“Seems like I’m hearing that a lot, lately,” Elle muttered, glancing out the window and grumpily buckling up.
“What’s that, young lady?” Beth said, and now she had to try hard to hold back her smile, a smile that was growing out of the warm feeling that was filling her with the strangest sort of joy, a joy that had an undercurrent of fearful excitement. “You said something?”
“No,” Elle said quietly, a little smile coming to her lips as she tried to pout at her mother. “Go ahead. Take your time. Process it. Say what you need to say. I deserve it.”
Beth took a breath, glancing out the window as she prayed for strength and then begged for forgiveness, hoping to the high heavens that the words would come out right. “What you deserve, Elle,” she said, turning to her daughter now, “is a man who knows within three days of meeting you that he’s ready to spend the rest of his life with you.” Now she shook her head quickly. “Correction. What you deserve is a man who knows that within three MINUTES of meeting you. And you’ve found that man, Elle. You’ve found him and he knows it and I hope to God you know it too.”
Elle’s jaw couldn’t open any farther, her eyes couldn’t go any wider, her smile couldn’t break any faster, and as Beth tried to point to that seatbelt sign, Elle snapped off that belt and hugged her mother and started to cry, and now Beth was crying, and now they were laughing, mother and daughter both, Beth cradling her little girl who wasn’t so little anymore, certainly wasn’t her little girl anymore, would never be her little girl again.
And as they wiped each other’s tears, Beth smiled again and watched her daughter sit back and take a moment and begin to jabber away, chatter away, her eyes lighting up, her hair seeming to straighten itself into some kind of order, her cheeks rosy like a cherub’s, her lips full like strawberries.
Beth sighed as she told herself that the words had indeed come out right, that the advice she gave sounded insane but was in fact sound. But there was something else she needed to do before she could let this little girl go, before she could let this girl become this man’s woman, let her enter his world, a world she somehow understood, understood in a way that she could never admit to Elle, would never admit to Elle, could never admit to Elle because Elle would have to find out for herself. And until then, there was something else Beth needed to do. A wedding gift, if you will. Her last act as guardian. An act that would pass the torch of protection from her to Him. The Almighty Him.
So Beth waited for Elle to head back to her cabin, and she waited for the seatbelt light to turn green, and then the older Ms. Easton went to her cabin and opened her travel bag and took out a small vial with a handwritten label on it that said “Holy Water. Trinity Church of Nashville.”
Then she slowly walked to the Sheikh’s large cabin, the one with the dark red double-doors, the gold metal trim, the Arabic letters engraved in goldleaf, letters that Beth knew full well read, “God is Great.”
God is great indeed.
34
“Allah hu Akbar,” said the old Sheikh Salim. “God is Great! Welcome back, my son!”
“Greetings, Father,” said Akbar, bowing his head slightly but otherwise remaining upright even as his younger brother Kai bowed full and deep. “How is your day going, Father? Better than Mohammed’s, I presume?”
“You are not in a position to presume anything, Akbar,” snapped the old Sheikh. “If you think your presence is going to change my mind, you are mistaken.”
Akbar smiled, crossing his arms over his broad chest as his traditional white tunic ballooned out in the warm desert breeze that flowed through the generously ventilated day-chambers of the old Palace, rooms through which Akbar and Mohammed and Kaizad had run like the little terrors they were, controllable by none but their father, their father who was clearly out of control himself now.
“Father,” said Akbar. “If our history serves as a guide, my presence simply makes you more stubborn and unreasonable.”
The old Sheikh shook his head as he leaned back in his padded purple throne. “Ah, Akbar. Forever quick with the tongue.”
“No quicker than you are with the enforcement of outdated, unjust laws that should have long been stricken from the penal code of Nihaara,” Akbar replied, keeping his voice calm, using that unflappable tone that he knew enraged his father—especially when Akbar was in the right.
“To lie with another man is heresy,” said the old Sheikh, smiling as he crossed one leg over the other knee and gestured vaguely towards the multicolored tapestries on the far wall. “Do you not remember your Quran studies?”
