The Fierce and Tender Sheikh Page 8

  What kind of woman had she become?

  Vibrant and honest, he was sure. He remembered her way of clambering up and down balconies and wondered if she had turned palace protocol upside down with her engaging, direct ways.

  Probably she would prove to be a beautiful woman, in the end. Her grandmother’s beauty had captured a prince, after all, and she was still a beauty nearly fifty years later. And Rabia, her great-grandmother, if the portrait in the Sultan’s Antechamber didn’t lie, had been another.

  Not that she needed her forebears’ beauty. Her face had been with him constantly. She was haunting, even when she had been starved to the bone.

  The past month must have made a big difference, and he was both sorry to have missed the transition and deeply interested to see what kind of woman the Princess was making of herself.

  Ahead of him, suddenly, a street urchin came milling out of a vegetable stall, the proprietor shouting and clutching at his grubby kaftan. The boy, cursing and kicking, grabbed a basket as he struggled. A cascade of purple-black aubergines spilled down, bouncing and rolling across the passage as shoppers danced out of the way.

  “Let me go, camel-stuffer!”

  At the sound of the voice, Sharif’s eyebrows shot up, and he turned to watch the fracas with frowning interest.

  A box of fat tomatoes went over next. Shoppers in the narrow alley created a small jam as they stopped to watch, or tried to gather the tumbling fruit. After a short struggle, Hani slipped out of the shopkeeper’s hold and dived into the little crowd. Twisting like a fish among reeds, he was through and gone in a moment.

  On Friday evenings the Sultan and Sultana regularly hosted a family meal in their apartments, to which family members and Cup Companions had a standing invitation.

  Today, the traditional sofreh was spread on the ground in the private courtyard. The cloth was covered with a tantalizing variety of food, including huge platters heaped with flavoured rice. Nearby the tumbling fountain cooled the air.

  It was a smaller group than usual: the Sultan and several of his Cup Companions were away consulting with tribal leaders. Shakira saw Sharif the moment he stepped out of the shaded cloister to stride across the grass towards the picnic, and her heart leapt straight for her throat.

  “Sharif!” she cried, and all the lies she had told herself about not caring were burnt up by the bright flame of her joy at seeing him again. She watched every step of his approach, her eyes getting bigger and darker with every footfall, revealing an unconscious longing that drew him like a net.

  “Hello, Princess,” he said quietly, a smile drawing up the corners of his mouth as he looked at her. She had gained weight, and her head had lost the skull-like look. The high cheekbones and square jaw were now covered with healthy flesh, and her chin was softly rounded. Her cheeks, he saw, would always be hollow, giving her face a regal elegance. The black smudges had gone from under her eyes. Her expertly cut hair had grown, and dark curls clustered over her head and neck, revealing a small widow’s peak and well-shaped ears. Now for the first time the adult Shakira would have been recognizable in that childhood photograph.

  She was wearing white, against which her mocha skin gave off a deeply attractive warmth. She wore no makeup, no jewellery. She seemed still halfway between the boy she had been and the woman she would be. But she had travelled far enough along the path for him to know that he was right: she was going to be a beautiful woman. A stunningly individual beauty, too, he thought.

  “It’s been a good month, I see.”

  She gazed up, smiling with the pleasure of seeing approval in his eyes. He was very tall, standing over her. He wore a black kaftan that made his eyes very dark, with a green keffiyeh tossed back over his shoulders. Wind caught the robe suddenly, pressing against him, but he stood easily against it, and it seemed to her that his strength would be equal to anything.

  “You said a week, but you never came back,” she said, in her direct way, as he sat beside her.

  “I had much more troublesome work than we had imagined, Princess. I’m sorry.” He took a piece of hot naan bread from the nearest basket.

  Shakira sighed.

  “I thought—I thought—sometimes I thought you were dead.”

  The remembered pain burned in her eyes. Sharif was shaken to his roots. He tossed down the bread and gripped her wrist.

