‘No?’
A simple word—two letters—rising at the end in a question, yet it sent a shiver of presentiment through Gemma, a shiver that began in her chest and travelled north and south so by the time his lips closed on hers, plundering them with piratical force, she was almost expecting it.
Almost, but not quite, so at first she did nothing, simply stood there and let his lips and tongue do what they would, until heat replaced the shiver and her body sank against his, a pathetic whimper of surrender escaping her lips as she met and matched his fiery intensity.
You cannot have sex with this man in his daughter’s bedroom.
The thought lodged in her head, and maybe held the reins that kept their joining to a kiss.
Or did he hold the reins?
Was his control equal to hers—perhaps even stronger?
Could he ever get his fill of her, drink enough of her taste? Yusef wondered, clamping the woman’s tall, slim body against his, feeling the softness of her breasts and belly, the spread of her hips, exploring her through kisses.
Was it shameful, to be kissing her in Fajella’s bedroom? The infant lay asleep, she would not be disturbed, and no matter how strong his urgency, he would do no more than kiss this woman in this place. To not kiss her had become impossible, and for all his talk of not taking the attraction further, he knew the strength of what lay between them would dictate that at some time, in some place, they would come together.
His ancestors had believed in djinns and other spirits and would have put this madness down to a spell cast by Boudariah the black devil, but he knew it was more basic than that—this spell had to do with the inexplicable chemistry that sometimes occurred between a man and a woman—the chemistry people called attraction.
Though why her, he had no idea.
She pulled away, not abruptly, more to get some air into her lungs, he guessed, for he, too, was feeling breathless.
‘Okay, I asked for that,’ she whispered, and she rested a hand against his cheek, a gesture that made his heart race faster than her kisses had. ‘But I do understand the situation you are in and the dangers of it. I think it’s best for both of us if we see each other as little as possible, Yusef. Yanne can pass on any news of my progress, or I could email you a report each day.’
He put his hand on hers to hold it on his cheek and waited for his pulse to slow and his blood to cool.
‘It is not what I would wish, but the sensible course,’ he said, knowing full well it was the only way forward. Tribal affiliations were flaky at best, his brother’s supporters were gathering strength, so the last thing he needed was a scandal of some kind so early in his reign. And an affair with a foreigner would cause a scandal but, worse, it would undermine the work she was here to do, perhaps devalue it, when it was so important.
Then he kissed her again, a gentler kiss this time, letting his lips tell her of the regret he felt, but not, this time, of the frustration…
‘Can you find your way back to the guest house?’ he asked, as he moved apart from her once more.
‘I can,’ she murmured, and he pressed his lips to her forehead.
‘Go in peace, then, Gemma Murray. I will sit with Fajella for a while.’
He ushered her out of the door and watched her silent, barefoot walk along the corridor. Then he followed a little way, out of curiosity, and saw her slip on her sandals outside the front door but walk to the guest house not through the courtyard but in the shadows of the wide loggia that ran along the front of the buildings, joining them all.
Back in Fajella’s room he squatted beside the cot, watching his sleeping child, thinking of her mother. He wanted a wife so the little one would have a mother, but could he honourably take one when he had failed his first wife so badly?
And could he honourably take a wife when he was so strongly attracted to a red haired foreigner, and in his mind at least could not be faithful to a wife?
He sighed then remembered Abed would return in the morning. Maybe with him here to share the workload and to talk to about the confusion in his mind, he could sort things out.
Maybe—
Gemma woke early after a troubled night’s sleep and asked Miryam if it would be rude for her to have some breakfast in the guest house. She used the excuse of having work to prepare for the day’s meeting but, in fact, she was reluctant to face the women of Yusef’s family, certain they must be wondering about the pair of them taking Fajella to her bed—wondering about the relationship between Yusef and herself.
Not that there was a relationship. His kisses on the plane had been from kindness and it was simply unfortunate that it had awoken a sexual attraction between them that was difficult to resist. But that’s all it was, sexual attraction, and if sometimes her heart ached for him, well, that was because she saw the pressure he was under in his role of ruler, and understood some of the dilemmas facing him.
She was up and dressed by the time Miryam brought her breakfast and because what she could see of the day through the fretted arched windows of her room looked inviting, she took her laptop and her breakfast out onto the loggia, where carpets and thick cushions promised comfort in the shade.
There was little she could do before she spoke to Yanne and the other women, but she had a map of Fajabal that had been in the things the secretary had given her back at home. It showed the borders of the country, the waters of the Gulf on one side, a line through desert sands to the south and east, and in the north the broken-looking black mountains she’d seen pictures of while back in Sydney.
And remembering, she gave a start for she’d not thought of the centres since her arrival in Fajabal. Opening up her computer, she got on line and found a number of reassuring emails from the staff of both the houses. Her guilt subsided—of course everything would be all right back home. She sent a belated ‘arrived safely’ email, assuring the staff she’d be in touch again soon, then returned to her study of the map.
