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But her mother would be horrified at the ‘bargain’.
Not if she didn’t know …
That last sneaky thought hit Kate like a sharp slap.
Was she actually considering Ibrahim’s mad idea? Could she really deceive her mother?
She looked at the man who sat quietly beside her, gazing out at the green fields and river gums. Not the courtly gentleman she’d met the day before but someone older, more tired, somehow.
She dragged her mind back from the man to the question.
‘But surely your nephew should marry someone from your own country. Someone who would know how—well, how to behave,’ she offered desperately.
Ibrahim shook his head, but now he smiled.
‘I have thought hard on it, and you would be my choice. Fareed is the son of my older brother so he is also my heir, and although he will be a wise and just ruler, he has ghosts in his life, ghosts I fear will stop him reaching his full potential.’
‘So I’m not only supposed to marry this man but banish his demons, as well?’ Kate demanded. ‘Shouldn’t you be calling an exorcist?’
She knew she was being flippant, but right now flippant was all she could manage. The turmoil inside her—the feeling of being torn in two—was just too much!
Ibrahim offered her a slight smile but obviously wasn’t diverted from his course.
‘I would not put such a burden on you, although I believe you could be the person to help him out of the past. It is why I have chosen you. And, as I said, I would not hold you to the marriage—divorce is simple in my country and should that happen, provided I believe you have behaved honourably, I will honour my agreement with your mother. That would be our bargain.’
Bargain!
The word brought her right back to where this bizarre conversation had started. Ibrahim would buy Tippy, have her mother train him, provide an overseer and stable help and the stables would not only survive but would undoubtedly thrive.
As would Billy!
And all she, Kate, had to do, was …
Marry the man with the disdainful yet seductively attractive face?
The words roared in her head, while a tremor of what she hoped was fear and not desire stirred inside her.
She tried desperately to pull herself together—to come up with some sensible, solid, irrefutable reasoning against this ridiculous idea.
All she came up with was a question.
‘I can work while I’m there?’
‘Of course,’ Ibrahim replied. ‘We would really appreciate it if you did.’
‘So you need doctors—or a doctor?’
He shook his head.
‘Doctors we can buy.’
‘And you can’t buy wives?’ The words were out before she’d thought them through, and as soon as they were hanging there, in the bright morning air, she realised her mistake.
‘But, of course, that’s what you’re doing.’
Ibrahim studied her for a moment.
‘We are traders back as far as our people go. Trade is give and take. It is bartering and making bargains, that is how we do things. You talk of buying as if it is a bribe, but if you could see it our way, maybe it would not look so ugly to you.’
‘And Fareed? What does he think of this?’
Ibrahim’s smile turned him back into the man she’d first met—the charming man her mother had introduced in the stables.
‘He has no need to know who—it is enough that he knows he is to marry a woman I have chosen. He will meet you on his wedding night.’
‘Wedding night?’
Kate’s voice was back to squeaky—squeaky with disbelief.
‘Our weddings are different. You will be married with the woman supporting you, and he with the men, so you will not meet until after the ceremony and feasting is over.’
It isn’t that part of the ‘wedding night’ phrase that worries me, Kate wanted to say, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate.
Not that any of this conversation had been particularly appropriate …
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9f382209-7315-59a8-add9-cf55f72dbfdc)
FAREED WAS PUZZLED when the limousine sent to collect him from the hospital didn’t contain his uncle, and even more surprised when the driver announced they were going straight to the airport.
‘The sultan is staying on for a few days but knows you wish to get back to work,’ the driver informed him. ‘His plane will take you home and return for him.’
Fareed wasn’t entirely surprised. After his uncle had dropped his bombshell at the hospital, the evening after his allergic reaction to the bee, Ibrahim had avoided opportunities for further conversation—opportunities he couldn’t have escaped if they’d flown home together.
That conversation had been startling, to say the least—shocking, in fact. He had known for some time that his days as a bachelor were numbered. Knew also that his uncle would be choosing his bride. After all, as Ibrahim had pointed out, he’d had plenty of time to find one for himself. And it was in keeping with the tradition of the family, and their people, so there was little point in arguing about it.
But the last thing Fareed had expected his uncle to announce on his hospital visit was a date for his wedding—a date within a fortnight of their return to Amberach.
Even more disturbing was his uncle’s refusal to tell him the name of his bride-to-be. It would almost certainly be some distant cousin, someone Ibrahim had been secretly grooming—or having groomed—for the job. Because that’s what it was—a job, a duty, preordained almost …
No, it was perfectly understandable that Ibrahim would be avoiding him!
Had she actually agreed?
That was Kate’s first thought when, three days after Ibrahim’s morning visit, Isaac, the man who’d first seen Tippy, arrived at the house, bringing with him a young stableboy, several mounds of luggage and an elegant leather folder, embossed in gold, with what must be the crest of Amberach and Kate’s name.
It contained not only details of the flight she would take to Amberach with the sultan in two days’ time but also coloured brochures about the country, its people and history right up to recent times, where a picture showed the sultan, in a long white robe and gold-edged headscarf, cutting the ribbon in front of the new emergency hospital.
A tall, distinguished-looking man, similarly dressed except for black edging on his headscarf, stood beside Ibrahim.
Fareed!
Kate peered at the photo—hoping to read something positive in the shadowed features?
He was as good looking as she’d first thought him, but good looks were usually way down on her list of important manly attributes.
