by Leslie North
And it was the Queen Mother who came around the corner after the cats. They were known throughout the country.
Talitha sank into a curtsy. That was the right thing to do, yes? It had to be. “Hello.” Don’t lose your cool. “Your Highness,” she said quickly. “I’m Talitha Rahman.”
The Queen Mother gave her a smile that lit up the room, sly as it was. “Yes—I heard my son had a guest at the palace.” The two women looked down at the cats circling their feet. “You must call me Nenet while you’re here. I prefer to limit the titles when I’m in my private home.”
“Nenet.” It felt wrong, calling her that, but Talitha wasn’t about to let her discomfort show. “I’d love to sketch your cats. When I have my things ready, of course.”
She met Nenet’s eyes and found the other woman studying her. “Of course you may.” She paused, and Talitha’s heart sped up. Had she already done something so out of line that she’d earned the Queen Mother’s disapproval? It couldn’t be. “You know, I find the collateral idea absurd. A person for debt?” She shook her head. “Not in these times. But I wouldn’t contradict my son.’
Despot. Talitha shivered. She’d never fall for someone like that. Polite as he was over breakfast, he’d still taken the deal with her father.
“Tell me, Talitha.” Now the energy in Nenet’s eyes shifted. “Are you good with phones?”
“The best,” she blurted out, and both of them laughed. “Why? What do you need?”
“I need a social media account.”
And that was how Talitha came to spend her first hour with the Queen Mother—by setting up her Instagram account. “I like to scroll,” Nenet said. “But I can never post because I don’t have an account. Now I do. Well—Beauty and the Beast do, at any rate.” They sat together and watched the first reactions roll in. By the tens at first, then hundreds, then thousands. “Isn’t that something.” Nenet put the phone aside.
It was more than something. The cats were going to be Instagram famous by nightfall. Things could change with the royal family, apparently.
Still stunned from watching Nenet’s post about her cats blow up on social media, Talitha went back to her rooms. Stuffy. They were just too stuffy. Did it feel weird calling for staff members to move out the old furniture? Very. But Talitha felt better the moment the heavy antique pieces were carried out. One of the staff members gave her a catalogue of available pieces. Easy choices. This bed, this chair, this desk. They were on the way in minutes. Talitha had brought enough small items from home that accessorizing was a simple matter.
Hamid wasn’t going to like it. It was too modern for his tastes. She switched the spots of two succulents on the corner of her desk. He had told her she was free to make changes. Perhaps she wouldn’t go as far as painting the rooms, but she could add a swath of fabric here and an artfully placed jewelry stand there. Inside of thirty minutes, the room had been transformed from traditional guest room to modern oasis. Not bad. Maybe she would paint the walls. They could benefit from an eggshell blue. Talitha laughed to herself. Really? Was she going to have a painting crew come in for her single month at the palace?
“Your room is pretty.” Rafiq’s voice floated in from the doorway. His eyes darted over the guest room. “Is this new furniture? It was different when my cousin stayed here.”
“I redecorated.” Was it just too much change for him? “Freshened things up.”
“Why?” He wrinkled his nose.
“I want my rooms to reflect my personality. I want...I want it to be a delight to look at. You can change things with light and color. You can respect the old but not be afraid to remake it into something new.” This was probably beyond the little boy.
“It’s like turning books into cartoons and TV and movies.” Rafiq stuck his hands in his pockets and looked longingly into the room. “Will you do my room, too? But more.”
“More?” Talitha laughed. “I don’t know if that would be such a good idea. I just chose some things from a catalogue a staff member gave me.”
“Don’t those catalogues have colors in them? Colors and lights? I want to change the colors and lights in my rooms.” What a decisive tone. Just like his father’s.
“Will it be all right with your dad if we do that? I’m not sure he’d be happy with so much change.”
“Of course it will,” said Rafiq. He turned his big brown eyes on her. “Will you help me do it?”
