Commanded by the Sheikh

Malik opened a door and ushered Olivia into a bedroom decorated in peach and cream. She glanced around the sumptuous room, from the canopied bed with its satin cover and pile of pillows, to the brocade sofas and teakwood dressing table. It was a woman’s room, feminine and opulent, and she wondered who had last stayed in it.

‘Mada and Abra are here to help you prepare,’ Malik said and two smiling, sloe-eyed women stepped forward shyly to greet her. ‘I’m afraid they speak very little English,’ Malik said in apology. ‘But I trust you will be in good hands.’ With a brief nod, he turned and left Olivia alone with the two women.

With smiles and shy nods they ushered her towards the en suite bathroom, which if anything was even more sumptuous than the bedroom, with a sunken marble tub, a two-person shower and double sinks with what looked like solid gold taps.

One of the women said something to her in Arabic, and Olivia shook her head helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand...’

Smiling, she indicated her own clothes and then gestured to the buttons of Olivia’s blouse. The other woman held up a bottle of hair dye and belatedly Olivia understood. She needed to undress so they could dye her hair.

Why was she doing this again? she wondered as she slid off her blouse and trousers and then stood shivering in just her bra and pants. She felt embarrassingly self-conscious; she lived such a solitary life now, and she couldn’t remember the last time anyone but her doctor had seen her in her underwear.

One of the women draped a towel around her shoulders and the other laid out the preparations for the hair dye.

‘What is your name?’ Olivia asked the woman who had given her the towel. She wished she knew a little Arabic. Did Queen Elena know any?

The woman understood her question, for she smiled and ducked her head. ‘Mada.’

‘Thank you, Mada,’ Olivia said and Mada gave her a lovely, gap-toothed smile before leading her towards the marble sink.

Olivia leaned over the sink, closing her eyes as Mada ran warm water over her head and then worked in the hair dye. She realised she hadn’t even asked if it was a temporary colour. She hadn’t had time properly to consider the ramifications of this charade, she acknowledged as the other woman, Abra, snapped a plastic cover over her hair and eased her up from the sink.

She hadn’t had time to ask Aziz if it was even legal. Was impersonating someone—and especially a royal someone—a crime? What if she was arrested? What if someone twigged she wasn’t Elena and sold the story to the foreign press?

They might uncover other secrets. She couldn’t bear the thought of the world knowing her past, raking over her secrets, judging her. She judged herself harshly enough, God knew. She didn’t need everyone else doing it too.

And her father, she thought, would be disgraced. After selling her soul to keep him from disgrace ten years ago, the thought that he might end up humiliated anyway gave her a surprising surge of savage satisfaction, and then more familiar rush of guilt.

One appearance. Two minutes. Then it would be over.

A few moments later Mada indicated that she should rise from where she’d been seated, waiting for the dye to set, and Olivia returned to the sink and bent her head so the women could rinse the dye from her hair.

She watched the water in the sink stream blue-black with the dye. When it finally went clear Abra eased her up again, and she stared at herself in the mirror in shock.

She looked completely different. Her skin seemed paler, her eyes deeper, darker and wider somehow. Her hair, her smooth, caramel-coloured hair, now framed her face in a damp, inky tousle. She didn’t really look like Queen Elena, but neither did she look like herself. Perhaps from a distance she really would pass as the monarch.

Mada took her by the hand and led her back into the bedroom where clothes had been laid out: a dove-grey suit jacket and narrow skirt paired with an ivory silk blouse.

She dressed quickly, sliding on the gossamer-thin, sheer stockings first, and then the blouse and suit. Four-inch black stilettos heels completed the ensemble. Olivia hesitated; she always wore plain, sensible flats. The heels, she thought as she gazed down at them, felt too...sexy.

And that was not a word she wanted to associate with herself...or Aziz.

Next came hair and make-up; the women styled her newly dark hair in an elegant chignon, then did her face with subtle eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick and blusher, all of it more than Olivia ever wore. The clothes had been familiar but the shoes, make-up and hair made her feel strange. An impostor.

