by Lynne Gentry
“We have you on a special bed, one with an opening to accommodate your . . . injury.”
“Big of you.” He tried wiggling his toes but felt nothing. He tucked his chin against his chest to survey the damage. Someone had dressed him in a clean, crisp hospital gown. “What’s beneath my dress?”
“Just you.”
“See what I mean?” He winked, then touched his thigh. “Shouldn’t I feel a breeze or something?” He slapped at his leg. “I’m numb from the waist down.”
“Don’t panic. The drugs will wear off by the time your friend returns with new pants.” She turned to leave. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She fished a clear plastic bag out of her pocket. “I saved this for you.” She handed him the baggie, which contained a dagger-shaped shard of clay with the strange painting of a black swimmer-looking creature about ten centimeters long. “You must put this relic back exactly as you found it.” A warning flashed in her eyes.
“Kinda hard to do since I probably did more damage to the pot than it did to me.”
“Promise me you’ll try.”
He’d never encountered a woman with such a keen interest in a dig site. “If it will make you happy.” He snagged her hand. “Besides, I can think of other souvenirs I’d rather keep.”
• • •
MAGDALENA FLIPPED her hair over her shoulders. “I don’t see how the arrangement of my hair would interest the proctologist.”
The knocker rapped the wooden front door. “Mutfi is here.” Father shoved her toward the atrium. “Answer with a smile.”
Magdalena sighed. She’d caused enough irritation for one day by refusing to leave the hospital until after she discharged the American. Nothing would be gained by delaying the inevitable evening her father had planned.
“Dr. Zaman.” She wasn’t sure which of his eyes to focus on, the one pointed at her or the one taking in the potted plants. “Won’t you please come in?”
“Good evening, Magdalena.” Her name squeaked from his lips, sticky and forced. So different from the layered sweetness of the American’s pronunciation. “Here.” Mutfi held out a burlap bag sealed with a string.
“Oh, you didn’t need to bring anything.”
“I am a very generous man.”
She’d only actually spoken to Mutfi Zaman once before tonight. He’d been the surgeon of record on a fistula repair she observed during her first surgical rotation. She’d thought him proficient in the OR, but he was nowhere close to the level of expertise that warranted his air of arrogance. “Thank you, Dr. Zaman. I’m sure Father will appreciate your kindness.” She turned and called, “Father!”
“Oh, no, Magdalena.” Mutfi touched her arm, and she jumped. “This fine couscous is for you.”
“Grain? For me?”
“Couscous works to keep your system regular.” One eye drifted to her midsection. “Everyone could use more fiber in their diet.”
She stumbled for a proper response. “A . . . sensible and prudent gift. How thoughtful.”
The atrium clock ticked in the awkward silence.
None too soon, Father appeared and led the proctologist to the veranda. Dinner was the frustratingly long, painful affair she’d feared. Mutfi droned on about the various treatments for colon disorders, hemorrhoids, and constipation. Whenever Magdalena tried to enter into the conversation, Mutfi would not even turn his good eye in her direction, but rather continued on as if she’d never spoken. She couldn’t help but smile when Mutfi noticed she’d left the extra helping of couscous on her plate.
Father flicked his wrist, and cups of frothy Turkish coffee and plates of lokum—bite-sized confections of chopped dates, pistachios, and hazelnuts dusted with powdered sugar—appeared on the table. He offered Mutfi one of the demitasse cups. “Magdalena is quite interested in your work, aren’t you, daughter?”
If she never smelled the colorectal OR again it would be too soon. “Well . . .”
“She delayed our meal due to the treatment of hind parts, isn’t that right, daughter? A potsherd in an American bum, wasn’t it?”
“Yes—”
Mutfi frowned. “I, for one, look forward to the day when Magdalena no longer has to burden herself with the unseemly business of a woman working in a man’s world.”
“Burden myself?”
“A woman’s place is in the home.”
“Perhaps in the old days, but not—”
Father squeezed her knee and cut off her protest.
Dr. Zaman continued, oblivious to her clenched jaw. “Omar, you’re getting to an age when a colonoscopy is in order. I’d be only too happy to give you the family discount.”
“Excuse me?” Magdalena looked to her father, whose face had turned tomato-red. Distant cousins abounded in Carthage, but the Kaders and the Zamans were not, nor would they ever be, related. “Family discount?”
Mutfi dabbed at the bread crumbs caught in his beard. “Have you not told her, Omar?”
Now Father was the one to squirm. He cleared his throat and took her hand. “I have a wonderful surprise for you, Magdalena.” He proceeded cautiously. “Dr. Zaman has agreed to marry you.”
“What?”
“The arrangements have been in place for quite some time.”
Magdalena pulled away. “How long?”
“Mutfi’s mother approached me while you were still in primary school.”
“You planned my destiny when I was a child?” Magdalena struggled to breathe. “When were you going to tell me?”
“We waited to see that your beauty would come around,” Mutfi conceded. “All that is left to consider before we announce our engagement is your ability to be a good housewife.”
Magdalena searched her father’s face for some explanation. “So all of those years of work and sacrifice were for nothing?”
He started to speak, then lowered his eyes.
