Sheikh's Mail-Order Bride

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘What form might that take?’

  Kadar shrugged. ‘No doubt a weighty purse of precious stones. Abdul-Majid is the expert on tradition and protocol, I shall consult him. He will most likely be delighted to know that my radical plans for Murimon must be significantly pared back.’

  ‘I think you may be surprised by his reaction,’ Constance said, taking her seat behind the desk. ‘It seems to me that he admires you, that he may even believe you are a better prince for Murimon than Butrus.’

  Kadar sat down opposite her, picking up her notebook and flicking idly through the pages of her carefully plotted celestial observations. ‘Constance, he is merely trying to ingratiate himself with me through you. He has a fondness for expediency that—what is this?’

  He was holding her notebook open. Glancing at the page, Constance’s stomach lurched. How could she have forgotten that stupid drawing! ‘Give me that.’ She leaned across the desk, but he snatched it away from her. ‘I was curious,’ she said. ‘No, not only curious. I wanted to know—to understand why you are so—what it is that makes you so—’ She broke off, afraid that if she articulated her thoughts he would detect the strength of feelings that lay behind them. ‘I would have asked you directly, if I’d thought you would have answered.’

  He said nothing, gazing down at her diagram, but she could see that telltale flicker in his eye. What to do? She should have torn the page from her notebook and burned it, yet there was a part of her that hoped it would force him to talk, and that by talking—what? Effect a lancing of the wound?

  He rubbed his eyes wearily, and Constance wanted nothing more than to hold him, to smooth the lines from his brow and kiss away all his cares. She wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter, but it did. She wanted to reassure him that he didn’t need to talk about it, but he did. ‘I simply want you to be happy,’ she said, opting for the truth. ‘That is all I care about, Kadar. I want you to be happy.’

  * * *

  He believed her. He could even echo her thoughts. Looking down at the sad little cartoon depiction of his doomed love affair, he felt oddly detached. He felt pity for the star-crossed lovers, yes, and sorrow for the loss of their perfect love, but both emotions were second-hand, as if the story belonged to someone else and not him. As if the little stick man was some other foolish youth, not he. It felt so much longer ago than seven years. He could still barely recall her face, and the love that had once filled his heart, that had made her the centre of his universe—no, that was long dead. A shadow. An echo. A ghost.

  Was he tired of carrying that ghost on his back, tired of the burden of the past weighing so heavily on the present and the future? Staring down at the childish images, Kadar realised that he was. Would it help to share his burden with Constance, with her big brown troubled eyes and her lovely mouth currently curved uncharacteristically downwards? Constance, the only person he had ever known who could read his thoughts. Constance, who refused to allow him to intimidate her, who pressed him and pressed him until he told her truths he never shared with anyone. Constant Constance, whose upside-down way of looking at the world had several times reflected it back to him from a new perspective. Would she be able to do so again? He was prepared to take the risk.

  ‘It is obvious from your idiosyncratic diagram that you have grasped most of the salient facts,’ Kadar said. ‘However, one significant component is missing.’ He picked up a pencil and added another stick man figure. As an afterthought he gave the figure a long pointy beard and drew a line from him to the circle in the middle of the drawing.

  Constance looked perplexed.

  ‘Zeinab was Abdul-Majid’s daughter.’

  Constance’s mouth fell open. Her eyes widened. ‘“He did have, once...”’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘I mean—someone who shared his love of books. That’s what you told me. You meant her, didn’t you? His daughter. Zeinab. Oh, Kadar, I had no idea. No wonder you— Was it he who forbade the match?’

  Yes, he wanted to say, because that is what he had always believed, it is what Zeinab had told him. But he hesitated. Was it true? ‘It was complicated,’ he said instead.

  ‘And I’ve interrupted you. I’m so sorry.’