Akbar flashed a half-smile. “Bible studies, you mean?”
“Eh?” said the old Sheikh. “What?”
“That line is actually from the Bible, Father. Old Testament. Here, I have it on my phone. Just one moment and I will show you,” said Akbar, reaching for his phone as Kai glanced over wide-eyed, not sure whether to laugh or flee.
“You will show me NOTHING!” roared the old Sheikh now. “You come into my chambers and quote the Christian book? Do you want to be flogged in the town square at noon, when the sun is highest and the—”
“Actually, Father, it is you that was quoting the Christian Bible. That is my point. Here, I have it up. Ah, perfect! Word for word quote, Father! You are indeed up to date on your Old Testament!”
“Akbar, are you mad?” whispered Kai now, glancing over at his older brother and then back at their father, whose face appeared to be turning a shade of purple remarkably close to that of his custom-made easy-throne. “Do you want to end up in the cell next to—”
“GUARDS!” the old Sheikh shouted, pushing himself to his feet as three (unarmed) attendants came running. “Seize him!” the Sheikh ordered, pointing at Akbar, who was trying his best to hide a triumphant smirk as those guards stepped up to him hesitantly.
“It is all right,” he whispered in Arabic to the stunned attendants. “Do what your king asks.”
“Father,” said Kai, looking in desperation at the old Sheikh and then at his brother. “Akbar, wait. I will sort this—”
“Take him to the cellar and put him with his brother,” the Sheikh ordered. Now he looked at Kai. “And you will not be sorting anything out, my chubby little prince. Unless you too want to spend a week below ground and behind bars.”
“Let it be, Kai,” Akbar whispered as he allowed the attendants to escort him to the door. “Let it be and just trust me, little brother. Oh, and in the meantime please inform my American guests that I will not be joining them for dinner tonight.”
35
“Oh, I understand,” said Elle, smiling at the pleasantly round Kaizad, whose countenance and beard made him look like one of Snow White’s dwarves, Elle thought—even though the man was six feet tall. “Family comes first. Akbar did say he had to return home to take care of something urgent. I hope everything’s all right. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Kai frowned for a moment, blinking a few times before speaking. “You have known my brother long?” he asked now, glancing past Elle, towards where Beth Easton was taking a photograph of the view from the open veranda at the far end of the living area of one of the palace’s many guest chambers. “And that is your . . . your mother?”
“That’s Mom! Yep!” said Elle, exhaling as she turned towards her mother and kept talking so she wouldn’t have to answer Kai’s first question, about whether she’d known Akbar long. Three minutes wasn’t an answer she was ready to explain to this man, she thought. “Ma, come and meet Akbar’s brother, Prince Kaizad.”
“It is Kai, please, thank you,” said Kai, smiling as Beth put her phone away and hurried over, her lined face red with the heat and the excitement. “How do you do, Madam.”
“Elizabeth Easton,” said Beth, bowing like she had practiced it as Elle smiled and shook her head in wonder. “So wonderful to be here.”
Kai showed them around the sprawling, lavish chambers, explaining how the wall tapestries were hand-embroidered by generations of
women from the royal line as Beth clapped her hands and pointed out how that was like the American tradition of quilting, where each generation of women made their mark.
And that feeling of fantasy flowed once again through Elle just like the warm desert breeze flowed through her hair as she stepped onto the veranda and looked out over the city of Nihaara, its white sandstone bungalows nestled together on narrow streets that were beautifully paved in a way that married the old and the new, tradition and progress, ancient and modern.
Soon Kai took their leave, telling them they had a few hours before an attendant would escort them to dinner and evening entertainment in the night chambers, beneath the stars and the crescent moon. Elle smiled and said bye and said thank you and smiled at her mother and sighed again as she sank into a gigantic day bed that looked like a deep green ocean and smelled like tea-tree oil and lemonbark.
