between the various clans all jockeying for social position.
Rashad laid Polly down on a silk-clad bed. She was starting to recover consciousness, her eyelids flickering, little formless sounds emerging from her full pink lips. But even in that condition she contrived to look remarkably like an idealised image of an angel he had once seen in a book.
‘Dr Wasem is here,’ Hakim said at his elbow, and Rashad stepped back from the bed, suffering one of those weird ‘moment out of time’ sensations and momentarily spooked by it.
Being men, they retreated to the corridor while the female contingent of the household took charge.
‘I wonder what is wrong with her,’ Rashad said tautly.
‘I wonder what our excitable crowds will make of this latest development. One of your guards used his phone in the lift. I frowned at him. He should have desisted immediately. What kind of discipline have we here when even the men dedicated to protecting you are taking a part in this media gossip nonsense?’ Hakim was steadily working himself up into a rant.
‘She was so pale. I should have realised it wasn’t natural for her to be that pale,’ Rashad breathed as if his adviser hadn’t spoken.
Minutes later, Dr Wasem joined them. ‘Heatstroke,’ he pronounced with a hint of satisfaction at the speed of his diagnosis. ‘Normally I would suggest our guest be taken to hospital but I am aware of the current mood in our city. The women will ensure that she is rapidly cooled down and rehydrated. I wonder whose idea it was to take a woman who had already endured a long flight outside during the hottest part of the day? Even our constitutions are taxed in such temperatures as we have in summer.’
A slight flare of colour outlined Rashad’s stunning cheekbones. Sunstroke.
‘That is serious—’
‘Not as serious as what I have to tell you,’ Hakim whispered once the doctor turned away to reel off further instructions to the cluster of women at the bedroom door.
With difficulty, Rashad rose above the guilt he was experiencing because sunstroke could be very serious and his guest could have had a fit, convulsions or even a heart attack if her temperature were not speedily reduced. He was appalled by his own thoughtlessness. ‘And what is that?’
‘Our guest may say she is called Polly but the name on her passport is Zariyah,’ Hakim divulged in an even lower-pitched whisper.
‘But that is...that is my great-grandmother’s name. It is rarely used,’ Rashad framed in shock, for the name was not used in Dharia out of respect for his ancestor’s memory. ‘How can her birth name be Zariyah?’
‘My suspicions have taken me in a direction I really do not wish to go,’ Hakim admitted heavily. ‘But her mother’s possession of that ring and her use of that name for her child, added to her unexplained disappearance all those years ago, deeply concerns me...’
‘It is not possible that she could be a relative!’ Rashad protested with rare vehemence.
‘With the timing, added to your father’s predilection for dallying with pretty women on the staff, it is sadly...possible,’ Hakim spelt out grimly. ‘A DNA test must be taken. Our guest could be your half-sister.’
‘My...’ Half-sister? Reeling with shock, Rashad had frozen into position by the wall as he struggled mightily to handle that shattering possibility while instinctively swallowing back any repetition of that familial designation.
That was not a result he wanted. No, he didn’t want that, he definitely didn’t want to discover that he had been sexually attracted to a long-lost family member. The very idea made him feel sick. But hadn’t he once read somewhere about such unnatural attachments forming between adults who had not been raised together as children?
‘It must be confirmed one way or another. We must know,’ Hakim repeated doggedly. ‘Annabel Dixon was a flirtatious woman and your father was—’
The strong bones of Rashad’s bronzed face set hard as granite as he spoke. ‘I know what he was.’
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