Shackled to the Sheikh(24)

‘Welcome, Tora, come and join us,’ said another. ‘At last, some adult company for you. It will make a nice change from Rashid, I am sure.’

Tora smiled and looked at Rashid, who was scowling. ‘My desert brothers,’ he said, introducing the three men, ‘whom I love with my life. Apart from the times I want to kill them, that is.’



Coronation day dawned pink and clear and just about perfect, he supposed, if you didn’t have a spiked cannonball rolling around in your gut.

Rashid rose early, knowing there was no putting it off, watching the layers of the early-morning sky peel away from where he took coffee on his terrace, pink giving way to blue, just as peace would give way to madness.

The day would be long—interminable at times, no doubt—a breakfast with foreign dignitaries and officials and then a long tortuous motorcade through the city to show off their new Emir before a public feast in Qajaran City’s biggest square. Then while the official party headed to the formal coronation ceremony, the gates of the Fun Palace would be thrown open to the public, the ceremony relayed on big screens, before a state dinner for six hundred, all topped off with cannon fire and fireworks.

He was exhausted already.

Exhausted and still more than a little daunted.

His cup rattled against his saucer when he went to pick it up and he lifted his trembling hand to inspect it.

God, what was wrong with him? He had studied the books. He had read the histories and pored over enough economic papers and reports to sink a ship, he had listened to the advice of Kareem and Zoltan and the Council of Elders, and still he wondered what he was doing here.

Duty.

There came a knock at the door and Kareem entered with two assistants bearing the robes he would wear today. ‘Excellency, it is time to prepare.’



He was dressed and taking his last few breaths as a free man when he heard the soft knock, but it wasn’t Kareem this time. It came from the connecting door to Tora’s apartments, the door he had never opened although temptation in the shape of a seductress lay just the other side. The door opened and a soft voice called his name, a voice that, to his fevered mind, sounded as cool as a waterfall. And then she entered, and for a moment he forgot the pain and the fever and the damnable tremble in his hands, because he had never seen anyone more beautiful.

She was dressed in a golden robe, exquisitely embroidered, with gold trim similar to his own, and with long sweeping cuffs on the sleeves and a gossamer-thin silk shawl over her hair that framed her face and floated like a cloud as she moved. She looked like something out of a medieval fantasy.

His next fantasy.

‘Rashid,’ she said, and her eyes opened wide as they took in the sight of him dressed in his unfamiliar robes, the first time she had seen him dressed this way. She blinked and seemed to gather herself. ‘I just wanted to wish you well today,’ she said, ‘before it all gets crazy.’

As they both knew it would.

He nodded, because his jaw set too tight to talk and the spiked cannonball in his gut rolled and stuck its spikes in his innards, and he had to take himself to the window to ease the pressure.

For her gesture, her simple act of kindness, had almost brought him undone.

She understood a lot for a woman who wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t needed to adopt Atiyah and coerced her into a convenient marriage. Because she had become so much more than simply a convenient wife. Her suggestion of opening the Fun Palace to the public had led to its inclusion in the proceedings today, an inclusion he had been informed had been met by the people with huge anticipation and great excitement. He was sharing some of the riches of the state and it was he who was being lauded for it.

She understood a lot more than he had given her credit for.

She would be gone soon.

And his breath caught, as the pointed barbs of that cannonball stuck their points into his raw and wounded flesh anew.



Tora had never seen Rashid in robes—had never imagined that a man who was so at home and looked so good in western clothes could own a look so traditional and yet he did. His snowy white robes and the tunic beneath were lined with gold trim, his headpiece bound with a band of black that would be replaced with a band of gold, in the final step of the ceremony that would make him Emir.

Tall and broad-shouldered, his skin looking as if it had been burnished by the sun against so much white, he looked magnificent, as if he had been born of the desert sands—born to rule—and yet Tora could see the battle going on behind his features, could see the slight tremble in his hands that he was at pains to disguise, and she ached for him.

