Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife

'They might well have been,' he agreed. 'All kinds of decoration can and have been used on this kind of knife, but these stones are the real thing. Cabochon rubies-that is they have been polished rather than cut.'

Violet, aware that something more was expected, could only manage a slightly croaky, 'Oh…'

Rubies…

'What we have here is the kind of weapon that would have been owned and worn by a chief. A sheikh,'

he elaborated. 'Maybe even a sultan. It needs cleaning, of course, but even in this state I can't remember when I've seen anything quite so fine.'

It was rare for anything to reduce Violet to silence, but he had managed it.

'The really interesting question is how it came to be hidden beneath your floorboards.'

Violet was well aware what it must look like. What everyone must be thinking. That it had been stolen and, too hot to fence, had been hidden away and eventually forgotten about. But her family had enough of a history without adding larceny to the list, so she said, 'I suppose it could have something to do with the family legend.'

'Family legend?'

'The one about my great-great-grandmother being an Arabian princess who sewed her jewels into her clothes,' she said, 'and ran away from her husband with my great-great-grandfather.'

It was, gratifyingly, Mr Smooth's turn to be reduced to silence-if only momentarily.

'An Arabian princess?' he repeated, with a touch of uncertainty. She could see from his expression that he wasn't sure whether she was pulling his leg.

'With blue eyes,' she added, beginning to see the possibilities for entertainment herself. 'I'd always assumed it was just one of those tales that had grown in the telling.' She shrugged, leaving him to make up his own mind.

'Most stories have some element of truth in them,' he suggested. 'Was he a soldier? Your great-great- grandfather?'

'He was in the army. He was a medic. Stretcher-bearer,' she explained.

'Quite.' Then, 'It's more likely that he brought this back from the Middle East as a trophy,' he said, apparently discounting the Arabian princess theory as pure fantasy. 'Possibly from Turkey. This kind of elaborate decoration was favoured in the Ottoman dynasty.'

'Actually,' she said, refusing to allow him to dismiss her story in quite so casual a manner, 'it was the

princess and the jewels I always assumed were the tall stories.' Her great-great-grandfather had braved artillery fire to carry wounded soldiers to safety, had a Military Medal to attest to his heroism, and she wasn't having him publicly branded a thief. 'Great-Great-Grandma Fatima was real enough. I have a photograph of her.'

There was a stiffly posed sepia-tinted photograph of a tall, exotically handsome woman, standing behind her seated husband, in the 'family gallery' on the kitchen dresser.

'And a letter. In Arabic…'

'Well…' For a moment he appeared lost for words-twice in one day had to be a record. 'Well, you have a real story. And a rich treasure. Knives like these are very much in demand, and if you were to put it up for auction in a specialist sale…'

He mentioned some ridiculous sum of money, and all around her she heard gasps. And she was the one left struggling for words.

It was, Violet thought, numbly, a bit like a fairy tale.

She'd been in her late grandmother's bedroom, emptying her wardrobe, sorting out what was good enough to send to the chaiity shop, when she'd stepped back and gone through a floorboard that had creaked for as long as she could remember. And then, having pulled out her foot, she'd seen the carefully wrapped black silk bundle.

Buried treasure.

She was still in shock when the photographer from the local newspaper said, 'Smile!' and took her photograph.

'I'm sorry to disturb you, Fayad,' the ambassador said, but the press attache has just received a call from the news desk of the London Chronicle about a story they're running tomorrow. It's something I thought you might want to know about.'

Sheikh Fayad al Kuwani, grandson to the ruler of Ras al Kawi, looked up from his laptop. His cousin would not have disturbed him unless it was something important.

'What scandal has my father visited upon us now?' he asked, sitting back, prepared for the worst.

'No… No, it's nothing like that, in sh'Allah,' Hamad was quick to reassure him. 'It seems that a young woman took a spectacular khanjar for expert valuation to some television programme that was being recorded this afternoon.'

'That makes the national news in this country?'

'There were rubies,' he replied. 'Very large rubies. And a story about a runaway Arabian princess and stolen jewels, which apparently makes it…' He hesitated, then with distaste, said, 'Sexy.'

Fayad stilled. 'Go on.'

'The local paper picked up the story and passed it along, and, having done some research, the Chronicle has inevitably come up with the mystery of the long-lost Blood of Tariq. They're running the story using the photograph of your great-great-grandfather with Lawrence, along with the original 1917 despatch from the front line in tomorrow's first edition. They were hoping for a comment from the embassy.'

'Did they get one?'

'Only that many fakes of the Blood of Tariq had been produced over the years, and this is undoubtedly one of them. That the value of the rubies is nothing compared to the value of owning the khanjar touched by Lawrence.'

'Yes…' Fayad sat back, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

The Blood of Tariq had a mystical power that put it beyond price. To hold it, possess it, was to hold the fate of Ras al Kawi in your hand.

A fake.

It had to be a fake. But in the present climate that might be irrelevant.

It was what people believed that mattered.

Lost, the khanjar was a legend, a tale for old men as they sat around the campfire recalling past glories.

Found, it was trouble.

His grandfather was failing in health, his father was a disaster, and in the wrong hands even a fake, especially one with such an incendiary story attached to it, could prove disastrous to his country.

'You know who she is, this woman? Where to find her?'

'Her name is Violet Hamilton. She's twenty-two years old, unmarried. For the last three years she's been caring for her sick grandmother. The old lady died two weeks ago. At present she's living alone in her grandmother's house in Camden, where the khanjar was found. The equity of the house is owned by a property company, however, so she is about to become homeless.'

Fayad raised an eyebrow and the ambassador smiled. 'I don't ask how he does it, but in any exchange of

information you can be sure that our man came out with the better deal.'

'Thank him for me.'

'I will' Then, 'You'll make her an offer for it? You know it can't be real, Fayad. The original was surely broken up for the gold, the stones, decades ago.'

'Princess Fatima would never have done that. She knew that its worth lay in more than rabies and gold. Knew its power in the right hands. But, real or fake, it's a bad time for it to come to light. There are tribal factions who will move heaven and earth to get hold of it.'

Because of the reclusive nature of his grandfather, and the lack of interest his father had shown in anything but money, Ras al Kawi had remained relatively untouched by the tide of offshore banking and tourism that had swept through neighbouring countries.

Fayad had such plans for it, and now, just when things were finally beginning to take shape and he was preparing to move the country into the twenty-first century, onto the international stage, he was being faced with some mystical symbol straight out of a medieval melodrama.

It couldn't just be coincidence.