was always going to get the hard stare and third degree. She, more than anyone, could understand that.
Easy to say—as she followed the servant through an ancient archway and down a short flight of steps, her skin was goosebumped, her breath catching in her throat—but it felt very personal.
At the bottom of the steps, sheltered from the sea by stone walls and from the heat of the summer by pergolas dripping with blue racemes of wisteria, scented with the tiny white stars of jasmine, was a terrace garden.
She stopped, entranced, her irritation melting away.
‘Madaam?’ the servant prompted, bringing her back to the reason she was there, and she turned to him.
‘Sho Ismak?’ She asked his name.
He smiled, bowed. ‘Ismi Khal, madaam.’
She placed her hand against her chest and said, ‘Ismi, Ruby.’ Then, with a gesture at the garden, ‘This is lovely. Jameel,’ she said, calling on the little Arabic she’d learned during working trips to Dubai and Bahrain and topped up on the long flight from London.
‘Nam. It is beautiful,’ he said carefully, demonstrating his own English with a broad smile, before turning to open the door to a cool tiled lobby, slipping his feet from his sandals as he stepped inside.
She had no time to linger, admire the exquisite tiles decorating the walls, but, familiar with the customs of the region, she followed his example and slipped off her heels before padding after him.
He opened the door to a large, comfortably furnished sitting room, crossed the room to draw back shutters and open a pair of doors that led onto a small shaded area overlooking the sea. There was a rush of air, the scent of the sea mingled with jasmine and, despite the less than enthusiastic welcome and her own misgivings about coming here, she sighed with pleasure.
When Amanda had explained that Sheikh Ibrahim was sitting out his exile in a fort in Ras al Kawi, his maternal grandmother’s native home, she had imagined something rugged, austere. It was all that, but below the ancient fortress a home, a garden, had been carved from the shelter of the hillside.
The man might be a grouch but this place was magical.
Khal was all set to give her the full guided tour of the suite, starting with the tiny kitchen, but she had just a few minutes to freshen up and get her head straight before she had to report to Sheikh Ibrahim.
‘Shukran, Khal.’ She tapped her watch to indicate that she was short of time. ‘Where... Ayn...?’ She mimed typing and he smiled, then took her to the door, pointed at the steps leading down.
‘Marra,’ he said, and held up one finger, then, ‘Marrataan.’ Two fingers.
Once, twice?
‘Etnaan? Two floors?’
He nodded, then rattled something off that she had no chance of understanding, before heading off down them.
* * *
Bram had showered on the beach when he came out of the sea but he stood in his wet room with cold water pouring off him while he caught his breath, recovered from that moment when he’d looked up and seen the dark, foreshortened silhouette of Ruby Dance against the sky and his heart had stopped.
In that split second he’d imagined every possible drama that would have brought Safia flying north to Ras al Kawi. To him. When Ruby Dance, and not Safia, had stepped out of the shadow, the complex rush of disappointment, guilt had hit him like a punch in the gut.
Her hair was the same dark silk as Safia’s but it had been cut in short, feathery layers. Her eyes were not the rare blue-green that was the legacy of Iskandar’s army, who’d fought and scattered their seed every inch of the way along the Gulf to India, but the cool blue-grey of a silver fox. She was a little taller and, while her voice had the same soft, low musical tones that wrapped around a man’s heart, when she spoke it was with that clear precision—as English as a rainy day—of the privileged aristocratic women he’d known in Europe.
What she did have in common with Safia was a rare stillness, a face that gave no hint of what she was thinking or feeling.
Schooled to obedience—accepting without question a marriage arranged to keep the peace between their warring families when they were children—Safia would have played the role of perfect wife, borne his children, never by so much as a breath betraying her love for another man.
The arrival of a courier that morning bearing the summons home, and the difficult call from his brother, had stirred up long-buried memories, bringing Safia’s image so vividly to mind that it had taken time for his brain to catch up with what his eyes were telling him. A seemingly endless moment when everything dead within him had stirred, quickened and he’d come close to taking her hand to draw her close. To step back five years and, if only for a moment, be the man he was meant to be. Husband, father, heir to his father’s throne.
He shook his head, grabbed a towel and scrubbed at his face to erase the treacherous thought and concentrate on what Ruby Dance had said about Peter.
A badly broken leg, a wrist that would be out of action for weeks, the agony of cracked ribs; the timing couldn’t be worse. There were a number of projects requiring his undivided attention and, after five long years of exile, the longed-for call home with a sting in the tail...
He glanced at the letter of introduction, picked up his phone and keyed Amanda Garland into the search engine.
Her reputation—clients who were prepared to publicly laud her to the skies, a Businesswoman of the Year award, an honour from Queen Elizabeth—was as impressive as the list of people she’d offered as a reference.
He’d asked the Dance woman if he would have heard of any of them and the fact was that he’d met all of them. If she was used to working at this level she must be seriously good at her job and, unlike Peter, she wouldn’t be itching to disappear into the desert for days at a time with a camera.
* * *
Ruby wasted no time in stripping off and stepping into the walk-in shower. She let the hard needles of water stream over her for one long minute, stimulating, refreshing, bringing her body back to life.
It was warmer here than in London, than on the air conditioned jet, and she abandoned her dark grey trouser suit in favour of a lightweight knee-length skirt and linen top. And, having already experienced the ancient steps, she slipped on a pair of black ballet flats.
She still had a few minutes and used them to check her phone for Amanda’s text, copying the details of the hospital onto one of the index cards she carried with her before going in search of Sheikh Ibrahim’s office.
The evening was closing in. The sea was flat calm, the sky ranging from deep purple in the east to pale pinks and mauves in the west while, in the shadows, tiny solar lights twined around the pergolas and set amongst the casual planting, were blinking on, shining through leaves, glinting on a ripple of water trickling down through rocks.
The garden had a quiet magic and she could have stood there for hours letting the peace seep into her bones. She took one last look then, out of time, she walked down to the next level where, in a corner, a few shrivelled fruits still clung to a pomegranate tree.
She found another flight of steps
