Кейт Хьюит – The Desert Lord's Love-Child: The Desert Lord's Baby (страница 17)
Hashem placed everything on a two foot-high, six-foot-wide, square polished mahogany table in front of her and Farooq. He opened the chest, produced two boxes, one the size of a shoebox, the other half its size, both like the larger chest, handmade, ornamented in complex mosaic patterns of gold, silver and mother-of-pearl. Next he produced a variegated brown leather folder and small drawstring pouch. Everything was in perfect condition, but looked ancient, heavy with history and significance.
An urge rose, to run her hands over the textures and shapes, feel their mystique and power flowing through her fingertips. She settled for soaking in each detail. The folder and pouch embossed with intricate gold-leaf borders, Judar’s royal crest at their center: an eagle depicted in painstaking detail, its wings arched up to enclose the kingdom’s name written in the ornamental
Hashem’s deep murmur tore her gaze back to him. She couldn’t believe how welcome his presence was. How she didn’t want him to leave. She couldn’t take more of Farooq undiluted.
Not that an army would make effective reinforcements. Not against Farooq. Or what she felt.
Sighing, she eyed Hashem in resignation as he bowed to them and retraced his steps out of the compartment.
Farooq opened the pouch, producing two brass keys that looked designed and forged in the Saladin era. He opened the small box, produced three stamps and an inkpad of the same design, before opening the folder and extracting two papyruslike papers and two crimson satin ribbons. Then he reached into his suit pocket—opposite the one she assumed held the photo—and extracted a gold pen.
He extended it to her. “Let’s see how well you write Arabic.”
She gaped from the pen to the papers to his eyes. “You’re giving me a written Arabic proficiency test?”
“I am interested to see your level, yes. But I’d hardly give you royal papers reserved for documenting state matters of the highest order to test your spelling and handwriting.”
So all this stuff was as momentous as she’d sensed. Her heart wrenched to a higher gear. “So what do you want me to write?”
He pushed the pen into her flaccid hand. “I’ll dictate to you.”
“Yeah, you live to do that, dictate,” she grumbled.
One side of his lips twitched. His eyes remained solemn. “Write, Carmen.”
The depth of the command, the gravity, squeezed her dry of breath. She sat forward, tremors buzzing through her like a current, took in the papers in front of her, handmade, each one a unique blend of beige-tan with multicolored fibers offsetting its pearly, heavy silk finish.
She put down the pen, wiped her hand on her pants. His clamped onto it. She bit her lip on the jolt as his other hand delved inside his jacket again, produced a monogrammed handkerchief, placed it on the paper, put the pen back in her hand.
As soon as the tremors allowed her to firm her grip on it, he started dictating. She geared her brain to the right-to-left writing of the exotic letters that always felt more like drawing.
She’d written a whole sentence before it registered.
This was a verse from a sacred scripture invocation.
She raised her hand off the paper, her eyes to his. “What is this? An incantation to sign over my soul?”
His eyes smiled now, a smile drenched in that overriding sensuality that was as integral to him as his DNA. And in seriousness. “Essentially, yes. This is
“This is the paper the cleric will read?”
“Yes. And along with my copy, it will reside in the royal files, proof of Mennah’s legitimacy.”
“So it’s an official document. And you want me to get creative.” The teeth sprouting in her stomach sank into its walls. “Just give me the exact language. Better yet, paraphrase.”
He pouted in mockery, continued dictating. She kept writing until he told her to sign her name. She did, raised her eyes. She’d only written two paragraphs. “That’s it?”
He shrugged one massive shoulder. “It takes only so many words to pledge oneself unto eternity.” He reached for the paper, ran his eyes over her efforts. “I’m impressed.”
Without waiting for her reaction to his praise—an upsurge of irritation for wanting it, for being so pleased at having it—he turned to his own paper, started writing the words he’d dictated her. And she forgot everything as she watched those fingers that had once owned her flesh, moving in the certainty of expertise and grace, producing a
After he signed both documents, had her sign his, she rasped, “So not only a prince, a tycoon, a philanthropist, a diplomat and a handyman but a calligrapher, too.”
“Yet another side-product of my unearned privileged existence.” His eyes mocked her, documented her chagrin at being caught out at a pettiness, at the need to apologize for it, at her anger at that need and at him.
Not that he waited for her to come to a decision about which urge to obey. He let go of her eyes, pressed three stamps to the inkpad, marked the documents with each. Judar’s royal insignia, the Aal Masood family crest and the date. The one he’d fixed to the day they’d first made lo—had sex.
She stared at the seals. The dark red ink became viscous as it dried, like congealing blood. She did feel she’d just signed a blood pact. A binding, unbreakable one.
He rolled up both documents, tied each with a ribbon, placed them in the larger box. “Those papers aren’t considered legitimate without two witnesses. As soon as we land in Judar, Shehab and Kamal, my brothers, will add their seals and signatures to ours.” He rose, extended a hand to her. “Now we’ll check on Mennah.”
Everything in Carmen squeezed. Fists, guts, lungs, heart.
Mennah. The reason he’d just taken her on.
The reason she’d just signed her life away.
Seven
A gentle nudge jogged Carmen out of the twilight between exhausted sleep and strung wakefulness.
It took her a second to realize they were touching down.
Her sandpaper-lined eyes scraped open. And there he was.
Farooq sprawled opposite her, an indulgent lion letting his overzealous cub crawl all over him. He was still watching her.
He scooped Mennah up with kisses and gentleness, rose, came to stand over her. They both looked down on her from what felt like ten feet, his face opaque, Mennah’s ablaze with glee.
“Do you need a few minutes to wake up, or shall we go?”
She shook her head, sprang to her feet. Her sight darkened, disappeared. His arm came around her, would have released her the moment she steadied if not for Mennah. Their daughter threw an arm over Carmen’s neck, bringing the three of them into an embrace.
Carmen went limp with the blow of longing at feeling him imprinting her in such tenderness, even if borrowed, at Mennah mashing herself against them as if seeking their protection, their union. At the hopelessness of it all.
She lurched away before her eyes leaked, held out her arms for Mennah. Mennah reached back.
Farooq only walked on. “I’ll carry her.”
She scampered, kept up with him. “But she wants me now.”
“Do you want your mother,
Carmen’s legs gnarled with the power of image he projected, the poignancy. She rasped, “Put that way, you go right ahead.”
Not that he was awaiting her approval. His strides ate up a path to the exit, leaving it up to her to keep up or not.
She scrambled in his wake, looked at the multitime zone clock on the way out: 9 a.m. in New York, 5 p.m. here. It had been sixteen hours since she’d found Farooq standing on her doorstep.
Sixteen hours. They felt like sixteen days. Sixty. Far more. It felt as if her life before those hours had been someone else’s, her memories sloughing off to be replaced by another reality that had unfolded with his reappearance.
Then she stepped outside and into another world.
And it was. Though her life had taken her all over the world, Judar felt … unprecedented, hyperreal. The azure of its spring skies was clearer, more vibrant, the reds and vermilions starting to infuse the horizon as the sun descended were richer in range and depth, its breeze, even in the airport where jet exhaust should have masked everything, felt crisper, more fragrant, its very ambiance permeated by the echoes of history, the lure of roots that tugged at her through her connection with Mennah, whose blood ran thick with this kingdom’s legacy.