The Desert Bride of Al Zayed / Best Man's Conquest: The Desert Bride of Al Zayed / Best Man's Conquest. Michelle Celmer

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СКАЧАТЬ to one knee beside the bed. “You must take the morphine, it will help the pain.”

      “I am feeling much better. The confusion and dizzy head is less now that I abandon the medicine.” His father’s hand rested on top of Tariq’s head. Gone was the solid weight that had stroked his hair as a child. No longer the hand of a ruler feared and revered by his subjects, but the wavering touch of a dying man. Tariq swallowed the hot thickness in his throat.

      “Hadi al Ebrahim has been to see me.” Tariq’s head rose as his father spoke. “He tells me the sheikhah has returned.”

      Hadi was one of his father’s most trusted aides. Tariq nodded. “She came to see you but you were—” drugged “—sleeping.” He watched his father carefully, unsure of what to say next. A couple of months ago, soon after the terrible diagnosis, Tariq had heard rumours that his father had sent Hadi on a mission to Sheikh Karim—a mission that he was not prepared to confront his father about now that he was dying. Instead he’d obliquely mentioned to his father that in terms of his marriage contract with Jayne he could take only one wife at a time. His father had looked fit to burst, calling Tariq a foolish monkey. Tariq certainly hadn’t expected his father to be overjoyed by Jayne’s return. But, for his father to die in peace, he needed to convince his father that marriage to Jayne was what he, Tariq, wanted more than anything on earth….

      “Good. It is time that your wife resumes her position at your side.”

      Tariq’s mouth fell open. While he was aware that his father wanted him contently married before he died, he’d anticipated a little more resistance. Especially as his father had evidently had other plans.

      “Hadi is worried,” the Emir said. “He says that Ali and Mahood can make a lot of trouble for Karim—and for you.”

      Tariq shrugged. “I’m sorry to say this, Father, but their trouble causing is not new.” And if Hadi had been acting as a go-between to broker a marriage between Tariq and Sheikh Karim’s half sister, then Hadi would have even more cause for concern.

      “But this time they have angered Karim, you need to placate him, we cannot afford to have an angry neighbouring ruler—especially not one as powerful as the sheikh of Bashir. What will happen to our oil interests in Bashir if we are in conflict with each other?”

      “I know. I have been in touch.” Sheikh Karim had laid the blame squarely at Ali and Mahood’s feet, saying they illicitly grazed herds of livestock over the border and had appropriated animals that did not belong to them. Karim had confiscated the whole herd the next time the animals had returned and impounded them.

      Tariq gave a sharp sigh. “I will go—” He broke off and closed his eyes. What if his father died while he was gone? What if he missed these precious last days because of the stupidity and stubbornness of Ali and Mahood?

      “When? You cannot wait.”

      Tormented, Tariq opened his eyes and looked into the dark orbs close to his own. Eyes that in the past had been filled with love…anger…disappointment…and now held only a stoic acceptance.

      No, he wanted to yell. Fight it. Don’t die.

      Don’t leave me.

      Alone.

      “You can’t wait, my son. You must go. Now.”

      Silently Tariq shook his head. His father’s hands were thin, the purple veins showing through the wrinkled skin. The skin that hung over his face showed a waxen cast…like a death mask, the eyes deeply sunken in the sockets.

      “I order you.” It was a command, gasped out by a man used to being obeyed.

      Tariq stiffened. He knew that his father would read his refusal in his eyes. He would not go. He could not leave his father. Not so near the end.

      “Please.”

      This time it was a plea. Tariq stared at the man who had never begged for anything in his life. The man that no one disobeyed.

      “What if…” Tariq swallowed the words, unable to finish the thought.

      But his father knew. “What if I die? Inshallah. It will not happen yet, I am feeling a lot better. But you cannot hover around waiting for that hour like a vulture in the noonday sky. You have a destiny…and Zayed needs you.”

      Tariq started to answer back.

      “Do not argue with your father. I am an old, sick man.” The bloodless lips curved into a ghost of a smile. “And by Allah, this will be the last task I ask of you, I promise that. Make peace with Karim and I will ask no more.”

      “He will expect an apology.”

      His father nodded.

      “I will have to put something in it for him…land or oil leases.”

      His father nodded again.

      “I will go tomorrow.”

      “Take your wife with you.”

      “What?” On his way to the door, Tariq stopped and stared at his father in disbelief. He’d already planned to take Jayne with him, in order to make it doubly clear to Karim that he was not in the market for a wife. Not even for Karim’s ever-so-suitable half sister. But he’d never expected his father to suggest the same. He’d thought his father wanted the…merger… with Karim. It would’ve been convenient for all concerned. And for the two oil-rich desert countries.

      “He needs to accept your wife…as I have. To know there will be no marriage between you and his sister.”

      There, it was out in the open.

      So the rumours were true. His father had tried to broker a new marriage for him. But hearing that Tariq could only take one wife—a wife he had not chosen to divorce—must have dissuaded him from meddling further.

      A gnarled hand reached out from the bed. “My son, do not repeat my mistakes with your own wife.”

      Crossing the room in one stride, Tariq closed his hands around the thin bones. “What do you mean, Father?”

      For a while the Emir did not answer. Finally he said. “I am tired. Never forget, I am proud of you, my son. Now I need the morphine.”

      Tariq’s hand went to the bell. The nurse arrived in a rush. The drug was administered, and his father’s eyes closed.

      Tariq lingered a few minutes, a deep sense of loss swarming through him. What had his father been about to reveal? Finally he leant over to kiss the wrinkled brow. In his heart he feared this was the last time he might see his father alive.

      The notion shook him to his soul.

      * * *

      Jayne was sitting at the stone table in the walled arbour beside the fountain, catching a little morning sun and writing out postcards to Samantha and Amy when the sound of Tariq’s footsteps clattered on the stone stairs.

      “I have been to see my father,” Tariq announced, his eyes unreadable.

      He dominated the comforting СКАЧАТЬ