‘You have no need to be afraid,’ she said softly.

‘What?’ He turned sharply.

‘You have no reason to fear.’

‘Is that what you think? That I’m afraid?’ But his voice lacked the conviction of his words and he knew it by the way he dropped his head and turned away again.

‘You’re strong,’ she said behind him. ‘You’re intelligent and just and a good man, and you want to do the best for the people of Qajaran. They are lucky to have you.’

He heaved in air, and his words, when they came, might have been blasted raw by the desert sands and the hot wind. ‘I was not brought up for this.’

‘But it’s in your blood. Your father—’

‘How is finding you’re suddenly responsible for the welfare and futures of millions of people in your blood?’

‘You can do this, Rashid,’ she said, more sternly than she’d planned. ‘You would not be here if you did not believe that. Nobody who knows you, nobody here in this palace does not believe that.’

‘How can you—someone who I have known for the tiniest fraction of my life—say that?’

‘Because I have seen how hard you work. I have seen that a weaker man would walk away and that a greedy man would stay even if the task was beyond him. You are not like that. You can do this, and you will prevail and you will be a good Emir.’

Kareem interrupted them with a knock on the door. ‘Excellency, Sheikha, if you are ready?’

She glanced at him one more time before nodding and saying she would check on Yousra and Atiyah, and had turned to go when he caught her hand before she could disappear. ‘Thank you for those words. They mean more than you know.’ He squeezed her hand tightly in his before he let her go. ‘I just hope you are right.’

She smiled up at him in a way that warmed him from the inside out in a way the sun had never done. ‘I know I am,’ she said, and her words and her warmth gave him the courage to believe it.



It was exhausting but it was exciting, too. Tora sat alongside Rashid on a sofa under the shade of a tent that had been set up on a dais before a huge square that was full of the longest tables she had ever seen. They had breakfasted with the foreign dignitaries at the palace and now it was the turn of the people to meet their soon-to-be Emir before they returned to the palace for the coronation proper. Bright banners in the Qajarese colours fluttered in the air, competing with the cheerful holiday colours worn by the women and even some of the men. There was a party atmosphere as the feasting got under way, musicians and dancers providing the entertainment, and the sound of laughter was everywhere.

And not even the knowledge that theirs was a marriage of convenience, and that soon she would be heading home and no longer the sheikha, could not diminish her delight in being part of the proceedings. For now, legally at least, she was the sheikha and she would do the best job she could, even if her stomach was a mass of butterflies. But this wasn’t about her, it was about Rashid, and the coronation of a new Emir, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and she was going to lap up every single moment of it.

And then a young girl climbed from her seat and approached the dais, in her hands a posy of flowers, her eyes wide and a little in awe as she stood waiting at the steps. Kareem leaned low over Tora’s shoulder. ‘She has flowers to welcome the new sheikha, if you so wish.’

‘For me?’ Today was supposed to be all about Rashid, she had thought. But still she smiled and held out her hand to urge her up and the little girl smiled back and climbed the stairs and bowed before handing over the flowers and uttering something in Qajarese.

‘What did she say?’

Kareem leaned low again. ‘She wished you many sons and daughters.’

‘Oh,’ Tora said, suddenly embarrassed, before adding thank you in Qajarese, one of the few words that she’d learned, feeling guilty because now she wasn’t just observing the proceedings; she was a participant in them.

There were more children after that, and more blessings and more flowers, until their table was transformed into a sea of flowers, and Tora smiled at all comers, girl or boy, and their faces lit up when she thanked them.

She glanced across at Rashid at one stage and felt a sizzle down her spine when she found him watching her, his gaze thoughtful and filled with something that almost looked like respect.



Rashid watched her accept another bunch of flowers, touching her fingers to the child’s face as she thanked her, and the girl skipped back to where her family were sitting, almost luminescent with delight. Tora was a stranger to this pomp and ceremony as much as he was, an observer caught up in a world not her own, but you wouldn’t know it.