Painfully aware that she would never be her father’s son, she left the table without waiting to be excused.
The flame of her temper refused to lower enough for her to attempt sleep. She paced the balcony outside her bedroom. For the first time since she was twelve, she wished she’d skipped her lessons and watched a soccer game.
3
NONE BUT A MULE denies his family.
The ancient proverb pounded in Magdalena’s head as she pulled into the hospital parking lot a few minutes before the start of her afternoon shift. She could refuse Mutfi’s offer and win this battle, but she would destroy her father and lose the war.
She gathered her white coat and stuffed her med school graduation stethoscope into the pocket. When Father had pressed the expensive piece of equipment into her hands six months ago, why had he not shared the fact that she would never need it?
A knock on her car window startled Magdalena.
“Dr. Kader?” Lawrence Hastings sported a large grin. Showered, shaved, and wearing a clean shirt tucked neatly into clean pants, he was a startlingly handsome contrast to the injured dust mop she’d treated only twenty-four hours ago. He motioned for her to lower the window. “Morning.”
“Is something wrong, Dr. Hastings? Are your stitches giving you trouble?”
“I heal quickly.” He opened her door. “I come from pretty hearty stock.” He offered his hand, but she ignored his chivalry and climbed out on her own.
Standing beside him, she noticed he was nearly a head taller, yet he held her in a level gaze. “My great-grandmother regularly fought off Indian raiding parties while plucking a chicken for dinner, splitting a cord of wood, and raising thirteen kids . . . and all before breakfast.”
Magdalena laughed out loud.
“I knew it.” His offbeat grin stretched ear to ear. “Your smile is as beautiful as your eyes. You should use it more.”
“If that’s the best you’ve got in the way of sweet talk, Americans
can’t hold a candle to the British.”
“The redcoats don’t have the market cornered. That’s just my warm-up.” He hobbled over to a bush and retrieved a picnic basket hidden in the foliage. “In appreciation of your care and devotion, I’ve prepared a feast.”
“You sew and cook? You will never need a wife.”
He laughed. “I don’t want to marry a seamstress or a cook.”
“All men want someone to take care of them.”
“If I ever marry, it will be to someone who thinks for herself and loves an occasional adventure.”
Mutfi Zaman would have choked on such words. Magdalena’s pulse quickened. “So what do you cook, Dr. Hastings?”
“I didn’t say I was a good cook.” He held up a callused palm. “But I do admit to being a shopping wizard in the souks.” He opened the basket and let her peek at the variety of olives, cheeses, and breads, and a bottle of fine wine.
“No couscous?”
He looked puzzled. “Nothing so bland for you.” He closed the basket. “So what do you say? Lunch on the harbor wall?”
“I’ve not even had breakfast.”
“Then an early lunch is just what you need.” He must have read her reluctance, because he said, “Come on. Even a doctor has to eat.”
She could never admit the magnetic appeal of his invitation. Technically, she was engaged to another man and shouldn’t even have been talking to him. “I’m on call.” As she brushed past him, he snagged her arm. His touch, firm but not confining, sent adrenaline coursing through her veins.
“It’s just lunch. I’ll have you back in plenty of time to save the next moron who falls on a potsherd.”
“As attractive as your offer is, Dr. Hastings—”
“Lawrence.”
“Dr. Hastings,” she said as firmly as she could. Father would frown on her getting too familiar with a patient, even one fully discharged and no longer under her care. “I have to work. And I’m sure you have to get back to . . . pillaging the earth or whatever it is you do.”
“Can’t. My doctor told me to take it easy for a few days. . . .” He leaned in and whispered, “And I always follow my doctor’s orders—especially when she’s breathtakingly beautiful.”
Mutfi’s opinion of her beauty had the appeal of fingernails screeching down a chalkboard. Here was a man with good depth perception, and he thought her appearance more than acceptable, even beautiful. But she would be a fool to swoon like Kaifah. Lawrence Hastings was an adventure seeker. When his work was done, he would vanish faster than the autumn rains.
Since the arrival of the ancient Phoenician queen Dido, a parade of invaders had sought to capitalize upon the treasures of Carthage. War upon war had been fought to secure this port as a center of trade for a number of empires. She had no more interest in becoming the purloined prize of this barbarian than she had in becoming the property of Mutfi Zaman. No matter how charming the American’s proposition, no matter how enchanting his smile, no matter how attractive he thought her to be, she had bigger problems that needed attention.
“Dr. Hastings, fraternizing with a patient isn’t a good idea. Besides, we come from two completely different and incompatible worlds.”
“Teach me your world,” he said in perfectly fluent Arabic. “I want to know everything.”
Her father would have been appalled if he caught her staring at a man with her mouth agape, but the American’s ability to speak her language was nearly as shocking as his views on the worth of a woman. Was there more to Lawrence Hastings than his easy-to-love humor, towering height, and rich, mellifluous voice? “I—I can’t,” she finally stammered.
“Here’s how I see it, Magdalena Kader. I’d hate for you to be sorry that you chose to play it safe.”
“Sorry?”
“Sorry that you missed out on an absolutely fabulous day with an extraordinarily fabulous guide.”