Fajabal was a small country and seemed only to have settlements along the coast, in the city, where she was now, and in isolated spots inland, perhaps oases, though she knew little of the geography of the area.
‘You wish to talk here or at the hospital?’
She looked up to see Yanne and five women with her, tribal women from their sturdy clothes and bare heads.
‘Will your friends be comfortable here?’ Gemma asked, and was surprised when all of the women nodded.
‘They all have English,’ Yanne told her, correctly interpreting Gemma’s surprise. ‘As traders and travellers, the nomadic tribes have always spoken many languages.’
‘Even the women?’ Gemma asked, as Miryam brought out more cushions for the women to sit on, and other servants brought platters of fruit and sweets and pots of coffee, almost as if the group had been expected.
Yanne sat then smiled at Gemma.
‘Men may be tougher in war but women are tougher in business,’ she said. ‘We can bargain better, get better prices for our goods or buy goods more cheaply. It is our way.’
The other women settled themselves, nodding acknowledgement of Yanne’s introductions. They accepted tiny cups of coffee and sweetmeats from the platters, and Gemma realised this ceremonial offering and accepting of hospitality must precede any serious talk. But once the coffee pot was dispensed with, the talk began, the women’s first concern being for their children.
‘We are coming to live in a place where diseases spread quickly. In the desert, in the past, a child might have a runny nose or sometimes a fever, but we hear of all these other things, measles, and chickenpox—these are things city children get. Will our children get them?’
Remembering how such seemingly minor childhood diseases had decimated indigenous populations in the early days of white settlement in Australia and America, Gemma understood the problem. She explained about the vaccines available to protect children against such things.
Some of the women had already had their children vaccinated, but all were interested,
so they chattered among themselves, sometimes in English and sometimes in their native tongue, losing Gemma, although every now and then she caught a word that obviously worked in both languages.
‘At home in my land we have programmes for vaccinations that begin when the children are babies. Here we could start similar programmes.’ Gemma looked around the small circle. ‘You would all be willing to have your children vaccinated against things like measles and chickenpox and whooping cough?’
‘Many women would fear this,’ one woman said, and others nodded.
‘We could run a campaign explaining why this is a good idea. We could start with a programme for children who are at school and then move on to the younger children. What is the best way to advertise something like this?’
The women chattered amongst themselves, and offered suggestions that seemed so ordinary to Gemma that she smiled.
‘Television, newspapers, magazines and posters on buildings where the women go,’ she summed up.
The women smiled and nodded, and Gemma moved the conversation on, telling them about the separate facility at the hospital that Yusef had created.
‘Ah, that is good,’ one of the women said. ‘We do not like going to the other part of the hospital.’
‘We do not like seeing men doctors,’ another put in. ‘Or women doctors who think like doctors instead of thinking like a woman when another woman is in trouble.’
Gemma let the sentence play out in her head and understood what was being said. It was about attitude, something she insisted on in the centres she had started. And suddenly Yusef’s insistence on wanting her to look at the services became clear. He wanted more than a medical centre, he wanted a special place for the women and children of his country, and staff they could approach with confidence, staff he wanted Gemma to find and train.
‘That is why Wardeh died,’ someone else said. ‘Trouble with her labour but the man doctor the old highness sent, he was too much a doctor and not enough a person, so he didn’t understand she was so distressed.’
There was more excited chatter as they obviously recalled this event, then Yanne explained.
‘Wardeh was my sister, Fajella’s mother. Her name, it is one of the words we have for the rose, and Yusef planted these roses in her honour.’
Yanne waved her hands towards the glorious display of roses in the courtyard and Gemma felt as if a dagger had slid into her heart as she realised how much he must have loved his wife to have honoured her this way—and to want the reminders of her with him always.
Yes, an affair between them was impossible—she’d accepted that—but had she been harbouring some hope, deep inside, that it might be more than attraction he felt? That it might be love?
Why else would she have felt such a jolt of pain?
CHAPTER NINE
THE talk continued, more coffee coming out, lunch, and snacks, the women slowly opening up about health problems some of them already had, telling Gemma things they would never tell a male doctor, shy even talking of their bodies to her, although the group was now so relaxed they could laugh at each other’s embarrassment.
Ideas were forming in Gemma’s head—a service based on the centres at home but with more outreach services—a small bus outfitted as a surgery perhaps that went out to the settlements rather than expecting the women to always come to the hospital.
But all the time the scent of the roses hung in the air, like a perfumed ghost, haunting the dark places of her mind.
‘Ah, my little one!’ Yanne cried out, as the shadows lengthened in the courtyard and tiredness began to blur the edges of Gemma’s mind.
She looked up and saw the children were out again, playing by the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, Fajella among them but heading towards the gathering on the guest-house loggia.
Yanne left the group and went down the steps, picking up the little girl and tossing her in the air.