Beth was back on her phone, clearly Facebooking her visit to the enchanted land of Nihaara, and Elle felt herself drifting now, the smell of tea-tree soothing her while the scent of lemonbark made it seem like the air around her was crackling with magic.
“Elle?” said Beth after a few minutes, walking in from the veranda, eyes glued to her phone. “Did Akbar ever tell you what this family emergency was?”
Elle blinked and looked up at her mother. “Actually, no. But I didn’t get that he was particularly concerned, and so—”
“Read,” said Beth, tossing the phone onto the shimmering green mattress of the day-bed. “Read that and tell me whether it’s particularly concerning that the man you’re going to marry is sitting in an underground prison right now, charged with dissidence and blasphemy, and sentenced to death by hanging.”
36
“Death?!” shouted Mohammed, doubling over as Akbar told him. “Ya, Allah. He has truly gone mad. Delusionally mad! Do we not still have a Judicial Council? Since when did Father become judge and jury?”
“He will also need to become executioner,” said Akbar, smiling in the darkness at his brother in the cell across from his. “Because not only will Father not find anyone in Nihaara mad enough to actually carry out his order, but he will not even find a working gallows where I can be hanged.”
Mo laughed again, clapping his hands once and shaking his head. “Dissidence and blasphemy! Akbar, you are the pick of the litter here. But why on Earth would you do it? What is the plan? You want Father’s head to simply explode as he has a stroke?”
Akbar snorted, looking around his bare cell, the rough red sandstone floors uneven and old but clean and dry. “Nobody’s head is going to explode, brother. Though there will certainly be some headaches when the Judicial Council is forced into action. Headaches for those old clerics and scholars, and one massive headache for Father at the end of it.”
“So tell me, Akbar,” Mo said, shaking his head in admiration as he narrowed his eyes and stared across the empty underground corridor at where Akbar stood straight and tall behind those black-painted iron bars. “Out with it, brother. What do you have cooking?”
“A tasty soup, my brother. A tasty soup.”
37
“The soup is lemon-infused lentils, Madam,” said the delighted man in white, bowing as Beth complimented him on the first course of what promised to be a lavish meal, if the dining room and place-settings were any indication.
Despite the beauty of the surroundings—a dining area in an open courtyard, blue marble floors, dimly-lit corridors on four sides of the massive quadrangle, the open space large enough to take in the view of one of the four large domes of the Royal Palace as well as appreciate the sight of the night sky above the Nihaara desert, perfect black with stars like white diamonds, a surreal crescent moon that looked like it had been pasted there by a giggling child.
Still, the dinner felt a bit awkward to Elle as she stared across the long teakwood table, appreciating that her mother was being chatty and gracious, insisting on having Prince Kai bring out the chef (turned out he was a Moroccan Arab educated in France, and was delighted to be serving Western guests . . .). Yes, a bit awkward, considering it was just the three of them—Mom, Elle, and Kai—and what seemed like forty attendants fussing about the table that could have seated four hundred, it seemed.
Elle had read the news flash about how a Middle-Eastern Sheikh, from an obscure but wealthy nation called Nihaara, had imprisoned his eldest son for admitting to being homosexual, and had just sentenced his middle son to death on some nebulous charge of dissidence and blasphemy.
The story had been broken by the Dubai office of the Washington Post, and Elle had wondered how the word had gotten out so quickly. It was almost like it had been planned, like sending the story to the Washington Post was part of the plan. What plan?
She glanced over at Prince Kai now, who also seemed relieved that Beth was happily chatting with the Moroccan chef and giving the young prince a moment with his thoughts. He looked up at Elle, making brief eye contact before smiling and hurriedly looking down at his empty soup bowl.
“OK,” Elle blurted out. “So I guess he told you not to tell me, but clearly I know, and clearly you must have figured I know, so let’s just—”
“One moment,” said Kai, raising his hand and straightening in his chair. He looked over his shoulder at his lead attendant. “Leave us,” he said. “I will summon you shortly.”
