The Royal House of Karedes: Two Crowns. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ even speak? Every Western sensibility Kalila had ever possessed rose and rankled. ‘Why can’t Sheikh Zakari see me as I am?’ she protested, trying to keep a petulant note from entering her voice. She was twenty-four years old, a university educated woman, about to be married, yet in her father’s presence she still felt like an unruly child. She moderated her tone, striving for an answering smile. ‘Surely, Father, it is just as important that he knows who his bride really is. If we present the wrong impression—’

      ‘I know what the wrong impression is,’ Bahir cut her off, his tone ominously final. ‘And also what the right one is. There is time for him to know you, as you so wish, later,’ he added, and Kalila flinched at the blatant dismissal of her desire. Bahir lifted one hand as though he were bestowing a blessing, although it felt more like a warning, a scolding. ‘Tomorrow is not about you, Kalila. It is not even about your marriage. It is about tradition and ceremony, an alliance of countries, families. It has always been this way.’

      Kalila’s eyes flashed. ‘Even for my mother?’

      Bahir’s lips compressed. ‘Yes, even for her. Your mother was modern, Kalila, but she was not stubborn.’ He sighed. ‘I gave you your years at Cambridge, your university degree. You have pursued your interests and had your turn. Now it is your family’s turn, your country’s turn, and after all this waiting, you must do your duty. It begins tomorrow.’ Despite the glimmer of compassion in his eyes, he spoke flatly, finally, and Kalila straightened, throwing her shoulders back with proud defiance.

      ‘I know it well, Father.’ Yet she couldn’t help but take note of his words. Pursue her interests, he’d said, but not her dreams. And what good were interests if they had to be laid down for the sake of duty? And what were her dreams?

      Her mind wrapped itself seductively around the question, the possibility. Her dreams were shadowy, shapeless things, visions of joy, happiness, meaning and purpose. Love. The word slipped unbidden in her mind, a seed planted in the fertile soil of her imagination, already taking root.

      Love…but there was no love involved in this union between two strangers. There was not even affection, and Kalila had no idea if there ever would be. Could Zakari love her? Would he? And, Kalila wondered now as Juhanah bustled around her bedroom, would she love him?

      Could she?

      ‘Now eat.’ Juhanah prodded her towards the tray set with a bowl of labneh, thick, creamy yoghurt, and a cup of strong, sweet coffee. ‘You need your strength. We have much to do today.’

      Kalila sat down at the table and took a bite. ‘Just what are we doing today, Juhanah?’

      Juhanah’s chest swelled and she puffed out her already round cheeks. ‘Your father wants you to be prepared as a girl was in the old days, when tradition mattered.’ She frowned, and Kalila knew her nurse was thinking of her Western ways, inherited from her English mother and firmly rooted after four years of independent living in Cambridge.

      When Kalila had discarded a pair of jeans on the floor of her bedroom Juhanah had pinched the offending garment between two plump fingers and held it away from her as if it were contaminated. Kalila grinned ruefully in memory.

      ‘His Eminence will want to see you as a proper bride,’ Juhanah said now, parroting her father’s words from yesterday.

      Kalila smiled, mischief glinting in her eyes. ‘When shall I call him Zakari, do you think?’

      ‘When he is in your bed,’ Juhanah replied with an uncharacteristic frankness. ‘Do not be too bold beforehand, my love. Men don’t like a forward girl.’

      ‘Oh, Juhanah!’ Kalila shook her head. ‘You’ve never left Zaraq, you don’t know what it’s like out there. Zakari has been to university, he’s a man of the world—’ So she had read in the newspapers and tabloid magazines. So she hoped.

      ‘Pfft.’ Juhanah blew out her cheeks once more. ‘And so, do I need to know such things? What matters is here and now, my princess. King Zakari will want to see a royal princess today, not a modern girl with her fancy degree.’ This was said with rolled eyes; Kalila knew Juhanah thought very little of her years in England. And in truth, she reflected, sitting at the table with the breakfast tray before her, those years counted for very little now.

      What counted was her pedigree, her breeding, her body. Zakari wanted an alliance, not an ally. He wasn’t looking for a lover, a partner. A soulmate.

      Kalila’s mouth twisted in bitter acknowledgement. She knew all this; she’d reminded herself of it fiercely every day that she’d been waiting for her wedding, her husband. Yet now the waiting was over, she found her heart was anxious for more.

      ‘Aren’t you hungry, ya daanaya?’ Juhanah pressed, prodding the bowl of labneh as if she could induce Kalila to take a bit.

      Kalila shook her head and pushed the bowl away. Her nerves, jumping and leaping, writhing and roiling, had returned, and she knew she would not manage another bite. ‘I’ll just have coffee,’ she said, smiling to appease her nurse, and took a sip of the thick, sweet liquid. It scalded her tongue and burned down to her belly, with the same fierce resolve that fired her heart.

      The bridal preparations took all morning. Kalila had expected it, and of course she wanted to look her best. Yet amidst all the ministrations, the lotions and creams and paints and powders, she couldn’t help but feel like a chicken being trussed and seasoned for the cooking pot.

      There was only Juhanah and a kitchen maid to act as her negaffa, the women who prepared the bride; the Zaraquan palace had a small staff since her mother had died.

      First, she had a milk bath in the women’s bathing quarters, an ancient tradition that Kalila wasn’t sure she liked. Supposedly the milk of goats was good for the skin, yet it also had a peculiar smell.

      ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of bath foam from the chemists’,’ she muttered, not loud enough for Juhanah or the kitchen maid to hear. They wouldn’t understand, anyway.

      As Juhanah towelled her dry and rubbed sweet-smelling lotion into her skin Kalila felt a sudden pang of sorrow and grief for her mother, who had died when Kalila had been only seventeen. Her mother Amelia had been English, cool and lovely, and it would have been her loving duty to prepare Kalila for this meeting with her bridegroom.

      She, Kalila acknowledged with a rueful sorrow, would have understood about bath foam. They could have teased, laughed, enjoyed themselves even with the pall of duty hanging over her, the knowledge of what was to come.

      Still, she reminded herself, she could be modern later. She could be herself later, when she and Zakari were alone. The thought of such an occurrence turned her mouth dry and set her nerves leaping once more.

      Yet they would not be alone today. Today was for the formal meeting of a royal king and his bride, a piece of theatre elaborately staged and played, and she was merely a prop…one of many.

      ‘No frowns,’ Juhanah chided her gently. ‘Only smiles today, my princess!’

      Kalila forced a smile but she felt a pall of gloom settle over her like a shroud. The future loomed dark and unknowable ahead of her, a twisting road with an uncertain destination.

      She hadn’t seen or spoken to Zakari since she was little more than a child. There had been letters, birthday presents, polite and impersonal inquiries. Tradition СКАЧАТЬ