Liz Fielding - Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife

© 2012

(Becoming the Tycoon’s Bride)

Dear Reader,

Mills & Boon have been thrilling their readers with escapist fiction for a hundred years and contributing a story to this celebration centenary volume was sheer delight.

The "sheikh" fantasy utterly encapsulates the rush of falling in love, the thrill of being swept off your feet by a tall, dark and handsome stranger and when Violet Hamilton, the heroine of Chosen as the Sheikh's Wife , stumbles across a jewelled "khanjar" hidden beneath her floorboards she gets all the excitement she can handle when she reveals the family legend of a runaway princess and a handsome soldier!

With her life in danger, Violet is whisked away by Sheikh Fayad to Ras al Hajar – not on a black stallion, but his private jet – and her life is changed out of all recognition as, for three months, she lives the life of a desert queen. But their marriage is a sham and time is running out…

Many, many congratulations on reaching your centenary, Mills & Boon!

With warmest wishes,

Liz Fielding

Violet had been waiting for what seemed like hours, but eventually it was her turn and she limped forward with the object she'd brought along to the Trash or Treasure roadshow.

She'd already been through the junk/interesting/wow! "triage" at the entrance, and since the object she'd brought along for assessment had received a unanimous "wow!", and been red-stickered to indicate its status, a television camera zoomed in to film the expert's reaction.

She was not carried away on a tide of excitement by all this enthusiasm. It only meant that her piece of "trash" was unusual enough to arouse interest-and not necessarily of the kindly variety. This show was, after all, primarily entertainment, and if you set yourself up as an Aunt Sally, you had to expect the knocks.

She hadn't wanted to come. It was Sarah, her next-door neighbour, who'd insisted on dragging her reluctant bones along to the town hall so that she could be publicly humiliated for the amusement of several million viewers. Sarah who, just at the moment when she'd needed her for moral support, had disappeared in search of a loo.

Pregnancy was no excuse…

'What have we got here?' The "expert"-permanently tanned, silver-haired, a darling of the blue-rinse brigade-was familiar from the many evenings she'd sat watching this programme with her grandmother.

'I don't know,' she said truthfully, putting the brown padded envelope she had been clutching to her chest on the baize-covered table in front of him. 'To be honest I feel a bit of a fool bringing it here-' She felt better for getting that out, disassociating herself from any pretence to have found "treasure" '-but my neighbour lived in the Middle East for a while and she thought it was…interesting.'

Oh, lame, Violet Hamilton. Pathetic to blame someone not here to defend herself.

'Well, let's have a look at it, shall we?' He tipped a rag-wrapped bundle out onto the table in front of him.

'That's just how I found it,' Violet said quickly, not wanting him to think she routinely kept her valuables wrapped in rotted black silk. Not that she had any valuables. 'This morning,' she added. 'When I put my foot through the floorboards.' The cameraman pointed his lens at her strapped up ankle. Terrific… This was her "fifteen minutes of fame", and already her ankle was more interesting. 'It must have been there for years,' she said.

Without a word he carefully unfolded the rotted silk to reveal an ornately decorated dagger. Around them people crowded in to get a closer look.

That it was old was not in doubt. The handle had the patina of hard use, and inset in the top was a large, smoothly polished red stone the size of a pigeon's egg. The sheath wasn't straight but sharply curved and adorned with fancy silver and gold-coloured filigree work into which were set three similar tear-shaped red stones, decreasing in size as they reached the curved point and looking for all the world as if the stone on the handle was bleeding along its length.

The man said nothing for so long that Violet said, 'If I'd seen it on a market stall I'd have sworn it was a pantomime prop. Something the genie might wear in Aladdin.' The crowd, obligingly, laughed. 'All glass beads and plastic handle,' she added.

Then, as he eased the knife out of the sheath and the lights glinted off the blade, the laughter died.

'It's not a theatrical prop,' he said, unnecessarily.

'No.' And belatedly Violet wondered exactly how many laws she'd broken simply by carrying the thing in public.

'You found it under the floorboards, you said?' he prompted, with a keen, assessing glance. 'And which floorboards would they be?'

' My floorboards,' she replied a touch defensively, although now that the equity release people had done their sums the floorboards-along with most of the structure-were apparently theirs.

'I'm the fourth generation of my family to live there,' she added. And the last.

'Then it's likely that someone in your family hid it?'

'Unless burglars have started breaking in and leaving loot instead of taking it,' she agreed, and raised another laugh from the people crowded round to listen to what he had to say. Maybe she should consider a career in stand-up…

'Indeed,' he agreed, his smile as fake as his tan. It was his job to make the humorous remarks. 'Maybe we can come back to that.' Then, turning back to the knife, 'The Arab world has always been famous for its weapons and this is a khanjar , mostly worn now as a ceremonial piece in the same way as swords are worn with dress uniforms.'

He talked about the blade, about how the sharply curved scabbard was made, the skills being passed on from one generation of craftsmen to the next. He knew his stuff and the crowd around them was quiet now, intent. They knew that when he took this amount of time it was because he'd found something a bit special.

'This knife is exceptional,' he continued. 'Not only is the blade of the very highest quality, but the handle is made from rare, much-prized rhino horn.'

'Eeeuw…' Violet sat back, instinctively distancing herself from it.

'It's more than a hundred years old,' he said reassuringly.

'Does that make a difference?' she asked. 'The rhino still died just to furnish some man with a handle for his knife.'

'The transference of power had a potent appeal. It was a different world…'

'Not that different.'

'No.' Then, turning to a safer subject, he went on, 'The filigree work is fine gold and silver, and the use of rubies-'

'Rubies!' Violet exclaimed, forgetting all about the poor rhino who'd given up his horn just so that some dumb man would feel invincible when he wielded this blade. Forgetting everything in her shock. 'They can't possibly be rubies!'

This time his smile was genuine. It was finds like this, reactions like hers, that made the programme compulsive viewing.

'I mean, they're huge,' she said. Then, 'I thought they were glass. And raised another laugh. This time for her foolishness. Everyone was an expert…

'They might well have been,' he agreed. 'All kinds of decoration can and have been used on this kind of knife, but these stones are the real thing. Cabochon rubies-that is they have been polished rather than cut.'

Violet, aware that something more was expected, could only manage a slightly croaky, 'Oh…'

Rubies …

'What we have here is the kind of weapon that would have been owned and worn by a chief. A sheikh,'