Sleeping with the Sultan. Alexandra Sellers

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      “I’m sure you’ll be at Table G with the rest of us.” The two women linked arms and moved towards the crowd around the chart beside the wide entrance to the ballroom.

      “That dress is going to cause a riot, Dana,” Jenny murmured, completely without envy. She was Dana’s opposite in nearly every physical feature—she was a curly-headed blond, with a round, cheerful, motherly face and a short dumpy shape. But she was fun, loyal and a good friend, as well as an excellent actress, and she never seemed to envy anyone anything.

      Dana laughed. “Is it shocking?”

      “You have no idea, my pet! You turn your head or lift an arm and suddenly you’re naked! I’ve seen more than one spilled drink!”

      “Well, that’s the idea,” Dana observed. “It’s supposed to get me noticed.”

      “And who is that broody alpha male you’re carefully not exchanging glances with?”

      Dana’s cheeks got warm. “Who do you mean?”

      Jenny laughed and squeezed her arm. “You know very well who I mean. First he looks at you, then you look at him, and you’re both careful never to be caught at it. Darling, have you had a complicated affair with a handsome sheikh and managed to keep it secret?”

      Dana jerked upright. “I don’t even know his name, and I certainly don’t want to learn it! Where did you get the idea I knew him?”

      “Oh…just a certain sizzle in the air,” Jenny said, mock dreamily. “The air between you is distorted, sort of like when heat is rising over the desert sands….”

      A man with a clipboard stopped them before Dana could argue.

      “It’s quite all right, I can check for you, Miss Morningstar!” he said, so obviously smitten that Jenny laughed. He riffled through his pages. “Table D,” he announced. “That’s about five o’clock on the inner circle if you take the dais as twelve.”

      This cryptic comment made sense a few moments later when they moved into the ballroom. Against the centre of the back wall was a raised octagonal dais where a Middle Eastern ensemble, including the traditional tar, setar, nay and santur, as well as zither and violin, was tuning up. Around the dais was a polished octagonal dance floor, and around that were arranged tiers of round tables, each seating eight people.

      The band began playing as the guests entered and spread out to find their tables—a haunting melody that Dana recognized. It was a traditional Bagestani song called Aina al Warda?—“Where is the Rose?”—which had taken on a special resonance for the expatriate Bagestanis, all so bitterly opposed to Ghasib’s terrible regime. Her father had played it to Dana and her sister throughout her childhood.

      “I wonder why you’re not at Table G with the rest of us?” Jenny moaned after accompanying her to Table D and discovering, contrary to both inclination and expectation, that the man with the clipboard was right.

      “It’s a bore,” Dana agreed, but there wasn’t going to be a seating change now.

      “Who are you with, then?” Jenny bent to the cards on either side of Dana’s own. The band was giving Aina al Warda? all it had, and as people around the room sank into their seats, Dana saw another stern dark man looking her way. He was dressed in the Western style, black tie, and looked as though he was wondering whether to cross over to her.

      Her father.

      Where is the Rose?

      When will I see her?

      The nightingale asks after his beloved….

      She stared at him. Well, this put a whole new complexion on the fund-raising evening. This was no mere Drought Relief Campaign. Her father would not have come to any ordinary charity fund-raiser for Bagestan. He was convinced that, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, most of the money raised in good faith in the West went straight into President Ghasib’s own coffers and the poor scarcely saw a penny.

      Dana took a fresh look around at the other guests. They were top bracket; the tickets to this affair had been very pricey. Only about half of them were the usual run of charity supporters and celebrity hunters, though.

      The other half were wealthy, educated Bagestani expats—mostly those of a certain age who had been rich enough to get out of the country in sixty-nine, but sprinkled with a few who had come as refugees in the years since and made good. The next generation, the foreign-born sons and daughters like herself, were also well represented.

      The women were mostly in traditional Bagestani dress of beautifully decorated shalwar kamees and trailing gold-embroidered scarf, and a number of the older men were in immaculate white djellabas. More than one of them, hearing that music, now had eyes that were brighter for tears.

      Her father was still looking at her. She wondered if he had seen her dress. She hoped so. She was suddenly filled with a dry, dead fury, as if her father had somehow manipulated her presence here. Logic told her that was impossible.

      “Hellooo,” Jenny carolled.

      Dana surfaced, nodded a cool acknowledgement to her father and turned away. “Sorry, what did you say?”

      “Sir John Cross,” Jenny repeated, pointing to the card at the place setting to one side of Dana’s. “Who’s he?”

      “A diplomat, I think. Or, he was.” She had a vague memory of her father’s voice. “Wasn’t he the British Ambassador to Bagestan at the time of the coup?”

      “Search me!” Jenny shrugged. “Poor Dana! And Sheikh Ashraf Durran,” she read from the card on her other side. “One of those boring old farts in white skirts, I bet. My poor darling, it’s going to be a long night for you.”

      “It is going to be a very successful fund-raising night,” Dana told her with dry sarcasm, unable to hold down her irritation.

      “Is it? How do you know?” Jenny asked with a smile. She wasn’t big on world affairs, Dana reminded herself. And her interest in such things as mind manipulation techniques began and ended with using her disarming, housewifely smile in fabric softener commercials.

      “Because it may say Drought Relief on the banners, but the real story behind this little event is Line Our Pockets with Gold and One Day We’ll Restore the Monarchy in Bagestan!” she told Jenny through her teeth. “God, these people make me sick!”

      Jenny blinked. “What do—”

      “Listen to that music! They’re deliberately playing on everyone’s insane hopes for Ghasib to be overthrown and a new sultan to come riding in on his white horse and turn back the clock to the Golden Age! It’s not going to happen, but they will get a fortune from the deluded tonight! It’s unspeakable!”

      Jenny was looking at her in surprise. Dana wasn’t often like this, except when she was on the set playing the overexcitable Reena.

      “But, Dana, wouldn’t you rather see Ghasib kicked out? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if one of the al Whatsit princes could be found and restored to the throne?”

      “You’ve been reading the Sunday papers, Jenny. It’s nothing СКАЧАТЬ