The Sultan's Heir

She had a sudden sharp memory of reading of the bombing raids. How she had wept for the destruction of his country.

She shook her head, fighting back the burning in her eyes.

“Jamshid had put a copy of the will and documents pertaining to your marriage in a safety deposit box we also knew nothing of. The bank sent a routine notice recently when the account that paid for the box went into arrears. Undoubtedly Jamshid had left a key with this same lawyer, expecting the box to be opened immediately in the event of his death.”

Rosie pressed her lips together and looked down, her thick beige hair falling forward to provide a partial curtain against his eyes. She sat in silence, absorbing it. A trembling, broken smile pulled at her mouth, and there was no trace now of the bitterness that showed as cynicism. She suddenly looked younger, innocent and trusting. He thought that he was now seeing the girl in the photograph. The girl Jamshid had fallen in love with.

“I see,” she whispered again. “That was…” She shook her head, raised her eyes and gazed at the ceiling. Swallowed. “I wish I’d known this five years ago.”

“It was not Jamshid’s fault that you did not. No one could have foreseen such a tragic coincidence.”

Rosalind was shaken to the soul. Five years of her life rewritten in a few minutes. Her eyes burned as the hurt she didn’t know she still carried flamed through her. So he had not abandoned her. His love had not been a lie.

Najib cleared his throat. “In the box also was a letter of explanation to my grandfather.”

“What did he say?” she asked hoarsely, her gaze on him again.

“I have it here. Would you like to read it?” He reached into his case again, drew out a letter and handed it to her. “I believe you read Parvani? He mentions the fact in the letter.”

Her hand shook as she accepted it. The writing swam behind her tears, and Rosalind blinked hard as she read the last words she would ever hear from Jamshid.

“Grandfather, I am ashamed not to have found a way to tell you and the family about my marriage, which took place in England….

“I know that it was your design that I should marry a woman of our own blood, but Rosalind will delight you when you meet her. She is a woman to rise to any demand that fate makes of her, and will be a fine mother to our child, which to my great joy she carries. We think it a son. If it should be God’s will that I do not return from this war alive, and that you learn of my marriage through this letter, I trust…”

Tears choked her. She could read no further. Rosalind dropped the letter and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, I wish I had known, I wish I had known!” she cried again. “I thought he betrayed me, I thought…”

She bit her lip and fought for calm.

“He loved me.” Her voice cracked. “He did love me.”

The stranger with Jamshid’s eyes moved and was sitting beside her. “Yes,” he murmured comfortingly. “Yes, he must have loved you very much.”

“Why didn’t he tell his grandfather about me?”

“My grandfather was a man who had suffered great reverses in his life, and for his favourite to have married an Englishwoman was—” He broke off. “For now, comfort yourself with the knowledge that your husband’s last thoughts, before going to war, were of you. You and the child.”

His deep, gentle voice tore away the last thread of her control. A cry ripped her throat, and when she felt his arms going around her it seemed natural and right. He was Jamshid’s cousin. Rosalind rested her head against the rough tweed of his jacket and wept as the mixture of grief and the deep hurt of betrayal shuddered through her and was at last released.

Najib stroked the long, smooth, honey-brown hair, and thought what a tragedy it was that she had been made to doubt his cousin’s love. But there was good reason why Jamshid had not told their grandfather of the marriage….

He remembered the terrible uproar that had ensued when Jamshid came home determined to go to war at the side of Prince Kavian. As one of the prince’s Cup Companions, as a man raised all his life in his mother’s country, Jamshid had insisted, he must do his duty to that country in its time of need. His grandfather had shouted, had threatened, had told him of his higher duty to his own family, to his father’s country and his fate….

The storm of the old man’s fury had raged over their heads for weeks, all through the buildup to the first, inevitable Kaljuk invasion, while the urgent diplomatic attempts, one after the other, fell on waste ground. Jamshid had stood resolute through it all, but it had certainly not been the moment to raise the matter of his marriage to an Englishwoman, which his grandfather would have opposed with the utmost bitterness. That might have killed the old man.