Which was exactly what Aziz wanted her to be—a convincing one.

A knock sounded on the door and then Malik entered. ‘You are ready, Miss Ellis?’

She nodded stiffly. ‘As ready I can be, I suppose.’

He glanced up and down her body and then nodded, seemingly in approval. ‘Please come with me.’

As she followed him down the corridor, her heels clicking smartly on the marble tile, she remarked with a touch of acerbity, ‘Clearly Mada and Abra are both in on this plan, and both of them looked far more like Queen Elena than I do. They have the right colouring, at least. Why couldn’t one of them act as her stand-in?’

Malik slid her a sideways glance. ‘Neither of those women possesses the confidence or ability to enact such a masquerade. In any case, they would not even be comfortable wearing Western clothes.’

‘But you trust them? Aziz trusts them?’

Malik nodded. ‘Yes, of course. Very few people know about this deception, Miss Ellis. Only you, Sheikh Aziz, myself, Mada and Abra.’

‘And the crew of the royal jet,’ Olivia pointed out. ‘Plus the staff who escorted me here.’

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘True, but it is a contained group, and everyone in it is loyal to the Sheikh.’

‘Aziz said he had not been in Kadar long enough to gain the people’s loyalty.’

Malik gazed at her with an inscrutable expression. ‘So he seems to think. But there are more loyal to Aziz than he knows, or allows himself to believe.’

Before Olivia could consider a response to that rather cryptic remark, Malik opened a door and ushered her into an ornate reception room. French windows led out to a wide balcony, and even from across the room Olivia was able to glimpse the courtyard below already filled with people pressed shoulder to shoulder, all of them craning their necks to catch a glimpse of their new Sheikh and his future bride.

Her stomach lurched and she pressed a hand to her mouth.

‘Please don’t be sick,’ Aziz remarked dryly as he stepped into the room. ‘That would ruin quite a lovely outfit.’ He stopped in front of her, his silvery-grey gaze wandering up and down her figure, eyes gleaming with a blatant masculine approval that made Olivia’s stomach tighten. He’d never looked at her like that before. ‘Dark hair suits you. So do high heels.’ His mouth quirked in a smile. ‘Very much so. I’m almost sorry it’s only a temporary dye.’

She lifted her chin, forcing the feeling back that Aziz stirred so easily up inside her. Why was she reacting to him now, when she never had before? ‘As long as I look like Queen Elena. As much as I can, at any rate.’

‘I think you’ll pass. Very well, actually.’ His smile turned sympathetic. ‘I do recognise that I am asking much of you, Olivia. Your willingness to help me is deeply appreciated, believe me.’

Olivia met his compassionate gaze with a direct one of her own. ‘I just want to return to Paris.’

‘And so you shall. But first, the balcony.’ He nodded towards the doors; even from here, with them closed, Olivia could hear the muted roar of the crowd below. She swallowed hard.

‘You had the press conference?’

‘Just a few moments ago.’

‘Were the media concerned with why Queen Elena wasn’t there?’

‘A few asked, but I said you were tired from your journey and preparing to meet your new people. They accepted it. In any case, it would be unusual in this country for a woman to appear in front of the media and speak for herself.’

‘But Queen Elena has spoken for herself many times,’ Olivia observed. ‘She’s a reigning monarch.’

‘True, but in Kadar she is merely going to be the wife of a Sheikh. There is a difference.’

Olivia heard a surprising edge of bitterness in his voice and wondered at it. ‘Why did Queen Elena agree to this marriage if she would have few rights in your country? It wasn’t, I presume, a love match?’

‘Indeed not.’ Aziz flashed her a quick, hard smile. ‘The alliance suited us both, for different reasons.’

A surprisingly implacable note had entered Aziz’s voice, but Olivia ignored it. ‘You speak in the past tense. Does it not still suit you?’