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And a commoner too!
She clicked on her laptop again, to see if any other foreign royals were visiting Australia, and sighed at the lack of news for there were a couple of foreign princes who looked as if they could be fun!
Jamila, Layla’s handmaiden, knocked on the door, and Layla clicked onto a game of chess she was playing and then called for Jamila to come in and prepare her bath.
When it was ready Layla went through and stood by the sunken bath as Jamila undressed her and then held Layla’s hand as she lowered herself in.
‘The water is lovely,’ she said as Jamila started to wash her. ‘Jamila?’ Layla’s voice was just a little too high as she attempted to sound casual. ‘Are you nervous about coming to Australia?’ When Jamila didn’t answer straight away, Layla jumped in. ‘Because if you are I can speak with father. I am sure I would manage on my own.’
‘I would be more nervous if you were in a foreign country without me to take care of you,’ Jamila said.
Jamila adored Layla. She had held her the moment she was born—a few moments before Layla’s mother had died.
Layla was the baby Jamila had never had—not that she could ever let Layla know that she loved her like a daughter.
Neither could Jamila tell a single soul that she secretly loved Fahid—the King—and no one must ever know about the occasional love they shared.
‘Here.’ Jamila handed Layla a cloth, which she took, and she washed her private parts as Jamila washed her hair.
Still Layla carried on speaking.
‘Well, you should rest while we are in Australia,’ Layla said. ‘You deserve to have a holiday too.’
‘Layla!’ Jamila’s shrewd eyes narrowed as she rubbed oil into Layla’s long black mane of hair. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Nothing.’ Layla shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘I just think that it would be nice for you to have a chance to rest and relax.’
Layla said no more, but she was worried about how her plans might affect Jamila, who was old and very set in her ways.
Trinity and Zahid, Layla had decided, would just have to bear the chaos of her actions. After all, they had had their fun—but poor Jamila…
Layla swallowed and dismissed the gnaw of discontent. She certainly wasn’t going to change her plans to spare a servant’s feelings.
‘You are too thin,’ Jamila said as she looked at Layla’s skinny knees jutting up out of the water, her slender arms wrapped around them.
‘Jamila,’ Layla said, ‘I could fill this bath and you would still say that I was too thin. Do you remember when I was a baby and always hungry and you said that I was too fat?’
Jamila’s hand paused as she went to rinse Layla’s hair—Layla should not remember those times. Jamila thought of those little fat legs and arms and her round belly. Layla had been such an angry, demanding baby and toddler. She had begged for attention from her father and it had been denied her as he’d grieved deeply for Annan, the late Queen. Jamila had tried to comfort the little princess with food, feeding her cream, honey, anything that might stop the relentless sobs that filled the palace.
Such sad, sad times.
‘Let us get you dressed,’ Jamila said, quickly finishing Layla’s hair. ‘Your father wishes to speak with you before you leave.’
Layla had chosen a simple burnt orange cotton tunic for the journey, but Jamila prepared a silver robe and silver jewelled slippers for her to wear on her arrival as there would be some dignitaries to greet them. Her fingers, toes and ears were dressed in pretty jewels, and her long black hair was tied in a low bun which was worn at the side of her head.
‘Dismissed,’ Layla said to Jamila, and then frowned when still she stood there.
‘You will listen to what your father has to say, won’t you?’ Jamila asked, for she too was worried at the thought of Layla beyond the palace walls.
‘Dismissed, Jamila,’ Layla said.
Alone, Layla stepped out onto the balcony. The sun was starting to set and the sky was a fiery orange. The desert was like molten gold and it was a sight to behold, a view that she loved, and yet she knew there was more. She looked up to the sky, through which she would soon be being carried to her long-awaited adventure.
She knew she was being bad, and yet she had tried so hard to be good.
Once this was over she would be good for ever, Layla vowed.
This was her last chance.
Four years ago, when she was twenty, Layla had been dressed in white and gold and led down the stairs to walk into a room and select her husband from the men who knelt there.
Hussain had been and still was considered the right choice. They had played as children, and her father had told her that marrying Hussain would bring many benefits to the people of Ishla. Yet as Layla had walked down the stairs she had remembered what a mean little boy Hussain had been, and she had collapsed and started to shout and scream.
The kind palace doctor had smoothed out the offence caused by explaining that anxiety had caused the young princess to have a seizure.
Layla smiled to the sky. She had not selected her husband that day.
It had not been a seizure, just her temper exploding as she had looked at her wrist and recalled one time with Hussain.
‘How do you make a match burn twice?’ he had asked when Layla was nine.
‘Show me?’
Wide-eyed, Layla had watched as he had lit the match and blown it out and then dug the burning sulphur into her wrist.
Immediately Layla had slapped him.
Now she looked down to the small scar on her otherwise unblemished skin and wondered about Hussain’s reaction if his wife were to slap him.
He had no doubt moved on from matches now!
Layla headed back inside and opened the drawer in her dresser. Feeling far into the back, she removed the wrapped parcel she had been hiding.
Opening it, she held in her palm the black ruby named Opium. It had been gifted to her at birth by the King of Bishram and must surely be worth quite a lot.
Layla hoped that it was.
She had read that Mikael was expensive, and perhaps he would want to be paid.
Layla slipped the ruby into her tunic, worrying about something she had read on the internet about Australian Customs. She tried to tell herself that it would all be okay.
She made her way through the palace to her father’s study, where Abdul, the King’s chief aide, let her in. But Fahid dismissed Abdul so that he could speak to his daughter alone.