  Constance folded her hands together on the desk. She was biting her lip, which she always did to remind herself not to speak. Her hair was flattened on one side, where she had been sleeping on it. Had she any idea how endearing she looked? Did he really want to entrust her with this sad little tragedy? Would it diminish him in her eyes? She would judge him, but wasn’t that what he wanted—not so much to be judged as to have the facts scrutinised, reflected by her perceptive mind that operated like some sort of internal telescope, before being re-presented to him in a different form. He did trust her. Completely. He smiled at her crookedly. ‘I will begin where all good stories should begin,’ he said, echoing her own words, ‘at the beginning.’

  * * *

  ‘Zeinab was raised here in the palace,’ Kadar said. ‘We knew each other as children. She was very beautiful, very intelligent. We shared a love of books and horses. We were—we were very like-minded.’

  ‘Perfectly matched, you mean?’

  Kadar frowned. ‘It is what I thought—how I always thought of her.’

  ‘And for the seven years of your self-imposed exile, you had no evidence to counter that belief, and now she is dead and you will never know.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kadar agreed, with another frown, lapsing into silence.

  And thus her perfection is enshrined and set in stone, Constance added silently to herself. ‘So,’ she prompted gently, ‘two like minds, spending so much time together, it is hardly surprising in such a claustrophobic atmosphere that friendship blossomed into love.’

  His frown deepened. ‘We knew it was forbidden. Zeinab was betrothed to Butrus from a very early age.’

  She had not anticipated this. Touched to the heart, Constance reached impulsively across the desk to take his hand. ‘I’m so sorry. To love someone, and to know that you can never have them is so very dreadful.’

  Too late, she realised that her own newly discovered feelings were horribly present in her voice, in the tremor, in the thickness caused by the tears which clogged her throat. She could only hope that Kadar was too caught up in his own thoughts to notice.

  Apparently not. ‘A rather odd response from someone who equates love with servitude, if I may say so,’ he said.

  She blinked at him, her fingers straying to her scar, a habit she thought she had cured herself of. ‘I meant—I believe I referred to love that was one-sided,’ she said. ‘You and Zeinab loved each other. A different case entirely, and all the more tragic. That is why I sound a little emotional. You did love each other, didn’t you?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Your brother. I can’t fathom why Butrus would marry the woman you loved, who loved you back.’

  ‘Because Butrus was unaware of our feelings for each other.’

  ‘Surely he must have guessed when he saw you spend so much time together.’

  ‘Our love was illicit, Constance. We were very careful to keep our assignations secret, our true feelings hidden.’

  She tried, but could not imagine someone as honourable as Kadar involved in the subterfuge of an illicit love affair. Or involving the woman he loved in such subterfuge. ‘I have learned that you are a man of great integrity, and you are also a man who likes to consider his options and to plan for them. I doubt you were so very different back then. You must have considered the future, Kadar. I cannot imagine that you simply allowed the matter to drift along, hoping that fate would intervene or—or something.’

  ‘I was very different, Constance. I was naïve enough to imagine that nothing mattered save our love for each other. I wanted Zeinab to marry me at any cost.’

  ‘Would the cost have been so great? Your father was no
t a despot. If you had explained the sincerity and depth of your feelings, wouldn’t he have understood?’

  Kadar looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘I could not persuade Zeinab to take the risk,’ he said. ‘If he had refused, and Zeinab was still required to marry Butrus—to have a husband know that you are in love with his brother...’

  ‘But then if Butrus knew you were in love, wouldn’t he have gladly relinquished his claim on her?’ Constance persisted. ‘I assume he harboured no deep feelings for her himself?’

  ‘No, he was indifferent towards her.’

  If she did not know him better, she would have said that Kadar looked—uneasy... No. Slightly panicked, perhaps?

  ‘Zeinab reckoned that Butrus would be even more set on marrying her if he knew that I loved her. The fierce sibling rivalry between us meant that...’

  ‘She believed he would marry her just to spite you?’ Constance covered her mouth, but it was too late to pretend she was anything other than incredulous.

