LYNNE GRAHAM - The Arabian Mistress

‘May I be of assistance?’

Faye glanced up to see Latif and she stood up. ‘I’d like to make a phone call.’

The little man looked uneasy.

‘Even a criminal usually gets one phone call…but maybe not in the civilised and humane country of Jumar,’ Faye conceded in a bitter undertone.

Latif flushed and bowed his head. ‘Come this way, please.’

He left her alone in an office a few doors down the corridor. She called her stepfather on his portable phone.

‘Faye?’ Percy demanded loudly. ‘Whatever stunt you’ve pulled, it’s working! I haven’t had the final word yet but it looks like our Adrian may be walking free this afternoon—’

‘Just answer one question for me,’ Faye interrupted in a flat little voice. ‘The day of the wedding, I gave you an envelope. What did you do with the cheque inside?’

Total silence buzzed on the line.

Percy cleared his throat.

‘You took the money, didn’t you?’ Faye pressed in disgust. ‘You let Tariq think he could buy me off as if I was a blackmailer too!’

‘Adrian’s had most of the money without knowing where it came from and stop talking about blackmail, Faye. All I did was try to protect your interests and, if Tariq wanted to pay us off to keep us quiet, why shouldn’t I have accepted the money?’ her stepfather protested. ‘It’s all in the family—’

‘You’re a con man and a thief. You robbed my mother and you ripped off me. Don’t insult my intelligence by talking about family!’ Faye sent the receiver crashing down again.

Slowly she retraced her steps and walked head held high out into the hot sunshine to climb into the limousine. ‘How well do you think you ever knew me?’ Tariq had asked. Well, some day soon he might be asking himself just how well he had ever known her!

The drive out to the Muraaba place took much longer than Faye had expected. Once the city limits were behind them, the desert took over for miles. It was the emptiness that fascinated Faye, then the rise of the rolling shadowed dunes baking below the remorseless heat of mid-morning. Sand and more sand…what a thrill! Had she really been so crazy about Tariq once that she had fondly imagined she could live with all that sand?

In the distance she saw a massive sprawling building surrounded by fortified walls that got higher the closer they got. As the limo approached, a cluster of tribesmen squatting in the shade jumped up to open the gates. Two sets of solid iron gates, Faye noted, one shorter inner pair, the outer so tall they could have kept the sun trapped, she thought fancifully.

Within the walls, terraced gardens of breathtaking beauty stretched up the hillside in every direction. She was blind to them. She was noting the number of guards on duty and reckoning that Tariq’s desert palace appeared braced to withstand both imminent seige and invasion. Her heart sank. Her nebulous plan to stage an escape within the next twenty-four hours would be more of a challenge than she had naively hoped.

Shoulders straight, chin tilted, ignoring the curious eyes and the whispers that accompanied her passage, Faye entered the palace. On her way past, soldiers snapped to attention, presented arms and saluted. She drifted on. It would be so easy to develop delusions of grandeur in Jumar, she decided. The Muraaba was a really ancient building, she registered with a grudging stirring of interest. Fantastic mosaic panels in glorious turquoise, green and gold covered every inch of the walls in the great hall that echoed from her footsteps.

A startling cry of pain followed by the shout of a child smashed the tranquillity and made Faye first freeze and then hurry on in search of the source. If a child had been hurt…

Faye came to a halt on the threshold of a room. So appalled was she by the scene which met her gaze, she could not initially accept what she was seeing. Three servants were huddled by the wall wailing and a fourth, a woman, was down on her knees while a small boy struck at her back with a switch. For an instant, Faye waited for one of the staff to intervene and then she realised that nobody was going to intervene and that the victim seemed too scared to protest such treatment.

Faye stalked forward. ‘Stop that!’

The little boy in his miniature robes stopped for an instant in surprise and then started again.

‘Stop it right this minute!’ Faye ordered icily.

The next thing the little horror rushed at her with the switch! She bent down and gathered him to her. The switch fell from his hand. Then she held him at a distance from her to let him kick out his tantrum without hurting her or anyone else. He was very young but his little face was screwed up in a mask of uncontrollable rage. ‘Let go of me!’ he bawled at her. ‘Let go, or I will whip you too!’

‘I’ll put you down when you stop shouting.’

‘I am a prince…I am a prince of the blood royal of Jumar!’

‘You’re a little boy.’ But Faye stiffened, now picking up on the stricken silence surrounding her. She studied the exquisite silk embroidery on the clothing the child wore. He spat at her and she grimaced. ‘No prince of the blood royal would behave like that,’ she told him without hesitation.

His bottom lip came out. His big brown eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘I am an ibn Zachir. I am a prince. You do what I tell you…why you not do what I tell you?’

And in that instant he went from being a little monster to being a child, and a distressed and frightened child at that. As he went limp, Faye slowly released her breath in relief that she had won the battle and drew him close. He could not have been more than five years old, maybe not even that. ‘Does the prince have a name?’

‘Rafi…’

Belatedly conscious that an outraged parent might descend on her at any minute, that she was in a foreign country with a very different culture and that for all she knew even the tiniest royal children were encouraged to beat servants all the time, Faye attempted to set the boy down again. Disconcertingly, he clung like a limpet.

Faye felt something touch her toes. She peered down over Prince Rafi’s back. His female victim was sobbing at Faye’s feet. The other servants were now lying face down on the floor as if they were waiting on a bomb dropping or someone shouting, ‘Off with their heads!’ She felt like an alien set down without warning in very dangerous territory.

‘Sleepy…’ Rafi told her round his thumb.

‘Will someone put Rafi…I mean, His Royal Highness down for a nap?’ Faye asked with the weak hope that someone spoke some English.

‘Nurse…I am nurse.’ It was the lady cowering at her ankles.

‘It is wrong and unkind to hurt people, Rafi.’ Faye sighed.

‘He no mean hurt,’ his nursemaid muttered fearfully.

‘Rafi sleepy…’ He snuggled his silky dark head under her chin. ‘Lady take Rafi to bed?’

Well, hopefully that would get everybody up and moving again, Faye decided.

‘My horse flies faster than the wind,’ Rafi told her sleepily as she carried him from the room.

She resisted the urge to ask if he beat the horse too. ‘I love horses.’

‘I show you my horse.’

It was a long trek through passageways, a positive procession for they seemed to gather servants and grow into a crowd on the way. And with every covert marvelling look that came her way, every awestruck appraisal that suggested she was doing something extraordinary, Faye’s frown grew. It was one weird household. She might possess the stepfather from hell but Tariq had got nothing to boast about on his own home front. Did he beat his servants too? Her tummy turned over at that image.

Finally they arrived in Rafi’s bedroom which was just stuffed with every imaginable toy and indulgence. Spoilt little brat, Faye thought, refusing to be softened by the child’s sweet innocence asleep. But some adult must surely first have taught such brutality by example, she conceded heavily. A parent? Evidently, Tariq shared his huge palace with his extended family. No wonder he was talking about stashing her like a guilty secret in a harem! No way was she staying in the Muraaba palace!