His only regret was that Adele would be embarrassed and he would now do his best to handle that.
He left her on his bed and walked down the stairs towards his father’s office. He nodded to Samina, who was crying, and he gave a small nod to Bashir. He knew they would have done their best to cover for him and Adele.
One of the guards gave him a small grim smile of quiet support as he opened the door and admitted Zahir to face a very angry king and a rather strained queen.
Zahir returned the guard’s smile.
And then he stepped in and took charge.
‘We shall speak later,’ Zahir informed them by way of greeting. ‘Right now I am going to take Adele to the airport. Clearly it will be uncomfortable for her to remain here.’
‘You don’t even try to hide it,’ the King shouted in exasperation. ‘You don’t even attempt to come up with a polite excuse!’
Zahir’s response was calm. ‘I refuse to hide any more that I have feelings for Adele. I have been doing just that for the past year and it has got me nowhere. I have driven past her, drenched in a storm at a bus stop, and told myself I was right to do that, that it was essential to keep my emotions in check. I have ignored her, I have tried to remove myself from her and I refuse to do so any more.’
‘You have free rein in England,’ the King retorted angrily. ‘And I know full well that you and Dakan use every inch of it. You know not to bring those ways here.’ He looked at Leila and of course he now made it her fault. ‘Now, if there were still a harem none of this would have happened...’
‘This isn’t about sex!’ Zahir said.
And Leila blinked in confusion, not at what Zahir had just said but at his words before.
‘Zahir, I don’t understand,’ she admitted. ‘Why did you drive past her when she was drenched from a storm? I taught you better than that.’
He did not answer and Leila’s heart broke for her son as she realised the reason was a love that could never be.
Never, because she looked at Fatiq and he had become a stranger.
‘We shall leave by my private exit,’ Zahir said to his father. ‘There is no need for Adele to receive your disdain.’
He walked out.
‘I expected better from Zahir,’ Fatiq said.
‘Why?’ Leila retorted. ‘He is his father’s son. Remember how you used Bashir’s ladder to come to me after the selection ceremony because you could not wait for the wedding night?’
The King said nothing.
‘We had the biggest premature baby that this kingdom has ever seen,’ Leila now shouted. ‘Zahir’s shoulders nearly killed me and we had to smile and pretend he was small.’
‘At least we were betrothed.’
‘Barely,’ Leila snarled.
It had been the night of the selection ceremony that they had first made love and she had told him that night that if he wanted her then the harem was to be gone.
Fatiq had readily agreed.
They had known on sight they were in love, Leila thought.
Look at them now.
Oh, she ached for her son and Adele.
And she ached for herself and her husband too.
* * *
Zahir spoke with Samina and told her to pack Adele’s things and then to arrange to have them put in his car. He told Bashir to move Adele’s flight forward by a day.
Then he headed to his suite.
‘Should I go down and apologise?’ Adele asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You have nothing to apologise for.’
‘I’m her nurse!’
‘Adele, we didn’t exactly do it in a cupboard while she was breathing with the aid of a ventilator.’
That made her smile.
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘You were on holiday by then and she was away in another country, trying to sort out the disaster of her own relationship while I was working on mine.’
And he acknowledged then to Adele that he knew the trouble his parents’ marriage was in.
‘He’s so stubborn, so set in his ways...’
‘You’re not,’ Adele said. She had thought Zahir was at first, but she had seen how open he was to discussion and change and how calm he was under pressure and she loved him so very much.
‘I don’t know how to help them,’ Zahir said. ‘Every time I bring up change he gets angrier...’
‘Maybe he’s scared to be proved wrong.’
Zahir dismissed that.
‘He’s not scared of anything. Come on,’ he said. ‘We shall leave by my private exit.’
Except it was not so easy to leave quietly.
Samina came and informed Zahir that the Queen had requested that the car be bought to the main entrance and that the Queen wished to bid farewell to Adele herself.
‘Don’t apologise,’ Zahir told Adele again. ‘Not just because you have done nothing wrong but because it would acknowledge that something occurred.’
He saw her frown.
And now he smiled.
‘Just wish her well.’
Oh, Adele did.
She loved Leila very much; she was so much more than a patient to her.
If ever there was a walk of shame, though, this was one, Adele thought as she went down the palace steps with Zahir by her side.
The King was nowhere to be seen but a strained-looking Leila stood at the bottom of the stairs to say goodbye to her guest.
She was supposed to have helped her to feel better; instead, Adele could see the tension in her features and she could not meet her eyes.
‘Zahir,’ Leila said, ‘perhaps you could wait for Adele in the car.’
Adele screwed her eyes closed and pressed her lips together because she wanted to say how sorry she was yet Zahir had told her not to apologise.
