The Desert Bride. Lynne Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ but it is so thrilling, I think, to fly on a plane. Once I travelled to London with Princess Fatima—’ Zulema’s animated little face abruptly clouded and she dropped her shining dark head as if she had dropped a clanger.

      Fatima...who was Princess Fatima? Razul’s sister, mother, aunt...wife? Bethany knew nothing about his family.

      As Zulema hurriedly pressed the other girls into activity Bethany absorbed their unhidden high spirits and the rather discomfiting way they kept on stealing fascinated glances at her. Were they maids or was their connection with Razul of a more intimate nature? After all, every one of them was wearing enough gold jewellery to sink the Titanic. Dear God, Razul had put her in his harem just as he had promised. And he had drugged her to keep her here last night!

      What had been in that seemingly innocuous drink that she had trustingly taken from his hand? She had never managed to sleep through a migraine before. Whatever he had given her had knocked her out cold. She had slept through what remained of yesterday late into a new day. And right now she was in shock—so much shock that her brain was traumatised. The sound of running water came noisily through a door now flung wide. In a sudden motion Bethany slid from the bed. Zulema gasped and surged to proffer slippers as if the wonderful, silk-soft rug were insufficient to protect her feet.

      ‘Please...’ Please leave me alone, she wanted to plead, but when Zulema looked up at her with a horribly embarrassing look of near-worship, as if she were some sort of goddess instead of a perfectly ordinary woman the same as herself, Bethany was struck dumb.

      ‘We will bathe you, sitt.’

      Bethany, who found even communal changing rooms a mortification, was appalled by the suggestion. Fighting to hide the fact, she murmured tightly, ‘You don’t need to serve me, Zulema.’

      ‘But you are the one...you must be served,’ Zulema protested anxiously.

      The one what? Bethany almost screamed, recalling that same phrase from the airport but restraining herself. ‘Where I come from,’ she said stiltedly, ‘we do not share bathrooms.’

      Zulema giggled and delightedly shared this barbaric desire for privacy with her companions. Bethany took advantage of the huddle to slide past them into the bathroom and close the door. The ultra-modern appointments were reassuring. The bedroom, furnished with antique cedarwood inlaid with silver, had given her the disorientating impression that she had been snatched back to the time of Sheherazade. Peeling off the gown, she climbed into the bath which had been run for her, but she sat rigid in the richly scented water like a puritan invited to an orgy, furiously washed herself and clambered back out again as fast as she possibly could.

      By the time she had finished with Razul he wouldn’t be able to get her back to the airport quickly enough! Was he crazy? Did he really imagine that he could make a prisoner of her? Of course, he could not seriously mean to try and keep her here by force. But everything he had told her the previous night flooded back to her—the endowment to the university... the strict anonymity demanded ...her own surprise, as a junior member of the department, when she had been offered the research trip.

      She emerged from the bathroom wrapped in towels. ‘Where are my clothes?’

      With pride Zulema indicated the fabulous heap of jewel-coloured silks now strewn over the bed.

      ‘My clothes...my suitcase,’ Bethany extended tautly.

      Neither was forthcoming. Ignoring her audience, Bethany flicked open chests and closet doors. Nothing, not a stitch of her own clothing in sight! She wanted to stamp her feet and scream with temper, and it must have showed because Zulema and her helpers looked worried sick, as if any sign of dissatisfaction on her part was likely to bring punishment down on their unprotected heads.

      ‘OK... I’ll wear this stuff. Choose something for me,’ Bethany invited grudgingly.

      Smiles broke out again like magic. Zulema extended an emerald-green silk caftan edged with gold, and a filmy pair of lace briefs and matching bra, the likes of which Bethany had never harboured in her plain white cotton underwear drawer. A flush of increasing rage mantling her cheeks, she dressed and stood at the mirror with a silver-backed brush, yanking it brutally through her long, wild mane of tangled curls.

      ‘I have displeased you, sitt?’ Zulema pressed in a small, tearful voice. ‘Why you not like my help?’

      Bethany felt all mean and small-minded and contemptible and handed over the brush, taking a seat on a divan. How the heck could you force the principle of equality on someone when equality was neither acknowledged nor desired?

      ‘Such glorious hair. I have never seen such wonderful hair,’ Zulema sighed, delicately teasing out each snarl with reverent fingers. ‘It is the colour of the setting sun, just as was said.’

      ‘Said by whom?’

      Zulema giggled shyly. ‘Prince Razul’s guards, they talk... It is forbidden that they talk, but men, they gossip too. A long time ago we hear about the English lady with the hair of glorious colours...soon all our people know and talk and the King, he got very angry indeed to hear the whispers about his beloved son. Ah...the English breakfast is here!’ Zulema carolled excitedly as the door opened.

      What kind of whispers? Bethany wanted to know as she stood up, but Zulema threw wide yet another door, revealing a dining table and chairs. ‘Just like home,’ she told Bethany as a procession of servants bearing trays followed in her wake.

      Open-mouthed, Bethany stared as the trays were unloaded and the lids on the metal dishes were lifted one by one. Fruit juices, cereals, toast, croissants, breakfast rolls, wheaten bread and every possible kind of preserve. Fried eggs, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, even coddled eggs. Kippers, devilled kidneys, beef sausages, fried bread, tomatoes and French toast. It was lunchtime but she was receiving breakfast.

      Zulema pulled out a chair and Bethany collapsed down onto it, surveying the banquet before her. She was hungry but never in her life had she seen such a spread for one individual. The entire table was covered.

      ‘You like?’

      ‘I’m very impressed.’ Her voice wobbled in the presence of such shamelessly conspicuous consumption.

      ‘Prince Razul bring in chef from Dubai. If you not like his cooking, he go back,’ Zulema informed her cheerfully.

      Razul had hired a chef specifically to cook Western food for her? Heavens, did he actually think that she would be staying long enough for it to matter? Bethany took a deep breath, feeling more and more as though she was existing in some outrageous fantasy world, aeons removed from her own life of quiet, sensible practicality.

      She was finishing her tea when Zulema approached her again.

      ‘The Prince...he say he meet with you now,’ Zulema whispered, as if she were setting up an incredibly exciting romantic assignation.

      Bethany stood up and straightened her narrow shoulders with Amazonian spirit. ‘And don’t spare the horses.’

      ‘The horses?’

      ‘Never mind.’

      The palace was an astonishingly large building. It rambled all over the place in a hotchpotch of corridors, screened galleries and sunlit courtyards.

      At the head of a superb marble staircase Zulema abruptly halted and drew back several steps. СКАЧАТЬ