Sheikh's Woman

Was it a dream, that memory of another child? Tiny, perfect, a beautiful, beautiful son…but so white. They had allowed her to hold him, just for a few moments, to say goodbye. Her heart had died then. She had felt it go cold, turn to ice and then stone. They had encouraged her to weep, but she did not weep. Grief required a heart.

Was that a dream?

She was terribly tired. She bent to lay the sleeping infant back in the bassinet. Then she leaned down over the tiny, fragile body, searching her face for clues.

“Who is your father?” she whispered. “Where am I? What’s happening to me?”

Her head ached violently. She lay back against the pillows and wished the lights weren’t so bright.

“My daughter, you must prepare yourself for some excellent news.”

She smiled trustingly at her mother. “Is it the embassy from the prince?” she asked, for the exciting information had of course seeped into the harem.

“The prince’s emissaries and I have discussed the matter of your marriage with the prince. Now I have spoken with your father, whose care is all for you. Such a union will please him very much, my daughter, for he desires peace with the prince and his people.”

She bowed. “I am happy to be the means of pleasing my father…. And the prince? What manner of man do they say he is?”

“Ah, my daughter, he is a young man to please any woman. Handsome, strong, capable in all the manly arts. He has distinguished himself in battle, too, and stories are told of his bravery.”

She sighed her happiness. “Oh, mother, I feel I love him already!” she said.

Anna awoke, not knowing what had disturbed her. A tall, dark man was standing at the foot of her trolley, reading her chart. There was something about him… She frowned, trying to concentrate. But sleep dragged her eyes shut.

“They’re both fine,” she heard when she opened them next, not sure whether it was seconds or minutes later. The man was talking to a young woman who looked familiar. After a second Anna’s jumbled brain recognized the junior nurse.

The man drew her eyes. He was strongly charismatic. Handsome as a pirate captain, exotically dark and obviously foreign. Masculine, strong, handsome—and impossibly clean for London, as if he had come straight from a massage and shave at his club without moving through the dust and dirt of city traffic.

He was wearing a grey silk lounge suit which looked impeccably Savile Row. A round diamond glowed with dark fire from a heavy, square gold setting on his ring finger. Heavy cuff links on the French cuffs of his cream silk shirt matched it. On his other hand she saw the flash of an emerald.

He didn’t look at all overdressed or showy. It sat on him naturally. He was like an aristocrat in a period film. Dreamily she imagined him in heavy brocade, with a fall of lace at wrist and throat.

She blinked, coming drowsily more awake. The junior nurse was glowing, as if the man’s male energy had stirred and ignited something in her, in spite of her exhaustion. She was mesmerized.

“Because he’s mesmerizing,” Anna muttered.

Suddenly recalled to her duties, the nurse glanced at her patient. “You’re awake!” she murmured.

The man turned and looked at her, too, his eyes dark and his gaze piercing. Anna blinked. There was a mark on his eye just like her baby’s. A dark irregular smudge that enhanced both his resemblance to a pirate and his exotic maleness.

“Anna!” he exclaimed. A slight accent furred his words attractively. “Thank God you and the baby were not hurt! What on earth happened?”

She felt very, very stupid. “Are you the doctor?” she stammered.

His dark eyes snapped into an expression of even greater concern, and he made a sound that was half laughter, half worry. He bent down and clasped her hand. She felt his fingers tighten on her, in unmistakable silent warning.

“Darling!” he exclaimed. “The nurse says you don’t remember the accident, but I hope you have not forgotten your own husband!”

Two

Husband? Anna stared. Her mouth opened. “I’m not—” she began. He pressed her hand again, and she broke off. Was he really her husband? How could she be married and not remember? Her heart kicked. Had a man like him fallen in love with her, chosen her?

“Are we married?” she asked.

He laughed again, with a thread of warning in his tone that she was at a loss to figure. “Look at our baby! Does she not tell you the truth?”

The birthmark was unmistakable. But how could such a thing be? “I can’t remember things,” she told him in a voice which trembled, trying to hold down the panic that suddenly swept her. “I can’t remember anything.”

A husband—how could she have forgotten? Why? She squeezed her eyes shut, and stared into the inner blackness. She knew who she was, but everything else eluded her.

She opened her eyes. He was smiling down at her in deep concern. He was so attractive! The air around him seemed to crackle with vitality. Suddenly she wanted it to be true. She wanted him to be her husband, wanted the right to lean on him. She felt so weak, and he looked so strong. He looked like a man used to handling things.

Someone was screaming somewhere. “Nurse, nurse!” It was a hoarse, harsh cry. She put her hand to her pounding head. “It’s so noisy,” she whispered.

“We’ll soon have her somewhere quieter,” said the junior nurse, hastily reassuring. “I’ll just go and check with Maternity again.” She slipped away, leaving Anna alone with the baby and the man who was her husband.

“Come, I want to get you out of here,” he said.

There was something odd about his tone. She tried to focus, but her head ached desperately, and she seemed to be behind a thick curtain separating her from the world.

“But where?” she asked weakly. “This is a hospital.”

“You are booked into a private hospital. They are waiting to admit you. It is far more pleasant there—they are not short-staffed and overworked. I want a specialist to see and reassure you.”

He had already drawn Anna’s shoes from under the bed. Anna, her head pounding, obediently sat up on the edge of the trolley bed and slipped her feet into them. Meanwhile, he neatly removed the pages from the clipboard at the foot of her bed, folded and slipped them into his jacket pocket.

“Why are you taking those?” she asked stupidly.

He flicked her an inscrutable look, then picked up the baby with atypical male confidence. “Where is your bag, Anna? Did you have a bag?”

“Oh—!” She put her hand to her forehead, remembering the case she had packed so carefully…and then had carried out of the hospital when it was all over. That long, slow walk with empty arms. Her death march.

“My bag,” she muttered, but her brain would not engage with the problem, with the contradiction.

“Never mind, we can get it later.” He pulled aside the curtain of the cubicle, glanced out, and then turned to her. “Come!”

Her head ached with ten times the ferocity as she obediently stood. He wrapped his free arm around her back and drew her out of the cubicle, and she instinctively obeyed his masculine authority.

The casualty ward was like an overcrowded bad dream. They passed a young man lying on a trolley, his face smashed and bloody. Another trolley held an old woman, white as her hair, her veins showing blue, eyes wild with fear. She was muttering something incomprehensible and stared at Anna with helpless fixity as they passed. Somewhere someone was half moaning, half screaming. That other voice still called for a nurse. A child’s cry, high and broken, betrayed mingled pain and panic.

“My God, do you think it’s like this all the time?” Anna murmured.

“It is Friday night.”

They walked through the waiting room, where every seat was filled, and a moment later stepped out into the autumn night. Rain was falling, but softly, and she found the cold air a relief.

“Oh, that’s better!” Anna exclaimed, shivering a little in her thin shirt.

A long black limousine parked a few yards away purred into life and eased up beside them. Her husband opened the back door for her.