‘Thank you for the care you have given to me,’ Leila said.
Adele’s cheeks were on fire and still she could not bring herself to meet the Queen’s eyes.
‘I am going to miss our lovely walk and talks,’ Leila said.
‘So am I,’ Adele said. Oh, how she would!
‘I have a small gift for you,’ Leila told her, and her voice was a little shaky but she remained dignified as she handed Adele an intricately engraved wooden box. ‘Please open it.’
‘I don’t think I deserve a gift,’ Adele said.
‘You do.’
‘No,’ Adele said, ‘I don’t.’
‘How could I be cross with you for loving my son?’ Leila whispered, and then spoke in a clearer tone. ‘Please accept my gift.’
Adele opened the box and was dazzled. A stunning sapphire that was beyond anything she had ever seen, let alone touched, was being given to her.
‘It comes from the palace wall, from the same guest room where you stayed,’ Leila explained. ‘In a few weeks’ time a ceremony will take place and the hole where your stone was will be filled with a diamond. One day, generations from now, the qasr, I mean the palace, will live up to its original name. The only requirement to accept this gift is discretion. We don’t need the world to know or understand our ways. Adele, please accept it and I trust you to keep the spirit in which it was given.’
‘I shall,’ Adele said. ‘Thank you.’
It was agony to get in the car.
Adele didn’t want to go home, she simply didn’t want to ever leave, but she climbed in and Zahir was silent as he drove off. He looked down at the box she held in her hands.
‘You understand what the gift means?’
‘I do.’ Adele nodded. ‘What happens in the palace stays in the palace.’
Zahir gave a small smile at her interpretation and nodded. ‘Pretty much.’
Through dusty ancient streets
he navigated the vehicle and she looked at the glittering city skyline that was so modern in comparison with the villages she had seen from the sky. And she remembered the comments she had read about Mamlakat Almas and the suggestion that it was best not to get sick here.
‘I don’t know how long I shall be,’ Zahir said, ‘but know this isn’t the end.’
And she looked out of the car and at a city that needed a hospital and a modern health care system to be implemented. Zahir had a fight on his hands to do that.
‘It has to be the end.’
‘I know you don’t share my faith but I have asked for a solution.’
‘There isn’t one.’
She would not cry when she said goodbye.
And she didn’t.
‘Can I ask that you don’t call me?’ Adele said.
‘I need to know that you get home okay.’
‘Well, turn on the news tonight and if there haven’t been any plane crashes, you can assume that I did.’
‘I will be back in London at some point.’
‘And very possibly married.’
‘No.’
‘Zahir, you know there are going to be repercussions. This country needs to change and your father will use anything he has at his disposal and so will you...’
Would he?
Could he turn his back on Adele and take a wife if it meant better care for his people?
‘I shall address things with my father.’
‘Why?’ Adele said. ‘I can’t come here. I’m not leaving my mother.’ And it wasn’t just that. ‘After this morning I could never face your parents again.’
It was impossible, and safer to end it.
‘I’ve had the most wonderful time of my life,’ Adele said.
‘I’ll see you in London.’
‘I shan’t be your mistress, Zahir.’
‘Liar.’ He smiled. ‘I might have to reinstate the harem and keep you there.’
How could he make her smile even now?
Yet he did.
There could be no kiss or embrace for they were in public and so she walked off and went straight through customs and she did not turn around.
And still she did not cry.
Not on the plane because it would be so loud that they would have had to divert to the nearest airport as she wailed.
And not even when she landed.
To terrible news.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LANDING IN LONDON, Adele told herself that she should be looking forward to seeing her mother; instead, she was resisting listening to a message that Zahir had left on her phone.
There was also one from the estate agent, informing her that the flat was hers.
That call she returned.
And then, before she went to the underground to take the tube home, she rang the nursing home and told them that she was home.
‘Hi, Adele,’ Annie said. ‘We weren’t expecting you back till tomorrow. How was your holiday?’
‘It was wonderful, thank you,’ Adele said. ‘How’s Mum?’
And she waited for the familiar answer—that she was comfortable and that there was no change. Instead there was a pause.
‘You need to come in, Adele.’
No, her mother wasn’t dead, but there was something that Annie needed to discuss and not over the phone.
Adele went straight there.
She didn’t even stop to drop her suitcase back at the flat and she sat with it beside her in the nurses’ office.
‘When she had her hair washed last week, the nurse noticed a lump on her neck. We spoke with her GP and a biopsy was done. Adele, we did discuss telling you...’
‘I understand why you didn’t.’ Adele said. She was grateful for the thought they had put into it. Of course she would have rushed back and for what? To sit by her mother’s bed and await results.
She wouldn’t have had the time with Zahir, even if it had come to such an embarrassing end.
