Sheikh's Ransom

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“Marjan tries to tell her father’s friend that she loves him as a husband and not a father, but he pretends not to understand. Then she begs him to wait, not to marry her off yet. But he chooses a handsome young man to be her husband, and believing that her love is hopeless, she marries the man he has chosen for her. Her father’s friend falls sick with unrequited love. Marjan visits him, but even on his deathbed he manages to keep his secret. When he dies, Marjan takes charge of the parrot that was, to the last, his companion. As she sits mourning the man she loved, the parrot recites the words it has heard so many times. ‘Marjan! I die for love of you!’ So Marjan discovers the truth.”

Caroline was suffocating. Tears burned her eyelids and she couldn’t speak, though it was stupid to be so affected by a story. “Why?” she whispered at last. “Why couldn’t he tell her?”

Kaifar watched her with eyes as shadowy as the night. “He believed in his duty, perhaps. People betray love for many reasons, some good, some bad.”

People betray love. Did he mean she was betraying love, marrying David? Was that why the story affected her so fiercely? David was her father’s friend, but he did not love her, nor she him. How could that be a betrayal of love? There was no man she loved now, even if one day there might be.

No, a part of her whispered. Not if you marry David. This seemed clear to her suddenly, sitting here with Kaifar’s eyes on her—eyes that saw everything, that showed her her own soul. Marriage to David would kill her heart, her ability to love deeply. How had she failed to see this? They were not asking merely for the sacrifice of a few years of her life. It might be the sacrifice of her heart’s future.