‘Even that sounds a bit grand. I keep pinching myself to prove I’m really here and not dreaming.’ Polly turned her head at the sound of people approaching. Men. All dressed in simple white dishdashas. She watched wide-eyed as her food was set over a small burner to keep warm. The saffron-coloured rice dish smelt absolutely fantastic.
‘This is maqbous,’ Rashid said as one of the men spooned a portion into a shallow bowl. ‘It’s a popular Amrahi dish, although not confined to this region. You’ll find the same in Oman and Saudi Arabia. Balkrash, too.’
Instead of handing it to her, the man placed it down on the low table in front of her and it was Rashid who passed it across. Then he spoke to the men in Arabic and they silently moved away, leaving behind tall glasses of layered fruit juice and a jug of iced water.
‘I hope you will enjoy this more than gahwa.’
Polly looked back up into his teasing blue eyes. When he looked at her like that it was really very difficult to remember all the reasons why she shouldn’t let herself relax into the moment. She’d had years and years of being responsible. It would be wonderful to act without thinking. To succumb to the playboy prince of Amrah, perhaps?
Crazy.
She carefully combined some of the white meat with the rice for a perfect first mouthful, glad she had something to do.
‘It’s spicy,’ she said, surprised. ‘And it’s lovely. Are you not eating anything?’
‘No.’
Polly felt a sudden wave of renewed embarrassment as she realised all this food was for her. ‘You know, I could have waited until tomorrow. There was no need for Bahiyaa to—’
‘It is our pleasure.’
It was really too late to protest too much. The food was there, she was hungry and it was delicious. She’d been too excited during her flight to eat much, not particularly inspired by what had been served either. ‘Thank you.’
Rashid poured her a glass of iced water. He set that on the low table in front of her and, once she’d finished eating, she exchanged her empty bowl for the water. Ice, ice cold.
‘I think I’m in heaven.’
‘I always think that when I come home to Amrah.’
He smiled and Polly felt her own falter. ‘Then why spend so much time away?’
He shrugged with typical Arab insouciance. ‘I have business which takes me abroad. Hobbies.’
Oh, yes, she knew plenty about those. She’d seen the smiling pictures of Sheikh Rashid Al Baha with assorted society beauties. It might help control her awareness of him if she remembered that.
‘Like your stepbrother I am passionate about horses, but that is more of a mission than a hobby.’
Nothing like Anthony, then. The Beaufort Stud was a means to an end. Not a passion, certainly not a mission. Even Shelton wasn’t. He saw the castle as a financial drain.
Polly took another spicy mouthful, determined not to dwell on how precarious Shelton’s future was. She couldn’t alter Anthony’s personality, couldn’t inspire him with her love for the castle, any more than his father had been able to. ‘In what way a mission?’
‘I want to see Arabia acknowledged as the home of racing.’ Rashid placed his glass down on the table and looked at her. ‘Every thoroughbred can trace its lineage back to one of three sires.’
‘Yes, I know. The Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Barb and…the Byerly Turk,’ she produced triumphantly, ridiculously glad her marshmallow brain had come up with something sensible.
Rashid sat back against the cushions. ‘Trace their heritage back a little further and you discover all three have their roots in Arabia. Racing belongs here. What I have begun here is a fraction of what the Maktoum family have achieved for Dubai, but it will come.’
‘Gambling is forbidden here, isn’t it?’ Polly said, after a moment.
‘As it is in Dubai.’
Polly nodded. ‘So that must mean your interest is tourism. Particularly since you said your oil reserves are running out. So, why,’ she continued, slightly intimidated by the sudden narrowing of his eyes, ‘why aren’t you more enthusiastic about this documentary?’
‘What makes you think I’m not?’
‘Are you?’
His sensual mouth twisted into something approaching a smile. ‘I have given my permission.’
Which was no answer at all. And he was watching her again as though he expected her to be trouble. She didn’t understand why. ‘Surely you want people to catch a glimpse of Amrah and be inspired to come here?’
