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The council had sat impassive while she railed at them for their narrow-minded ignorance and cowardly sticking to ineffective methods, but when she resigned they had accepted it with obvious relief. She had finished out the school year, but as of a week ago, Jana was unemployed.
Of course, the media had been on her side. It was just the kind of story they loved, but Jana had very soon tired of being fodder for the entertainment industry that masqueraded as news broadcasting, and in any case her story had a brief lifespan. It would take more than newspaper articles and talk shows to change the national curriculum, though a generation of children had already emerged from the schools unable to read
Fighting was what was needed, but Jana had temporarily run out of the famous Stewart fighting energy. She felt like her distant ancestor, Bonnie Prince Charlie, after the Battle of Culloden: defeated. Her father urged her to enter politics and run for parliament—that, too, was a part of the family heritage—and one day she might do that. But for the moment, Jana just wanted to get away and lick her wounds.
The ad for a private English tutor to “an important family in the small but prosperous Barakat Emirates” had caught her eye two months ago. The position was for a minimum of one year. She knew it was the escape she needed.
“There are better ways to get away than a job in the Barakat Emirates,” her mother said.
Jana shrugged. Her mother’s suggestion of a sailing holiday in the Maldives or a villa in Greece, either of which friends could be counted on to supply at short notice, had tempted her...until she saw what her mother was really planning. Jana had no intention of taking such a holiday if Peter was also going to be a guest—and her mother would make certain that Peter was a guest. Peter was the man her whole family adored.
“Mother, we’ve been over it.”
“I really think, Jana, that a few weeks in—”
“Mother.”
“Yes, darling.”
“I am not going to marry Peter,” Jana said, slowly and unmistakably.
“Oh, darling, why do you keep saying that? He’s so right—”
Jana couldn’t help laughing. Her mother was completely transparent. Peter was right for her parents, and would be a great brother for Julian and Jessica, her younger sister and brother. She knew all that. Unfortunately, he was not right for Jana. They agreed about nothing in life. She sighed and shrugged. She was so tired of fighting. Please, God, let me get this job, she prayed silently. Don’t let me end up married to Peter.
Her laughter cut her mother off. She looked at Jana and lifted her hands resignedly. “At least take the Rolls,” she urged.
Jana gave in. She knew her mother had manipulated her, had made it seem like a small concession when she was holding out on a major issue, and her own weakness frightened her. Her resistance was low. If the whole family started pressing her to marry Peter...Jana clenched her jaw. If she was offered the job she would take it even if the advertiser was’ an oriental despot.
Two
An hour later Jana slipped gracefully out of the back seat of the navy Rolls and into the heat of the city streets, looking as fresh as a spring morning. She stood for a moment looking up at the facade of the Dorchester Hotel. Under the caress of the hot summer sun it had a rich, satisfied glow.
“Thank you, Michael,” she murmured to the chauffeur.
“Good luck, Miss,” he said. “I hope you get the job.”
“Thank you. I do, too,” she said, a little grimly.
She thought her chances were good. Her experience was right for the job. She had had three interviews over the past six weeks—all with intermediaries—and she knew the numbers had been whittled down to a shortlist of three or four. Now the father of the children she would teach was in town and she was meeting him for the first time. She had been told that their mother was dead.
She flashed a quick smile at the doorman as he held the door for her, and he seemed to take in her slim, vibrant figure, her glowing red hair, wide-spaced eyes and dramatic flair with one comprehensive, appreciative glance that managed to indicate that he wouldn’t mind holding the door all day for her.
“Good afternoon, Miss. Lovely day,” he offered.
Then she was being ushered to the enquiry desk, where a stern, handsome, dark-eyed Barakati took her in tow, led her into an elevator, and then, as the doors closed, said, “Forgive me, but may I have your handbag?”
Jana stiffened. “What?”
“I request to search your handbag, Miss Stewart.”
She stared at him down her nose. “Certainly not!” she said, in her best imitation of her mother.
The minion shrugged. “I am sorry, Madame, I must insist.”
“Nothing was said to me at any time about being searched!”
The elevator arrived at the floor and stopped, but he had turned a key in the panel and the doors did not open.
“I say it, Madame.”
“And who are you?”
“I am Ashraf Durran, cousin and Cup Companion to Omar Durran ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi,” he said, with a nod of such regal condescension that she blinked. “Please, Miss Stewart, allow me to search you. He is waiting for you.”
Jana hadn’t run away from the restrictions of her own family life all these years to go to work now for someone who had their staff physically searched and who was apparently worried about assassination attempts. Maybe her mother was right.
