The Sheikh's Bride. Sophie Weston
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manager bowed again and led the way. The security men followed.
The Sheikh was left alone. He went out to the balcony and stood looking across the Nile. The river was sinuous and glittering as a lazy snake in the morning sun. There was a dhow in midstream, he saw. Its triangular sail was curved like scimitar. It looked like a small dark toy.
He closed his eyes briefly. It was against more than the glare reflected off the water. Why did everything look like toys, these days?
Even the people. Moustafa, his chief bodyguard, looked like a prototype security robot. And the woman he was seeing tonight. He intended quitting the boring conference dinner with an excuse he did not care if they believed or not in order to see her. But for an uncomfortable moment, he allowed himself to realise that she reminded him of nothing so much as a designer-dressed doll. In fact, all the women he had seen recently looked like that.
Except—he had a fleeting image of the girl who had tumbled against the pillar in the hotel lobby. She was too tall, of course. And badly turned out, with her hair full of dust and a dark suit that was half-way to a uniform. But uniform or not, she had not looked like a doll. Not with those wide, startled eyes. The sudden shock in them had been intense—and unmistakeably real.
The Sheikh’s brows twitched together in a quick frown. Why had she looked so shocked? He suddenly, passionately, wanted to know. But of course he never would, now. He grunted bad temperedly.
His personal assistant came back into the suite. He hesitated in the doorway.
The Sheikh straightened his shoulders. ‘Out here, Hari,’ he called. There was resignation in his tone.
The assistant cautiously joined him on the balcony.
‘Everything appears to be in order,’ he reported.
The Sheikh took off his dark glasses. His eyes were amused but terribly weary.
‘Sure? Have the guys checked thoroughly? No bugs in the telephone? No poison in the honey cakes?’
The assistant smiled. ‘Moustafa can take his job too seriously,’ he admitted. ‘But better safe than sorry.’
His employer’s expression was scathing. ‘This is nonsense and we both know it.’
‘The kidnappings have increased,’ Hari pointed out in a neutral tone.
‘At home,’ said the Sheikh impatiently. ‘They haven’t got the money to track me round the world, poor devils. Anyway, they take prosperous foreign visitors who will pay ransom. Not a local like me. My father would not pay a penny to have me back.’ He thought about it. ‘Probably pay them to keep me.’
Hari bit back a smile. He had not been present at the interview between father and son before Amer left Dalmun this time. But the reverberations had shaken the city.
A terminal fight, said the palace. The father would never speak to the son again. An ultimatum, said Amer’s household; the son had told his father he would tolerate no more interference and was not coming back to Dalmun until the old Sheikh accepted it.
Amer eyed him. ‘And you can stop looking like a stuffed camel. I know you know all about it.’
Hari disclaimed gracefully. ‘I just hear the gossip in the bazaars, like everyone else,’ he murmured.
Amer was sardonic. ‘Good for business, is it?’
‘Gossip brings a lot of traders into town, I’m told,’ Hari agreed.
‘Buy a kilo of rice and get the latest palace dirt thrown in.’ Amer gave a short laugh. ‘What are they saying?’
Hari ticked the rumours off on his fingers. ‘Your father wants to kill you. You want to kill your father. You have refused to marry again. You are insisting on marrying again.’ He stopped, his face solemn but his lively eyes dancing. ‘You want to go to Hollywood and make a movie.’
‘Good God.’ Amer was genuinely startled. He let out a peal of delighted laughter. ‘Where did that one come from?’
Hari was not only his personal assistant. He was also a genuine friend. He told him the truth. ‘Cannes last year, I should think.’
‘Ah,’ said Amer, understanding at once. ‘We are speaking of the delicious Catherine.’
‘Or,’ said Hari judiciously, ‘the delicious Julie, Kim or Michelle.’
Amer laughed. ‘I like Cannes.’
‘That shows in the photographs,’ Hari agreed.
‘Disapproval, Hari?’
‘Not up to me to approve or disapprove,’ Hari said hastily. ‘I just wonder—’
‘I like women.’
Hari thought about Amer’s adamant refusal to marry again after his wife was killed in that horse riding accident. He kept his inevitable reflections to himself.
‘I like the crazy way their minds work,’ Amer went on. ‘It makes me laugh. I like the way they try to pretend they don’t know when you’re looking at them. I like the way they smell.’
Hari was surprised into pointing out, ‘Not all women smell of silk and French perfume like your Julies and your Catherines.’
‘Dolls,’ said Amer obscurely.
‘What?’
‘Has it occurred to you how many animated dummies I know? Oh they look like people. They walk and talk and even sound like people. But when you talk to them they just say the things they’ve been programmed to say.’
Hari was unmoved. ‘Presumably they’re the things you want them to say. So who did the programming?’
Amer shifted his shoulders impatiently. ‘Not me. I don’t want—’
‘To date a woman who has not been programmed to say you are wonderful?’ Hari pursued ruthlessly. He regarded his friend with faint scorn. ‘Why don’t you try it, some time?’
Amer was not offended. But he was not impressed, either.
‘Get real,’ he said wearily.
Hari warmed to his idea. ‘No, I mean it. Take that girl down stairs in the lobby just now.’
Amer was startled. ‘Have you started mind reading, Hari?’
‘I saw you looking her way,’ Hari explained simply. ‘I admit I was surprised. She’s hardly your type.’
Amer gave a mock shudder. ‘No French perfume there, you mean. I know. More like dust and cheap sun-tan lotion.’ A reminiscent smile curved his handsome mouth suddenly. ‘But even so, she has all the feminine tricks. Did you see her trying to pretend she didn’t know I was looking at her?’
Hari was intrigued. ‘So why were you?’
Amer hesitated, his eyes unreadable for an instant. Then he shrugged. ‘Three months in Dalmun, I expect,’ he said in his hardest voice. ‘Show a starving man stale bread and he forgets he ever knew the taste of caviar.’
‘Stale bread? Poor lady.’
‘I’ll remember caviar as soon as I have some to jog my memory,’ Amer murmured mischievously.
Hari knew his boss. ‘I’ll book the hotel in Cannes.’
It was not a successful visit to the pyramids. As Leo expected, Mrs Silverstein insisted on walking round every pyramid and could not be persuaded to pass on the burial chamber of Cheops. Since that involved a steep climb, a good third of which had to be done in a crouching position, the older woman was in considerable pain by the end of the trip. Not that she would admit it.
Ever since Mrs Silverstein arrived in Egypt on her Adventures in Time tour, she had wanted to see everything and, in spite of her age and rheumatic joints, made a spirited attempt to