The lead attendant bowed his turbaned head and barked out an order. Immediately the other attendants turned on their heels and silently left the courtyard, lining up behind the white sandstone pillars in the distance, well out of earshot.
“Yes, Ms. Easton,” Kai said, clearing his throat, now looking back at her, relief easing his young face. “Akbar told me not to say anything yet. He said that you would have sensed that he was not in real danger.”
Elle blinked and nodded, trying to hold back an excited smile as she thought that yes, I did sense that he wasn’t in any real danger, and he didn’t have to say it, not in words. Like that knowing look between two old lovers in a crowded room, eyes saying more than words ever could, bodies communicating in ways that could not lie.
But there was still a sense of relief that washed over her now, and Elle smiled and nodded and leaned forward towards Kai. “So he planned this because it’s somehow going to get your eldest brother released?”
Kai nodded. “Yes. I spoke to them both not an hour ago. Akbar has studied the founding principles of our nation, principles that form the basis of the supreme Sheikh’s power, and the power of the Judicial Council.”
“Judicial Council. So that’s like the Supreme Court or something?” Elle asked.
Kai shrugged. “You could say it is like the American Supreme Court and the House and the Senate all combined. It is the true governing body of Nihaara. Yes, the Sheikh does have an executive power, the ability to make certain decisions and enforce them without consulting the Council. We are not a democracy here, make no mistake. But neither are we a pure dictatorship, where the citizen’s lives depend on the whims of a single man.” He paused and sighed. “A man whose faculties of reason and common sense may eventually desert him in old age.”
“Is that what you all think is happening? That your father is just . . . just . . . losing it?” Elle said, for some reason glancing over at Mom before turning back to Kai.
Kai smiled and shook his head, now shrugging. “Ya, Allah, it must be! Father has always been quick to anger, quick to take offense, quick to decision and also to judgment. But this . . . by God, to put two sons in prison! And sentence one to death!” He blinked and hurriedly continued. “Which will not happen, of course. It cannot happen.”
“So what is in fact going to happen then?” Elle asked.
“Well, this is how Akbar explained it. He said that the Judicial Council does have the ability to decide whether a Sheikh who is past the age of eighty is still fit to serve as supreme ruler.”
“How old is your father?” said Elle.
Kai looked right at her, his eyes gaining ser
ious focus. “Father will turn eighty on New Year’s Day. Five days from now.”
Elle blinked and leaned back in her chair, furrowing her brow as she stared across at Kai. “So Akbar believes that once your father turns eighty, the Council will declare him unfit to be Sheikh, and then what?”
“Then . . .” Kai frowned and looked down for a moment, as if something had only just occurred to him. He looked up now. “Well, Mohammed is heir-apparent, eldest son, first in line to the throne. But Mo is . . . well, Mo has chosen to step aside from the line. In fact he has submitted his intentions in writing to the Council. He did it right before telling Father. And so . . . well, of course, now it will be Akbar.”
“It will be Akbar what?” Elle said, still frowning even though the answer was clear in the way that tingle of otherworldly excitement was rising up in her, like if this had started off as a fantasy, it was turning into a dream. And that was more confusing, because while you know a fantasy isn’t real, when you’re dreaming it’s really not clear what’s real and what isn’t!
“Akbar will be supreme Sheikh,” Kai said, still frowning like something else had occurred to him. Now he blinked away his thoughts and smiled at Elle. “Akbar will be King, Ms. Easton. He will be King.”
38
Elle stood in front of the old mirror, its sandalwood frame carved with the most intricate forms: elephants, camels, tigers, the beasts held together by outlines of leaves and flowers, tendrils that twisted and turned, transformed and transported. But Elle wasn’t looking at that beautiful old mirror frame, and she wasn’t looking at her reflection either. No, she was staring down at the top of the teakwood dresser in front of the mirror. Staring down at that pill. That pill which was a marriage proposal, an engagement ring, a decision, a choice. Her choice.
Stockings for the Sheikh: A Royal Billionaire Romance Novel (Curves for Sheikhs Series Book 5) Page 13