  Kadar nodded his head in affirmation, swallowed, and gazed down at his hands. ‘Whether she was right or not,’ he said slowly, ‘that’s what she believed. And that is all that mattered to me at the time.’

  Constance bit her tongue. Kadar would not wish to hear her most uncharitable thoughts on Zeinab, and she did not wish to voice the jealousy she was convinced lay at the root of them.

  Her silence for once spurred him on. ‘Besides,’ Kadar said, ‘it was not only a question of my father but her father too. Abdul-Majid’s ambition was for his daughter to be Princess of Murimon. It would secure his pre-eminent position within the court hierarchy.’

  The last piece of the puzzle. ‘And so he sacrificed her,’ Constance said. ‘That is what you said, that Abdul-Majid had sacrificed his daughter for the sake of power.’

  ‘Yes. He did. That is what I meant.’

  ‘He knew, then, that his daughter was in love with you?’

  ‘And he insisted that she marry my brother. Now you understand the kind of man he is.’

  Did she? Abdul-Majid did not strike her as a power-mad despot, but she hardly knew him, and was in no position to judge. Was Kadar, or had his judgement been skewed by his emotions? ‘So Zeinab would not permit you to do the honourable thing and declare your love. That must have been very difficult for you—no, it must have been almost impossible.’

  ‘You give me far too much credit Constance,’ he replied stiffly. ‘I wanted to elope. It was not only an utterly naïve and foolish idea, it was a selfish and most dishonourable one. Zeinab made me see that. Zeinab persuaded me that love stolen under such circumstances could never flourish.’

  ‘And so she strangled it at birth, by agreeing to marry your brother.’

  Once again she had let her feelings get the better of her. Kadar flinched. ‘You have no right to judge her.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Constance said, thinking that it was about time someone judged the perfect paragon Zeinab. But how to force Kadar to see that his goddess was probably tarnished? And how to be sure that her own motives for doing so were noble and not self-serving. ‘So Zeinab married Butrus. Were they happy?’

  ‘I left Murimon immediately after the wedding.’

  No answer, Constance thought, and Kadar must have read this thought because he shrugged. ‘I believe my brother remained in ignorance of his wife’s true feelings.’

  She waited. Kadar tapped his finger on the desk. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said. ‘What I do know is that Zeinab was a woman of honour. She entered into that marriage determined to make it work.’

  ‘But you suspect she must have endured unhappiness. That is why you were so against my marriage,’ Constance said, touched, ‘though I was not in love with another man when I agreed to it. If I had been, I would never, ever have consented to marry another.’

  Once again her words were fuelled by her new-found love, and once again Kadar was subjecting her to his Mind Reader look. She must not wear her heart so obviously on her sleeve. Luckily he couldn’t literally read her mind.

  ‘How can you be so certain of that when your experience of love is confined to an adolescent infatuation with a groom and a brief flirtation with a Russian acrobat?’ Kadar asked, once again proving her wrong.

  ‘Don’t forget the blacksmith,’ she said in an effort to distract him. ‘I never claimed to be in love with any of those men.’

  ‘Which makes you singularly unsuitable to judge Zeinab.’

  He was right. Constance slumped back in her seat, as if the air had been punched out of her body. ‘I’m sorry. You are quite right, I have no right to judge her. I wished only to help you, and all I have done is make you angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry, Constance.’ Kadar picked up the notebook again, rifling through the pages until he came to her diagram. He drew a question mark above the head of the bearded figure. ‘And you have helped, despite what you think,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘By pointing out that I have no way of knowing whether Zeinab was happy with her lot or not. I assumed—but I don’t know for certain. There is one person who does, though, and I intend to ask him.’

  ‘Abdul-Majid.’