  “Ya Allah, why didn’t you ask the Sultan?” he said, though his impatience was directed at himself. He might have guessed this.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. She didn’t know how to explain the misery of trying not to miss him, of thinking him dead because it was easier than thinking he had just gone away.

  He knew why. Because she was too used to loss to challenge it. Either he was dead or he didn’t care about her, and life goes on. He shook his head with remorse. He knew her better than anyone, he was suddenly very sure of that, and he should have been more careful. He had thought he would become unimportant in her life, but he should have known that one more loss would touch that wounded place in her. He should have known that, by his actions in lifting her so abruptly from her former life, he had made himself her rudder in the unknown sea he had brought her to. He should have respected that.

  He was suddenly filled with regret that he had not been here to be that rudder.

  “Was it important, the reason that took you away?” she asked.

  “Very important,” he said. “I had more than one job to do, but one of them was…”

  He paused. She gazed at him.

  “I was searching for your brother, Princess.”

  Shakira’s eyes went wide and dark at a stroke.

  “I’m very sorry to have to tell you that I found nothing. Not one lead.”

  “You—oh, Sharif, you were looking for my brother? Did the Sul—did Ash ask you to do it?”

  “I asked for the task. I thought it was very important to you—and I seemed to be the best person for the job. I wish I had been successful, Shakira. But it is very possible that not all avenues have been exhausted yet.”

  “Nothing? You found nothing?” she said with a desperate appeal that tore his heart to ribbons.

  “I’m more sorry than I can say, Princess.”

  Her eyes burned with tears. “I wish you had told me, that day you left.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t remind her that she had spurned his attempt at explanation. “We thought you might think too much about it, if you knew. Your first priority was to settle here.”

  But she was too honest to accept this glossing over of the truth. “Yes, but you were going to tell me, and I wouldn’t listen. I was so angry, Sharif! But afterwards…”

  She smiled up into his eyes, and he felt his heart give an involuntary kick. Yes, she was going to be a very beautiful woman.

  “I’m glad you’re home again,” she confided, with a complete lack of feminine guile.

  They sat silent for a long moment, and then he mentioned Suhaila.

  “My grandmother! Oh, yes!” Shakira said quickly. “She is living in the palace now.” She looked around. “She is there, beside Dana.”

  He obediently looked. Her grandmother and the Sultana were both dressed gorgeously, Dana in turquoise and purple, Suha in red and gold, and Shakira was suddenly conscious of her own very plain shalwar kamees, all white with only a little embroidery around the neck and sleeves. For the first time she wondered what it would be like to dress in something really beautiful. Something feminine. She wondered what Sharif would think if she did.

  “I am sure that makes you very happy.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Everybody loves her. Did you hear? People learned that Suha was here, and they started crowding into the square, shouting her name and demanding to see her. There were thousands of people, and they were shouting for the Sultan, too. Finally we all went out onto the balcony, and Grandmother sang Aina al Warda. She changed the last line. Instead of where is the Rose she sang, here is the Rose.” Shakira closed her eyes,
remembering the moment. “It was so exciting! The crowd was cheering and crying. Did you see it? I thought about you. I wondered if you were there.”

  He suddenly realized that what had softened the intense little face was the wiping away of some of the cynicism that had once protected her. He was swept with a feeling of gratitude that it should be so, that her innocence could be restored like this. Gratitude that was closer to joy than anything he had experienced for a long time. Joy—and yet, he realized abruptly, his eyes were burning with unshed tears.

  “I was many miles away, but I watched it on television.”

  “Did you? We watched it, too, afterwards. No one knew the TV people were there till we saw it on the news. Did you see me?” she asked with naive pleasure. “I was standing beside Dana.”

  Sharif looked at her gravely. “Yes, I saw you. We all saw you.”

  “That was another strange thing, to see myself like that,” she confided. “Until you showed me that photograph, I’d never seen even a picture of myself. Well, except on my camp documents,” she amended.