‘So sad,’ one of the other women said. ‘He married Wardeh, Yusef did, to please his father and she to please her father, to bring the tribes together, but she was not like Yanne, brave and bold. Wardeh was a shy rose, one that flowers in the shadows, but had there been a place like you are speaking of, a medical centre where women feel confident and safe, she might have sought help earlier and lived.’
The words twisted the knife in Gemma’s heart. Yusef might say he saw the medical centre as part of a larger restructuring of the overtaxed hospital system, but his passion for it was an attempt to atone for his wife’s death.
She was thinking these gloomy thoughts when a tug at the hem of her skirt alerted her to the fact that she had a new visitor. Fajella was standing beside her, a pretty shell in her hand, holding it out to Gemma, offering a gift.
‘Oh, thank you, sweetheart,’ she said, gathering the little girl to her for a hug and a kiss.
The other women all smiled and some applauded.
‘She has taken to you,’ one of them said.
‘It’s my hair,’ Gemma told them. ‘She hasn’t seen anything like it before.’
The women seemed to accept this explanation for now they too talked about Gemma’s hair, some of them touching it, one of them showing the red in her own hair.
‘Henna,’ she said. ‘I like to use it.’
The group broke up, Gemma rising, Fajella still in her arms, to say goodbye to them and thank them for their help. She hadn’t wanted to take notes while the women were talking for it could have stifled the natural flow of conversation but now there was so much she wanted to get into the computer before she forgot it that she was pleased to see them depart.
She sat again and opened her computer, Fajella settling by her side.
Gemma looked around and saw Anya waiting at the bottom of the steps, but although the nanny called to Fajella the little girl remained where she was.
‘I don’t mind her staying,’ Gemma said. ‘She’s sitting quietly.’
But what she didn’t realise was that it would become a habit, Fajella coming to where Gemma sat in the loggia late each afternoon, settling beside her foreign friend, entertaining herself while Gemma tried to recall all she’d learned during the day, and work it into the larger plan she was making for the new service.
It was exciting, she had to admit it, as the days flew by. So many women wanted to be part of the service, nurses and doctors who had trained overseas, now wanting not only to work in their own country but to be part of an innovative and exciting experiment in community medicine. And their excitement infected Gemma, who found that the hard work helped her forget about Yusef, except in the dark hours of the night when she would see a light on in his big house across the courtyard and picture him, a slight frown on his face, still working.
But for the most part she was happy with the way the plans were developing, and even happier, when, each afternoon, she took some time off from the complex logistics of the new service to play in the rose garden with Fajella. If the other women in the compound wondered about the attachment that had grown between the two of them, they said nothing, although the older woman, the senior wife, as Gemma thought of her, stopped Gemma one day to thank her for the time she spent with the little girl.
‘She was too quiet—too withdrawn—this child, and her father, he doesn’t have the time to play with her. Not now when things are difficult for him and there is unrest in our land.’
Gemma would have loved to ask more—about Yusef’s difficulty, not about Fajella—for she suspected the older brother Yusef had spoken of, was probably this woman’s son. Whose side, then, was this woman on?
But Fajella’s cry of greeting interrupted their conversation and Gemma thanked the older woman and turned to welcome the little girl.
Now much steadier on her feet, she came racing along a path beneath an arch of brilliant red roses and, knowing the game she expected, Gemma chased after her, pretending to be trying to catch up, Fajella squealing her delight. They had just rounded a corner in the arched arbour, when Yusef appe
ared.
Although Gemma was in touch with him via email, she hadn’t seen him since the evening in Fajella’s bedroom when he’d cursed his weakness in not being able to stay away from her. Well, he’d got over that successfully enough, though now she saw him and she felt a pang of concern for how tired and drawn he looked.
‘They told me I might find my daughter here,’ he said, seizing Fajella in his arms and tossing her lightly into the air. ‘Seduced away from her father by a red-haired witch.’
Although the words were spoken lightly Gemma had the distinct impression that he wasn’t joking. But what could she say? She’d grown to love the little girl, and playing with her provided relief from the stresses of the service she was trying to set up.
And from the heartache of not seeing him—
Then Yusef’s eyes met hers above the little girl’s head and the hunger Gemma read in them found an immediate response in her body.
‘Tomorrow is Friday, our holiday, as you now know,’ he said, ‘and I, the ruler, am decreeing no work for you. Abed will call for you at nine. It is time you saw the something of our country, especially the sea. You have a swimsuit with you?’
Gemma tried to respond but her heart was beating so rapidly she could barely breathe.
Abed is collecting you, she reminded herself as she nodded a response. And bring a swimsuit! So it is not a private tryst he is suggesting, but at least she’d get to spend some time with Yusef, to feel him close, to look at him when Abed and others were distracted.
Except that a private tryst was exactly what it turned out to be, Abed collecting her as promised, delivering her to a place far out of the city, where high-prowed dhows were moored in rows along a wharf. The driver stopped the car and Abed escorted her to the third in the row, a smaller vessel but still a graceful, dark-timbered boat with a twirling symbol painted on its prow, the reddish-tan triangle of sail already raised.
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