Liz Fielding: Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife

Even now he could feel the warmth of her body as he'd held her close, the softness of her breasts against his chest, the scent, the silk of her hair against his cheek.

Feel the soft tug of her lips against his…

'Sheikh?'

He looked up to see his aide regarding him anxiously and he shook his head, dismissing his concern with a gesture. Drank from the glass of water at his hand. It made no difference.

Violet woke to the steady thrumming of the aircraft's engines, for a minute completely disoriented. Then, as she rolled over, luxuriating in the feel of the finest linen sheets, it all came back with a rush.

The khanjar .

Her home.

Sheikh Fayad.

She was flying to Ras al Kawi in the kind of luxury that she could only ever have dreamed of. She concentrated on that rather than the horror she'd left behind.

'You are awake, sitti …' Leila placed a tray on the table beside the bed containing orange juice, fresh figs, small cakes. 'We will be landing in an hour,' she said, with a shy smile. 'Sheikh Fayad asked if he might be permitted to join you before we touch down?'

Be permitted? Then, as she sipped at the orange juice, her brain caught up. Obviously the meaning had become distorted in translation.

'I imagine he wants to drill me in the rules of court etiquette,' she said, putting two and two together and coming up with a little inventive translation of her own. 'Teach me when to curtsey and remind me that princesses only speak when they're spoken to.' And who could blame him?

Leila looked shocked. 'No! That would be most…'

'What?'

'Everything will be very different for you in Ras al Kawi, I think.'

'No doubt,' she said, swinging her legs to the floor. 'But even a girl from the wrong side of Camden Market knows that rule number one is never keep a sheikh waiting.'

Leila giggled. 'A woman must always keep a man waiting.'

'Really?'

'Until he has…' She sought for a word. 'Overwhelmed her and he is her lord.' And she blushed, leaving what she meant by "overwhelmed" crystal-clear.

'Okaaay,' Violet said, lost for any other response. 'I'll, um, just freshen up, and then you can help me pick out something suitable to wear.'

That brought a smile to the girl's face. 'I have already chosen,' she said.

'Oh, right.' Well, she'd had plenty to choose from. It was obvious that whoever had packed had emptied her wardrobes. Brought everything.

Left to her own devices, she'd have chosen her denim ankle-length skirt and a fine knitted top that covered her arms. Maximum skin coverage. She knew better than to offend Fayad's grandfather with some flighty western garment. A bare midriff. Too much leg.

But apparently that didn't come close to what Leila considered appropriate. Given the run of Violet's wardrobe, she'd picked out one of her student design pieces. A richly decorated evening outfit that she'd made for an end-of-term college fashion show.

'This is very beautiful,' Leila said. 'It will be perfect for your arrival in Ras al Kawi.'

"This" was a long skirt in a curious shot silk that in one light was blue-grey, in another a soft turquoise, that the stallholder-and he was a smooth-tongued man if ever there was one-had sworn matched her eyes exactly.

The fabric had been way beyond her budget, but, totally unable to resist something so gorgeous, she'd traded half a dozen of her precious one-off embroidered T-shirts, made for the co-operative stall she'd set up with some of her college mates.

She'd appliqued the skirt with a fan of velvet and silk peacock "eyes", free-hand embroidered the fine feathers using her sewing machine.

She hadn't had enough material to make a jacket, but had instead made a neat little waistcoat which, for the fashion show, she'd worn with one invisible hook at the breast and nothing else. It had been a huge success with the audience, if not with the avant garde college lecturers, who'd pronounced it too "conservative". Too "wearable". But then that was all she'd ever wanted to design and make-clothes that women longed to wear.

But a few days later she'd come home from a meeting of the co-op, full of their plans to expand, set up a proper business, to find her grandmother collapsed with the first of her strokes.

Three years on from college, her outfit, like her plans, her first step on the way to her own fashion label, seemed like a fantasy. Rich, gorgeous, but not the sort of thing you'd actually wear except to a pretty

fancy party. Even with the co-ordinating top that she'd made to wear beneath the waistcoat.

Struggling to bite back the I don't think so which flew to her lips, she said, 'It seems rather exotic, Leila. Do you really think it would do?'

'Oh, yes,' she said, with absolute confidence. 'It is quite perfect.'

In that case she was in trouble, she thought as Leila produced the hair straighteners to tidy up the curls that had made a bid for freedom while she slept. Then tutted as she insisted on applying the minimum of make-up herself.

'You need kohl to emphasise your eyes and your hands should be hennaed,' she insisted, and maybe she was right-about the kohl at least. She looked washed-out, and without a little colour the clothes would be wearing her rather than the other way around.

There was no time to draw elaborate patterns on her hands with henna, but she allowed Leila to add kohl and a touch of blusher, although Violet wiped off most of the kohl as soon as she'd turned away to pick up her skirt, hooking, buttoning and zipping her up, as if she hadn't been doing it herself for her entire life.

The waistcoat followed, and when Violet looked at the finished result in the mirror she swallowed. This was as good as her wardrobe got. Her Cinderella "you can go to the ball" outfit; if this was what constituted everyday wear in Ras al Kawi, what on earth did women wear when they wanted to make an impression?

What would make an impression on Sheikh Fayad?

She stopped the thought and turned to face Leila. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Will I do?'

Leila's response was a sigh of envy. 'It is designer?' she asked, and Violet's smile was, finally, unforced.

'In a manner of speaking,' she said. Then, when the girl frowned, 'I designed it, Leila. And then I made it.' Since the girl was apparently lost for words, she said, 'Have we kept Sheikh Fayad waiting long enough, do you think?'

Fayad looked up as his aide approached him. 'The Princess is waiting,' he said.

He'd given no instructions that she was to be given that title, but everyone knew who she was, and it seemed that her transformation from Violet Hamilton to Princess Violet al Sayyid had already begun.

He still did not know what he was going to say to her, only that he must somehow prepare her for his grandfather's expectations. Reassure her that she was totally in control of her own destiny. But as the door to the hareem majlis was opened to his knock he saw her standing in the centre of the room, waiting for him, and words became an irrelevance.

He could not have spoken even if he'd wanted to.

Grave, beautiful, untouchable.

As distant from the girl who'd opened the door to him that morning-hair an enticingly damp tangle of curls, legs and feet bare, wearing nothing but a faded pink bathrobe-as the moon was from the stars.

Mistaking his silence for disapproval, she said, 'This was Leila's idea.' A tiny gesture took in her clothes, some rich creation that would have his sisters drooling with envy.

'Leila will be rewarded,' he said.

'Oh. I wasn't sure. I thought it seemed a little…excessive, but…'

'But everything is strange.'

Her silence, her stillness were answer enough.

'You are wondering, now you've had time to think, whether you have made a mistake.' And this time heat rushed to her cheeks. Not that cool, then.