‘When do the results come in?’
‘Dr Edwards expects to have them back tomorrow when he does his rounds.’
Adele sat by her mother’s bed and held her hand.
‘I’m back,’ she said, but of course there was no response.
There never had been since day one.
And then, only then, did Adele allow herself the bliss of listening to Zahir’s voice as she turned on the message he had left on her phone.
‘Call me when you land,’ he said in his lovely deep voice that felt like a caress. ‘Let me know how you are.’
She didn’t, because she needed him so much now and it would not be fair to tell him so, knowing there was nothing he could do.
No, she had no faith in the desert offering a solution.
And she sat by her mother’s bed.
‘Call me when you land... Let me know how you are.’
She played it over and over and over some more.
And the next day, after picking up the keys to her new home and signing the lease, she listened to it again before she went back to the nursing home for Dr Edwards’s round.
‘It isn’t good news, Adele.’
He was terribly kind and as Adele sat in the office he gently explained that it would be wrong to send her mother for invasive tests and treatment.
Nature would take its course.
‘I want her to have pain medication,’ Adele said.
‘Of course.’
‘I want to be sure that she’s not in any pain.’
‘We’ll do all we can to ensure she’s comfortable.’
It was Adele who was the one in pain. There was a wash of guilty relief that finally there was an end in sight and that was so abhorrent to her that she was propelled to her feet.
‘I’m going to go and sit with her,’ she said.
And as she did she held her phone to her ear.
‘Call me when you land,’ Zahir said in his lovely deep voice that felt like a caress. ‘Let me know how you are.’
Adele hit delete.
And then she gave her mother a kiss and headed out to the office. ‘Annie, I need to update my contact details.’
She had deleted his number and blocked him and by tomorrow she would be at a different address.
And the day after that she would be back at work.
* * *
‘Wow!’ Helene said as a suntanned Adele came into the changing room. ‘How was Paris?’
‘Fantastic.’ Adele smiled.
‘Good God, how hot was it?’ Janet said as she took in Adele’s sun-bleached hair and brown limbs.
‘Pretty warm?’
‘Are they having a heatwave?’
‘I think they were.’
‘Where’s our postcard?’ Janet checked.
‘It must be on its way.’
She didn’t tell them about her mother and she certainly didn’t tell them she had been in Mamlakat Almas.
Instead she was brought up to date.
‘Zahir didn’t renew his contract,’ Janet informed her as they walked around to the nurses’ station, ‘so we’re rather short-staffed, though what’s new?’
Everything, Adele thought.
The place felt different without him, though her home life was better, of course, now that she lived alone.
The days just seemed to limp by, though.
* * *
For Zahir they did too.
She had been gone almost a month and there was no progress that Zahir could see.
In any direction.
He was working with Nira, the architect, and she had some wonderful suggestions but his father just knocked back every one and it incensed Zahir.
‘Why are you so opposed to this?’ he demanded of the King.
‘Our scholars are the basis of your system. We were the forerunners, and that wisdom I refuse to lose. I consult with the Bedouins and the elders, not with you.’
Zahir walked out.
His father was right. His culture had contributed so much to modern medicine. Surely they could marry ancient and modern. Other countries managed it and yet his father blocked him at every turn.
He found himself on the beach, and he strode in the pristine white sand and looked out to the stunning gulf and he did not know the solution.
He looked up at the palace and saw that a long ladder was resting against the wall that led to the suite where Adele had resided.
Up the ladder a man went, and beneath it were the elders, all watching as the small ceremony occurred.
From early times the elders, with little evidence, had believed that Mamlakat Almas was a land of diamonds. Rubies and other precious stones had been panned from the rivers and later mined. So convinced were they, despite evidence to the contrary, that the kingdom held the most precious stones, that when the palace had been built it had been named Diamond Palace. Its walls had been dotted with precious stones with the promise that one day diamonds would be discovered. They had been and now, when a guest stayed at the palace, they were presented with a stone from the wall and it was replaced with a diamond.
There were rare exceptions.
On the night of the selection ceremony the Sheikh Prince would meet with the elders and the King. A diamond would represent each bride and when the Sheikh Prince had made his selection he would hold the diamond in his palm and show his choice to the King. If the King endorsed the decision he would place his palm over the chosen stone and it would then be presented to the future bride.
That should be Adele’s stone.
Zahir strode over, and his shout halted proceedings and he told them to hand over the stone.
Adele’s stone.
The elders frowned and tried to argue with him but Zahir was having none of that.
‘I am the Crown Prince of Mamlakat Almas,’ he reminded them. Not that it counted for much as his father had the final word after all, but for now he put his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘You can take it up with him later, but for now you are to give me the stone.’
Seduced by the Sheikh Surgeon Page 12