‘Are you looking forward to your trip?’ Fahid asked her.
‘Very much, Father.’
‘When you are in the hotel you will have your own room, with Jamila adjoining. Jamila is to take care of you there, but at all other times you are to be with either Trinity or Zahid.’
‘I know that.’
‘If you are in a restaurant then Trinity is to come with you if you need to go to—’
‘Father!’ Layla interrupted. ‘I do know the rules.’
‘They are there for your protection,’ the King said. He looked at his daughter, whom he loved so very much. She was so contrary—floaty and vague, and yet arrogant too, just as her mother Annan had been. Layla was fiercely independent, and yet na?ve from living her life within the palace grounds.
‘Layla, I have not asked to speak with you to deliver meaningless words and a lecture. I really want you to listen to all that I have to say. Things are very different overseas—the people are different too. There is traffic…’ The King winced as he thought of his daughter in a foreign city with fast-moving cars when she had never so much as crossed a road.
Layla saw his grimace and her heart went out to her father. ‘I know you are worried for me, Father,’ she said. ‘I know that you have loved me from the moment that I was born…’
Again the King closed his eyes as Layla hit a still raw nerve.
He hadn’t loved her from the moment she was born.
In fact the King had rejected Layla for more than a year. Sometimes Fahid wondered if that was why Layla was so rebellious and constantly challenged him, even if she couldn’t logically know about that time.
He worried so much about her—especially knowing that soon he would be gone from his world. Surely Layla needed a stern husband like Hussain, who would keep her in line?
He would just miss the wild Layla so…
‘Do you have any questions you wish to ask?’ Fahid offered.
‘I do.’ Layla nodded. ‘Father, I was looking up the customs in Australia—I thought I would find out who curtsies to me, who bows, and what gifts we should exchange, but instead I read that at the airport your property can be searched—even your body…’ She paused when she saw her father’s reaction. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Oh, Layla!’ The King wiped his eyes as he tried to halt his laughter. ‘That does not apply to you. Your retinue will take care of all the paperwork and luggage and our gifts are in the diplomatic pouch. You do not have to concern yourself with such things.’
‘Thank you, Father.’
He rose from his seat and came over and took her in his arms. ‘I love you, Layla.’
‘I love you too,’ Layla said, and hugged him back, but there were tears filling her eyes as she did so. ‘I am sorry if I make you cross at times—please know that it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.’
‘I know that,’ Fahid said.
What the King didn’t know, though, was that Layla was not apologising for her past.
Instead she was saying sorry for all that was to come.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_01d16dec-8ee4-5355-88d5-e30a532d4151)
‘GREAT!’
Mikael had no choice but to pull to a stop as a policeman put up his hand and halted the morning traffic.
Even though he had more than enough on his mind, with closing arguments starting this morning, he flicked on the news to listen to the traffic report and hopefully find out the reason for the hold-up. He knew that he should have stayed at his city apartment, or even a hotel, instead of driving to his waterfront home last night, but he had just needed to get away from the case.
Mikael’s remote beachside home was his haven, and last night he had needed to escape from the more pungent details of the case he was consumed by and breathe in fresh air and simply switch off.
It would be over soon, Mikael told himself.
‘Pizdet.’ He cursed in Russian when he found out that the reason for the delay was some visiting royal family, grinding everyone else to a halt.
Then he heard a little about himself as the news continued.
Mikael Romanov, SC, was surely going to lose this time…there was no way he could get his client off…
Then the calls in from listeners started and a character assassination ensued. Not of his client but himself.
‘What sort of a person is Romanov?’ an enraged caller asked. ‘How can he possibly sleep at night?’
Mikael yawned with boredom and turned the radio off.
When his phone rang, instead of letting it go to voicemail, as he usually would, Mikael saw that it was Demyan and took the call.
‘Any news?’ Mikael asked, because Demyan’s wife Alina was due to give birth soon.
‘We have a little girl—Annika.’ Demyan said, and Mikael rolled his eyes at the sound of his tough friend sounding so emotional. ‘She’s beautiful. Her hair is curly, like Alina’s…’
Demyan went on to describe interminable details to Mikael.
All babies had blue eyes, Mikael thought.
‘Congratulations,’ Mikael said. ‘Am I to visit while Alina is still in the hospital? What is the protocol?’
Demyan laughed. He took no offence. He knew that Mikael had no concept of family, for Mikael’s upbringing had been even harsher than Demyan’s.
‘You don’t have to come to the hospital,’ Demyan said, ‘but once this case is over it would be good if you could visit us before you disappear onto your yacht. I’m really looking forward to showing Annika off.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Mikael said. ‘It is closing arguments over the next couple of days, and then we await the verdict.’
‘How is the trial going?’ Demyan asked. ‘It is all over the news.’
‘Long,’ came Mikael’s honest answer. ‘It has been a very long couple of months.’
It had been an isolated couple of months too.
He always pretty much locked himself away from the world during a trial and, he admitted to Demyan, he was more than a little jaded from sitting with his client day in, day out.
‘He’s a fortunate man to have such a good solicitor.’
‘Barrister,’ Mikael corrected. ‘One day you will get it right. Anyway, enough about the trial. Go back to your beautiful wife and daughter, I am very pleased to hear the good news.’
Rather you than me, Mikael thought as he ended the call.
When Demyan had told him that he was marrying again Mikael had offered to draw up a watertight pre-nup this time, given how Demyan’s first wife had ripped him off for years.
Demyan had refused.
