Date with a Surgeon Prince

by Meredith Webber

  Marni smiled, doubting the formidable Tasnim could ever make a fool of herself anywhere.

  ‘Come,’ Tasnim continued. ‘We’ll be given refreshments in the boutique. I phoned ahead and asked for my favourite one to be closed for us. The women from the other boutiques will come there with whatever else we need.’

  A shop closed so she could shop? Once again Marni found herself in fantasy land.

  ‘I’ve made a list,’ Tasnim told her. ‘I thought half a dozen everyday things for a start. Just things like you’re wearing today so your way of dressing doesn’t offend anyone. Then half a dozen formal outfits—two kinds—Western for entertaining diplomats and other foreigners, and Eastern for entertaining locals. And some casual clothes for at home and for when Ghazi visits.’

  ‘I have my own clothes for at home,’ Marni protested as they entered the boutique, a woman bowing them through the door.

  ‘Nonsense! You can’t be wearing the same thing every time you see Ghazi, now, can you?’

  Couldn’t she?

  Marni felt a little lump of sadness lodged beneath her breast.

  Because she knew Ghazi didn’t really care what she was wearing?

  Probably!

  Although he had said she looked beautiful this morning…

  The lump remained.

  Tasnim was talking to the saleswoman, the words rattling around the beautifully set-up salon.

  Marni was checked out, looked up and down, ordered to turn around, then told to sit on a low love seat and offered tea.

  She shook her head and looked about her. There was only one gown on display—a Western evening gown made of some silvery material, and sewn with beads and crystals so it shimmered under a discreetly placed light.

  It appeared perfectly simple in style and cut and yet was breathtakingly beautiful.

  ‘Local things first,’ Tasnim declared, returning with the saleswoman and a young woman who was pushing a trolley hung with clothes, spectacular clothes in rich greens and blues, long loose trousers, patterned and beaded tunics that would go over them and at the end of the rack a selection of black abayas.

  An hour later, Marni was the rather hesitant possessor of four new pairs of trousers and five new tunics. She’d put her foot down over Tasnim’s suggestion she’d need half a dozen, listened in disbelief as Tasnim and the saleswoman claimed to have hundreds of such outfits, and had been talked into the fifth tunic because it was so beautiful.

  It was the simplest of them all, not bright but a pale blue-grey with a pearl-coloured thread woven through it and the patterning around the bottom in the pointy-topped shape of the local arches, picked out in darker blue.

  As for the abayas! Far from the plain cotton garment she’d borrowed from Jawa, these were woven from the finest silk, with delicate ebony bead embroidery around the hem, sleeves and neckline. Beautiful garments to cover other beautiful garments.

  The fantasy deepened!

  ‘If you choose a couple with hoods, it will save you tying a tight scarf over your hair when you go out,’ Tasnim advised. ‘Abayas used not to have hoods as we wore a hijab—a specially tied scarf—over our heads. But with the hoods, any of your scarves would go under the hood.’

  The saleswoman hung the abaya Marni had tried for size back on the rack—on the buying side, not the reject side—and studied Marni yet again.

  ‘Surely that’s enough for one day,’ she begged Tasnim, but her new friend wouldn’t be distracted.

  ‘We haven’t done the scarves,’ she scolded. ‘If you’re insisting on only having four outfits, at least you can vary them with scarves.’

  Long scarves, as fine as gossamer, were produced, most in tantalising colours, all embroidered in different ways.

  She was wearing the tunic she’d been unable to resist, and the woman found a scarf in the darker blue of the embroidery and draped it around Marni’s head and shoulders.

  ‘Perfect. It makes your skin gleam like alabaster and turns your eyes as blue as cornflowers,’ Tasnim said, clapping her hands in delight. ‘But you will need more. Darker ones are good for evening, and if you have a darker one over your hair, you can still tie it hijab style and need not pull the hood of the abaya over your head.’

  Marni assumed Tasnim was talking sense but she was lost. She found herself drifting, doing whatever Tasnim or the saleslady told her, lost in the mad dream that had become her life.

