entirely. Hassan doesn’t know that I’ve always known that Nadira Al-Yasin is the people’s preferred wife for him.’
‘I’ve been there. I know the feeling,’ Evie murmured understandingly. ‘I suppose she’s beautiful, biddable and loves children.’
Leona nodded on a muffled sob. ‘I’ve met her once or twice. She’s quite sweet,’ she reluctantly confessed.
‘Just right for Hassan, I suppose.’
‘Yes,’
‘And, of course, you are not.’
Leona shook her head.
‘So why are you here, then?’ Evie challenged.
‘You tell me,’ she suggested, finding strength in anger and pulling herself into a sitting position on the bed. ‘Because I don’t know! Hassan says I am here for this reason, then he changes it to another. He is stubborn and devious and an absolute expert at plucking at my heart strings! His father is ill and I adore that old man so he uses him to keep me dancing to his secret tune!’
‘Raschid’s father died in his arms while I held Raschid in my arms,’ Evie told her sadly. ‘Wretched though it was, I would not have been anywhere else. He needed me. Hassan needs you too.’
‘Oh, don’t defend him,’ Leona protested, ‘It makes me feel mean, yet I know I would have gone to his father like a shot with just that request. I didn’t need all of this other stuff to make me do it.’
‘But maybe Hassan needed this other stuff to let him make you do it.’
‘I’m going to sit you at the dinner table between Mrs Yasin and Mrs Mahmud tonight if you don’t stop trying to be reasonable,’ Leona said warningly.
‘Okay, you’ve made your point,’ Evie conceded. ‘You need a loyal champion, not a wise one.’ Then, with a complete change of manner, ‘So get yourself into the bathroom and tidy yourself up before we go and fight the old dragons together.’
Leona began to smile. ‘Now you’re talking,’ she enthused, and, stretching out a long leg, she rose from the bed a different person than the one who’d slumped down on it minutes ago. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Evie,’ she murmured huskily.
It was a remark she could have repeated a hundred times over during the following days when everyone did try to appear content to simply enjoy the cruise with no underlying disputes to spoil it.
But in truth many undercurrents were at work. In the complicated way of Arab politics, there was no natural right to succession in Rahman. First among equals was the Arab way of describing a collective of tribe leaders amongst which one is considered the most authoritative. The next leader did not necessarily have to be the son of the one preceding him, but choice became an open issue on which all heads of the family must agree.
In truth everyone knew that Hassan was the only sensible man for the job simply because he had been handling the modern thrusts of power so successfully for the last five years as his father’s health had begun to fail. No one wanted to tip the balance. As it stood, the other families had lived well and prospered under Al-Qadim rule. Rahman was a respected country in Arabia. Landlocked though it was, the oil beneath its desert was rich and in plenty, and within its borders were some of the most important oases that other, more favourably placed countries, did not enjoy.
But just as the sands shifted, so did opinions. Al-Mahmud and Al-Yasin might have lived well and prospered under thirty years of Al-Qadim rule, but they had disapproved of Hassan’s choice of wife from the beginning. Though they could not fault the dedication Hassan’s wife had applied to her role, nor ignore the respect she had earned from the Rahman people, she was frail of body. She had produced no sons in five years of marriage, and then had made Hassan appear weak to his peers when she’d walked away from him of her own volition. Divorce should have followed swiftly. Hassan had refused to discuss it as an option. Therefore, a second wife should have been chosen. Hassan’s refusal to pander to what he called the ways of the old guard had incensed many. Not least Sheikh Abdul Al-Yasin who had not stopped smarting from the insult he’d received when Hassan had not chosen his daughter, Nadira, who had been primed from birth to take the role.
With Hassan’s father’s health failing fast, Sheikh Abdul had seen an opportunity to redress this insult. All it required was for Hassan to agree to take on a second wife in order to maintain the delicate balance between families. It was that simple. Everyone except Hassan agreed that his marriage to Nadira Al-Yasin would form an alliance that would solve everyone’s problems. Hassan could keep his first wife. No one was asking him to discard this beautiful but barren woman. But his first son would come from the womb of Nadira Al-Yasin, which was all that really mattered.
The alternatives? Sheikh Jibril Al-Mahmud had a son who could be considered worthy of taking up the mantle Hassan’s father would leave vacant. And no one could afford to ignore Sheikh Imran Al-Mukhtar and his son, Samir. Samir might be too young to take on the mantle of power but his father was not.
This, however only dealt with the male perspective. As the sheikhs fought their war with words on each other during long discussions, ensconced in one of the staterooms, the women were waging a similar war for their own reasons. Zafina Al-Yasin wanted Leona out and her daughter, Nadira, in. Since Hassan was not allowing this, then she would settle for her daughter taking second place. For the power lay in the sons born in a marriage, not the wives. So critical remarks were dropped at every opportunity to whittle away at Leona’s composure and a self-esteem that was already fragile due to her inability to give Hassan what he needed most in this world.
In the middle of it all stood Sheikh Raschid and his wife, Evie offering positive proof that west could successfully join with east. For Behran had gone from strength to strength since their marriage and was fast becoming one of the most influential States in Arabia. But they had a son. It was the cog on which everything else rotated.
It took two days to navigate the Suez Canal, and would take another five to cross the Red Sea to the city of Jeddah on the coast of Saudi Arabia. By the time they had reached the end of the Canal, battle lines had been clearly marked for those times when the war of words would rage or a truce would be called. Mornings were truce times, when everyone more or less did their own thing and the company could even be called pleasant.
In the afternoons most people took a siesta, unless Samir grew restless and chivvied the others towards more enjoyable pursuits.
‘Just look at them,’ Evie murmured indulgently one afternoon as they stood watching Samir, Rafiq, Raschid and Hassan jet-skiing the ocean like reckless idiots, criss-crossing each other’s wash with a daring that sometimes caught the breath. ‘They’re like little boys with exciting new toys.’
They came back to the boat, refreshed, relaxed—and ready to begin the first wave of strikes when the men gathered to drink coffee in one of the staterooms while the women occupied another.
Dinner called a second truce. After dinner, when another split of the sexes occurred, hostilities would resume until someone decided to call it a day and went to bed.
Bed was a place you could neither describe as a place of war nor truce. It gave you a sanctuary in which you had the chance to vent all of the things you had spent the day suppressing. But when the person in the bed with you saw you as much the enemy as every one else did, then you were in deep trouble. As Hassan acknowledged every time he slid into bed beside Leona and received the cold shoulder if he so much as attempted to touch her or speak.
She