Talitha fought a fast and furious battle with herself. Hamid did not like change—it had been a hallmark of his rule since his coronation. He prioritized tradition in all things. But he had also told her to make herself comfortable. That meant taking on new projects.
“Sure,” she said brightly, the battle over and won. “We’ll make a project out of it. Show me your rooms and we’ll get to thinking of a plan...”
4
“The meetings are going very well. Very, very well.” Hamid’s younger brother Raed smiled on the screen of the video app they were using to have a conference. Raed stood on the balcony of his hotel room, wind in his hair and sun lighting up his eyes. “We’re going to have so many more options for trade. I might extend the trip and meet a few more people—”
“But not so long that—”
“Not so long that I’ll miss awarding the oil contracts.” Raed laughed. “Do you think I’d miss a once-in-a-lifetime event?”
Hamid ignored the urge to tell Raed that a good leader renewed oil contracts several times in his life, since it was a formal ceremony done every twenty years. This year, it happened to coincide with the jubilee. “I know you’d rather be jetting off to do a business deal than participating in the ceremony. You don’t have to hide it from me.”
“Jetting home is part of the pleasure. But, Hamid, we can’t remain inward-looking forever. The countries around us are embracing new revenue streams. Look at that ocean view.” Raed flipped the camera so that Hamid could take in the blue, sparkling ocean down beneath the balcony. The camera abruptly flipped back before he’d gotten his fill of the sight. “But enough business updates. I hear you’re dating the new palace guest.”
Heat rushed to Hamid’s face, and he glanced into the small square where he appeared on the screen to make sure it didn’t show in his cheeks. “I am not dating our guest. I’ve had breakfast with her twice. It’s the hospitable thing to do.”
That morning’s breakfast had gone particularly well. Tali had burst into delighted laughter when a staff member arrived with a box of Choco Loco cereal on a silver platter. Another member had followed behind with a pitcher of milk. They’d treated it the way they would any delicacy, and she had obviously loved it. Her face glowed in the early morning sunbeams, her dark eyes shining, and Hamid had felt a kind of pleased warmth that took him completely by surprise.
“What’s on your mind? I thought you’d be happier about the contacts I’ve made.”
The taste of Choco Loco cereal. How can I be curious about puffed rice nonsense? “I’m very pleased. Keep it up.”
“You hesitated for quite a while before you said that,” ribbed Raed.
“I consider my responses before I speak, unlike some people I know.”
Raed laughed. “Okay, then consider this. Some of my colleagues’ children are into this new computer game. I can’t quite remember the name, but...” Raed’s brows drew together on the screen. “It’s a collaborative kind of thing. They build houses and attack monsters together. Find recipes to make different items. Can I send it to Rafiq? I think he’d like it, and he could play against the other children online.”
Protectiveness rose in Hamid, strong and pure. Online? No. Never. “I’d feel better about reading. It’s much healthier than online games. You and I spent a considerable amount of time reading as children, and it’s served us well. Look—we’re educated. Informed. We can assimilate and connect information quickly and in several languages.”
Raed shot him a look. “Not when we were Rafiq’s age.”
“Fine, bu
t the habits started early. You can’t let these things go until the child is too old, otherwise he might never learn. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?” Hamid caught sight of the clock at the corner of the screen. Talitha had thrown him off his routine. She’d insisted on walking him to work after breakfast, which had meant he’d gotten there later, and now the call with Raed was cutting into his usual schedule. It felt all wrong, like wearing pants that didn’t fit.
His brother rolled his eyes. “Tick tock, Hamid. Whatever will you do if everything doesn’t go exactly according to schedule?” But there was no sting behind the words, and the brothers signed off with affectionate goodbyes.
What would Hamid do if he were off schedule? Exactly what he spent the day doing. Carefully playing catch-up with all his tasks. The ripple effects from lingering with Talitha over breakfast reached into the late morning, then the afternoon, and it was only toward the evening that he got back on track. Hamid signed the final paperwork of the day with only minutes to spare before family time with Rafiq.
