Meredith Webber - The Sheikh Doctor's Bride

Fareed’s vehicle was a high-set SUV, black like most of the vehicles she’d seen these people use.

‘Why are all the cars black?’ she asked, as she clambered in, unaided by her husband-to-be.

‘They aren’t,’ he replied—two crisp words cutting off any further conversation.

Kate studied his profile—more stern than arrogant—and shivered inside. Perhaps there was still time to pull out of this arrangement. She could speak to Ibrahim and ask if she could work for two years—even three—instead of marrying this man, but she knew she couldn’t risk the happiness of the two people she loved best in all the world.

And yet if she was going to marry Fareed, shouldn’t she at least attempt to get to know him?

‘I’m sorry you were pulled away from your work. If I had known Ibrahim was going to interrupt your work to take care of me, I could have asked him to call me a cab.’

Fareed’s reply was a derisive snort.

‘Call a cab when he has a dozen vehicles at his disposal and probably twice as many drivers? I’m to take you to the palace where, no doubt, he’ll be happy to organise a car and a driver to be put at your disposal for however long you are here.’

He turned to study her as the traffic slowed.

‘It seems you have bewitched him.’

How to respond?

‘Nonsense! He’s asked me here as thanks for the bee episode and so I could see your country and perhaps work here for a while. I imagine, once I start work, I can live in at the hospital.’

Another snort.

Kate sighed.

If the man was like this when he thought her just a visitor, how much more awkward and dismissive would he be when he discovered she was to become his wife?

She should tell him—let him work it out with Ibrahim—but she had given her word she’d tell no one of the agreement. To all intents and purposes, she was coming here to work, full stop.

And as for seeing sights, so far all they’d seen was traffic. Was this Fareed’s way of disobeying his uncle’s orders? She’d have been better off being shown around by one of the camels wandering across the streets—the cause of the traffic chaos.

‘Are they sacred animals that they are allowed right of way?’ she asked, and Fareed, though he looked momentarily shocked that she had asked a question, did, finally, reply.

‘No, just animals with minds of their own! But they have been essential to the survival of my people for thousands of years, so no one would harm one. We will be out of this traffic soon.’

Kate turned her attention back to her surroundings.

Rows of small shops and businesses gave way to signs of development, boarded lots, some with massive cranes rising behind the fences, and beyond them the outlying residential area of a sparkling new city.

‘How exciting it must be to be able to build a city from scratch,’ Kate said. ‘To try to get it right from the beginning.’

For a moment she thought Fareed wouldn’t answer, but after a swift glance her way, he relented.

‘This city is my uncle’s dream. He had so many plans he needed teams of architects and engineers and builders to implement them. He drew the best from all over the world, told them what he wanted, then made sure he got it. He might appear a charming cosmopolitan man but he has the core of steel all our leaders had to keep the tribes alive in inhospitable places for thousands of years.’

Kate heard the words but also the love this man must feel for Ibrahim. Could a man who loved his uncle be all bad?

The vehicle left the city, the built and unbuilt bits of it, and swung onto a wide road that ran along the shoreline.

‘Oh!’

Kate barely breathed the word, so astonished was she by the wide stretch of golden sound reaching out to the deep blue of a placid sea. Squat palm trees lined the landward side of the road and beyond them, green parklands stretched to the foothills of craggy red-grey mountains.

The road curved gently around the shallow bay, coming to a point where rugged cliffs met the sea, and perched atop the cliffs, like something formed from the land itself, there was a multi-towered building.

The old fort?

‘How do you get to it?’ Kate asked, staring up now at the sheer cliffs.

‘There is a way from the inland side,’ Fareed explained. ‘And a secret way from the sea. Once it was a place of refuge for the fishermen who lived along the shore, but now it is deserted, except for the caretakers and some artisans who are restoring parts that have deteriorated.’

As they rounded the corner, Kate turned back to look again, marvelling at the beauty of the structure and wondering how on earth it had been built on such an impossible site.

But they were passing the fishing village now, the colourful boats tied up along the shore, and beyond the village high mud brick walls—

‘Another fort?’

‘The palace,’ Fareed replied.

She was here!

In Amberach!

With her bridegroom?

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