She asked with angry amusement, “Whose pay, exactly, does he imagine I’m in?”
“There are many fools in the world. Miss Stewart,” the man said simply. “Please,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture inviting reason.
Her hands tightened on her bag. She was damned if she’d submit to this! “I was invited here for an interview, and no one said anything about being searched. I think there’s been a mistake,” she said firmly.
Ashraf Durran stared at her, shrugged and reached into his pocket. For a chilling moment she thought the narrow black object he pulled out was a gun. She laughed with reflexive relief when he started to speak into it. After a moment he said, “Baleh, baleh,” and put it back in his pocket.
“I must search you and your bag, Madame,” he said.
“Or?”
“Or escort you back downstairs.”
She glared furiously at him. “Well, do tha—” she began, but immediately broke off. She thought of Peter, of the vacation her mother would engineer—for Jana and Peter—if she did not get this job.
She handed her bag to Ashraf Durran, waited as he searched it and handed it back to her. “Excuse me,” he said, and she gasped as he reached for her and then stood in cold, stony fury as he ran his hands lightly, impersonally over her body.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am sorry for the necessity.” Then he turned the key and the elevator doors opened.
She stepped out into a large furnished foyer. A massive mirror directly opposite reflected her image. She was relieved to see that her irritation did not show. In her white dress she was neat and cool looking. There were several men, all in Western suits, but some wearing burnouses in addition, standing and sitting around the room, and they all turned to watch her progress as Ashraf Durran led her across to a door. She had the humiliating conviction that they all knew that she had just been searched.
Ashraf Durran tapped on the door and opened it. As the door opened into the elegantly furnished hotel sitting room, the two occupants turned towards her and got to their feet.
Behind them an expanse of Hyde Park showed green through a wide window. One man, she saw, was the old man with grey hair, tall, thin, and perfectly erect, whom she had met at a previous interview. Hadi al Hatim’s dark eyes sparkled with a smile of welcome.
The other was much younger—in his mid-to-late thirties, she thought—a little taller, lean, a good build. He had sea green eyes, strong cheekbones, a broad forehead, thick black hair and a neat devil’s beard. His expression was hard and closed. He might as well have been carved from stone, for all the feeling she got from him. He did not smile.
“Miss Jana Stewart, Your Highness,” Hadi al Hatim presented her, then put out his hand. Jana shivered as she put out her own hand to take it. “Miss Stewart, it is a pleasure to meet you again. This is His Serene Highness Sheikh Omar ibn Daud, the Prince of Central Barakat.”
“Prince?” she repeated on a wailing note. “My mother was right! Oh, damn it!”
Of course she shouldn’t have said it. His Serene Highness Prince Omar ibn Daud stiffened—Jana didn’t think it was possible to get any stiffer than he already was, but he managed it—and stared at her from eyes as cold as the green, green sea.
“What is the matter, Miss Stewart?” He spoke with an accent, in a deep, hard, unresponsive voice.
“You were described to me as an influential Barakati family with mining interests!” she said.
There was an arrogant tilt to his head. “We own the gold and the emerald mines of the mountains of Noor.”
“Congratulations!” she said dryly. She was irritated by his icily arrogant manner. She realized that she had no idea how to greet a sheikh. Should she curtsey? She was pretty sure that the curtsey was a purely Western tradition, but the Eastern genuflection before princes, if her memory served, was the kind of prostration where you touched your nose to the ground, and that seemed too incongruous, even for the Dorchester.
“But I don’t want to work in a palace. And I do think I might have—”
Been warned, she was going to say, but he cut across her. “Why not?” His voice was flat, emotionless. Not even curiosity showed.
The interruption annoyed her, and she snapped, “Partly for all the reasons that make you think you can interrupt me whenever you like.”
He stared at her. “Miss Stewart, I do not understand your hostility. You seemed to my vizier very eager to take this job.” He glanced at Hadi al Hatim, but the old man, the suspicion of a smile at one corner of his mouth, was saying nothing. “What is the reason for your attitude?”
“I’ve just been body searched in the damned elevator,” Jana said, waving an indignant arm back towards the door. “There’s an army of bodyguards out there, and it turns out to be because you’re a prince, that’s the reason!”
“I have no army of bodyguards,” he informed her flatly. “You are not yet a member of my household staff. When you are, you will not be searched when you approach me.”
Approach me. He sounded like something out of the fifteenth century. “That’s not the point. The point is, I wasn’t told I was applying for a job in a royal family.”
“Now you have been told. You do not want the job?”
Faced with the stark decision, Jana suddenly, belatedly, began to think. To wonder if she was handling this in the best way. Not for nothing did her family and friends accuse her of impulsiveness.