Hamid relaxed a little more with every step he took toward the private wing of the palace. Rafiq was old enough to have his own suite of rooms next to Hamid’s, which meant the boy had more room to spread out...and more responsibility. Hamid could not have been prouder of the way Rafiq rose to the occasion. Of course, some of that had to do with the routines Hamid had instilled, but he could expect a low-key, quiet evening with his son. They’d have dinner together. They’d read. All the hustle and bustle of the day would fall away, and—
Was that hammers?
Construction noises echoed through the halls, and Hamid stopped dead. An electric drill whirred, then whirred again.
He picked up the pace, going as fast as was seemly for a king, and burst into Rafiq’s room.
It was unrecognizable.
A full construction crew zipped back and forth across the living space, which also served as Rafiq’s playroom. He had a separate bedroom off the living area, and his own bathroom. People were in there, too. A woman knelt on the floor, stenciling outlines of American cowboys, and Rafiq stood by, filling them in with paint. The electric drill was being used to construct wooden storage boxes—cupboards—up against one wall. Someone told a joke; another person laughed. Two people bent over a laptop, their faces glowing as they pointed at something on the screen. A laptop? That was hefty for a bedroom makeover, but then again, this bedroom renovation looked like more than a few pieces of new furniture.
Hamid had walked into another universe.
He went to the woman crouched down with the stencil and tapped her on the shoulder. She twisted to look at him, still holding the stencil against the wall, and with a shock he realized it was Tali.
“What is all this?”
A bright smile spread across her face, and she gave the stencil over to Rafiq. “We’re doing some redecorating.”
Redecorating royal rooms without consulting him? How could she? She was a guest, not a hired decorator. Not a member of the family. His hands balled into fists, and he had to consciously work to relax them. He was not the kind of man who made fists, no matter how taken aback he was. Fine. She had asked him for permission to remodel, and he’d said yes. Something about a treehouse. But he hadn’t realized she’d go through with it. And he hadn’t realized how hands-on it was going to be.
Rafiq finished painting the cowboy figure on the wall and jumped up, his face alight. “Dad! We’re painting! And we’re redoing my room. Isn’t it amazing? It’s just like the cartoons. Talitha has seen them, too. They have books that go along, and we’re going to read them.”
What cartoons?
“Go wash up for dinner, Rafiq. We’ll talk more about it while we eat.” The boy leaned the stencil carefully against the wall and scampered off. Then Hamid took Talitha by the arm and guided her out into the hallway. Slowly. Carefully. And looked into her eyes. He tried fiercely to ignore the perfect shape of her lips, quirked in a smile that seemed to be challenging him, though she didn’t say anything.
“This can’t continue,” he said in a low voice. “You’re my son’s nanny, and even though it’s in a temporary capacity, your primary duty is to care for him.”
“Oh, I am.” Talitha swiped a lock of honey-blonde hair away from her face. It had come undone from the swept-back chignon, and for some reason he found it almost unbearably endearing. “I’m sorry we lost track of time.”
“These kinds of activities aren’t for my son,” Hamid heard himself say. “Rafiq is reserved. He prefers his own company and reading to—”
“Having fun?” Talitha said it with a smile and a gentle touch to his arm. “It’s hands-on learning. We’ve been using math to measure and work out what we need for our various projects, IT skills to find pictures and plans, hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills to color in the stencils...”
“That may well be, but you’re destroying the palace.” Hot irritation swept over him. What wasn’t she hearing? “It all needs to be put back the way it was.”
“What’s all the excitement?”
Hamid straightened at the sound of his mother’s voice. She swept down the hall in a purple caftan with gold edging, Beauty and the Beast nipping along at her feet.
“My goodness. Renovations?” Nenet leaned in the door of Rafiq’s room, her eyes going round with surprise. “Oh, wow. Oh, look at this.”
Hamid searched for an explanation. Part of the reason he’d been keeping the palace the way it had been was because he didn’t want his mother to lose every piece of her past. When his father died, he’d vowed to carry on his legacy. This was part of it.
