Engaged To The Doctor Sheikh

‘She might be your cousin,’ was all Tariq could manage.

‘Nalini’s daughter? And you’ve brought her here? Are you mad? Can’t you imagine how Second Mother’s going to react to this? I might not remember much about that time but the tales of her reaction to Nalini’s disappearance have become modern legends. Second Mother burnt her clothes on a pyre in the garden and our father had to build a fountain because nothing would grow where they had burnt.’

Tariq touched his half-sister’s shoulder.

‘Lila came looking for her family and I think that might be us,’ he said gently. ‘Isn’t that enough reason for us to welcome her?’

Barirah rolled her eyes but turned back to look at the visitor, still standing at the edge of the loggia.

‘You’re right,’ she said, and heaved a deep, deep sigh. ‘She’s family so she’s welcome, but...’

She turned back to look at Tariq.

‘You’d better be around to protect her. Don’t you dare just dump her on me and expect me to run interference with Second Mother. I’m already a pariah in her eyes because I refuse to marry.’

Lila had guessed the conversation the Sheikh and the young woman who looked so like her had been about her, but what could she do?

Put on her shoes and leave the complex? Walk out through the beautiful gardens and the forbidding stone walls and—

Then what?

Besides, there was this nonsense about the Ta’wiz—about her mother being a thief.

Could she walk away from that?

Definitely not!

And being here in the palace, she might be able to find out what had happened way back then, learn things about her mother—and possibly her father too. And wasn’t that why she’d come to Karuba?

She turned as the pair came towards her.

The woman called Barirah smiled at her.

‘Tariq tells me we are probably cousins—that you are probably Nalini’s daughter,’ she said, in a softly modulated voice. ‘So, as family, you are more than welcome.’

She hesitated then leaned forward and kissed Lila on both cheeks.

The gesture brought tears to Lila’s eyes. Tiredness from the journey, she was sure, but Barirah must have seen them for she put her arms around Lila’s shoulders and drew her into a hug.

‘Come, I will find you a room and someone to look after you. Tariq, our guest might like some refreshment. She doesn’t need to face the whole family at the moment, so perhaps you could order some lunch for the two of you in the arbour outside the green guest room? I have appointments I can’t miss.’

Ignoring Tariq’s protest that he needed to get back to the hospital, Barirah put her arm around Lila’s shoulders to lead her into the house.

‘I will put you in the green room—it was Nalini’s room but has been redecorated. You might as well know now, because it’s the first bit of gossip that you’ll hear. My mother, who was Nalini’s sister, went mad when Nalini left and destroyed the room and all the belongings she’d left behind. My mother is still bitter, but at least my brother’s illness—he is battling leukaemia—is keeping her fully occupied at the moment.’

The flood of information rattled around in Lila’s head. Jet-lag, she decided. She’d think about it all later.

Think about why the man walking down the marble hall behind them was sending shivers up her spine as well.

It had to be jet-lag...

* * *

‘But it’s beautiful!’

Having led her down innumerable corridors, Barirah had finally opened a very tall, heavy, wooden door to reveal what a first glance seemed like an underwater grotto of some kind.

The ‘green’ used to describe the room was as pale as the shallowest of water running up on a beach on a still day—translucent, barely there, yet as welcoming as nature itself. It manifested itself in the silk on the walls and the slightly darker tone in the soft curtains, held back by ropes of woven gold thread.

The bed stood four-square in the middle of the room, the tall wooden posts holding a canopy of the same material as the curtains, while the bedcover had delicate embroidery, vines and flowers picked out in gold and silver thread.

‘It’s unbelievable!’ Lila whispered, walking across to a small chest of drawers to trace her fingers along the silver filigree design set into the wood. ‘Is this design traditional?’

Barirah smiled.

‘It is the most common motif in our decoration although by no means the only one. It shows the vine that grows over the dunes after rain, and see here...’ delicate fingers traced the pattern ‘...the moonflower.’

It was the palest pink, perhaps more mauve in tone, open like a full moon, a half-open bud beside it, and seeing it pain speared through Lila’s heart and she fell to her knees, her hands reaching out to touch the flowers, to grasp the material and bring it to her face, feeling it against her skin, smelling it...

Barirah knelt beside her, held her, while she cried, then dried her eyes with a clean white tissue.

Lila turned to face her.

‘My mother had a shawl—she wore it over her head and around her shoulders. It was this pattern! Why didn’t I remember? How could I have forgotten that?’

Tariq, in the arbour outside the doors that opened into the garden, had heard the words, heard the anguish in the woman’s voice, and wondered just how hard it must have been for a four-year-old to have lost not only her parents but the world as she had known it.

Barirah was helping Lila to her feet, comforting her with soft words and soothing noises, and he stepped back, showing the servants where to leave the food, then waiting for the two women to appear.

He sat, resting his tired eyes behind closed lids, dozed perhaps, aware he should be seeing his father, telling him of this development but not wanting to put further stresses on their guest.

Had he been less tired, he realised now—too late—he’d have taken her to the hospital, let her get on with her work. Officials could have confiscated the Ta’wiz, verified it, and it could have been returned to the palace, without her.

But even as these thoughts rambled through his exhausted brain, an image of the woman, Nalini’s suspected daughter, hovered behind his eyelids, her dark almond eyes sparking with anger at him, her fingers clinging to the pendant—a last gift from her mother.

No way would she have given it up.

‘He’s been working far too hard.’

Barirah’s voice woke him from the half-dream, woke him as his memories of Lila’s angry eyes had shifted to an image of her soft lips—woke him just in time, really...

The two women joined him in the arbour, Barirah making her apologies for having to leave.

‘But Tariq will take good care of you and, when you are rested, take you to the hospital to show you around.’

She gave Lila a brief kiss on the cheek and departed on silent feet, leaving Tariq to wonder again just how big a mistake he’d made in bringing the woman here.

His guest was eyeing the array of food with almost childlike delight.