  He looked at her for a long moment, considering, then spoke softly, for her ears alone.

  “Millions of other people saw you, too, Princess. You will have to be on your guard now.”

  Her eyes widened with shock, surprise, disbelief. She shifted, uncomfortable under his gaze without knowing why. What was he trying to say? He couldn’t know. Nobody knew.

  “Be careful, Princess.”

  Neither of them noticed the approach of Suhaila and the Sultana until both women were sitting down beside them.

  “Someone who insists on meeting you instantly, Sharif,” Dana said with a smile. “Suhaila, this is Sharif ibn Bassam Azad al Dauleh, who found and rescued Shakira. And I’m sure you know, Sharif, that Bagestan’s Nightingale is Shakira’s grandmother.”

  The wonderful eyes, still young and vital in the lined face, were wet with tears as the great singer took Sharif’s hand in both of hers and thanked him for what he had done.

  “Allah must have willed it so, and I thank Him every night that Ashraf chose you for the job, for I don’t see how anyone else could have succeeded. An impossible labour! But you did it.”

  Sharif clasped a fist to his breast.

  “Shakira talks about you, you know—‘He told me my name,’ she says. What gift could one human being give another better than her history, her family, her true self, all in one lost word? You gave my granddaughter her life. And you also gave me…the most precious thing anyone has ever given me.” She put her hand on Shakira’s cheek, and stroked it lovingly, so that Shakira’s heart nearly burst. “You gave me back my lost life. The love I threw aside has been returned to me.”

  Sharif placed his fist on his heart and bowed.

  Suddenly the entire family seemed to realize who had come among them at last, and they all got to their feet, and moved down to where the others sat, and surrounded him, calling their approval and gratitude.

  “How did you manage it, Excellency? Especially when she really only looks like Ash when she’s in her imp mode!”

  “Or when she’s angry. How did you get her to lose her temper, Sharif?” someone asked in dry humour, because Shakira was never slow to say what she meant.

  Sharif only laughed.

  “The palace hasn’t been the same since she arrived! I don’t know how we got along without her before,” Dana said. “We’re all very much in your debt.”

  There was a chorus of agreement. Shakira sat listening, her heart swelling with this unfamiliar happiness. In all her life before, no one had said so many wonderful things about her. She hadn’t felt so loved since those distant memories of her mother and father.

  And it was somehow even more satisfying because Sharif was there, sharing it with her. He had brought her to this place, and she was glad that he knew she was loved.

  “Every month?” Shakira cried in shock. “Every month for three days? Are you sure?”

  Noor smiled at her in the mirror. “You really didn’t know? You never had a period before?”

  With the resilience of youth, Shakira had recovered quickly, and she felt, and knew she looked, a hundred times healthier. But no one had thought to warn her that with a return to health her delayed puberty would kick in.

  “I remember once bleeding when I was about—thirteen, I think. I thought it was a…punishment.”

  Noor frowned. “A punishment for what?”

  Shakira looked away. “I thought I was going to die. But it never came back and I just…forgot about it.”

  “Thought you were going to die?” Noor repeated in horror.

  “When people bleed from the inside they usually die,” Shakira said matter-of-factly. “It means internal injuries.”

  “But—didn’t you ask anyone about it?”

  Shakira only shrugged.

  Of course she had known that women had periods, but she had simply never considered that information relative to herself. No woman had discussed it in her presence because she had been a boy, and what she had learned from the men had been a kind of masculine paranoia. Women who were bleeding were dangerously moody and couldn’t be touched sexually. Women lied about bleeding when they weren’t, to punish their husbands and avoid sex. Women who had stopped bleeding were going to bring another child into a life of misery.

  It wasn’t something you’d go halfway to meet.

  “I just never made the connection till now. I guess I would have, if the bleeding had continued, but it didn’t.”

