by Holly Rayner
And surrounding the windows, she saw the pattern. The same pattern she’d seen on so much of the distinctive pottery that had first led her to believe there was once a center for pottery production in the region.
“Where are we?” Lucie said quietly.
“Not too far from the site,” the Sheikh said, picking up her meaning entirely.
Maybe she’d been wrong about the precise location of her mysterious pottery center. But maybe she hadn’t been that far off… Her heart swelled at the sudden realization that her dissertation wasn’t doomed at all.
“Come,” the Sheikh said, sitting down himself. “There’ll be plenty of time for work later. For now, we must eat!”
He kept speaking in Arabic and Lucie kept expecting that the pleasure of hearing his voice would wear off. But if it was going to happen, it certainly wasn’t going to be any time soon.
She joined him on the floor. The coffee was still hot, and the food was a mixture of western and Al-Brehonian cuisine. She down sat across from him, but immediately thought the better of it, and moved to his side so that her leg could touch his as they sat together.
Breakfast was delicious, the setting thought-provoking, and the company perfect. Lucie had thought nothing could improve on the feeling of waking up in the Sheikh’s bed, with the certainty of his love, but she’d been wrong.
Less than a minute later, however, her perfect joy was shattered. In came a servant—the same one who had refused her request to go to the palace before she left the country. In his hands, he held a newspaper in Arabic.
The Sheikh read it, and Lucie saw the peaceful, contented expression on his face transform in a split second to one of complete and utter rage.
Seeing the flash in his eyes, her gaze darted to the headline. Upside down, and in embellished type, it was hard at first for her to make out the words that were written there.
And then, she did. And her heart sank.
The headline called him a “playboy” royal, indulging a “foolish dalliance” with an “American whore”.
She didn’t know what bothered her most about the headline, but stopped short of saying so when the Sheikh dropped the newspaper and got to his feet.
“How could you have been so stupid?” he asked quietly, menacingly. He’d switched back to English, and hit the hard consonants with full force. “You were angry, I know. But to ruin my reputation… to risk everything I’m trying to achieve just because you felt insulted…”
The word drew her to her feet, and his rage summoned her own.
“What? You think I did this? Do you really think so little of me?”
But before she could say another word—before she could further deny his unfounded accusations—his arm flew out. He was pointing towards the door.
“Get out!” he said.
Lucie tried to respond, but he only repeated himself more loudly.
“Get out of my sight!”
She wanted to argue. She wanted to calm him. Already, she was missing the closeness of their morning. She was missing the peace and the certainty. How had they gotten so quickly from there to here?
He wouldn’t hear it. He wouldn’t listen. He had nothing to say but to banish her from his presence.
And at the end of the day, he was a king, and he would get what he wanted, even if she tried to resist.
So she obeyed him, and left.
SIXTEEN
Lucie was back in the car headed toward the camp so fast it made her head spin. Her bag and clothes had been handed to her by a thoughtful maid, but she’d not even been allowed to stay in the palace long enough to change out of the robe she’d put on for breakfast.
She was thankful for the tinted windows and the partition between her and the driver as she quickly put back on the clothes she’d worn the previous day. Taking off the robe and putting back on the dusty clothes felt like shedding one perfect world for another than was much lonelier.
On the way from the camp to the palace, the trip had seemed torturously long. But now, she was glad for the length of the trip. She needed to get herself together. She needed to figure out what had gone wrong, and how her fragile joy had collapsed in on her so quickly.
And it started with finally letting out the tears that had been trying to so long to get out. It started with a stream, and increased to a flowing tide, impossible to hold back. Before she knew it, her body was wracked with sobs, the water from her eyes making muddy streams on her work shirt.
She cried for a long time, until her heart began to feel a little less heavy, and her mind was a little clearer.
With the tears gone, she began to piece everything together. She had control of herself again, and she needed desperately to work out where it had all gone wrong.
She was no longer angry at the Sheikh. Without him there in front of her, it was easy to see where he was coming from. Sure, he was assuming the worst from her—but it wasn’t a big leap from the anger that she’d been feeling only the day before to the reckless action he was accusing her of.
If there was anything the Sheikh was underestimating, it was how much Lucie loved her work. In his anger, he wasn’t thinking how much she’d be sacrificing by compromising her own reputation and access to the sites in Al-Brehoni she hoped to study and discover.
But if she hadn’t reported their relationship to the press, who had?