He said nothing. Hard, flinty eyes looked at her, a muscle flexing in his cheek, then he leant forward to pick up his glass again and took a sip. ‘Let us say I find it difficult to trust,’ he said, at last.
‘We really don’t intend any kind of political comment. This documentary is to be entirely about Elizabeth Lewis.’ Polly looked about the garden, foolishly hurt. There was no reason on earth why he should trust her. He didn’t know her. It wasn’t personal… ‘Was this really here in the time of my great-great-grandmother?’
‘It was created for her.’
‘It was?’
‘It’s why there are so many roses. Tradition has it that Elizabeth missed the roses of her English home and so my great-great-grandfather conceived and planted this garden for her. You know they lived here for a time?’
Polly shook her head.
‘After their adventure in the Atiq Desert in eighteen eighty-nine they stayed here for a handful of months.’ Rashid settled back against the cushions once more, the fierce glitter in his eyes gone. ‘You knew they became lovers within days of meeting?’
Polly nodded. The knowledge that their ancestors had been lovers made her feel shy. ‘Dr Wriggley said they settled in Al-Jalini.’
‘Elizabeth was settled there. When it became clear she wasn’t going to return home. It’s a beautiful sea port and she lived there until she died in nineteen oh-four.’
‘Alone?’
‘No.’ Rashid picked up one of the fruit juices and handed it across to Polly. ‘Al-Jalini is the perfect place to live out a romantic idyll. I think King Mahmoud spent every moment he could with her, much to the anger of his wives. Theirs was an enduring love story.’
‘But selfish.’ She’d thought a lot about this. ‘He was already married and so was she. And Elizabeth was a mother. I’ve read some letters which say her son was told she’d died and we know her husband drank himself to a premature death. The scandal was too much for him, I suppose.’
‘The son being your great-grandfather?’
Polly nodded. Those letters had made her cry. ‘It’s a strange feeling to be connected to someone as…colourful as her,’ Polly said, searching for the right word, ‘but when you start to think about the hurt she caused I can’t like her particularly.’
Rashid picked up the second fruit juice and sipped, his eyes not leaving her face.
‘I do like her courage and zest for living,’ Polly said, stumbling on. ‘I’d like to have that.’ She’d really like to have that, but real life had intervened. She had responsibilities, people she cared for and who cared about her. As Elizabeth Lewis had had. ‘I know I’d have stayed in England and tended my rose garden there. Not very exciting of me, is it?’
‘It depends on the motivation behind the decision.’
‘I couldn’t have left my child.’
‘Mothers do.’
His mother had, if what she’d read about him was true. If only there were a nice deep hole in which she could hide herself. For someone who prided herself on her social skills, she was doing appallingly.
She struggled on, ‘And, maybe it wasn’t as straightforward as it seems. These things often aren’t.’ She stopped her fingers pleating her lihaf.
‘What became of the son?’
Polly forced a smile and said brightly, ‘Oh, he married and had five children spread over two wives. The youngest son being my grandfather, who became a not particularly distinguished soldier with something of a drink problem. So perhaps his grandfather’s early demise wasn’t entirely due to Elizabeth. It would be nice to think that. My mother remembers her father as being very…handsome but ineffectual.’
‘You didn’t know him?’
‘Oh, no, he died in his forties and his widow became a housekeeper and, family gossip has it, a little bit more to a Major Bradley.’ Polly picked up her fruit juice and traced a finger across the condensation on the glass. ‘Now, I do remember him. Not that I knew anything about the “little bit more”. As far as I was aware she really did just look after his house. They never married.’
‘And your mother?’
‘Became a shorthand typist and eventually married my father. Who was a chef at Shelton.’
Rashid hadn’t moved. His eyes were still on her face, his expression one of polite interest. She’d probably bored him rigid.
‘What’s in this?’ Polly asked, holding out her fruit juice. ‘I don’t think I’ve tasted anything like it.’
Rashid moved one long finger up the glass. ‘Avocado, orange, pomegranate and mango.’
She took another sip. ‘I can taste the orange, but I’d never have guessed avocado. It’s lovely.’