One thing was sure—her mother and Peter would be quick to take advantage of her situation if she agreed with what His Serene Highness had just said and walked out of here.
“Well—I...” She hesitated and bit her lip.
The vizier intervened. “Miss Stewart, before this meeting, His Highness and I had decided that you were very much the best candidate for the job. If you are now determined not to take the job, there is nothing to be said. If you are in doubt, I suggest you sit down and discuss the matter.”
It was a very gracious way out.
“All right,” she said gratefully.
Prince Omar indicated the sofa and they sat down, the prince in a chair set at an angle to her. Hadi al Hatim retired to a window embrasure.
“In your last interview, I think, you were informed that the job requires that you will live with us, teaching two girls,” he said. “You are aware of their ages and their level of proficiency.” Although his use of English seemed very good, she sensed that he did not really feel comfortable with the language, and she wondered why.
“The only thing I wasn’t told about them, I think, was that they are princesses.” Jana looked into his eyes, and was locked by a gaze that seemed to both draw and repel her at the same time. She felt the surge of a mixture of feelings—surprise, confusion, discomfort, nervousness, irritation. “I’m right in that? They are your daughters?”
“Yes, they are,” he said, without any hint of parental feeling. Just stating a cold, hard fact. Jana wondered if there were someone with a little more warmth of feeling closer to the girls. “If you have questions, you may ask them now.”
“How much would you personally expect to dictate terms in my teaching?”
“Terms?” he repeated, frowning slightly. “We do not have school terms. The princesses are taught entirely by tutors within the palace. Most of them are now absent for the summer. I prefer that you start now because the princesses have been without English lessons for some months.”
She laughed lightly at the misunderstanding. “No, no, I meant...” She flailed for another way of explaining, and then gasped as his face hardened and his eyes glinted with cold rage.
“My English is very far from perfect, Miss Stewart. I hope you will not be moved to laugh at every error I will make.”
Jana sat up straight. “I was not laughing at any error!” she said indignantly.
Prince Omar raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “No? What caused your amusement?”
She gritted her teeth. “The mutual misunderstanding!”
“I see.”
“Do you forbid laughter in the palace?”
He sat for a moment watching her. She didn’t think she had ever seen such resignation in a human face.
“No, I do not forbid it,” he answered, but she could see that laughter rarely happened, even if it was not actively forbidden. She was starting to feel seriously sorry for his daughters, raised with such a curb as this cold-hearted father must place on their spirits.
“What are your daughters’ names?” she asked involuntarily.
His dark green gaze flicked briefly towards Hadi al Hatim and then back to her. “Masha and Kamala are their usual names.”
“Kaw-meh-leh,” she repeated carefully. “Masha. They’re both very pretty names.” She smiled. “Masha. Isn’t that Russian?”
“Masha is short for Mashouka, which means beloved in Parvani, my mother’s tongue. It is true that I spent many years in Russia. There it is short for Maria. But I did not intentionally give my daughter a Russian name.”
He sounded as though it would be the last thing he’d do. “If you hated it so much, why were you there?” she asked impulsively. Speaking without thinking was one of Jana’s most determined faults. By the time she reminded herself to think before she spoke, Jana had usually already spoken.
“I did not say I hated it.” Another glance at the silent vizier. “I attended univ—”
“But you did hate it.”
His eyelids drooped, as if to hide his reaction from her, and, released from his gaze, she suddenly was free to notice how physically attractive he was. His face and head were beautifully shaped, and both the curving eyelids and the full lower lip held a sensual promise. His beard gave him the look of a Hollywood pirate. But the coldness in his eyes seemed to undo all that.
He heaved an impatient sigh.
“Yes, I did hate it. Why do you insist on this, Miss Stewart? Is it important to you?”
Jana’s cheeks were suddenly warm. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He was watching her curiously. “Do you yourself have some connection with Russia?”
“None at all,” she replied hastily, hoping he would not press the point. She could hardly confess that she had felt an impulse to make him admit to some feeling! So the Prince of Central Barakat was withdrawn! It was not her business.
“Do you have a picture of them?” she asked.
“Of the princesses?” He frowned, as though the request was unusual. “I don’t know—” He turned in his chair and called to his vizier, “Do we have such a photograph, Khwaja?”
Hadi al Hatim smiled and crossed to the table in front of the sofa where they were sitting. He pulled a file out of a briefcase and extracted a colour ten-by-eight photograph, handing it to the prince. At that moment the Cup Companion who had searched her appeared at the door, and the vizier crossed the room and went out with him, closing the door behind him.
