girl that you have “invited” to be your guest.’
Ali shrugged in a light-hearted way, but actually he was as uneasy as his own steward under his mother’s piercing gaze. Here was one woman who saw through him and would tolerate nothing less than honesty, which made her uncomfortably like another woman, at this minute in his palace.
‘Miss Frances Callam is enjoying my hospitality for a while,’ he said. ‘Tell me more about your trip.’
‘All in good time, my son. I’ve had to play private detective to find my way through a garbled story about an employment agency, and a servant girl who vanished when you did. Through the agency I found myself talking to an enquiry agent called Joey, who is concerned because he cannot contact Miss Callam. I reassured him, hoping that I was right to do so.’
‘Quite right, Mother. Miss Callam is in no danger.’
‘Ali, why can’t you meet my eye?’
‘Believe me, Mother, you are making a fuss about nothing.’ Elise was looking at him wryly, and he reddened under that all-seeing gaze.
‘Ali, there are some laws that even you cannot ignore. I won’t ask what you’ve done, because it might be better for me not to know. But I expect you to bring this young woman to meet me tomorrow.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ he said meekly.
CHAPTER TEN
ELISE’S apartment was a clever combination of royal luxury and English comfort. She was immediately above Fran’s own rooms, looking out onto the Peacock Garden, and her sitting room was filled with light. Long net curtains filled the floor-length windows and wafted gently in the faint breeze.
She rose, a tall, graceful figure in white robes, and embraced Fran warmly.
‘I have longed for this meeting,’ she said, adding mysteriously, ‘I’ve heard so much about you that it has made me most curious.’
Tea was served. It was good, solid English tea, because, as Elise explained, ‘After thirty-five years in this country I still can’t do without my cuppa.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Fran said, sipping gratefully.
They made polite small talk, with occasional interjections from Ali, until Elise said with a touch of exasperation, ‘My son, I’m sure you have affairs of state to attend to.’
‘No today,’ he said, smiling at them both. ‘If I leave you may talk about me.’
‘Certainly we are going to talk about you. Please go away at once. Can’t you see when you are not wanted?’
He gave a wry glance first to his mother, then Fran, before reluctantly leaving.
When they were alone Elise kissed Fran on both cheeks and smiled.
‘I knew you would be beautiful,’ she said, ‘from the effect you have had on my son. But you are more than beautiful. Speak to me quite frankly, I beg you. Are you here of your own free will?’
‘No,’ Fran said, and Elise’s face darkened.
‘We will talk of that later,’ she said heavily. ‘For now, tell me how you met.’
Fran described the first evening, and what had happened subsequently. When she came to the part about the cheque, Elise said, ‘Ah! Now I understand something that has been puzzling me. Come with me.’
She took Fran’s hand and led her into the next room. Fran stopped dead on the threshold. This room didn’t belong to a female forced to live in retirement. This was a business office, complete with desks, filing cabinets and all the latest equipment.
Two young women were busy at computers. They rose and bowed when the princess entered, and she waved them lightly away. Under Fran’s astonished eye she went to a third computer and began to tap in some figures. A file opened on the screen and Elise beckoned her to look.
‘Normally Ali gives the ICF one million a year,’ Elise observed calmly. ‘When he suddenly added another hundred thousand I couldn’t understand it. He never does such things without first consulting me.’
‘A million?’ Fran echoed in dismay. ‘And-consulting you?’
‘I handle all his donations to foreign charities.’
‘All his-?’
‘About twenty million a year.’ Elise gave her lovely smile again. ‘My dear, have you fallen for the legend of the playboy who spends every penny on himself? How unwise of you!
‘Ali maintains this grandiose palace because it’s expected of him, but the oil revenues are spent first on his subjects, and only afterwards on himself. I must show you some of our hospitals. They are simply the best equipped in the world.’
‘But why didn’t he tell me this instead of just saying loftily that he wouldn’t discuss it?’ Fran said in frustration.
‘Because he is a prince,’ Elise said, amused. ‘He doesn’t feel he has to explain himself to anybody. You take him on his terms or not at all.’
‘And all those things he told me about not discussing serious things with women-’ Fran said with mounting indignation.
‘He was probably trying to annoy you. And it’s true that he wouldn’t talk with a strange woman, nor does he appoint women to his cabinet. He makes an exception for me because I am his mother. In this country, a man who does not respect his mother is considered a disgrace.
‘I remember years ago, in England, my own brother once quarrelling with our mother and telling her to shut up. No Kamari man would speak like that to the woman who gave him life.’
She gestured towards the computer.
‘He takes his charities very seriously indeed, and they are all in my hands. If people wish to solicit donations they come to me, not to him. I visit them, and advise Ali according to what I discover. That is why I have been out of the country recently.’
‘And I thought it was a shopping trip.’
‘Well, I indulged myself with a little shopping as well.’
‘I can’t take all this in,’ Fran said, dazed.
‘Then I will give you some more.’ Elise pressed a buzzer on her desk and spoke into an intercom. ‘Be good enough to have my car brought around to the front.’
Ten minutes later the two women were seated in the back of the princess’s personal limousine, gliding into the heart of town. They stopped outside a huge white-walled building, which Elise explained was the city hospital.
‘We shall have to go through the private part first, but quickly.’
The private section was much like a private hospital anywhere, but it was the public wards that alerted Fran.
‘These are for people who cannot afford to pay,’ Elise explained. ‘The money comes from state funds, or, in other words, Ali.’
Everywhere she looked Fran saw spotless cleanliness, the finest equipment and a high ratio of staff to patients. She had to admit that the place shamed a good many western hospitals.
‘The people with money are charged heavily,’ Elise said, ‘and they partly pay for the poor patients. But only partly. The rest of the money comes from the royal coffers.’
‘From the oil,’ Fran mused.
‘Not just from the oil. The casinos make a handsome profit.’
‘Casinos? Plural?’
‘In almost every capital city in the world, and several in Las Vegas. We need all the profit we can make because Ali has some very expensive ideas for irrigating the desert. So far most of the money has been soaked up by the sand, but he keeps trying one experiment after another.’ Elise smiled fondly. ‘Sometimes there’s a touch of the mad professor about my son.’
She saw Fran craning her neck out of the window. ‘Something interests you?’
‘The Sahar Palace. Ali told me how it was built and then abandoned as not being big enough.’
