Shackled to the Sheikh(13)

But of course, they would be heading for a palace. Where else would an Emir live?

And then the palms parted and the car rolled slowly past a fountain that was the size of a small lake, featuring stallions made of gleaming marble and standing tall on their hind legs, their manes alive to an unfelt breeze as they pranced in the tumbling water that sparkled like jewels in the sun.

But while the fountain was spectacular, it was a mere accessory to the palace. Tora took one look and knew she’d left her old world behind and stepped into the pages of a fairy tale. Surely it was the most beautiful building she’d ever seen, with decorative arches and rows of columns and a golden dome adorning the roof, and the whole effect was as romantic as it was impressive.

The limousine rolled to a stop under a colonnaded entrance shaded from the weather and before a flight of stairs where a dozen uniformed men, wearing the colours of the flags she’d seen waved in the streets, stood waiting.

‘Welcome home, Excellency, Sheikha,’ Kareem said with a nod as one of the guards stepped forward to open the door.

Sheikha? Tora swallowed as she unfastened Atiyah’s capsule and prepared to enter this strange new world. But of course, she supposed, she must be a sheikha if she was married to a sheikh.

And then she caught a glance of Rashid’s grimly set jaw. She was married to this man. As good as shackled to the sheikh. A fairy tale? And suddenly Tora wasn’t so sure.



‘If you please, Sheikha Victoria,’ Kareem said with a bow as he gestured her to enter, ‘this is your suite.’

Tora was reeling. She’d thought the outside of the palace was breathtaking, but then she’d stepped inside into air scented with jasmine and musk and known she was in some kind of fantasy land. Walls were decorated in gilt and mosaic, chairs and tables inlaid with mother of pearl. It was a feast for the eyes, and everywhere she looked another work of art demanded her attention. It was all she could do not to gape.

It was all she could do not to run. Still dressed in her serviceable, travel-weary uniform while everything around her was exotic and beautiful, she had never felt more out of place.

And now Kareem was showing them a suite that would swallow up her entire house in Sydney and still leave enough room to live in, and that was without taking into account the terrace overlooking the pool and garden outside her windows where the now setting sun was bathing everything including a row of mountains far in the distance in a ruby glow. It was utterly magical, and that was only the outside.

The bedroom itself was enormous, hosting a magnificent gilt four-poster bed, and there was a room prepared for Atiyah along with another room for Yousra, a local girl who’d been assigned to be her nursery maid, and the main bathroom had a bath that put some of the lap pools at home to shame.

Her suite. All hers. Which meant that Rashid would be sleeping elsewhere, and for the first time since arriving Tora started to relax. If she wanted to avoid Rashid, she need never leave the safety of her room.

She eyed the four-poster bed longingly. Weary from both the travel and the emotional roller coaster of the last however many hours since she’d walked into her cousin’s office, already she imagined herself lost in blissful sleep amongst the cushions and the pillows. Tomorrow would be soon enough to chase up the funds Rashid had promised and let Sally know they were coming. By then she might be able to sound convincing when she told Sally that her delay in returning home was caused by nothing more than a simple request to stay while Atiyah settled in. Not that anyone was likely to believe her if she did tell them the truth.

But that could wait until tomorrow. Once Tora had bathed and fed Atiyah and seen her comfortable, bed was the first place she was headed.

‘And through this door,’ Kareem continued, opening a door of exquisitely carved timber, ‘is Your Excellency’s suite. The rooms are interconnecting, of course.’

‘But of course,’ said Rashid with a smirk in Tora’s direction.

He was teasing her again, she realised. No more than taunting her. And yet all of a sudden Tora’s sprawling apartment didn’t seem anywhere near big enough.

Atiyah cried out, growing restless, and Tora saw her chance.

‘If that is all?’ she asked, not interested in venturing into Rashid’s apartments. ‘I will take care of Atiyah. She’s had a long day.’

‘Cannot Yousra take care of the child for you?’ Kareem asked. ‘Would you not like to dine together with us?’

