by Pippa Roscoe
There had been a moment when she’d felt hope. When she’d thought that perhaps she’d been meant to come to Duratra, to find not just the necklace but him.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
She dressed in a loose-fitting T-shirt over an ankle-length skirt and left her feet bare. For some reason, she wanted to feel the ground beneath her feet—as if it might be the only thing she could be sure of.
When she knocked on his door a few minutes later she didn’t hear him ask her to enter, but she was sure that he was there. Gently, she pushed open the door to the most incredible suite she’d ever seen.
She’d thought the room she was staying in was something from a fantasy. It was almost the entire size of the flat she shared with her sisters, and the impossibly large bed had mosquito nets that had become silks fit for a princess in her mind. The view of the desert was something she would take with her until her last breath. The detail of the carvings, the faded plaster and history pouring from every inch of the walls, was so different from the shabby neglect of the estate in Norfolk. It was as if it were full of pride and strength and love from every generation of this family that had ever stepped across the threshold.
She felt that and so much more as she ventured into Khalif’s domain.
He was standing with his back to her, hands clasped behind him. Her eyes scanned the room, surreptitiously and quickly. It wasn’t obvious wealth, though that was evidenced by the luxurious pieces of furniture, pristine despite their obvious age. By the gold, silver, precious metals and jewels that were scattered across tables, inlaid across tabletops, shelf-edges, doorframes. Everything was exquisite...everything was priceless.
It was that everything spoke of Khalif. The rich dark mahogany that was both weathered and strong, the hard edges and sharp angles opulent and eye-catching. The colours were masculine but there were hints of a playfulness that she sometimes felt he was capable of.
But in the centre of the wall that dominated the room was a shelf that was devoted to his family—photos, trinkets that one would collect, memories. Family comes first. It was a sentiment that she could both warm to and be warned by.
On the low slung table between them were trays of food, both sweet and savoury from what she could tell. Steam streamed from the spout of a large silver teapot and she told herself that was the cause of her mouth watering, not the power of the man in front of her. Her stomach was hungry, not clenched with desire and need. Her pulse was racing because she was unfit, not hoping for more of the man who had taken her innocence and left in its place a wanton woman whose sole focus was pleasure.
She took a step to close the distance between them and just over his shoulder was able to see what he was looking at that had him so absorbed.
It was a black and white picture of a family of four. Even if she hadn’t seen pictures of him in the exhibition, Star would have recognised the good-looking man with the same jaw and nose as Khalif. Faizan had his arm around his two young daughters and was leaning into his wife, Samira, who was smiling at the camera as if there was nowhere else in the entire world she’d ever want to be.
Star’s eyes were drawn to the gold necklace hanging just below the neckline of her silk top, almost exactly the same as the one Star had removed the moment she had returned to her suite.
He didn’t flinch, noticing her presence, she felt it as if it were more of a tightening within him.
‘She was very beautiful,’ Star said, shocked by the sudden drop in temperature that followed her declaration.
‘Tea?’
His question was such purposeful distraction, it was almost as if it were a challenge, or a warning. She nodded, but walked past him towards the view of the desert. Sand swirled in the distance, like her thoughts, shifting, scattering, only to be swept up by the air and thrown down elsewhere. Khalif, Samira, Faizan. Despite what her sisters might think, she wasn’t so clueless as to go blundering into a clearly painful area for Khalif. But there was definitely something there.
She could see it as surely as she could see the sky begin to turn to that purple pre-dusk hue that always reminded her of lavender and salt. And home. She felt a sudden pang of homesickness she’d not yet experienced since arriving in Duratra. Suddenly she didn’t want to know how Khalif’s family had cared for the necklace, why Samira had worn it and how Star might be able to get it for herself.
She wished she’d never heard of the Soames diamonds, of the estate in Norfolk.
And then a swooping wave of guilt and horror overwhelmed her, knowing that without it her mother would have no hope for recovery. For her mother, for her sisters, she would face Khalif, explain it all and do whatever she had to in order to return to the UK with the key to the missing jewels, whether she was pregnant or not.
She went to sit on the long sofa opposite the chair Khalif had occupied. She took a deep breath and began. ‘My grandfather died nearly a month ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said, his formality clearly echoing the lack of emotion in her tone.
‘We’d never met him. Mum had never spoken about him and I guess we just didn’t ask.’ There was so much she hadn’t asked her mum, so much more she wanted to know. ‘We were notified only because he had named us as...sort of beneficiaries of his will.’
‘Sort of?’
Star shook her head from side to side. ‘His will held a complicated stipulation. If we meet that stipulation, we will inherit his country estate in Norfolk. Which we could then sell.’
Realisation dawned in his tawny eyes. ‘And pay for private treatment for your mother?’
Star nodded, breathing a sigh of relief that he understood. That he hadn’t immediately assumed she and her sisters were simply out for money. ‘It doesn’t have to sell for the biggest value—we have no idea what that would even be. It just has to be enough.’
‘Star, if you need—’
‘We don’t,’ she said, cutting him off before he could offer her anything. ‘Because we’re going to meet the stipulation and sell the estate.’