So Jamshid, his grandfather’s favourite and named heir, had gone off to battle with the old man’s curse ringing in his ears, and a few weeks later they had carried his lifeless body back across the threshold, broken, bruised and thin, in early promise of what horrors the war would bring to Parvan. His grandfather had been knocked to his knees by the blow. He never recovered. The change in him had shaken them all. That tower of strength reduced to rubble in an hour.

Rosalind’s letter and its revelations must have seemed the final horror to a mind finally driven beyond its limits. Perhaps, in the human way, the old man had turned on her as a way to ward off his own deep guilt. To curse a man going into battle was a terrible thing….

It was a tragedy that he had succumbed to such emotions at such a time. If Rosalind had been taken into the family then, she and Jamshid’s child would already be under their protection. But thank God fate had revealed her existence at a time when they could still take steps. Najib thought that it would be his job to protect her now, and his arm tightened around her, making him conscious of the train of his thoughts, so that he deliberately released her.

Rosalind wiped her eyes and cheeks with her fingers, snatched a tissue from the box on the table. She sat up, snuffling, blew her nose, wiped her tears.

“Thanks for the shoulder,” she muttered.

“I am sorry to have offered it five years late.”

Rosalind shook her head and pulled her still-trembling mouth into a half smile. “Well. What now?”

“I should tell you the contents of his will before anything else, I think.”

“All right.”

Najib al Makhtoum returned to his own seat, where he drew the will from his case, flipped over a few pages, and began softly, “Jamshid left you his flat in Paris and another in New York outright. In addition, there is a lifetime interest in the villa in East Barakat to be held by you until your death, in trust for the child. Another property, in trust until the child reaches twenty-one years of age. Certain valuables and some investments intended to provide an income for you.” He outlined them briefly, and then said, “The provisions are slightly altered in the case of a daughter, to protect her property on her marriage.”

He rested the document on his knees. “Fortunately, none of the real estate or property has been sold in the intervening years. A lump sum payment of the accumulated income is, naturally, due to you immediately.”

Rosalind stared at him, her astonishment increasing with every word of this recital. He passed her a list of figures, and she looked at the total he indicated with sheer disbelief.

“Did Jamshid really own all that?”

He looked at her, wondering if her astonishment was genuine. If he really had told her nothing, Jamshid must have been crazy, Najib reflected. But looking at Rosalind, he could see plenty of reason for madness.

“His father died when he was an infant. He came into his personal inheritance at the age of twenty-one. I have taken the liberty of bringing you one of the jewels that forms a part of your inheritance.”

He reached into the case, and brought out a small wine-coloured velvet bag. Rosalind watched in silent stupefaction as Najib al Makhtoum expertly pulled open the drawstring and shook out onto his palm a ring. He picked it up between thumb and forefinger, glanced at it, and held it out to her.

It was a diamond as big as all outdoors, in an old-fashioned setting between two pyramided clusters of rubies. It took Rosalind’s breath away. It glowed with a rich inner fire, as if it had been worn by a deeply feminine woman and her aura still surrounded it.

“It belonged to our great-grandmother,” Najib explained. “She was famed for her beauty, and was a woman of great charm.” He looked at Rosalind and thought that he had never met a woman with such feminine impact. Family legend said Mawiyah had been such a woman.

Rosalind stared at the ring. “I don’t—are you sure?” she asked stupidly, and, with something like impatience, for she was now a wealthy woman and this ring was no more than a token, he took the ring from her again and picked up her hand.

“Put it on,” he said, slipping it onto her ring finger and down over the knuckle, and for a moment reality seemed to flicker, and they realized that it was her left hand. They both blinked and then ignored the fact that unconsciously he had performed the age-old ritual that bound men and women together for life.

They spoke simultaneously, in cool voices. “It’s very lovely,” Rosalind said, and Najib said, “It’s only one of several very fine pieces that are now yours.”

She shook her head dumbly. “He never said a word about this. Not a word.”

But then, Jamshid had always been reticent about his background. They had dated for months before she even learned that he held the rank of Cup Companion to Prince Kavian.

