He said the word as if he tasted something unpleasant and instantly Lina’s warm glow subsided. ‘Given that, if you show promise, you will attend school outside Halarq.’
Lina nodded, torn between delight and the need to pinch herself to check she was awake. ‘But won’t it be expensive?’
Instantly his gaze, which had fixed on a spot in the middle distance, zeroed in on her. Once more Lina felt that keen scrutiny, as if he looked at her but saw more than anyone else ever had.
‘Fortunately I can afford it.’ A ghost of a smile hovered around his firm mouth. ‘If you work hard, I will sponsor your education.’
‘But how will I repay you?’ The words erupted before she could hold them back.
The Emir’s eyebrows rose. In surprise because she continued to speak without being invited? Yet he didn’t seem angry. Was that approval in his gleaming eyes?
‘You cannot simply accept this gift?’
Lina bit her lip, considering carefully. His Royal Highness the Emir of Halarq was a powerful man, accustomed to having his every word obeyed. Yet her conscience—or was it the pride her aunt complained of?—told her she had to set limits to this kindness.
‘I would be honoured, sir. Yet that same honour compels me to acknowledge my great obligation to you. It’s an obligation I must repay. We aren’t kin. I have no call on your charity.’
Lina’s heart thudded in her chest, her pulse rushing so fast through her body she felt light-headed.
For what seemed an age those piercing eyes, darker now and unreadable as polished obsidian, bored into her. Then, abruptly, he nodded.
‘So be it. If this turns out as I hope, you’ll be a shining example of change in Halarq. I intend to modernise our country through education, among other things. Work hard, learn, and on your return you can repay my generosity by helping to promote the value of education in those areas where people still refuse to send their daughters to school.’
He glanced at his watch and shoved his chair back from the desk.
Instantly Lina scrambled to her feet before sinking into a low bow, her heart swelling fit to burst. ‘I promise to study hard, sir.’ She’d make him proud, no matter what it took.
‘Excellent.’ With that he turned and strode from the room.
* * *
Four and a half years later Lina stepped off the plane a different woman.
Which was apt since the country she returned to had changed too.
The airport had expanded for a start, with a new streamlined terminal building and space for many more planes. The road into the city was a revelation—wide, straight and well-surfaced. It was even lined with rows of date palms and other trees.
A new hospital sat in spacious landscaped grounds at a major road junction and a university was under construction nearby. Across the city cranes testified to a programme of renewal.
The driver who’d met her kept up a flow of informative chatter in response to her queries. That marked a change too, for when she’d left Halarq she couldn’t imagine a male driver speaking more than was absolutely necessary to a woman. Though, to be fair, her experience was limited. She’d grown up in a rural province before her uncle had brought her to the capital. She’d rarely been in a car before she’d left her homeland. And this wasn’t an ordinary car but a limousine with the Emir’s crest on the door.
Lina felt a rogue shiver of heat through her insides at the thought that he’d sent one of his drivers to collect her.
Had he personally arranged it? Or had one of his staff done it without being asked?
Did the Emir even remember her?
In all those years years he’d sent not a word, though she knew the school staff had sent regular reports to the palace. For the first year, homesick and overwhelmed by the changes in her life, she’d have given anything for a word from him. In her loneliness the Emir had grown in her imagination, filling the empty places in her soul. He was protector, hero, saviour...and something else she couldn’t put a name to.
In the years she’d been away, bombarded with new experiences and places, new people and ideas, he’d remained a constant. A lodestar, the single reference point connecting her to Halarq and the world she’d left behind.
Which, she realised with a grimace, was dangerous. She was nothing to him. Once she’d fulfilled her end of their bargain she’d never see him again.
Pining over the Emir and wondering whether he approved of her choices and achievements wasn’t sensible.
He’d probably forgotten her. No doubt his officious secretary kept a watching brief on the little social experiment that was Lina. For though His Royal Highness had been kind, she understood he’d only looked for a solution that would remove her from the palace and feed into his plans to modernise Halarq. He simply hadn’t wanted her.
Nothing new there. To her father she’d been a disappointment because of her gender. To her aunt and uncle an inconvenience. To the Emir a problem to be solved.
Tangled emotions knotted Lina’s stomach. Anxiety definitely. Though she’d survived and eventually thrived in her Swiss school, she knew what it was to be utterly alone. She longed for connection. To belong, to a place and to people, or at least one person.
Savagely Lina cut off that thought.
She’d daydreamed of the Emir, so tall and handsome, for too long. She was no teenager now. There’d be no swooning over him, or for that matter, any man.
Once her obligation to the Emir was fulfilled, she had a career to build. An income to earn. A life to enjoy.
The limousine turned off the teeming street and onto the private road that led up from the old town to the citadel. Above, its coral-coloured walls rising from the sheer rock, rose the Emir’s palace. A silver and blue banner over the gate whipped in the breeze, proclaiming the Emir was in residence.
Lina clasped her hands tight in her lap, trying to still the rising tide of excitement and trepidation that quickened her pulse.
She’d thank him for the wonderful thing he’d done in giving her an education. She’d throw herself into whatever PR tasks he devised to promote education and, as soon as she could, remove herself from his orbit.
She smiled. That was settled.
Except, as so often in life, it didn’t work out that way.
* * *
Sayid exchanged farewells with the fiercely bearded provincial leader then watched him and his entourage bow themselves out through the wide doors of beaten copper.
Rolling his head back, he tried to relieve the stiffness of too many hours sitting in the formal audience chamber. It had been a long afternoon.
He disliked this echoing room with its lavish decorations and raised dais that set him apart from everyone. But he’d made so many reforms in such