“You? I’m the one who grew up here.”
“I bet I can show you a thing or two about your city you never knew.”
“Are all Americans this sure of themselves?”
“Only the handsome ones.”
She stared at his outstretched hand, then glanced around the parking lot. Her father’s limo waited in its usual honored spot. She’d been too angry to ride with him, feigning sleep when he’d brought her breakfast tray. The deception had been childish, but she wasn’t ready to give him the answer he wanted. “After lunch, we part company, and I never see you again. Agreed?” A harmless outing on a beautiful day. Nothing more.
A slow grin danced across the American’s tanned face. “Only if you’re not totally in love with me by dessert.”
4
AZURE WAVES WASHED OVER the stone remains of the harbor walls.
“One hundred and thirty meters in diameter.” Lawrence waved his pipe in the direction of the water. “The port of Carthage may seem small by today’s standards, but at its prime, over two hundred Roman ships docked within these walls.”
“I knew that.” Magdalena finished the last of the cheese. She’d already polished off the majority of the stuffed olives. Interns seldom took lunch breaks. And single women never picnicked on the beach with a man they’d just met. Father would not be happy, especially when he learned she’d missed her shift to play hooky . . . with an American.
“Did you know that at the height of the Roman occupation Carthage had over three hundred thousand inhabitants?”
“Again, trivia easily found in any tourist brochure.” Magdalena made herself take a breath and face the foreigner’s gaze head-on. He lay stretched out on the grass, favoring his injured hip while puffing on a pipe like the one she’d seen in pictures of the British detective Sherlock Holmes. “Why are you really here, Dr. Hastings?”
“Why are you here?”
“In Carthage?” To marry well and please her father. Nothing more, apparently. “I grew up here. I belong here.”
“No, I mean why are you here? Your purpose?”
“Purpose?” She would never hear such questions from Mutfi. A woman knew her purpose. “To marry. To have children. To serve my family.”
“Then why bother with medicine?”
“Helping sick people feels like making a difference.”
“Being a doctor is a hard path.” His gaze penetrated deep, as if he could see the struggle going on inside her soul. “I admire your focus.”
Waves splashed her feet, tumbling her emotions. Was he really looking at her as if what she did mattered, or was she reading more into his words in an attempt to assuage the sting of Mutfi’s comments?
“Enough about me,” she said, breaking the spell. “I’m sure you’re far more interesting. You never answered my question. Why are you here?”
He blew out a hazy ring that drifted toward her. “I love everything Roman, Magdalena Kader.” Purpose and passion rang in his voice. “Don’t you ever imagine yourself living in the days of Rome?”
Orange-scented smoke hung like a curtain between them, hopefully obscuring her aroused senses. “Hard not to when you live amidst their rubble.”
He took another long drag on his pipe. “With your beauty, I’m certain you would have been the wife of a rich patrician, draped in silks and attended by a bevy of slaves.”
“And forced to give up digging potsherds out of bumbling archaeologists? No thank you.” She poured herself more wine, determined to drown the fire his gaze stirred in her bones and return to her predestined life unscathed, dismal as slaving over a hot stove sounded. “But why here? Most of the records of Carthage have been destroyed. There’s little left to discover.”
He pushed himself to a sitting position. “Not true.” His finger skimmed her jaw. “There are always secrets buried beneath the layers.” He leaned in, his breath warming her already flushed cheeks. “My job is to find them.”
She hesitated, her heart arguing with the flashing caution lights in her head. Clearing her throat awkwardly, she sat back. “Are you good at what you do?”
“Not as good as you are with a needle, but I get by.” If he suspected she’d put the distance between them on purpose, he quickly recovered. “I was doing a bit of postdoctoral digging with a team in Syria when we got the call that additional human remains had been discovered near the Tophet.” His tone had taken on a beneficent reverence for the dead reminiscent of her deep regard for her med school cadaver. She’d never met anyone with her appreciation of what could be learned from bodies. “It took a bit of finagling to get myself assigned to this site, but like my sweet little mama always told me and my four brothers: nothing ventured, nothing gained. And being the archaeologist to unearth the truth behind the legend of pagan infanticide was a rare opportunity I did not want to miss.” His gaze traveled to hers. “I’d do it all again.”
“Even the potsherd to the bum?”
“Especially the potsherd.”
She wanted to touch his jaw, explore the square underpinnings of that easy smile and bedrock confidence. Instead, she stuffed her empty wineglass back into the picnic basket. “Killing babies isn’t exactly one of our finer moments.” She’d avoided the tilted grave markers at the Sanctuary of Tophet. The thought of all of those lost children had always sickened her. Everyone knew the ancient cemetery to be a sacred place with a dark history. The enormity of the numbers sacrificed in the name of religion made her furious. She snapped a lid on the few remaining olives. “So are there really twenty thousand children buried there?”
“At least.” His eyes held the same question as hers: what kind of mother willingly places her child upon the idol fires?
Not her. She loved children. As an only child, she’d dreamed of raising an entire tribe one day. But that was before her father had promised her to a man who announced that her primary obligation would be to immediately provide a son.