  Kadar shut the notebook with a decisive snap and got to his feet. ‘Once the past is put to bed I can focus on the future. Now if you will excuse me, I have a betrothal to cancel, and plans to revise.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Anxious as he was to confront Zeinab’s father, experience had taught Kadar the value of contemplation. He was, as Constance had adroitly pointed out, a man who liked to consider and to plan. Picking up the key of his orrery, he wound it up and watched the planets slowly begin their orbits of the sun, the tiny representation of the moon rotating around the earth. His thoughts drifted away from the past to the present and his court astronomer.

  Constance had said that she missed him. When he’d told her he’d missed her too, he hadn’t been referring to their mutual passion. He had missed her, though there had been times during their last conversation when he hadn’t recognised her. Her thoughts and feelings, usually written so plain on her face, had been guarded, yet there had been other moments where she had seemed to him oddly overemotional. And judgemental too, implying that Zeinab had lacked the courage of her convictions, that Zeinab had not loved him enough. And that he had been too trusting.

  Had he, as Constance implied, put his lover on a pedestal? Idealised her? Created an impossibly perfect version of reality? Kadar propped his chin on his hand, frowning as the planets orbited to the sound of the mechanical cogs turning the mechanism. Had it been a cathartic experience to discuss it with Constance? It had certainly raised questions he had never before asked himself, and he found that he now wished to seek answers to those questions.

  The moon had ground to a halt again, as it was prone to do. He flicked it with his little finger, setting it off on its journey around the earth. Anningan, chasing his lady love, Constance had told him. Had he been more in love than Zeinab? Had he misread a lack of love as a desire to do the honourable thing? If she had run away with him, would they have been happy? With Zeinab by his side, would he have achieved more or less in life? She had never been strong, not like Constance. Zeinab was a delicate and fragile desert flower, requiring nurturing, careful tending. Not that she had been weak, but it was true, she had been inclined to bend her will to the wind, he recalled now. Resistance made her wilt. With Zeinab as his wife, he would not have been able to pursue success so single-mindedly. But with Zeinab as his wife, would he have wanted to pursue such success?

  Had she loved him less than he her? Another potentially painful question, yet it merely roused his curiosity. She was dead, and so too was whatever love they had shared seven years ago. Seven years! It seemed like a lifetime, so much had changed. He had changed. He tried, but he could not remember what
it had felt like, that love he had once thought so precious, so perfect. If he could meet Zeinab now, what then? Would their love blossom afresh? The question seemed treacherous, the answer treason, for into his head came a vision not of Zeinab, but of Constance. Captivating Constance, whose body he craved, whose passions equalled his. Kadar smiled, forgiving himself. To compare the two women was foolish beyond belief. Love and passion. Two very different emotions.

  The orrery came to a stop, Jupiter halting with its usual jerky click. There was only one man capable of answering his questions. Could he trust him to tell the truth, or would Abdul-Majid’s propensity for expediency lead him to tell Kadar only what he thought he wanted to hear?

  He had been deeply unhappy in those early days after fleeing Murimon. Slightly disgusted at his younger self, he recalled taking perverse comfort in imagining Zeinab being equally unhappy. It had become a habit with him to think of them both nursing their broken hearts and shattered dreams, but truly, when he searched his memory, his conscience, the anguish of those first months had not persisted. The heartache had faded, leaving only a steely determination never to suffer it again.

  And Zeinab? How often had he thought of Zeinab? Not the love he had lost, but the princess, the wife, the woman living out her new life in the kingdom he had left behind? The harsh truth was that he had not thought of her at all, had not tried to imagine that life, had taken every care, in his limited correspondence with his home, not to discover what life might be like for her. Had she been content with Butrus? Had she made his brother happy, or had the lack of a child made them both miserable? Only Abdul-Majid knew.

  The time had come to find out, because Constance was right—once again Constance was right, he corrected himself with a rueful smile. Whatever the truth, the time had come for him to face it and then put it firmly behind him.

  * * *

  ‘Very well, Highness, I shall attend to the matter immediately. The question still remains as to appropriate compensation to the princess’s family for the breach of contract.’