by Nora Roberts
Other babies were being cooed over and coddled. Girls Adrianne’s age and younger were fussing over the boys, stroking them, spoiling them. From birth, females were taught to devote their time and energies to pleasing men. Adrianne knew only that she adored her little brother and wanted to make him smile.
Phoebe couldn’t bear it. She watched as her daughter served the child of the woman who had taken her place in her husband’s bed and in his heart. What difference did it make if the law here said that a man could take four wives? It wasn’t her law, it wasn’t her world. She had lived in it for six years, and could live in it for sixty more, but it would never be her world. She hated the smells here, the thick, cloying smells that had to be tolerated day after listless day. Phoebe rubbed a hand over her temple where a headache was beginning to throb. The incense, the flowers, perfume layered over perfume.
She hated the heat, the unrelenting heat.
She wanted a drink, not the coffee or tea that was always served, but wine. Just one cool glass of wine. But there was no wine permitted in Jaquir. Rape was permitted, she thought as she touched a finger to her sore cheek. Rape, but no wine. Camel whippings and veils, prayer calls and polygamy, but not a drop of crisp Chablis or a dram of dry Sancerre.
How could she have thought the country beautiful when she had first arrived as a bride? She had looked at the desert, at the sea, at the high white walls of the palace, and she had thought it the most mysterious, the most exotic spot in the world.
She had been in love then. God help her, she was still in love.
In those early days Abdu had made her see the beauty of his country and the richness of his culture. She had given up her own land and customs to try to be what he wanted. What he wanted, it turned out, was the woman he had seen on the screen, the symbol of sex and innocence she had learned to portray. Phoebe was all too human.
Abdu had wanted a son. She had given him a daughter. He had wanted her to become a child of Allah, but she was and would always be a product of her own upbringing.
She didn’t want to think of it, of him, of her life, or the pain. She needed to escape for a little while. She would take only one more pill, she told herself, just to help her get through the rest of the day.
Chapter Three
By the time he was ready to turn thirteen, Philip Chamberlain was a very accomplished thief. At the age of ten, he had graduated from picking the plump pockets of well-to-do businessmen on the way to their banks and brokers and solicitors, or nipping wallets from careless tourists bumping along in Trafalgar Square. He was a second-story man, though any looking at him would see only a handsome, neat, somewhat thin boy.
He had clever hands, shrewd eyes, and the instincts of a born cat burglar. With cunning and guile and ready fists he’d avoided being sucked into any of the street gangs that roamed London during the waning days of the sixties. Nor did he feel the urge to pass out flowers and wear love beads. Fourteen-year-old Philip was neither Mod nor Rocker. He worked for himself now and saw no reason to wear a badge of allegiance. He was a thief, not a bully, and had nothing but contempt for delinquents who terrorized old women and stole their market money. He was a businessman, and looked with amusement on those of his generation who talked of communal living or tuned second-hand guitars while their heads were stuffed with dreams of grandeur.
He had plans for himself, big plans.
At the center of them was his mother. He intended to put his hand-to-mouth existence behind him and dreamed of a big house in the country, an expensive car, elegant clothes, and parties. Over the past year he’d begun to fantasize about equally elegant women. But for now, the only woman in his life was Mary Chamberlain, the woman who had borne him, raised him single-handedly. More than anything, he wanted to give her the best life had to offer, to replace the glittery paste jewelry she wore with the real thing, to take her out of the tiny flat on the edge of what was rapidly becoming fashionable Chelsea.
It was cold in London. The wind whipped wet snow into Philip’s face as he jogged toward Faraday’s Cinema, where Mary worked. He dressed well. A street-corner cop rarely looked twice at a tidy boy with a clean collar. In any case, he detested mended pants and frayed cuffs. Ambitious, self-sufficient, and always with an eye to the future, Philip had found a way to have what he wanted.
He’d been born poor and fatherless. At fourteen, he wasn’t mature enough to think of this as an advantage, as grit that strengthened backbones. He resented poverty—but he resented even more than he’d ever been able to express the man who had passed in and out of his mother’s life and fathered him. As far as he was concerned, Mary had deserved better. And so, by God, had he. At an early age he’d begun to use his clever fingers, and his wits, to see that they both got better.