She considered the palace guard, and the other servants there. But Abdul trusted them all completely, and that was good enough evidence for Lucie that they were trustworthy.
That left few options. The first was the archaeologists at the camp, who might have seen them interacting with each other. But that made no sense. Sure, their behavior had been unusual, and there were probably those who had suspected something. But suspicions weren’t enough to go to press.
No, the only person who could have done it was the first name that had jumped to her mind.
Zach.
He’d been an annoyance from the beginning. A handsome annoyance, certainly, but she’d always been clear on the fact that he didn’t have a chance with her.
But she also knew that he was pigheaded enough not to understand the difference between her playfully refusing his advances and her clearly communicating that she wasn’t interested. And between the faint hope of her maybe changing her mind and the offence she’d seen him take during their dinner with the Sheikh, Lucie could easily see him making the leap to this kind of extreme action.
By the time she got to camp, she was convinced that Zach was the culprit, and she was aflame with indignation. How dare he?
***
Arriving at the camp, Lucie asked if anyone knew where Zach was, and wasn’t surprised to learn that he was shirking his duties by spending the morning in bed.
She stormed into his tent, not stopping to give him any warning. One look at him, and she knew she had been correct. There was the newspaper in his hand, and he had a pencil, scrawling notes in the margins, attempting to translate the article.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?”
He held his hands up and flashed her an infuriating smile.
“You may be mad, now…” he said. He spoke each word carefully, as if he were trying to diffuse a bomb.
“I’m not mad, I’m furious!”
“I completely understand that, Lucie. But when you’ve calmed down, you’ll understand why it’s for the best.”
She just stared, unable to fathom where he was going with this.
“He was using you. I know you haven’t travelled much, but in these kinds of countries, men get everything they want. He’ll use you, and he’ll throw you away. It may seem like he cares about you now, but honestly, Lucie, he just sees you as a thing. You don’t know what these people are like…”
For a long moment, Lucie just stared at him, her mouth wide open. And then, a strange thing happened.
She laughed. It started deep in the bottom of her belly, blossomed in her chest and spilled out of her mouth. The
irony of this man, steeped in entitlement and lecturing her about how another man was morally corrupt because he’d had everything handed to him.
And now, she saw, she’d hurt his feelings. His chest had been puffed out in pride, or something like it, but now it had caved in on itself.
“I saw you,” he squeaked. “In the garden. Don’t try to pretend nothing happened.”
She could barely stop laughing to talk. “And what did you see? What did you think you saw when you were spying on us?”
Zach’s eyes darted to the side, as though he was doubting, for the first time, what he’d done. “He ran after you. He was taking advantage of you.”
With her laughter gone, Lucie’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think anyone was ‘taking advantage’ at all?”
Zach seemed to get a second wind. “Like I said, you don’t know these men…”
“And you don’t know me, if you think I’m so weak. If you think that just because a man is powerful, I would do anything that I don’t want to do. Do you think I’m weak, Zach?”
She had trapped him. He couldn’t say yes. But he couldn’t say no, and make any sense in his own argument.
“You know what you saw. And you know why you didn’t like it. And whatever story you’re telling yourself about your own actions, and how you were trying to save me, it’s wrong. You made it up, all of it.”
She paused, waiting for him to speak up and try and defend his actions. But instead, his mouth opened and closed like a fish. He was looking for something to say, but his mind was no more successful at finding a rebuttal than it had been at finding a decent subject for his dissertation.
She was done with him.
She left him alone, then. Maybe he would think about what he’d done. Maybe he would get the message that he had been out of line. Probably he wouldn’t.
Either way, it wasn’t on her. The more she’d seen him work these last few weeks, the more she’d become convinced that she would never have to have anything more to do with him once her PhD was complete and she’d left Harvard. He never would, she was convinced of that. And so long as she worked in Al-Brehoni, she thought, she certainly wouldn’t have to deal with his parents.
She wondered, now, what information she was missing about them that the Sheikh had discovered in the course of his own investigation.
If she ever managed to get back into his good graces, she’d have to ask him.
But that was a big ‘if’.
Lucie wished there was a rulebook for this. She wished there was someone who knew her well enough to tell her what she should do. One advantage of having spent her whole life learning was that there were always models to follow; there was always someone who had done what she was doing before, on whom she could depend for advice.
But on this, there was nothing. There was no advice column for how to win back a king after your jealous colleague had spread lies about your relationship to the national press. She was on her own.