And Mum would get her treatment and be fine.
They had a plan, they would stick to it and everything would be okay, she assured herself. It had become a mantra in the last few weeks. A rhythm in her mind and her heart like a prayer.
‘So the stipulation...it has something to do with the necklace?’ he asked.
‘What do you know of it?’ she asked, hoping that might give her some indication of where to start.
‘It’s been in my family for over five generations and has been worn by the wife of every Sheikh during that time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, why?’
It made her feel strange that Catherine’s necklace had been worn by the woman who’d married Hātem. And by the wives that had followed. Perhaps that was why she had not found a trace of it. She had been looking for it with the male heirs. And she suddenly felt a little foolish, remembering the words from the first part of the coded message her sister Summer had translated.
If you have discovered my message then I can assume two things: that you are female, because no man would wade through the private fripperies of my youth, and that you are clever, to have found the journals.
The pieces of Catherine’s mystery had remained secret because they had been protected by women. As, even, had this piece.
‘I might have been naïve to assume that Hātem would have kept it with him.’
Khalif shook his head. ‘The men in our family do not wear jewellery.’
She nodded in understanding. ‘And what do you know of where it came from?’
‘I thought you were supposed to be telling me,’ he said, half impatient, half grumble, his tone completely familiar to her from the little children she taught when they weren’t given what they wanted easily.
‘Humour me?’ she asked.
He sighed and
ran a hand absently through his hair. ‘Honestly, even now it feels more like a fairy tale than reality or a part of family history. I used to tease Faizan about it when we were children.’
‘About what?’
‘That his wife would have to wear the fairy tale necklace.’
Star threw a hand-woven tapestry pillow at him without realising that the piece was from the seventeenth century and probably hadn’t actually been touched for at least two.
He caught it one-handed and put it down with great care.
‘I was a child,’ he defended. ‘Anyway, we knew that it had been worn by our mother, and our grandmother, and our great-grandmother and so on. Every generation was proud and protective of it, always ensuring that the first in line to the throne would present the necklace to his wife.’
Goosebumps pebbled on his skin and the hairs on the back of his neck lifted as he followed his thought to its natural conclusion.
‘But you take it seriously now,’ she said, unaware of his thoughts.
‘Very,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘We were told that some day someone would come and claim the necklace. That it would be clear who they were and they would be given it without question or hesitation. Any more than that, I’m afraid I have no idea. My mother might know, but...’ He shrugged, his mind still half on the thought that if Star was pregnant it might have found its way to her anyway. Either by becoming his wife, or it being returned to her, Star would end up wearing the same necklace as his grandmother, mother...and Samira.
‘My great-great-great-grandmother came here,’ Star said, causing Khalif to blink in surprise. ‘In the late eighteen-hundreds she was travelling with her uncle as his wife’s companion. They were passing through the Middle East and had come to Duratra to meet with His Majesty Sheikh Hātem Al Azhar to discuss Duratra becoming part of the British protectorate. Many other countries in the area had agreed, but Hātem had neither interest or need to do so.’
Khalif raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And you know this how?’ She was right, but it was strange hearing her so certain of the thoughts and feelings of a man who had died over one hundred years before.
‘Because Hātem and Catherine grew very close and she wrote about it in her diaries,’ she stated, her large blue eyes shining up at him with nothing but sincerity.
‘I don’t—’ He stopped short, his mind incapable of processing what Star was implying. ‘This is not possible,’ he declared.
Star looked down at the necklace in her hands as if trying to soften the blow of what she was implying. ‘Catherine’s uncle was called back to Egypt, but his wife refused to travel again so soon. According to Catherine, her aunt had a weak constitution, not suited to the climate, which irritated the husband she was angry with for bringing her to the Middle East in the first place.
‘But Catherine was happy to stay behind. She loved it here. She begged Hātem to take her out on horseback so that she could explore as much of the desert as possible.’
‘Star, this is all very fanciful but—’
‘She spoke of an oasis. Which is what had me confused,’ Star said, not noticing the stillness that had come over him. ‘I was confused at the palace in Burami because some of her descriptions didn’t seem to fit. I just assumed that things had changed in the last hundred years. But when you showed me the gardens here, I realised...this is where Catherine met with Hātem. This is where she stayed with her aunt, and spent the night at the oasis with the crossed palms.’
* * *
Khalif’s mind screeched to a halt. No one outside the family had visited the oasis. So there was no way that Star could have known about the crossed palms. A sudden memory of him and Faizan digging at the base of the huge ancient trees, convinced there was buried treasure to be found, filled his mind and heart, his ears echoing with the sounds of boys’ laughter and the feel of sand against his skin.
‘What do the diaries say of Hātem?’ he ventured, half hoping she was being truthful and half still disbelieving.
‘Quite a lot,’ Star replied with a smile. ‘That he’d seen what had happened in Egypt and the way it was being torn between Britain and the Europeans, the impossible loan rates and finally the political coup. According to Catherine, Hātem insisted that Duratra had been fine without being under the British protectorate and would continue to be so. He’d been surprised when Catherine had agreed with him though.’