  The evening gowns were unbelievable—like things she’d seen actresses wearing on the red carpet when the Oscars were televised. And the names of the designers—names she’d heard with awe and had never in her wildest dreams imagined wearing clothes they’d designed.

  But she was also tiring fast and after trying on and removing the sixth evening gown she found the energy to protest.

  ‘Tasnim, we’ve settled on three, that’s enough,’ she said, although her eyes strayed to the silver creation on the shop model.

  Tasnim saw her look that way then she said, ‘Just one more,’ and spoke to the saleswoman, who immediately began disrobing the mannequin.

  ‘It’s made for you with your fair skin and hair,’ Tasnim insisted, and when Marni put it on she knew she had to have it. She’d never considered herself beautiful, but in this dress?

  She remembered Gaz saying after dinner at the hospital that she was like a silver wraith—well, in this dress she almost was.

  So why was that lump back in her chest and her heart hurting, just a little bit?

  ‘Sandals next,’ Tasnim decreed, and another saleswoman appeared pushing a trolley laden with shoeboxes. Marni gave up. She pushed her feet in and out of sandals, stood in them, walked around, and finally settled on a few pairs, although it seemed Tasnim was making her own decisions as at least ten boxes were piled together while the rest were wheeled away.

  But when make-up and perfume were suggested, Marni stood her ground.

  ‘I can handle that myself,’ she said firmly. ‘I have my own make-up and have always used the same perfume, a particular scent my grandfather first bought me when I was eighteen. I’m not changing that!’

  Tasnim argued she needed more than one so she could choose according to the time of day and the occasion and the outfit, but Marni was adamant—she’d wear her own, any time, any day, anywhere!

  Exhausted by the decision-making, all she wanted to do was go home—well, back to Tasnim’s place, and lie on the bed, and try to make sense of all that had happened to her.

  Although wasn’t that bed part of the fantasy?

  But Tasnim was ruthless.

  ‘Of course we can’t go home,’ she said. ‘We need to go over to the palace and get you some jewellery. Ghazi won’t want people thinking he’s too mean to give you jewellery and until he’s got time to buy you some, there’s a ton of stuff over there. Some of it’s a bit old-fashioned, which is why we sisters all insisted our husbands bought us more—but we all got plenty of the family stuff in our bridal chests.’

  Marni stopped outside the boutique to study the woman who’d taken over her life.

  ‘Aren’t pregnant women supposed to get tired and to need a lot of rest?’ she demanded.

  ‘Oh, phooey,’ Tasnim replied. ‘You sound like my mother. I’ll rest later!’

  So, to the palace they went, Marni regretting she hadn’t stayed in one of her new outfits in case they ran into Ghazi, but that was stupid, wasn’t it?

  Once at the palace, Tasnim summoned Mazur and must have explained what they wanted for he led them through more tortuous passages, finally unlocking what looked like, but couldn’t possibly have been, a solid gold door. Pulling a huge, old-fashioned key from beneath his kandora, he unlocked the door, pressed numbers on a very modern-looking security system pad, then turned on a light to reveal an Aladdin’s cave of riches.

  ‘Oh!’

  Marni breathed the word, unable to believe that a picture from a childhood book could be springing to life in front of her. Yes, there were neat chests with little drawers in them,
and glass cabinets with displays of stunning jewellery, but there were also open chests and large jars from which spilled what looked like all the treasures of the world.

  ‘The children like to play with the chests and jars,’ Mazur explained in a very disapproving voice. He was retrieving a long string of pearls from the floor as he spoke, and examining them for damage.

  ‘But I couldn’t possibly wear any of this kind of jewellery,’ Marni protested. ‘I’d look ridiculous!’

  ‘So start simple,’ the indomitable Tasnim told her. ‘Take those pearls, for instance. They will go beautifully with that tunic you really like. Mazur, a bracelet or bangle to go with them and a ring, of course.’

  Mazur poked through drawers, finally emerging with a bracelet that had six rows of pearls on gold wire and fastened with a gold catch.

  ‘Perfect!’ Tasnim declared. ‘And now a ring.’

