when he asked, ‘And this last time you looked?’ his voice was deepened by emotion, as if he actually understood.
Lila smiled with the sheer joy of remembering.
‘There were stalls everywhere, but I could hear the music and I followed it. And at one stall, beneath a big tree, I saw a small wooden box with a patterned silver inlay.’
She paused, emotion catching at her throat again.
‘Something in the pattern...I mean, I’d seen many boxes over the years but this one took me straight back to my mother, to the little box she had always kept close. Her sand box, she called it. I touched it and the girl—the student—handed it to me.’
‘So you asked where it was from?’
Lila nodded.
‘At first I couldn’t speak, I just held it, felt its warmth, felt my mother’s hand on it, my hand on hers. But then I realised that I had the name of the country where my mother might have been born. I had my first real clue.’
HE SHOULD HAVE let her go, seen her safely to the hospital and forgotten the Ta’wiz, pretended it was just a locket—such things were sold all over the world, like amulets and chains with women’s names written in Arabic, pretty tokens and jewellery, rather than sacred objects.
He should forget the laughing Nalini of his youth, and the problems of his people. He should let this woman do her job, serve her twelve months’ contract and depart.
From all he’d heard as he’d chased up her references, she was an excellent paediatrician—what more could he ask of her?
But glancing sideways at her as she sat, bolt upright, her head turned to look out the window, her shining dark hair in a loose plait down her back, he knew he could no more have pretended she was just a doctor than he could have walked naked through the shopping mall.
In fact, the second would probably have been easier, because he would have debased only himself, while ignoring this woman’s sudden presence in his country would have been...
Traitorous?
He wanted to talk to her, to ask her more, to hear that soft husky voice, but anger at her treatment—deserved anger—was emanating from that straight back.
Until they reached the wide, ceremonial road that led straight to the palace gates.
‘Oh, but they’re gum trees,’ she cried, turning back to look at him, her face alight with surprise and delight. ‘Eucalypts—from home!’
And several things clicked into place in Tariq’s head.
First was the confirmation that she was beautiful. Not blindingly attractive as Nalini had been, but with a quiet radiance that shone when she smiled.
And secondly, the trees!
Australia!
Two years after Nalini had disappeared, a gift of two hundred eucalypt seedlings had arrived at the palace, packed in boxes in a container, sender unknown. The only clue had been a picture of an avenue of such trees and his father had taken it that they were meant to be planted on the approach to the palace.
Had his father suspected they were a gift from the runaway that he had had the trees tended with more care than new-born babies?
Now they grew straight and tall, and had brought a smile to the face of the newcomer.
A smile so like her mother’s it touched something in his chest...
Should he explain—about the disappearance of Nalini, about the trees arriving?
No, it would be too much too soon, although living in the palace she’d hear the gossip soon enough, even if it was close to three decades old.
Although he could explain the trees.
‘They were a gift, sent unexpectedly to my father, and he planted them along here.’
That would do for now.
She smiled at him.
‘They look great. They obviously like it here. Where I grew up was on the coast and although we had sand, we had rain as well so the trees grew tall and strong. Can you smell them? Smell the scent of the oil? Sometimes at night it filled the air, and especially after being in the city it would tell me I was home.’
‘The desert air is like that,’ Tariq told her. ‘Cities seem to confuse our sense of smell, but once we’re out of them it comes back to us, familiar as the sound of the wind blowing sand across the dunes, or the feel of cold spring water in an oasis.’
Lila heard the words as poetry, and stared at the man who’d spoken them. He’d erupted into her life, caught her at a time when anyone would be vulnerable—new job, new country, new customs and language—then confused her with her mother’s name.
Seeing the familiar trees had strengthened her, and she decided to go along with whatever was happening, not that she’d had much choice up until now. But she’d come here to find out about her parents, and this man had known her mother.
Had suspected her mother was a thief?
So maybe she had to stay in the palace, if only to clear her mother’s name...
She turned away, catching a glimpse of a large building at the end of the avenue.
A very large building, not replete with domes and minarets but with solid, high stone walls, earth brown, and towers set into them at regular intervals.
Guard towers? For men with guns?
More a prison than a palace, surely?
Her mother had been a thief?
No, that last was impossible!
She was letting her imagination run away with her, but as they drew closer to the imposing façade, she shivered.
‘It is old, built as a fort, not a palace,’ her companion explained. ‘But inside you will see. It is a home.’
He said the words with the warmth of love and she smiled, remembering how forbidding her childhood home, an old nunnery, had looked from outside, yet how homelike it had been.
‘It’s the people inside that make a home,’ she said, and saw his surprise.
Then his smile.
And something changed...
Something inside her gave way, weakening her when she would have liked to be strong.
Needed to be strong...
* * *
Tariq glanced at his companion, aware of the complications he was undoubtedly bringing into his life by insisting she stay in the palace.
