man should have a beard.’
He rubbed his hand self-consciously over his bare chin. He had grown a beard, aware that to be clean-shaven was the western way; it would be something else the Emir could hold against him.
‘My grandfather doesn’t have a beard these days,’ he told her. The chemo baldness hadn’t bothered him nearly as much as the loss of this symbol of his manhood and Kal had taken a razor to his own beard in an act of solidarity. It had felt odd for a while, but he’d got used to it.
‘They say that he is dying,’ she said. He did not ask who had said. Gossip flowed through the harem like water down the Nile.
‘But still stubborn,’ he replied. ‘He refuses to die anywhere but in the place he still calls home.’
She nodded, ‘You are stubborn, too,’ she said, reaching up to pat his hand. ‘You will bring him home,
‘Who are you?’ he asked, with a sudden sinking feeling, the certainty that he had just made a complete fool of himself.
‘I am Dena. I was found, out there,’ she said with the wave of an elegant hand, the rattle of gold on her skinny wrists. ‘Your great-grandmother took me into her house. Made me her daughter.’
Oh, terrific. This woman was the adopted child of the Khatib and he’d spoken to her as if she were a servant. But from the way she’d settled herself in front of Rose’s bedroom door…
He’d been brought up on his grandfather’s stories, had studied his family, this country, clung to a language that his father had all but forgotten, but he still had so much to learn.
He uncurled himself, got to his feet. ‘My apologies,
‘You have his charm, too,’ she said. ‘When you speak to him tell him that his sister Dena remembers him with fondness.’ Then, ‘Go.’ She waved him away. ‘Go. I will watch over your lady while you sleep.’
His lady…
Dena’s words echoed in his mind as he stood beneath the shower, igniting again the memory of Rose’s lips, warm, vital as they’d softened beneath him, parted for him. His mouth burned but as he sucked his lower lip into his mouth, ran a tongue over it, he tasted Rose and, instead of cooling it down, the heat surged like a contagion through his body.
Lucy had not answered his question, but it would have made no difference either way. He was not free. He flipped the shower to cold and, lifting his face to the water, stood beneath it until he was chilled to the bone.
And still he burned.
CHAPTER SIX
LYDIA woke in slow gentle ripples of consciousness. Blissful comfort was the first stage. The pleasure of smooth, sweet-smelling sheets, the perfect pillow and, unwilling to surrender the pleasure, she turned over and fell back into its embrace.
The jewelled light filtering through ornate wooden shutters, colours dancing on white walls, seeping through her eyelids, came next.
She opened her eyes and saw an ornate band of tiny blue and green tiles shimmering like the early morning creek. She turned onto her back, looked up at a high raftered cedar wood ceiling.
It was true then. Not a dream.
‘Bab el Sama.’ She said the name out loud, savouring the feel of it in her mouth. The Gate of Heaven. ‘
‘You are awake,
What?
She sat up abruptly. There was a woman, her head, body swathed in an enfolding black garment, sitting cross- legged in front of a pair of tall carved doors, as if guarding the entrance.
She rose with extraordinary grace and bowed her head. ‘I am Dena,
‘She seems to have called everyone,’ Lydia said.
So much for being alone!
She threw off the covers, then immediately grabbed them back, clutching them to her chest, as she realised that she was naked.
Realised that she had no memory of getting that way. Only of the sunrise with Kal, soft cushions, the scent of buttery pastry. Of closing her eyes.
‘Bin Zaki carried you here,
Lydia swallowed, not quite sure how she felt about that. Whether it was worse that an unknown ‘we’ had undressed her sleeping body or Kal.
The woman, Dena, picked up a robe, held it out so that she could turn and slip her arms through the sleeves, wrap it around her, preserve a little of her modesty before sliding out of the bed.
It clung to her, soft and light as the touch of a butterfly wing, leaving her feeling almost as exposed as if she was wearing nothing at all. The kind of thing a pampered concubine might have worn. With a sudden quickening of something almost like fear, laced through with excitement, she said, ‘Where is Kal?’
‘He went to the stables.’ The woman’s eyes, as she handed her the glass of juice she’d poured from a flask, saw the flush that heated her skin and smiled knowingly. ‘He took a horse,’ she said. Then, ‘I will bathe you and then you will have a massage.’
What?
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said.
‘Bin Zaki ordered it so. Princess Lucy always needs a massage when she comes home.’
‘Really?’
But the woman had opened a door that led into a bathroom that was out of a fantasy. A deep sunken tub. A huge shower with side jets. A seat big enough for two.
‘Which?’ Dena asked.
‘The shower,’ Lydia said, dismissing the disturbing image of sinking into the huge tub, sharing it with Kal.
She really, really needed something to clear her head, wake her up.
Dena turned it on, adjusted the temperature, apparently oblivious of the fact that her floor length black dress was getting wet. Apparently waiting for her to shed the robe and step into the shower so that she could wash her.
No, no, no…
Lydia swallowed, said, ‘I can manage. Really.’
She nodded. ‘Come into the next room when you are ready and I will ease the ache in your shoulder.’
Lydia stared after her. Raised her left hand to her right shoulder, the one that ached when it was cold or damp. After a long shift on the checkout. The legacy of years of lifting other people’s groceries across a scanner.
How did she know? What had given her away?
She shook her head.
Nothing. Dena couldn’t know that she was a fake. If she did, the whole house of cards would be tumbling around her ears by now, she told herself as she slipped out of the wrap, stepped under the warm water.
If she was a trained masseuse she would be observant, that was all, would notice the slightest imbalance. It didn’t mean anything.
She might have slept awkwardly on the plane or strained it in a hundred ways.
She turned up the heat and let the water pound her body, easing an ache which, until that moment, she’d been scarcely aware of herself.
Lathered herself in rich soap.
Washed her hair.
Putting off, for as long as possible, the moment when, wrapped in a towel that covered her from breast to