  The ring he produced had a pearl the size of Tasmania, and Marni refused to even consider it, although a smaller ring, set with rows of seed pearls that went well with the bracelet, won her heart.

  ‘Now that’s enough,’ she told Tasnim, but the woman was unstoppable. Ignoring Marni completely, she pulled out necklaces, bracelets and rings with stones that looked like emeralds and rubies. Studied them, then declared, ‘No, we’ll stick to sapphires because of your eyes, but now I am tired. Mazur, could you put together some sapphire sets and send them to my house?’

  Mazur nodded, and followed the two of them out of the treasure trove, locking the door behind him before walking them out to the car. The driver held the door for Tasnim, while Mazur did the same for Marni, murmuring, as she slid past him, ‘I am very happy for you and Prince Ghazi.’ Marni sensed the kindly man actually meant it and immediately felt depressed.

  She hadn’t realised just how much she would hate deceiving people—maybe not people generally, but nice people like Mazur.

  Fortunately Tasnim seemed to have finally run out of steam so the drive back to her home was quiet.

  ‘I will rest now,’ she said, ‘but the driver will take you wherever you wish to go, or you can ask Shara for anything you need if you decide to stay in your room. The boutique will package up all we’ve bought and send it here, probably by later today, so you can choose what you want to wear to dinner tonight.’

  ‘Dinner tonight?’ Marni queried.

  Tasnim smiled.

  ‘Did I not tell you? Ghazi phoned to say he would pick you up at seven to take you out to dinner. It will be to somewhere special so—no, I won’t let you decide. I’ll come to your room later and we’ll decide together what you will wear. Remember, this will be your first public appearance and although as yet your betrothal is not known, people will notice you and begin to talk.’

  Marni’s stomach knotted at the thought, but she had agreed and she’d gone along with the purchase of all the new clothes so she couldn’t deny being aware that they would be needed.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, letting the word escape in a sigh.

  But underneath her trepidation a bud of excitement began to unfurl.

  She would be seeing Ghazi—how easy it was to think of him that way after being with Tasnim most of the day—tonight!

  Which was really pathetic if she thought about it. This was all pretence!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE EXCITEMENT HAD waned by the time she was dressed, waiting with Tasnim in the big room at the front of the house. Her own reflection, as well as Tasnim’s cries of delight, had told her she looked good, but uneasiness boiled inside her.

  This dressing up in clothes paid for by someone else seemed to underline the fact that it was all pretence, and the subterfuge made Marnie feel queasy. It was one thing to pretend for the sake of his sisters but for other people that she would surely meet, people who looked up to him as their ruler—was it right to be deceiving them?

  ‘Ghazi will not be able to take his eyes off you,’ Tasnim was saying, ‘and how he’ll keep his hands off you—whoo-hoo, it will be near impossible. Such fun!’

  Considering her more personal reason for being in Ablezia, Marni would have liked to ask if Ghazi would have to keep his hands off her, as Tasnim seemed to be intimating. But that question was far too personal—too fraught with hidden mines and traps to even consider asking.

  Beside which, she was reasonably certain formal betrothals didn’t include the couple going to bed together, while actually making love with the ruler of a country—any country—was so far beyond Marni’s imagining it had to be impossible!

  ‘The car is here!’

  Tasnim’s—was he a butler?—appeared, and made the announcement, then vanished in his usual silent way.

  ‘Oh, bother Ghazi,’ Tasnim muttered. ‘He’s sent a car, not come himself, and I did want to see his face when he saw you looking so beautiful.’

  ‘It’s just the clothes,’ Marni told her, using words to hide the little stirring of disappointment at Gaz’s non-arrival, and her embarrassment over Tasnim’s praise.

  ‘No, it is you,’ Tasnim argued. ‘Of course the clothes help, but you have a serenity about you that enhances whatever you are wearing, and that’s part of true beauty.’

  As if! her head mocked, but Tasnim’s words helped ease Marni’s disappointment, and she walked out to the car, slipped into the back seat and settled her beautiful new clothes around her.