He had a pearl and diamond bracelet in his pocket, along with matching ear clips. He’d been a bit disappointed after examining them with his hand loupe. The diamonds weren’t of the first water, and the biggest of them was less than half a carat. Still, the pearls had a nice sheen and he thought his fence on Broad Street would give him a fair price. Philip was every bit as good at negotiating as he was at lifting locks. He knew exactly how much he wanted for the baubles in his pocket. Enough for him to buy his mother a new coat with a fur collar for Christmas, and still have a chunk to set aside in what he called his future fund.
There was a snaking line outside the ticket booth at Faraday’s. The marquee touted the holiday special as Walt Disney’s Cinderella, so there were plenty of whiny, overexcited children and their exhausted nannies and mothers. Philip smiled as he went through the doors. He’d wager his mother had seen the movie a dozen times already. Nothing made her day more than a happy-ever-after.
“Mum.” He slipped in the back of the booth to kiss her cheek. It was hardly warmer in the glass box than it was out in the wind. Philip thought of the red wool coat he’d seen in the window at Harrods. His mum would look smashing in red.
“Phil.” As always, pleasure lit Mary’s eyes when she looked at him. Such a handsome boy with his narrow, scholarly face and golden hair. She didn’t, as many women might have, feel a pang as she saw the man she’d loved so fiercely, and so briefly, reflected in the boy’s face. Philip was hers. All hers. He’d never given her a moment’s trouble, not even as a baby. Not once had she ever regretted her decision to have him, though she’d been alone, without a husband, without family. Indeed, it had never occurred to Mary to seek out one of those tiny, flesh-colored rooms where a woman could rid herself of a problem before it became one.
Philip was a joy to her, and had been from the moment of conception. If she had a regret, it was that she knew he resented the father he’d never known and looked for him in the face of every man he saw.
“Your hands are cold,” he told her. “You should be wearing your gloves.”
“Can’t make change with gloves.” Mary smiled at the young woman who had a boy by the nape of the neck. She’d never had to corral her Phil that way. “There you are, dear. Enjoy the show.”
She worked too hard, Philip thought. Too hard and too long for too little. Though she was coy about her age, he knew she was barely thirty. And pretty. His mother’s smooth, youthful looks were a source of pride to him. Perhaps she couldn’t afford Mary Quant, but she chose what little she had with care and an eye for bold colors. She loved to look through fashion and movie magazines and copy hairstyles. She might mend her stockings, but Mary Chamberlain was anything but a frump.
He kept waiting for another man to waltz into her life and change things for her. He looked around the tiny booth that smelled forever of the exhaust from the street beyond. He was going to change things first.
“You should tell Faraday to put more than that rickety old heater in here.”
“Don’t fuss, Phil.” Mary counted out change for two giggling teenage girls who were desperately trying to flirt with her son. Mary passed the coins through the chute and muffled a laugh. She couldn’t blame them, really. Why, she’d ev
en caught her neighbor’s niece—twenty-five if she was a day—making over Phil. Offering him cups of tea. Asking him to come in and fix her squeaky door. Squeaky door indeed. Mary slapped change down hard enough to make a round-faced nanny grumble.
Well, she’d put a stop to that right enough. She knew her Phil would leave her one day and it would be a woman he left her for. But it wouldn’t be some fat-breasted cow a dozen years his senior. Not as long as Mary Chamberlain drew breath.
“Something wrong, Mum?”
“What?” Catching herself, Mary nearly blushed. “No, nothing, luv. Would you like to go in and watch the movie? Mr. Faraday wouldn’t mind a bit.”
As long as he doesn’t see me, Philip thought with a grin. He thanked God he’d long ago eliminated Faraday from his list of possible fathers. “No, thanks. I just came by to tell you I have some errands to run. Want me to pick up anything at the market?”
