The sheikh's chosen wife(23)

Leona began to smile. 'Now you're talking,' she enthused, and,  stretching out a long leg, she rose from the bed a different person than  the one who'd slumped down on it minutes ago. 'I'm glad you're here,  Evie,' she murmured huskily.

It was a remark she could have repeated a hundred times over during the  following days when everyone did try to appear content to simply enjoy  the cruise with no underlying disputes to spoil it.

But in truth many undercurrents were at work. In the complicated way of  Arab politics, there was no natural right to succession in Rahman. First  among equals was the Arab way of describing a collective of tribe  leaders amongst which one is considered the most authoritative. The next  leader did not necessarily have to be the son of the one preceding him,  but choice became an open issue on which all heads of the family

In truth everyone knew that Hassan was the only sensible man for the job  simply because he had been handling the modern thrusts of power so  successfully for the last five years as his father's health had begun to  fail. No one wanted to tip the balance. As it stood, the other families  had lived well and prospered under Al-Qadim rule. Rahman was a  respected country in Arabia. Landlocked though it was, the oil beneath  its desert was rich and in plenty, and within its borders were some of  the most important oases that other, more favourably placed countries,  did not enjoy.

But just as the sands shifted, so did opinions. AI-Mahmud and Al-Yasin  might have lived well and prospered under thirty years of Al-Qadim rule,  but they had disapproved of Hassan's choice of wife from the beginning.  Though they could not fault the dedication Hassan's wife had applied to  her role, nor ignore the respect she had earned from the Rahman people,  she was frail of body. She had produced no sons in five years of  marriage, and then had made Hassan appear weak to his peers when she'd  walked away from him of her own volition. Divorce should have followed  swiftly. Hassan had refused to discuss it as an option. Therefore, a  second wife should have been chosen. Hassan's refusal to pander to what  he called the ways of the old guard had incensed many. Not least Sheikh  Abdul Al-Yasin who had not stopped smarting from the insult he'd  received when Hassan had not chosen his daughter, Nadira, who had been  primed from birth to take the role.

With Hassan's father's health failing fast, Sheikh Abdul had seen an  opportunity to redress this insult. All it required was for Hassan to  agree to take on a second wife in order to maintain the delicate balance  between families. It was that simple. Everyone except Hassan agreed  that his marriage to Nadira Al-Yasin would form an alliance that would  solve everyone's problems. Hassan could keep his first wife. No one was  asking him to discard this beautiful but barren woman. But his first son  would come from the womb of Nadira Al-Yasin, which was all that really  mattered.

The alternatives? Sheikh Jibril Al-Mahmud had a son who could be  considered worthy of taking up the mantle Hassan's father would leave  vacant. And no one could afford to ignore Sheikh Imran Al-Mukhtar and  his son, Samir. Samir might be too young to take on the mantle of power  but his father was not.

This, however only dealt with the male perspective. As the sheikhs  fought their war with words on each other during long discussions,  ensconced in one of the staterooms, the women were waging a similar war  for their own reasons. Zafina Al-Yasin wanted Leona out and her  daughter, Nadira, in. Since Hassan was not allowing this, then she would  settle for her daughter taking second place. For the power lay in the  sons born in a marriage, not the wives. So critical remarks were dropped  at every opportunity to whittle away at Leona's composure and a  self-esteem that was already fragile due to her inability to give Hassan  what he needed most in this world.                       
       
           



       

In the middle of it all stood Sheikh Raschid and his wife, Evie offering  positive proof that west could successfully join with east. For Behran  had gone from strength to strength since their marriage and was fast  becoming one of the most influential States in Arabia. But they had a  son. It was the cog on which everything else rotated.

It took two days to navigate the Suez Canal, and would take another five  to cross the Red Sea to the city of Jeddah on the coast of Saudi  Arabia. By the time they had reached the end of the Canal, battle lines  had been clearly marked for those times when the war of words would rage  or a truce would be called. Mornings were truce times, when everyone  more or less did their own thing and the company could even be called  pleasant.

In the afternoons most people took a siesta, unless Samir grew restless and chivvied the others towards more enjoyable pursuits.

'Just look at them,' Evie murmured indulgently one afternoon as they  stood watching Samir, Rafiq, Raschid and Hassan jet-skiing the ocean  like reckless idiots, criss-crossing each other's wash with a daring  that sometimes caught the breath. "They're like little boys with  exciting new toys.'

They came back to the boat, refreshed, relaxed-and ready to begin the  first wave of strikes when the men gathered to drink coffee in one of  the staterooms while the women occupied another.

Dinner called a second truce. After dinner, when another split of the  sexes occurred, hostilities would resume until someone decided to call  it a day and went to bed.

Bed was a place you could neither describe as a place of war nor truce.  It gave you a sanctuary in which you had the chance to vent all of the  things you had spent the day suppressing. But when the person in the bed  with you saw you as much the enemy as every one else did, then you were  in deep trouble. As Hassan acknowledged every time he slid into bed  beside Leona and received the cold shoulder if he so much as attempted  to touch her or speak.

She was angry with him for many reasons, but angriest most for some  obscure point he had not managed to expose. He was aware that this  situation was difficult, that she would rather be anywhere else other  than trapped on this yacht right now. He knew she was unhappy, that she  was only just managing to hide that from everyone else. That she was  eating little and looking contradictorily pale when in truth her skin  was taking on a deeper golden hue with every passing day. He knew that  Zafina and Medina used any opportunity presented to them to compare her  situation unfavourably with Evie's. And he wished Raschid had shown some  sensitivity to that prospect when he'd made the decision to bring his  children along!

The children were a point of conflict he could not seem to deal with.  This evening, for instance, when Raschid had brought his son into the  salon to say goodnight to everyone. Hashim had run the length of the  room with his arms open wide in demand for a hug from Leona. She had  lifted him up in her arms and received all of his warm kisses to her  face with smiles of pleasure while inside, Hassan knew, the ache of  empty wishes must be torture for her.

When she hurt, he hurt. When he had no remedy to ease that pain, he had  to turn away from its source or risk revealing to her the emptiness of  helplessness he suffered whenever he saw her hugging a son that was not  their own.

But in trying to protect Leona from himself he had forgotten the other  pairs of eyes watching him. The Al-Mahmuds and the Al-Yasins had seen,  read and drawn their

'A sad sight, is it not?' Abdul had dared to say.

Leona had heard him, had known what he'd been referring to, and had been shunning Hassan ever since.

'Talk to me, for Allah's sake.' He sighed into the darkness.

'Find another bed to sleep in.'

Well, they were words, he supposed, then sighed again, took the bull by  the horns and pushed himself up to lean over her then tugged her round  to face him. 'What is it that you want from me?' he demanded. 'I am  trying my best to make this work for us!'

Her eyes flicked open; it was like gazing into pools of broken ice. 'Why  go to all this trouble when I am still going to leave you flat the  first moment I know I can do it without hurting your father?'

'Why?' he challenged.

'We've already been through the whys a hundred times! They haven't  changed just because you have decided to play the warlord and win the  battle against your rotten underlings without giving an inch to anyone!'

'Warlord?' His brow arched. 'How very pagan.' He made sure she knew he liked the sound of that title in a very phys-

'Oh, get off me,' she snapped, gave a push and rolled free of him,  coming to her feet by the bed. Her hair floated everywhere, and the  cream silk pyjamas shimmied over her slender figure as she walked down  the room and dumped herself into one of the chairs, then dared to curl  up in it as if he would allow her to sleep there!