In ancient times, the cup had meant the winecup. The companions were the men with whom the Prince caroused and forgot world affairs. But in modern times the position was much more than an honourary one. The Companions now were like a government cabinet.

It was a very prestigious appointment, but Rosalind had somehow not been all that surprised to learn of Jamshid’s position. Maybe it was Jamshid’s own bearing, or maybe it was that Prince Kavian had always treated his “bodyguards” with the respect of an equal.

Cup Companions to the Crown Prince normally came from the nobility. But Rosalind had certainly assumed, if she thought of it at all, that, like so many other Parvanis, the family’s wealth had all gone towards defending the little kingdom from the Kaljuk invaders during the destructive three-year war.

“But wasn’t everything lost in the war?” she murmured stupidly.

“The family holdings in Parvan were turned over to the royal house for the war effort,” he informed her. “Much was destroyed. Jamshid had the foresight not to leave you any of the Parvan property, however, and I assure you that your inheritance, and your son’s, is virtually intact.”

And your son’s. “Oh.”

“Except for one thing. We thought that perhaps, on discovering your pregnancy, he might have entrusted it to you. Did Jamshid ever give you a jewel, Rosalind?”

“What, you mean a ring? He gave me a gold wedding band. We were in such a hurry before he went home…”

“Not a gold band. A very large diamond ring—or perhaps, the key to a safety deposit box?”

She shook her head, mystified. Again, he could not be sure of her. “A very large diamond? Larger than this?”

“It is a family heirloom that belonged to Jamshid but was not among his effects when he died. He would have wanted his son to have it.”

“His son,” she murmured.

“The family is naturally very eager to meet you and the boy. We would like to ask you, Rosalind, to visit—”

Rosalind looked down at her hands in her lap, watching the ring with deep sadness, and thought how different her life might have been.

“I’m sorry,” she said, interrupting him with quiet firmness. “Jamshid had no son. The day after I got that—that letter from your grandfather, I had a miscarriage. I lost Jamshid’s baby.”

Three

There was a startled silence. “A miscarriage?” he repeated softly. He did not look towards the entrance, where the plastic dinosaur was just visible.

She remembered the terrible, stabbing pain as she read the letter, as if the old man had taken a knife to her womb. As if her child had responded to such viciousness by refusing to be born into the world.

“It was the letter,” she murmured. “I knew it was the letter. It’s why I’ve hated you all so much.”

He sat in silence, staring at her with a mixture of doubt and sadness. But there was nothing more to say. Rosalind shook her head, made a slight shrugging movement, then got up. She went to the bathroom, rinsed her face in cold water, stared at the ring, gazed at her reflection for a minute in blank disbelief, and came back.

He was sitting where she had left him, holding one of the glass ornaments from the table, absently watching the snow settle around a perfect red rose. He looked up as she crossed the room and stopped in front of him.

“I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some?”

“Thank you.”

Moving around the kitchen, getting down the cafetière, filling the kettle, laying the tray, she could see him through the doorway. He sat on the sofa in the kind of coiled relaxation that could leap into action very quickly. He absently shook the ornament again, and a cloud of snow bubbled up and hid the rose.

“How did you meet Jamshid? Were you a student, too?”

She shook her head. “Not at the same time he was. I’d already done an undergrad degree in Parvani, and was working at the Embassy of Parvan as a junior translator. I was mostly doing stuff for tourist publications. Prince Kavian and Arash and Jamshid came and were living upstairs at the embassy,” she explained.

“I was studying in Paris for much of that time. But my sister was a student at the university here at the same time as Jamshid,” he remarked. She was measuring the coffee, and looked up as he spoke. “Do you remember a girl named Lamis al Azzam?”

The little scoop caught the edge of the glass cafetière and leapt from her grasp, the fine-ground coffee spraying all over the counter. Rosalind muttered and reached for a sponge.

Next thing she knew, he was in the doorway, still holding the rose ornament. With forced calm, Rosalind wiped up the spilled grounds, dusted the residue from her pale blue shirt, rinsed her hands and the sponge under the tap.

As she carefully measured another scoop of coffee into the cafetière, she said, “I knew Lamis, yes.” How much would Lamis have told him? “She’s your sister?” she repeated, carefully wiping all expression from her voice.

