‘Raschid—what is it?’ she asked anxiously, very conscious of his sister walking with them.
This time he didn’t even attempt to dissemble. Instead he stopped walking suddenly, turned to take her by the shoulders then pushed her up against the corridor wall so he could stand right over her while his sister paused several delicate yards away.
‘We have yet another ceremony to go through tonight,’ he announced, sounding clipped and grim and beginning to look just a little jaded around the edges. ‘Again, my father has arranged this. And again I find I am in no position to argue with his decree.’
‘A marriage ceremony, you mean?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’ He grimaced. ‘What else? Do you think you are up to it?’
Like him, Evie didn’t think she was being given very much choice in the matter. ‘What do I have to do?’ she asked heavily.
‘Nothing but stand beside me and repeat the vows you will be asked to say in Arabic. And I pray to Allah that then we will be allowed to do what we came here to do and be private,’ he sighed out sardonically.
‘But you don’t hold out much hope,’ Evie dryly assumed from all of that.
‘No,’ he confessed. ‘I do not.’
‘Raschid—’ Ranya’s voice softly interrupted them. ‘We really must go now…’
Another sigh, then his mouth clamped into a flat line of grim perseverance. ‘Come,’ he said, taking hold of Evie’s hand again. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
Not the most diplomatic thing to say to his bride. But then, Evie mused as they began walking along that long corridor again, how many times did he have to marry this wretched bride before he could be allowed to feel married?
They stopped at a door. Raschid seemed to need a moment to compose himself for what was to come next, and his fresh bout of tension became Evie’s tension as, with a perceptible straightening of his broad shoulders, his fingers tightened around Evie’s hand and his other hand reached out to open the door.
What followed became lost in the realms of a dreamlike sense of unreality. The room was dark—lit only by wall-mounted candles that gave off too little light for her to see very much of what was around her.
She was vaguely aware of people standing in the dimness, vaguely aware of their curious scrutiny as Raschid led her forward. The ceremony was short—shorter than she had expected. Beside her, Raschid quietly translated every word into English for her, before she was then required to repeat them in Arabic. And through it all she kept her body in touch with his body, needing to feel the security of his presence in this alien place with its alien service and its alien sounds and scents and language.
When it was over, Raschid’s attention was claimed almost instantly. As he turned to speak to the several men who had come up to him, Ranya appeared at Evie’s side.
‘Come,’ she said quietly. ‘We must go this way…’
‘But—’ Evie did not want to leave Raschid; glancing around her, her eyes caught sight of him standing several feet away. Her hand went out, anxious to catch his attention, but even as she did so the group of men closed in around him, and Ranya’s hand on her arm was firmly guiding her away through a door that led into frighteningly unfamiliar territory.
Not a corridor, but another dimly lit room which then led through to another and another… All were richly furnished, all wore the stamp of eastern luxury. At a fourth door, Ranya paused and turned what Evie presumed was supposed to be a reassuring smile on her before she was knocking on the door.
Someone called out in Arabic. A man’s voice. A sudden sense of dreadful foreboding shot like a steel rod along her spine. Ranya opened the door and stepped inside with Evie in tow.
After the eastern splendour of all the rooms they had passed through, Evie was expecting to find herself stepping into yet more of the same. She was therefore surprised to find herself standing in a big but definitely old-fashioned library that could have been transported right out of Victorian England.
It was all oak panelling lined with shelves upon shelves of leather-bound books. Richly coloured Persian rugs covered the polished wood floor and there was even a large polished oak fire surround with a log fire burning in the grate—although it did so behind a shield of heat-reflective glass.
The chairs and sofas were of old English dark red velvet, and several huge desks were groaning under the weight of the books and papers scattered across them.
And it all felt so very strange—as if she had just walked into her grandfather’s study on one of those duty visits she used to make to his home with her mother when she was a child.