  “Probably because you were half starved. Your body couldn’t afford the luxury. I’ve heard it happens with anorexics, and I guess effectively, you were one. Now that you’re getting proper nutrition, your body is starting to function properly. That’s so good, Shakira, because if it never happened, you know, you wouldn’t be able to have babies.”

  Babies. Shakira stood staring into her own eyes in the mirror. Was it possible? Would she—could she have babies one day? Who would be their father?

  Ten

  She stopped in front of a sweets stall, to watch with a child’s fascination as a woman arranged tiny squares of a confection on a tray. As Sharif watched, the sweets-maker smiled at the urchin in front of her, and offered one of the bright lime squares on the end of her spatula.

  Shakira accepted the sugared morsel with a smile as wide as if she had been the hungry urchin the woman thought her, and popped it into her mouth. Then, with an abruptness that caught him off guard, she turned her head and looked straight at him. Sharif stiffened and dropped his attention to the antique silver lamp on the stall beside him. Shakira chewed the morsel and swallowed, thanked the woman very politely, turned and continued on her way.

  She hadn’t recognized him, God be thanked. After a moment he took up the trail again, at a safer distance. Ahead, she turned into the main section of the bazaar, and he walked a little faster, for it would be easy to lose her there.

  The alley they had been in debouched into the main street of the bazaar near the arched entrance that framed the mosque. The sun on the golden dome was blinding, seen from the shadowed bazaar, and he stood for a moment frowningly trying to discover which way she had gone.

  “Are you following me?” demanded a voice at his elbow. Sharif shook his head ruefully. She hadn’t gone anywhere. Oldest trick in the book, and he should have known Hani was wily enough for anything.

  He looked down at her. He was now at his leisure to appreciate the artistic smudges of dirt on her face; and the grubby white djellaba and crocheted multi-coloured cap were a neat touch, for it was an outfit no different than what most of the bazaar beggar children wore.

  “Hello, Hani,” he said.

  She caught her breath, then laughed a little. “You are always giving me my name!”

  Even so, if anyone looked closely, she could no longer seriously pass for a boy. Her face had filled out, and was softer and more rounded. Her mouth had relaxed into a more feminine fullness. The loose kaftan did not complet
ely disguise the new small curve of breasts. And the curls clustering all around the rim of the cap were too neat, too glossy…too female. With her big dark eyes and wide mouth, she looked like a picture book Aladdin, smudged cheeks and all.

  He stood gazing down at her for a long moment of silence. He was aware of a faint breeze. It disturbed the dark curl that fell over the centre of her brow.

  “Is it your name?” he challenged softly.

  She flung her head up and stared into his eyes with a look so defiantly female that he wanted to shake her. How did she imagine she was safe in this ridiculous boy’s disguise?

  “Sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  Before, he had always laughed whenever she had reverted to Hani behaviour. She had felt that Sharif alone understood. She responded to his challenge now in Hani fashion, with a sudden descent into aggression.

  “Why are you following me? What business is it of yours what I do?”

  “It’s someone’s business to keep you out of trouble,” he told her.

  “Not yours!”

  “Who else knows you are here?”

  “Why does it have to be anyone’s business but my own?”

  “You know why. Because you are taking a ridiculous and unnecessary risk.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she flared suddenly.

  “There are several good reasons,” he replied calmly. “Some you know, and some you don’t. The ones you know should be enough to convince you. Why don’t they?”

  It wasn’t that the arguments weren’t convincing. It was that she couldn’t explain to anyone the need she had, to be Hani sometimes.

  She had yearned so long to be Shakira that she could hardly herself understand why the transition was sometimes so difficult. She had been Hani for so much of her life, and that part of herself and her life, it seemed, would not simply be banished in the way she wished and her family expected. Hani, she was learning, was a part of who Shakira was. There were things about being Hani that she had enjoyed. Pitting her wits against the world to wrest what she needed from it had given life an edge quite different from what she now experienced in the palace, where anything she wanted was given to her almost before she knew she wanted it.