‘Why did she?’
Star bit down on her lip, distracting him momentarily. ‘Because she knew what it was like to live with a gun to her head.’ She turned to look at the desert as if needing to gather her thoughts.
‘When Hātem and Catherine returned from the oasis, it was to news that her father had died. Everything that Catherine had, all she had known, would be inherited by her cousin—a man who had made it clear he intended marriage. Would it surprise you to know that Hātem asked Catherine to marry him?’
‘Yes,’ Khalif barked. And then, ‘No. At this point, Star, I don’t think anything would surprise me,’ he said, reaching for his tea to quench both his thirst and his wonder at all of this...information he’d never known about his ancestor.
‘Catherine knew that he was betrothed to Alyah. She thought Alyah would be a good bride for Hātem.’
‘Really?’ Khalif asked, knowing, of course, that Hātem had married Alyah.
Star leaned towards him with one of the little leather journals she had brought with her gently held open and pointed to the top of one of the pages.
He will be happy with Alyah. Kind, loving and patient... We are too similar, too adventurous, too impatient. But he refuses to see that.
‘What did she mean by that? That he refuses to see it?’
‘Hātem didn’t believe that Catherine had to return to England. She said, Men think women know nothing of duty. Sometimes it is all we’ve ever known. He just couldn’t see why she wouldn’t stay and they parted on not so great terms.’
‘But if they left on such bad terms, how did Alyah end up with the necklace?’ He felt like an impatient schoolboy, desperate to hear the end of the story.
‘I thought this was fanciful and...?’
He cut her off mid-taunt with a glare.
‘Really?’ she demanded. ‘Does that stare really work on your staff?’
‘Yes!’ he groused. ‘Just not with you,’ he said through only half reluctant laughter.
‘Catherine wrote to Hātem when she got back to England. Her marriage to her cousin Anthony was much worse than she had expected. He was violent and verbally abusive. The journals really only continued for a few years after the marriage and then she had them packed away, so it’s a little hard to say. But she’d reached out to ask a favour of Hātem. She hoped that he would make her a key that could be separated into two parts. One part was to be kept by her, and one to be kept by him, guarded until the day someone came to find it.’
‘What is it the key to?’
‘Catherine wanted somewhere safe to hide things from Anthony. Her diaries, pictures...and the one thing that Anthony wanted most—the Soames diamonds. Catherine left clues and coded messages in her journals for someone worthy of finding them, but the men in the Soames family dismissed or ignored the signs. Ever since Anthony, the Soames men have been driven mad desperately searching for them.’
‘Because none were worthy of it,’ Khalif realised. ‘So, the necklace is actually a key?’
‘When the two are joined, yes. They will open the locked room marked on the map of the secret passageways that Skye found the day we...my last day in Burami,’ Star stumbled.
Khalif was too caught up in the story to notice, only now making the connection between how down she had been and her desperate need to help her mother. ‘That’s why you were so sad? Your sister had found the map, but you hadn’t found the key?’ He nodded to himself. ‘And with the diamonds...’
‘If we find the diamonds we can inherit the entire estate and then sell it to fund Mum’s treatment.’
‘I imagine you could do a lot more than that.’
‘We don’t want anything more than that. Nor do we need it.’
It was said so simply, as if she was genuinely confused as to why they might want to have more than they needed.
‘It’s just that...’ He tried to find the words to explain. ‘It would seem that Catherine went to a lot of trouble to keep those diamonds safe for someone worthy to inherit. And to sell them for less than their value...’
‘I think Catherine would understand our duty to our mother over the weight of the past,’ she said with a finality and firmness that surprised him a little.
Khalif looked out to the balcony and the night sky beyond, his fingers rubbing at the slight stubble on his jaw and chin as he traced the stars with his gaze. He wondered if it was fanciful to think that the historic link between their families might account for the instant impact Star had made on him.
And then she shifted, her hair cascading over her shoulders, down her back and his gut clenched. No. That was all Star. So Hātem had taken Catherine to the oasis... He couldn’t help but wonder whether Catherine was the reason Alhafa was known for hiding royal mistresses. Hātem and Alyah had made Burami their central residence and it had been that way ever since.
‘What does it mean, Alhafa?’
His language on her tongue sounded soft and strange but utterly hypnotic. ‘I suppose the closest translation in English would be The Edge. You can view the desert from every window and it often feels as if we’re at the edge of the world.’
‘It’s truly beautiful.’
‘My brother would have agreed with you. I...don’t find it easy being back here,’ he admitted. ‘Nadya and Nayla loved this palace. Faizan was planning to move them here permanently. When they were younger the twins would run screaming down the corridors, terrifying the staff...’ He couldn’t help but smile at the memory, but it wobbled as he realised how much he’d cut himself off from them. ‘Faizan taught them to swim in the pool, just like our father had taught us. It was where we...we met Samira. Her father’s family came to visit one summer.’ Samira would have been exactly the same age as the twins were now, the realisation catching him by surprise. ‘On the first day, she climbed up the tree in the courtyard and refused to come down.’