So she decided to wait. Abdul’s anger had been complete, earlier, and justified—albeit aimed at the wrong person. And it would take time for him to calm down. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt if Lucie had some time to think about things herself.
She needed to not be so afraid when she spoke to him. She needed to be able to make her case that it wasn’t her who had gone to the press. If she came across as nervous, it might seem like she was lying, and there had never been a time when she needed to be believed more.
If she was going to wait, Lucie realized, she’d need something to do to keep from driving herself insane.
She could sit in her tent at camp, but that seemed like a bad idea. Spending the whole say stewing over what may or may not happen, with little to distract her from guesses and conjecture, sounded like the worst way to prepare for the conversation that would determine the rest of her life.
And so she worked. She put on headphones, and pumped in some music. It was something bright and poppy, in Arabic. The words were saccharine sweet, but she didn’t mind.
No one bothered her. It was just her, and the work. Just her, the sand and dirt, and the secrets they held.
She could see several scenarios stretched out before her. In one, the Sheikh believed her. He believed that she had nothing to do with the leak. He told her again that he loved her, and she finally told him the same.
And then that path split in two directions. In one, she told him that she was pregnant, and he was angry. He couldn’t marry her, especially after the scandal over their relationship. In that path, it all ended in tears.
And then there were darker paths, where he did not accept her explanation, and insisted that she had betrayed him. And even within these possible futures, there were two options: she could tell him about the child or she could not.
If she told him, it would look like a desperate Hail Mary; an attempt to salvage what she had destroyed with her betrayal. He would question if it were true. He would question if the child were his. And even if she stayed on, and fought to get him to accept that the child was his own, they would never be happy again. The bond they had begun to form would be lost.
And, finally, there was the possibility that she wouldn’t tell him. She would leave, never letting him know about the child that would forever bind them. She would go back to Harvard, finish her studies, and graduate. She would put Al-Brehoni behind her, and never return. She’d learn to study the history of some other place—somewhere that wasn’t quite so cruel.
All these options were possible. And though she certainly hoped for the one good outcome among the many that ended in tears, she had no way of being sure that it would come to pass.
She worked the rest of the afternoon on holding her composure as she thought about each possibility. If she lost the Sheikh, she would need to keep her calm in the moment. She would need to find a way to be okay with it, even it if might take years to truly accept.
It was hard work, trying to numb her mind to the possibilities. From time to time, tears sprung from her eyes, mingling with the dust and sweat on her body. She paid them no mind. Now that her business had been announced to the whole country, now she had shouted at Zach for blabbing, it wouldn’t be long before the whole camp knew the truth.
No one approached her, however. They only left her alone to work.
She skipped lunch. It seemed unimportant to her, now, and she didn’t want to risk the chance that someone would ask her about what was going on, let alone the chance that she would run into Zach again. She just worked straight on through, and straight through the afternoon.
And then, when the sky began to darken, she went to Calista and asked to borrow the jeep.
The other woman raised her eyebrows. “It’s Professor Hasseb’s. You should probably ask him.”
Lucie shook her head. “He wouldn’t understand. But I thought you might.”
She was desperate, and it must have shown in her face.
“You might be surprised what he would understand,” Calista said. “But it doesn’t matter. I won’t let you use the Jeep.”
Lucie’s eyebrows furrowed. She hadn’t expected this. She began to formulate a response, but Calista raised her hand.
“I will, however, drive you to the palace. These roads can be dangerous and confusing at night, if you don’t know where you’re going.”
Lucie sighed in relief. She wanted to leave immediately, but Calista insisted she take a shower first, and make herself presentable, which she reluctantly agreed was probably a good idea.
***
When Lucie was clean again, and as prepared as she would ever be for the confrontation, the two women got on the road. The stars were just starting to peek out of the sky, and the day was cooling swiftly into a cold desert night.
So far, all of her trips to the palace had been in the back of an expensive car—relatively smooth, and shielded from the elements. Not so in the jeep.
But it felt good. The feeling of being jostled around by every bump in the road kept
her from getting too lost in the thoughts she’d already exhausted during the day.
If everything did go wrong, she knew she would have to find another desert country to work in. She couldn’t give up on a night like this. It was too magical.
To Lucie’s relief, Calista didn’t try to make conversation on the way over. She drove in silence, her dark eyes fixed on the road ahead. She slowed slightly as the palace came into view.
Lucie’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t seen it from the approach before; a single shape, so alone and stark against the desert landscape. The way it went from a speck in the distance to a towering presence up close made it seem all the more intimidating.