Manly attributes?
What was she thinking?
‘I do wish you hadn’t made such a quick decision about going over there to work,’ her mother said when she saw the documents, and Kate knew her mother suspected something.
Not a marriage something, that was for sure, but she knew something had gone on between Ibrahim and Kate.
‘Mum, it’s a brand-new hospital—look—and I’m only going for a year. It’s not as if I haven’t been away before, and think how exciting it will be. Look at the brochures Ibrahim has sent. What’s more, you’ll be so busy with training and getting the new staff into order, you won’t even notice I’m gone.’
Sally smiled.
‘It is good for us all, isn’t it? Like a gift from heaven, to be able to keep Tippy here for Billy—’
‘And for you to train him, Mum, to show what you can do with a really good horse! It’s time to stop dreaming and get working.’
Sally hugged her hard and Kate swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat.
This is all for Mum and Billy,she reminded herself,and for the future of this family—myfamily.
Twelve months of her life was a small price to pay for the happiness she was bringing these two people, whom she loved with all her heart.
And there was no way she could think beyond that—except perhaps, from a purely selfish motive, it would offer a chance to put her life back together after Mark …
‘Snow-capped mountains?’
Ibrahim smiled at the disbelief in Kate’s voice.
‘You did not expect them?’
‘I saw the pictures in the brochures, but it still seems strange to see snow in a desert.’
Her host had spent most of the flight tucked away in what he called his mobile office, catching up on business and resting when he could. Perhaps he wasn’t well, the kindly Ibrahim—could this be why he was so anxious to marry off his nephew?
You don’t know enough about any of it,Kate told herself.Just be glad you had a good sleep so you can face whatever lies ahead.She felt fresh and rested, having lazed and slept in first-class luxury until a steward had brought breakfast and opened the blind for her to see Amberach for the first time.
Ibrahim had slid into the seat beside her as she’d blurted out her surprise.
‘Amberach has everything,’ he explained. ‘It is winter now so there is more snow, but on the highest peaks a little snow remains all year round. It is the snow melt that makes the land around the base of the mountains fertile, and has provided a good living for our farmers throughout the ages. But the fertile plain is narrow and on two sides of my country the great desert has encroached more and more—right to the coast, where many of my people have lived on fishing and pearl diving for generations.’
‘Do you still have a pearling industry?’ Kate asked.
‘I am trying to revive it, if only as an added incentive for tourists to visit my country,’ Ibrahim said, as the plane swooped lower, over dark blue sea and yellow-gold sand. ‘Once cultured pearls came on the market, our pearling fleets went out of business. Most turned to fishing, but the fisherman must go farther and farther from shore to get a good catch.’
Kate nodded, remembering the things she’d read, but the plane was coming in to land and a mixture of excitement and apprehension at what lay ahead held her silent.
The plane landed but no one moved and to Kate’s surprise it was then towed into a huge hangar, sumptuously decorated in deep reds and purple and gold.
‘The women of the family prefer to alight in privacy,’ Ibrahim explained, ‘although these days many of them, especially the younger ones, frequent the shopping malls and go with friends to the theatre.’
They disembarked, Ibrahim ushering Kate into yet another sleek black vehicle—into the front seat this time.
‘I have asked Fareed to meet us here. He will take you for a short drive along the esplanade and past the old fort on the way to the palace. It will be an opportunity for the two of you to talk a little but remember, he knows nothing of the wedding plans. It is not necessary for him to know until the wedding night.’
Kate frowned at the man she’d discovered was so devious and felt her stomach knot at the thought of the deception she would have to play.
Or was it deception if Fareed didn’t know?
She heard voices and looked up to see him striding into the hangar.
‘Is this really necessary, Uncle?’ he demanded. ‘Do you not have enough lackeys that one couldn’t be found to show Dr Andrews around this morning? I’m barely back at work and you call me away.’
His face might be a mask, but his eyes glittered with fury.
Kate tried to blend into the car, to pretend she wasn’t there at all, but Ibrahim was unrelenting.
‘It is a small thing I ask of you,’ he was saying to Fareed. ‘Dr Andrews is our guest and all I would wish of you is to show her a little hospitality. Perhaps as a mark of your gratitude …’
‘In that great hulking limousine? If you want me to play tour guide she can ride with me in my car.’
Kate thought she detected a quick smirk on Ibrahim’s face and wondered just how wide his manipulative streak might be.
‘Well, come along!’
Fareed this time, the order curt.
She longed to rebel, to tell the pair of them she wasn’t just a piece of meat to barter over, but she bit her tongue because, sadly, that was exactly what she was—Ibrahim’s pawn.
She forced herself to think of the rewards of the position—the continued success of the family business, her mother’s and Billy’s happiness …
Billy! In her head she saw the tiny scrap of humanity that had been her longed-for baby brother, born twelve weeks early and looking like the living doll she’d been imagining. All tied up with wires, his little eyes taped shut, tiny hands and feet and tubes everywhere.
Billy, who’d fought to live, then battled through one illness after another to survive.
Billy, who’d only really come fully alive when Tippy had been born and the two of them had formed some magical bond.
She shut away the memories and followed meekly behind the angry man who so obviously didn’t want to be stuck with her.
If he only knew …
Fareed’s vehicle was a high-set SUV, black like most of the vehicles she’d seen these people use.
‘Why are all the cars black?’ she asked, as she clambered in, unaided by her husband-to-be.