“We could use a nice chicken.” Mary blew absently on her hands as she sat back. It was cold in the booth, and would get colder yet as winter set in. In the summer it was like one of those Turkish baths she’d read about. But it was a job. When a woman had a boy to raise and not much schooling, she had to take what she could get. She started to reach for her imitation leather purse. It would never have crossed her mind to nip a pound note or two from the till.
“I’ve got some money yet.”
“All right, then. Be sure the chicken’s fresh.” She passed four tickets to a harassed woman herding two squabbling boys and a young girl with big teary eyes.
The show would start in five minutes. She’d have to stay in the booth another twenty in case there were any stragglers. “Be sure to take the price of the chicken out of the tin when you get home,” she told him, knowing he wouldn’t. Bless him, the boy was always putting money in instead of taking it out. “But shouldn’t you be in school?”
“It’s Saturday, Mum.”
“Saturday. Yes, of course, it’s Saturday.” Trying not to sigh as she arched her back, she picked up one of her glossy magazines, already well thumbed. “Mr. Faraday’s going to have a Gary Grant festival next month. He even asked me to help him choose the films.”
“That’s nice.” The little leather bag was beginning to weigh heavy in Philip’s pocket, and he was itching to be off.
“We’re going to start off with my very favorite. To Catch a Thief. You’d love it.”
“Maybe,” he said, looking into his mother’s guileless eyes. How much did she know, he wondered. She never asked, certainly never questioned the little extras he brought into the house. She wasn’t stupid. Just optimistic, he thought, and kissed her cheek again. “Why don’t I take you on your night off?”
“That would be lovely.” She resisted the urge to stroke his hair, knowing it would embarrass him. “Grace Kelly’s in it. Imagine, a real-life princess. I was thinking about it this very morning when I opened up this magazine to an article about Phoebe Spring.”
“Who?”
“Oh, Philip.” She clucked her tongue and folded the page out. “Phoebe Spring. The most beautiful woman in the world.”
“My mother’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said because he knew it would make her laugh and blush.
“You’ve a way with you, boy.” She did laugh, hugely, robustly, as he loved to hear her laugh. “But just look at her. She was an actress, a wonderful actress, then she married a king. Now she’s living with the man of her dreams in his fabulous palace in Jaquir. It’s all right out of a movie. That’s their daughter. The princess. Not quite five years old but a regular little beauty, isn’t she?”
Philip gave the picture a disinterested glance. “She’s just a baby.”
“I wonder. The poor mite has the saddest eyes.”
“You’re making up a story again.” His hand closed over the pouch in his pocket. He’d leave his mother to her fantasies, her dreams of Hollywood and royalty and white limousines. But he’d see she rode in one. Hell, he’d buy her one. Maybe she could only read about queens now, but some fine day soon, he’d see she lived like one. “I’m off.”
“Have a good time, dear.” Mary was already engrossed in her magazine again. Such a pretty little girl, she thought again, and felt a maternal tug.
Chapter Four
Adrianne loved the suqs. By the time she was eight, she had learned to appreciate the difference between diamonds and sparkling glass, Burmese rubies and stones of lesser color and quality. From Jiddah, her grandmother, she learned to judge, as shrewdly as a master jeweler, cut, clarity, and color. With Jiddah she would wander for hours, admiring the best stones the suqs had to offer.
Jewels were the security a woman could wear, Jiddah told her. What good to a woman were gold bars and paper money stored in a bank? Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, could be pinned on, clipped on, strung on so she could show her worth to the world.
Nothing pleased Adrianne more than watching her grandmother bargain in the suqs while the heat rose in waves to make the very air shimmer. They went often, clutches of women cloaked in black like a band of blackbirds to finger ropes of gold and silver, to push polished stones onto their fingers or simply to study the gleam of gems through dusty glass while the smells of animals and spice hung in the still air and the matawain roamed in their straggly henna-tipped beards ready to punish any infraction of religious law. Adrianne never feared the matawain when she was with Jiddah. The former queen was revered in Jaquir. She had borne twelve children. When they shopped, the air would be crowded with sound, the squawks of bargaining, the bray of a donkey, the slap of sandals on the hard ground.