  Cinderella going to the ball, was her first thought, but if that had been the case she’d have been wearing one of the ballgowns.

  And glass slippers!

  She sighed and wondered just what lay ahead of her on this, the second momentous day in this new, and totally fantasy, life.

  Lost in her thoughts and concerns over pretence, she barely noticed where the driver was taking her until she saw the palace looming up ahead.

  ‘We’re going to the palace?’

  Duh!

  ‘No, miss, we’re going to Sheikh Nimr’s home. His wife, Sheikha Alima, is preparing a special banquet in your honour.’

  A special banquet! Great!

  Fortunately Gaz was at the top of the steps as the vehicle pulled up and it was he who came down to open the car door for her, taking her hand to help her out, the light in his eyes as he took in her appearance enough, for a moment, to still her nerves.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he murmured, for the second time that day.

  ‘It’s the clothes—the dressing up in this gorgeous gear—anyone would look beautiful,’ she said, trying for lightness, although her fingers clung to his for support.

  His smile told her he didn’t agree, and it was the smile, plus the sensations firing through her that made her remove her hand and regain some common sense.

  ‘A banquet?’ she queried.

  ‘Only a small one,’ he assured her, smiling as she spoke. ‘Having put all the sisters’ noses out of joint by asking Tasnim if you could stay with her for a while, I have to start the conciliation process. Believe me, growing up with seven sisters is better training in diplomacy than any university degree.’

  They had reached the top of the steps, and he paused, turning towards Marni to explain.

  ‘I have to start with Alima because she is the eldest. She has invited two other sisters, Meena and Ismah, and their husbands, as well as Nimr’s brothers and their wives, the married ones. A small party and you do not have to remember everyone’s names and if I don’t get you inside very soon I shall have to kiss you right here and scandalise everyone.’

  Marni had been trying to get her head around the names and wondering why only two sisters had been invited—with Tasnim she would now have met four of the seven—when Gaz—in a business suit so definitely Gaz—had added the last bit.

  About the kiss…

  So it wasn’t all pretence…

  Of course not, there’s still the lust, she reminded herself, dousing her re-smouldering embers.

  They paused at the front door, Marni preparing to slip off her sandals and noticing the ease with which Gaz
removed his highly polished loafers.

  ‘You learn our ways,’ he said quietly.

  ‘This one’s easy,’ Marni retorted, unsettled by the lust reminder as well as by his nearness.

  The lust wasn’t pretence.

  Neither was it love!

  But love’s not been any part of this, the sensible part of Marni’s brain responded.

  And the funny lump of pain sneaked back into the middle of her chest.

  ‘Have you an extremely tidy mind that you need to reposition your sandals three or four times, or are you having second thoughts about meeting the family?’

  Gaz was waiting for her to move away from the neat array of sandals.

  Marni pulled herself together and looked directly at him, hoping all her doubts and inner discussions weren’t visible on her face.

  ‘Only two of the other sisters?’

  He smiled and her heart turned over.

  Love not part of this?

  ‘I’m breaking you in gently. I think you’ll find Tasnim has already asked the others to lunch one day next week. Alima set the limits—ordered them all not to crowd you—and what Alima says goes with the women.’

  He took her hand and placed it on his forearm, tucking her close to his side as they walked through the wide entranceway. Marni glimpsed the huge majlis off to the left, and was relieved when a white-clad servant bowed them into a smaller, though no less opulent room.

  Where shades of yellow from palest lemon to deep, rich gold had been the dominant colours in the rooms Marni had seen in the palace, it was red that struck her here. Swathed red silk curtains framed arched openings into what appeared to be a courtyard garden, while deep vermilion couches were pushed back against the walls. The floor, again, was marble, but a creamy colour, streaked with red, so Marni wasn’t surprised to find the woman walking towards her, hands outstretched in welcome, was also clad in what must be her favourite colour.

  ‘My sister, Alima,’ Gaz said smoothly. ‘Alima, this is Marni.’

  Alima clasped Marni’s hands and drew her closer, kissing her on both cheeks—air kisses really, although the warmth of the woman’s smile seemed genuine.