on her skin and the new experience of the desert. She could let the magic of a new day work on the tensions that had tormented her all night.
Then later—some other time—she’d talk to Arun…
He had mounted his horse, a bold, black stallion who frisked and gambolled as if reminding the rider who was the boss. But Arun held him under control, letting him prance a little but always reining him back in. You are not the boss, his strong but slender hands were signalling.
And as Mel watched the tussle between horse and rider, her own mount following sedately behind the pair, she did relax, her taut muscles loosening, her body adjusting the rhythm of the mare’s gait, her lungs welcoming the crisp morning air.
They left the compound through a smaller gate than the one the car had entered the previous evening, and to Mel’s delight were immediately in the desert.
‘It’s so close,’ she marvelled, as Arun reined in his still fidgety mount and waited for her to come alongside. ‘I thought we’d have to follow roads or paths to the outskirts of the city.’
Arun smiled at her.
‘This is the outskirts of the city. From here the desert stretches out towards those mountains, and in the other direction to an inland sea.’
He pointed to the mountains, indistinct behind a gauzy morning haze. They were like a metaphor for this place—veiled mountains, veiled women, curtains and screens—secrets.
‘You wish to canter? You are confident enough on Mershinga?’
‘Yes!’
Mel smiled as she replied, suddenly longing for a canter—for a gallop, in fact—to blow the cobwebs from her head. The secret wouldn’t change for being kept a little longer.
They went slowly at first, no doubt because Arun wanted to see the level of her riding skills, but then he turned and raised his eyebrows at her.
‘Faster?’ he asked.
‘Faster,’ she agreed, loosening the reins and digging her heels into the mare’s sides, taking off beside him, although the stallion soon outpaced her mount.
She caught up with him at what looked like a cairn of some kind, stones stacked on top of each other beside some squat palms.
‘Is this an oasis?’ she asked, not bothering to hide the disappointment she felt. Where was the water? Did three date palms count as lush forestation?
He laughed.
‘A very small one, but none the less important if you were a traveller in the desert. Come, dismount and try the water. I can assure you that the most expensive bottled water in the world will not compare in purity or taste.’
He vaulted easily off his horse as he was speaking and looped the reins over a post beside the cairn, then held the mare’s head while Mel dismounted.
Leaving the mare untethered, her reins knotted loosely to they wouldn’t trail on the ground, he led Mel towards a small well she hadn’t noticed.
‘This is a wadi—a place where one of the underground streams beneath the desert runs close enough to the surface for the palms to grow and for the people, in ancient times, to dig a well.’
He threw the wooden bucket that was sitting on top of the well wall down into the depths, then wound the handle to bring it back up, crystal-clear water splashing from it.
Cupping his hands, he dipped them into the water then offered them to Mel.
She drank, more out of politeness than thirst, then drank again for the water was as special as he had said.
‘You’re right, it’s better than any water I’ve ever tasted.’ Then she looked up into his face and laughed, surprising herself as her inner tension had been so great a laugh was the last thing she’d expected to issue from her lips. ‘That sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Water doesn’t really have a taste.’
Arun grinned at her.
‘No more stupid than me telling you it tasted better than any other water on earth,’ he agreed, dipping his hands in again and drinking himself.
Mel watched him, the handsome man in jeans and sweatshirt, water running down his stubbly chin, staining the front of his shirt.
Her baby’s father…
‘I’m pregnant.’
The words came out before she could prevent them. So much for all the phrases she’d practised during the ni
ght, all the lead-in explanations and excuses!
She studied him, reading puzzlement in the face he raised towards her, then disbelief as it dawned on him why she should be blurting out such a thing—to him of all people.
‘How pregnant?’
A crisp demand for clarification. Her stomach coiled in on itself at the coldness in his voice.
‘Four months.’
‘Impossible! I took precautions! Every—’
He stopped and she saw him frown as he thought back. Would he pick up on the memory she’d had when she’d discovered her pregnancy?
They’d opted out of a formal dinner, deciding instead to dine at a small, local, beachside restaurant someone had recommended, eating lobster on a deck beside the sea, wiping the butter from each other’s chins with gentle fingers. Then walking back to the hotel along the beach—the secluded cove, the midnight swim, making love in the warm, enveloping water of the Pacific Ocean.
‘And, presuming you’re telling me now because it’s my child, you’re also telling me that for four months you’ve felt no need to tell me? Seen no reason to share this information?’
Arun paused, studying the woman in front of him, aware how pale and fragile she was looking, yet he was so angry—so enraged—he could no more stop himself from hurting her than he could turn back time four months.
‘Would you have told me at all had not Jenny’s wedding brought you to Zaheer? Or, having seen the compound, are you after money?’
He saw her wince, although he could tell from the way she’d stiffened she’d tried desperately hard to stop the reaction, but he couldn’t afford to feel sympathy for her, not when she’d kept such information to herself all this time.
Not when he was finding it difficult to process that same information—to work out how he felt and what it meant to him.
‘Arun,’ she began, moving so she could sit down on the stone seat at the cairn, her hands twisting in her lap. ‘I know this is a shock—you have to believe it was just as great a shock to me. And, yes, I should have told you earlier.’
Blue eyes, dark with remorse and what seemed like a shadow of fear, looked pleadingly up into his.
‘But I had no idea how to react myself,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I didn’t know how to think, what to do.’
The Sheikh Surgeon's Baby Page 3