He nodded. Rosalind swallowed. This was a complication she didn’t need. She would have to be careful. She lifted the kettle and poured boiling water over the grounds. The scent of coffee rose strong in the air.

“Why don’t you have the same name?”

He waved his hand as if the answer would entail some obscure cultural explanation that wasn’t worth the trouble.

“You must be from Barakat, then? Jamshid told me once that other branches of the family were in Bagestan and the Barakat Emirates.”

He hesitated. “Yes. We are in Barakat. My mother was half sister to Jamshid’s father. But the family is Bagestani originally.”

She wondered if he had mentioned Lamis as a way of gaining her trust. If so, it was having the opposite effect. She would have to be on her guard with him.

She lifted the tray, and he backed out of the doorway to let her pass. She carried it into the sitting room and set it on the low black table as they sat again.

“Jamshid was from Bagestan originally? He never told me that.” She poured coffee into the delicate cream-coloured porcelain cup, set a spoon in the saucer and passed it to him.

“He was born there,” Najib said briefly. He noted the hesitation that had crept into her manner. So she did know something. The mention of Bagestan had made her wary. He stirred sugar into his cup, laid the little spoon on his saucer, accepted a sweet biscuit from the plate she offered.

“Really! And what made the family leave?” she asked, in a light, false voice.

Overdoing the ingenuousness, he advised her silently.

“Lamis is married now, with a young child. She works in television in Barakat.” He lifted the little rose again. “She collects ornaments like this.”

A fact Rosalind knew well. The ornament was not in the same style as the others on her table. The others were mostly her own choice, a carved jade figurine, a chunk of raw amethyst, a polished rose crystal set in an antique wooden tripod, a decorated egg, but… Think of me when you look at the rose, Rosalind.

“I am on a permanent commission to buy her a new one every time I come to Europe.” She was hiding something, that much was obvious. You rushed her, he told himself. Relax. Let her tell you in her own time.

She gazed for a moment at the perfect red rose, with its little translucent drop like a tear on one petal. Rosalind had never really liked the idea of the rose being imprisoned. Like a woman in purdah. It was natural to think of Lamis when she looked at the rose: Lamis was the rose.

“My sister was not the same woman when she returned from her time in England,” Najib murmured. “Do you know what happened while she was here to change her?”

The black gaze seemed to probe her. Rosalind dropped her eyes and nervously adjusted one of the other ornaments on the table, then forced herself to meet his gaze again. She shrugged. “What, for example?”

“I never knew. She never spoke of it. But she had been a carefree young woman. She came home marked by…suffering.” He set down the glass ball with a kind of protective care, as if the rose, or the thought of his sister, called up an instinctive tenderness for anything weaker than himself.

Rosalind felt almost hypnotized by the gentle voice, the dark, dark eyes, the strong, sensitive hands. He sounded like a man in touch with life. It would be a relief to confide in him, but… The corners of her mouth pulled down to signal ignorance, she shook her head.

“Maybe it was because of the war,” she said.

But he only shook his head in his turn, still watching her, and somehow Rosalind felt compelled to speak.

“We heard a rumour that Lamis went home under a bit of a cloud,” she offered, a little desperately. “Gambling, or something. They said she lost an absolute bundle in some Mayfair casino and her family had to bail her out.”

“That was true.” He sipped his coffee. “But such a thing as this could not have caused the change I am speaking of.” His eyes were on her again, as if he knew she knew.

“But you were here yourself. Surely you would have known if anything happened?”

“I went home, like Jamshid, just before the Kaljuk War. Lamis remained to complete her studies.”

She said, “Did Lamis ever mention me?”

“She never talked about her time here. Did she know of your marriage?”

Rosalind shrugged, not sure what to say. “People generally did,” she temporized.

He nodded, drained his coffee cup, set it down.

“Well, it is no surprise if she was afraid to tell my grandfather. The messenger’s fate is well-known. Perhaps you will enjoy making her acquaintance again.”

“Oh, sure!” Rosalind smiled to hide her racing thoughts, her quickened heartbeat. “When is she coming to England?”