When prayer call sounded, the suqs would close. Then the women would wait while men lowered their faces to the earth. Adrianne would listen to the click of prayer beads, her head bowed like those of the other women. She was not yet veiled, but no longer a child. In those last days of the Mediterranean summer, she waited, poised at the edge of change.
So did Jaquir. Though the country struggled against poverty, the House of Jaquir was wealthy. As the first daughter of the king, she was entitled to the symbols and signs of her rank. But Abdu’s heart had never opened to her.
His second wife had given him two daughters after Fahid. It had been murmured in the harem that Abdu had flown into a rage after the second girl and nearly divorced Leiha. But the crown prince was strong and handsome. Speculation ran that Leiha would soon be pregnant again. To insure his line, Abdu took a third wife and planted his seed quickly.
Phoebe began to take a pill each morning. She escaped now into dreams, sleeping or waking.
In the harem, with her head comfortably nestled on her mother’s knee, her eyes lazily narrowed against the smoke of the incense, Adrianne watched her cousins dance. The long, hot afternoon stretched out ahead. She had hoped to go shopping, perhaps to buy some new silk or a gold bracelet like the one Duja had shown her the day before, but her mother had seemed so listless that morning.
They would shop tomorrow. Today the fans stirred the incense-laden air while the drums beat out a slow rhythm. Latifa had smuggled in a catalog from Frederick’s of Hollywood. The women were pawing over it and giggling. They talked as they always did, and the talk was of sex. Adrianne was too accustomed to the frank words and excited descriptions to be interested. She liked to watch the dancing, the long, sinuous movements, the flow of dark hair, the twists and turns of bodies.
She glanced over at Meri, the third wife of her father who, smugly content with her swollen belly, sat nearby discussing childbirth. Leiha, her face pinched as she nursed her youngest daughter, surreptitiously eyed Meri. Fahid, a sturdy five, trotted over and demanded attention and without hesitation Leiha passed the baby away. Her smile held triumph as she took her son to her breast.
“Is it any wonder they grow to abuse us?” Phoebe murmured.
“Mama?”
“Nothing.” Absently, she stroked Adrianne’s hair. The beat of the drum pounded in her head, monotonous, relentless, like the days she
spent in the harem. “In America babies are loved whether they are boys or girls. Women aren’t expected to spend their lives bearing children.”
“How does a tribe stay strong?”
Phoebe sighed. There were days she no longer thought clearly. She had the pills to blame, and to thank, for that. The latest supply had cost her an emerald ring, but she’d gotten the bonus of a pint of Russian vodka. She hoarded it in the most miserly fashion, allowing herself one small glass after each time Abdu came to her room. She no longer fought him, no longer cared to; she endured by focusing her thoughts on the solace to be enjoyed from the drink she would have when he was done with her.
She could leave. If she only had the courage she could take Adrianne and run away, run back to the real world, where women weren’t forced to cover their bodies in shame and submit themselves to the cruel whims of men. She could go back to America, where she was loved, where people crowded into theaters to watch her. She could still act. Wasn’t she acting every day? In America she could give Adrianne a good life.
She couldn’t leave. Phoebe shut her eyes and tried to block out the sound of drums. To leave Jaquir a woman needed written permission from a man of her family. Abdu would never give it to her, for as much as he hated her, he wanted her.
She had already begged him to let her go, but he had refused. To escape would take thousands of dollars, and a risk she was nearly ready to take. But she would never make it out of the country with Adrianne. No bribe was large enough to tempt a smuggler to give illegal passage to the daughter of the king.
And she was afraid. Afraid of what he might do to Adrianne. He would take her away, Phoebe thought. There would be nothing she could do to stop him, no court to plead to but his court, no police to go to but his police. She would never risk Adrianne.
More than once she had thought of suicide. The ultimate escape. She thought of it the way she had once thought of lovemaking, as something to be desired, treasured, lingered over. Sometimes on hot, endless afternoons she stared at the bottle of pills and wondered how it would feel to take all of them, to drift finally, completely, into the fuzzy world of dreams. Glorious. She had even gone so far as to pour them into her hand, to count them, to fondle them.