While the girl’s eyes looked up at her hopefully, Rashid’s dark eyes gleamed, his lips turned up in one corner. He knew she was avoiding him and right now she didn’t care.

‘I will welcome Yousra’s assistance, of course,’ Tora said, smiling at the girl so as not to offend her, but also because she really would appreciate the help, especially when sleep tugged so hard at her, ‘but Atiyah has been through many changes recently, and until she’s settled in I’d like to keep some routine in her life. Besides, I’m sure you and Rashid have many matters to discuss that don’t require my input.’

‘As you wish,’ Kareem said with a bow, and Tora was surprised to see what looked like approval in his eyes. ‘I will have your meal sent up.’ He touched his fingers to Atiyah’s brow, uttered a blessing to the child and wished Tora goodnight.

‘I’ll see you later,’ said Rashid.

‘Seven in the morning for breakfast?’ Tora suggested, refusing to acknowledge the implicit threat in his words. ‘That would be perfect. We have some details to discuss also. Goodnight.’

And the flash of his eyes and the flare of his nostrils told her he did not like her dictating when they would meet or being so summarily dismissed. No doubt, he didn’t like being reminded about his end of the bargain either. Tough. He had promised, he could pay up. ‘Come,’ said Tora, turning to Yousra. ‘Let’s give Atiyah her bath now.’

With a swish of Kareem’s robes, she heard him disappear with Rashid through the interconnecting door and Tora could breathe again.



Zoltan was coming. Rashid felt the tight bunching ache in his gut loosen a fraction, but it was fraction enough to be able to breathe more deeply than he had since arriving in Qajaran. He gazed out from his terrace over the gardens surrounding the expansive pool below. Around him the palace slept. Night had fallen fast and now the sky above was a velvet shroud of blue black.

 Zoltan would arrive in three days, to be joined by Aisha and the children, and Bahir and Kadar with their own families, the day before the coronation. The last time they had been together had been in Melbourne for Kadar’s wedding six months ago. It would be good for the desert brothers to be together again, although once there were just four of them, and now every time they got together there seemed to be more, wives and children swelling their numbers. He shook his head. Such an eventuality would have been unthinkable even a few years ago, one by one his brothers falling into marriage.

He alone was left. He wasn’t counting his hastily contrived marriage to Tora. It wasn’t as if she were a real wife. She would be gone in a matter of weeks, even if their marriage needed to last a year on paper. In some ways, it was unfortunate that his desert brothers and their wives would meet her at all, for they were bound to make something of this temporary arrangement.

He heard a sound and looked sideways towards where Tora’s suite of apartments lay, but the night settled into quiet again, the rustle of the palm fronds on the barely there breeze the only sound.

He sighed. Well, let his brothers make of it what they would. He had much more important things to think about now, like a country full of people who had been offered morsels through years where the Emir had grown rich on its resource revenues. Things needed to change. Less money would be lavished on palaces and fripperies. More money would go to funding schools and hospitals, especially outside the city, where needs went unseen and often ignored when they were.

His grip on the alabaster balustrade of the balcony tightened until his knuckles hurt.

It was easy to see where the inequities and injustices lay, but there was so much to address. Could he fix the problems of the past thirty years of maladministration?

Why was he even considering it?

But then somebody had to do it—share the riches and drag this country into the twenty-first century—and he was next in line to the throne.

His gut screwed tighter all over again. God, what was he even doing here? He was a petroleum engineer by day with a reputation as a playboy by night. Apart from his DNA, what qualifications did he have to equip him to run a country?

He looked around. There was that sound again. The child, he realised. But this time there was more.

She was singing that song again.

Both drawn and repelled in the same instant, he watched as Tora emerged from her suite, the baby clutched in her arms as she sang the soft, soothing words of a lullaby he never knew and yet that somehow tugged at some deep part of him. He melted into the shadows as she swayed in the night air, singing words of comfort and peace, her hair down out of that damned bun, just the way he liked it, while the blue light from the pool below turned her long white nightdress translucent so that it floated like a cloud around her slim legs and tickled the tops of her bare feet.