“Mother—”
But his mother was already looking at Talitha, expectation bright in her eyes. “Would you do my suite, too?”
Talitha looked from his mother to Hamid, her eyes sparkling. “If it’s all right with the king,” she demurred. “It was a pleasure to see you again, Your Highness. I need to get back to my work.” And then she was gone, with a perfect dip of a curtsy.
Hamid tried to release some of the tension that had gathered around his shoulders. “Come, Mother. The paint smell is so strong here. Let’s walk in the garden.”
His mother took his arm, and the two of them strolled out into the palace garden. Her favorite path was a little-used one in the back. Birds sang in the trees and the perfume of the flowers reminded him annoyingly of Talitha. She smelled good, too. Even in a room filled with paint fumes.
Hamid guided his mother to her favorite bench, an ornate one overlooking a fountain built to look like a series of waterfalls. She settled in with a happy sigh.
“How are you feeling, Mother? Any dizziness? A headache?” He couldn’t help asking the questions. Ever since his wife had died of heart failure, he thought about it constantly.
His mother shot him a look. “You’re my son, not a doctor.”
“And Talitha is a nanny, not a painter,” he retorted under his breath.
The Queen Mother pretended not to hear.
“What do you think of your guest?” One of the cats hopped up into his mother’s lap. “I think she’s quite creative.”
A breeze kicked up, and white petals from a flowering tree floated lazily down over them. “She’s not traditional,” Hamid said, a bit more flatly than he’d intended.
“Yes,” his mother said wistfully. “She’s modern and free.”
“That’s not what we need for Qasha. We need to stick to the old ways. The ways that have been tested.”
His mother pursed her lips. “Qasha needs some of its traditions. But I think you’re forgetting a few of them.”
“Like what?” Hamid challenged. He spent his days making sure he lived up to the ideal of the kings of old.
His mother’s dark eyes sparkled. “Taking a woman like Talitha as your wife would be a throwback to the old ways of the desert nomads. Don’t you know? Our ancient fathers tried to choose partners who would stand in contrast to their tribes.”
“
I—” A wife? Was she serious? He hadn’t been thinking of her as a potential wife. Should he? He could find no words to express this.
“I understand, Hamid.” She patted his knee. “I know why the Jubilee celebration is so important to you. I know why you want everything to be perfect with the oil contracts. This truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it’s your first time awarding the contracts...” She smiled, and Hamid’s heart ached. It was such a familiar expression. She’d been happy, before his father died. “But you should loosen up. Your rule is so much more than observing traditions.”
“Well,” Hamid said gruffly. “Following those traditions has served me well in my leadership so far. It helps me build trust with my staff and with my people. And if we’re going to build a vibrant kingdom, then we need that strong foundation. We need it to be rock solid. I can’t afford to slip up. Not for anything.”
“Of course not, love,” his mother murmured. “Of course not.” But Hamid could hear her disagreement, even if she wouldn’t say it out loud. And she wouldn’t, would she? Of course not.
5
Tali braced for an angry visit from Hamid about the bedroom, but it never materialized. The days rolled into one another. Busy as she’d been at the jewelry store, caring for a five-year-old was far more intense. Rafiq’s nanny had taken a huge step back. And, in a way, so had Hamid. He’d gone on a business trip to visit the tribal elders. From what Tali understood, he’d see them in order of precedence as part of the preparation for the ceremony around granting the oil contracts.
First, she spent a full day with a team of staff on renovating the Queen Mother’s apartments. Nenet. She couldn’t quite bring herself to call the Queen Mother by her first name. She’d just have to keep trying. In the meantime, she’d transformed her suite from an antique furniture store to a modern oasis in the space of twenty-four hours. Not bad. She’d also set up a grownup desk for Rafiq in his own suite for all of his “work.” There wasn’t much—he was only five—but it made sense to her that he should have a dedicated space for some of his educational pursuits. That was how her parents had done it when Tali looked after her sisters and then later her little brother. No need to reinvent the wheel.