by Liz Fielding
And this time the Emir laughed appreciatively.
‘She is all fire, that one. You will have your hands full.’ He did not appear to believe that this was a bad thing.
Since there was no other way to get rid of them, Lydia finally faced the newsmen, standing on the pavement outside her home giving an impromptu press conference, answering their questions.
‘Who was the horseman?’
‘A bodyguard rescuing me from intrusive photographers.’
Laughter.
‘Lady Rose has cut her hair. Will you do that?’
‘No.’
‘When did you meet?’
‘Will you be seeing her?’
‘Have you met her fiancé?’
No. No. No.
She kept a smile pinned to her face, didn’t lose her temper, even at the most intrusive questions, and eventually they ran out of things to ask.
And since she wasn’t Lady Rose, it didn’t take long for the madness to die down. One moment the pavement in front of their flat had been mobbed, the next there was no one.
The agency was still pleading with her to reconsider her decision. They’d been inundated with requests for appearances since Rose had announced her engagement. But the publicist, who’d been so keen to negotiate a contract for her to ‘write’ the story of her career as Rose’s lookalike-with the titillating promise to reveal who had really swept her away on that black stallion and what had happened afterwards-finally accepted that she meant it when she said ‘no’.
With the excitement of Rose’s engagement to occupy the gossip pages, she quickly became old news.
The story about the exiled Sheikh who had been pardoned by the Emir and allowed to return home to die probably wouldn’t have made the news at all, except that Ramal Hamrah was where that very odd incident had taken place, when everyone thought Lady Rose had been kidnapped.
She had heard nothing from Kalil.
No doubt he had his hands full taking care of his grandfather, transferring him to Umm al Sama. Getting to know a whole new family.
She winced as White Christmas began to play for the fiftieth time that week on the seasonal tape. Turned to smile at yet another harassed mother doing her Christmas shop. Reached for yet another turkey.
Kal quietly joined the checkout queue.
All his duties done, he had come straight from the airport to find Lydia. Had gone to her home. He’d met her mother and, with her blessing, he had come to claim his love publicly, in her real world. Wanted her to know that there was no misunderstanding between them. That he knew who she was. That it was not some icon he had fallen in love with but Lydia Young.
Not the aristocrat in the designer suit, but the ordinary girl on the supermarket checkout wearing an overall and a ridiculous hat.
She looked exhausted. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes, her cheeks were hollow and had lost their glow, but the smile never faltered.
She greeted regular customers as friends. Asked what they were doing for the holiday and, as she listened with every appearance of interest, they lost a little of their tension as she swiftly dealt with their purchases. He watched her pack the shopping for one old lady whose hands were crippled with arthritis, helped her count out the money.
He made an instinctive move forward to help as she heaved a heavy bag of potatoes over the scanner, got a glare from the woman in front who was fiddling with a mobile phone. She was trying to take a picture of Lydia, he realised, and he leaned forward and said very quietly, ‘Don’t do that.’
About to tell him to mind his own business, she thought better of it and, muttering something about forgetting something, melted away.
Next in line was a woman with a toddler and a small baby who was grizzling with exhaustion.
Lydia whizzed the goods through, packed the bags, then took the baby, put it to her shoulder as the woman searched helplessly for her wallet. Reassuring the woman, patting the baby. The baby fell asleep, the wallet was found.
‘Can I take you home with me?’ the woman asked as she retrieved her baby.
He’d seen her dressed in designer clothes, every inch the Lady with a capital L.
He’d seen her sweetness with Yatimah, her eyes hot with passion, soft with desire. Seen her berate the Emir in a room filled with hostile men. Seen her on her knees begging for him…
Beauty was a lot more than skin-deep and with each revelation he’d fallen deeper in love with Lydia. And as he watched her kindness, her compassion, her cheerful smile even though she was exhausted, he fell in love with her all over again.
She lifted her hands to her face and rubbed it, turned as someone came alongside her. ‘Your shift is nearly up. Just this last one and then I’ll take over.’
His cue to place the basket he was carrying on the shelf, take out the single item it contained and place it on the conveyer.
He saw her gather herself for one last effort. Put the smile back in place, turn to wait for the goods to reach her. Saw the smile falter, the frown pucker her brow as she watched the tiny dark blue velvet-covered box move slowly towards her. The diamond solitaire at its heart sparking a rainbow of light.
Confused, she looked up. Saw him standing at the far end of the conveyer as, behind him, half a dozen shoppers stared open-mouthed. Rose slowly to her feet.
‘Kal…’
‘The ring was in my pocket when I returned to Umm al Sama, Lydia. I was sure that you knew, understood that the only woman I would take there would be my bride. But I wanted to give you a tangible token of my love. Something more than a dream.’
‘I am not what you wanted.’
‘Until I met you I didn’t know what I wanted, but love is the star to every wandering bark, Lydia. You taught me that. I had been wandering all my life, without a star to guide me…’ He sank to his knees. ‘Ahebbak, Lydia. I love you. I am begging you to marry me, to be my princess, my wife, my lover, the mother of my children, my soul, my life.’
The growing crowd of onlookers broke out into a spontaneous round of applause but it was Lydia who mattered.
‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘Your grandfather?’
‘Happy to be home. Thanks to you.’
‘Then you have everything.’
‘Everything but you.’ He stood up, took the ring from the box, held it up, then touched it to each finger of her left hand, counting slowly in Arabic…‘Wahid, ithnan, thelatha, arba’a, khamsa…’
‘Ithnan, ya habibi-my beloved,’ she said. ‘Ahebbak, Kalil. I love you.’
He slipped the ring onto the ring finger of her left hand, then walked around the checkout, took her in his arms and kissed her.
By this time they had brought the entire row of checkouts to a standstill. And the entire store was clapping.
‘Maybe we had better leave, my love,’ he said. ‘These good people need to finish their shopping. And we have a wedding to arrange.’
Daily Chronicle, 2nd March 2010
LADY ROSE LOOKALIKE MARRIES HER LORD
Lydia Young, who for ten years made regular appearances as a Lady Rose lookalike, was married today at Umm al Sama in Ramal Hamrah to Sheikh Kalil bin Zaki al-Khatib, nephew of the Emir.
Sheikh Kalil, who founded the international air freight company Kalzak Air Services, met Miss Young before Christmas and proposed after a whirlwind romance.
The bride’s mother Mrs Glenys Young, who was formerly a seamstress for a London couturier, made her daughter’s wedding dress from a bolt of cream silk that was a gift from the groom.
Four of the groom’s sisters were attendants and his brother was best man. Family members and guests flew in from all over the world to be present at the ceremony, amongst them Lady Rose Napier and her fiancé billionaire businessman George Saxon. The groom’s grandfather, who is gravely ill, rallied sufficiently to make a short speech at the reception.
The couple will spend their time between homes in London, Paris, New York and Ramal Hamrah.
Liz Fielding
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br /> Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain-with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days she mostly leaves her pen to do the traveling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favorite authors and spends a lot of time wondering “What if…?” For news of upcoming books-and to sign up for her occasional newsletter-visit Liz’s Web site at www.lizfielding.com.
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