He frowned at her.

“Do you have no intention of visiting East Barakat to inspect your inheritance and meet the family, Rosalind?”

Once she had dreamed of such a trip. But that was long ago.

Rosalind hesitated. “I don’t know,” she began. She glanced at her watch and leapt in sheer horror when she realized what time it was.

“Oh!” she cried, slamming down her cup so that it rattled. “I’m sorry, I completely forgot! I—have an appointment.” She jumped to her feet. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m very late.”

He obediently slipped the papers back into his case, snapped it shut and got to his feet. He followed her to the door. She was practically running.

“Goodbye,” she said quickly.

“We will talk again,” he said.

“Yes,” she babbled. “Yes, give me a call….”

She opened the door, but he did not step through. Instead, Najib al Makhtoum bent to set down his case beside the cheerful plastic dinosaur on wheels. He straightened, and Rosalind’s breath caught in her throat as his hands grasped her shoulders.

He stared down into her face. For a strange moment, his mouth above hers, they seemed to slip into some other reality, a reality where they knew each other very well, where he had the right to kiss her. Rosalind had the crazy thought that by putting the ring on her finger he had opened a door onto another life, and tendrils of that other possibility were now reaching for them. His black gaze pierced her, searching for her soul, and her lips parted involuntarily.

They blinked, and the world shook itself back into place. She is a complete temptress, he told himself. You will have to be on your guard every moment. Jamshid’s behaviour was a mystery no longer. His judgement must have been derailed as powerfully as if he were drugged.

“Rosalind, this is of immense importance,” he said. “You cannot guess how vital it is that you tell me the truth. Do not allow an old grievance to affect you any further. Did you give birth to Jamshid’s son?”

His long fingers were painful on the soft flesh at her shoulders. The look in his eyes frightened her.

“Why is it so important?”

“I am not at liberty to explain. But I ask you to believe that it is.”

It was her pain speaking when she said, “How can a possibility that was totally rejected five years ago suddenly become a matter of immense importance?”

He shook her. “Tell me.”

She pulled out of his grasp and turned away. “I have told you. Jamshid’s baby died,” she said, her voice raw. She looked at her watch again. “Please go. I’m late.”

“Goodbye, Rosalind,” he said, picking up his case. “I’ll be in touch.”

He strode down the corridor to the wrought-iron cage that held the elegant Art Deco lift. But before he could push the button, it clanged and heaved and started its upward journey from the lobby.

Rosalind bit her lip. Instead of closing the door she stood there, nervously planted in the doorway, following the sound of the machine’s tortured progress. How could she have failed to think of this?

Najib glanced at her, his eyes widening and then narrowing into alertness at what he saw in her face.

Rosalind waited with a kind of fatalistic foreknowledge as the lift creaked up three floors and ground to a stop. Then the door opened and, as she had known they would, a small, excited boy and a pretty teenage girl stepped out.

Najib, holding the door open with one arm, turned to watch in disbelief as the child shot down the hall towards Rosalind, a decorated sheet of blue construction paper clutched in one tiny hand. Rosalind knelt down and held her arms open.

“Mommy, Mommy!” cried Sam, his eyes glowing, as he flung himself into her embrace. “Look what I made you!”

Over his head, Rosalind saw Najib al Makhtoum’s dark, accusing gaze rake over her for one horrible moment. Then he turned and stepped into the lift.

“He’s the living spit of the old man,” said Naj.

“Damn,” came Ashraf’s fervent voice. “Damn, damn, damn.”

The was a silence. “And she knows nothing about the Rose?”

“So she said. But she is living in a place she certainly did not buy on a translator’s income. In Kensington.”

Ashraf cursed again. “You think she sold the Rose? Who to?”

Naj shook his head, his lips pursed. “No guesses there. Depends how much she knew.”

“She knows enough to deny the kid is Jamshid’s.”

“And maybe when she’s had a little time to absorb the facts she’ll stop denying it. She naturally assumed we all knew about the exchange of letters and left her to swing in the breeze. And God knows what she thought Jamshid’s motives were.”