THE HOSPITAL WAS UNBELIEVABLE, reasonably new and laid out in spacious, beautifully maintained gardens. The buildings were white, two and three stories high.
‘Each unit is complete,’ Harry told her, as the limo pulled up at a portico entrance, ‘ER, Outpatients, Radiography, Theatre and wards. There’s a central pathology lab that does all the blood and culture work. This is the children’s block. You can see it’s built around a central courtyard. Even after generations of urbanisation, we still like to be close to the outdoors. Many family members of hospitalised children will sleep in the portico outside their relative’s room.’
‘So the hospital was built to accommodate families?’ Sarah asked, looking around in wonder at the beautiful interior—the entrance was like that of a five-star hotel.
‘Family is important to us,’ Harry said, although she realised it was Rahman talking, and Harry only when he touched her lightly on the arm and added, ‘I am sorry. Talk of family must be painful.’
She turned towards him, wanting to look at him, to make sure it was Harry under the unfamiliar clothing.
‘I only lost part of my family. The rest of them helped me through, kept me going, until I ran away from their kindness because I knew I had to do it myself—to put myself back together again, possibly in a way that was different from their expectations. Do you understand that?”
She need not have asked, because the understanding was there in his eyes and in the little extra pressure of the hand that rested on her arm.
* * *
He had to stop touching her, had to take his hand off her arm, yet how could he? A friendly touch like this was all the contact he would be able to make with her, surrounded as he was by the ever-present interest of the people of his country.
He’d been away so long he attracted extra interest wherever he went and he knew the gossip would be rife.
Was he here to stay this time?
Would he take over from his father, as had been ordained by his lineage?
Had he come home to be married?
It was time he produced an heir...
He guided Sarah towards the theatre area of the building and handed her over to a young woman who was hovering near the tea room.
‘Would you show Dr Watson the bathrooms when she finishes her tea?’ he said, then weakened. ‘No, don’t worry, I’ll have tea with her. We can talk about the operation, then I’ll show her the way to the showers.’
‘How weak am I?’ he said gruffly, aware his annoyance was with himself. ‘Wanting just a few more minutes alone with you, but not in the way I’d like to be alone.’
Sarah turned her green eyes on him, her pain clear to see.
‘Harry, we have to put what happened between us in the past. You have duties to your family here, a woman expecting to marry you. We’ll do the op then I’ll be gone. Why torture ourselves needlessly when we know this can’t go anywhere?’
The shock was like a knife going into his chest.
‘But you have to see the sand—my sand—and meet Rajah. I have so much to show you—’
She lifted her hand in front of her, an obvious stop signal, and shook her head to emphasise the point.
‘No, Harry,’ she said softly. ‘I cannot do anything with you. With a guide, perhaps, but not with you. You know as well as I do the attraction is still there and being alone together would be stupid. You have—’
Now he stopped her.
‘A duty. I’m sorry, that was stupid, but...’
She poured a cup of tea, and sipped at it.
‘There are too many buts, Harry. Too many ifs and buts and whys and maybes. We had fun together, shared passion for a while, but now it’s back to real life for both of us.’
He felt anger flare, and wanted to rage at her, or more probably at himself. She was just too calm, talking about passion without a hint of it in her face or voice.
And hadn’t it been more than that?
She finished her tea and stood up, collecting the small bag he’d carried off the plane and set beside their chairs.
‘Bathroom?’ she asked, and now she smiled and he was back on Wildfire, soaping her long, white back, counting down the vertebrae with his fingertips, inciting them both to—
Passion!
‘This way.’
He spoke abruptly and led her out of the room, pushing open the door to the women’s dressing room, calling to someone inside to show Dr Watson where everything was kept.
‘See you in Theatre?’ Sarah asked, and he heard anxiety in her voice.
Instead of calmly and quietly discussing what lay ahead of them, he’d been fuming over her withdrawal from him—a withdrawal he deserved. After all, he was the one with commitments.
He nodded a reply then calmed himself down before seeking out Miryam, wanting to speak to her, reassure her, before he had to change for Theatre.
His youngest sister was in the theatre waiting room, together with his mother, two other sisters and a horde of aunts and cousins crammed into what he’d always thought a reasonably sized room.
His mother seized him first.
And right at the back of the crowded room, his father, sitting in an armchair, two grandchildren on his knee, quietly watching over his family.
‘She’s here, the doctor?’ his mother demanded, and Harry assured not only her but all the clamouring relations that Dr Watson had indeed arrived and would be in Theatre within minutes.
He took Miryam’s hands in his.
‘I know it’s hard to think so young a baby, your baby, has to have an operation, but it is simple and Dr Watson is an excellent surgeon. I will stand behind her and tell her what to do. She will be my hands, so your baby’s life will be in my hands, as you wished.’
He kissed her cheek then held her close for a moment, though inwardly aware that it was his sister’s insistence he operate that had brought him and Sarah together again.
Having done the same operation with Sarah once, he had known this was the safest way to proceed. Other paediatric surgeons would have their own ways of working and would not want him hovering over them. But while having Sarah close again when he’d been trying to convince himself it was all over was bad enough, having her close and untouchable was even worse.
He had to stop thinking about their relationship—or lack of it—and direct all his thoughts to what lay ahead.
Focus on his sister’s baby—his nephew. This was family.
All his attention must be focussed on the baby.
He could do this, he reminded himself as he introduced Sarah to the team already in place, then stood beside her but a little behind her, to keep out of the way of people operating instruments.
He could do this, although as he spoke and her hands moved, he felt as if they were not two people but two parts of a whole, working in tandem, the feel of her body close to his so familiar it was like part of him, her fingers on the scalpel his as well as hers.
It was a slow and careful process. So tiny an infant had a lot of very necessary paraphernalia tucked into his little body, all of which must be kept intact.
But Sarah never lagged, never slumped or hesitated, her hands sure and steady as he told them what to do.
And when the job was done, the baby taken to Recovery, he touched Sarah on the shoulder. Her hair was hidden by the theatre cap, her face pale from the strain of the work she’d done, but to him she was as beautiful as he had ever seen her.
He couldn’t let it end.
Not the way it had, and not now, with hard words between them.
Yes, it had been a fling, but there’d been something deeper between them, something he was sure Sarah felt as keenly as he did. It was up to him to give them more time together—time to look past the passion that they’d shared and maybe just a little way into the future.
Time...
‘I have a few things to do,’ he said, ‘the family to see. Will you wait for me in the tea room?’
She looked at him as if trying to assess his reasoning, but in the end smiled and nodded.
‘I could be a while,’ he added.
She simply said, ‘I’ll wait.’
Right! Family first—reassurances for Miryam, then a quiet word with his mother. She would know the best way to go about things, and, though undoubtedly she’d be disappointed in his decision, she’d understand it was the right thing to do.
Probably!
* * *
Sarah waited in the tea room, nibbling at the delicate pastries that were brought to her, chatting to other staff who’d been in Theatre with her as they stopped for tea or coffee before heading back to whatever jobs they had to do.
They came and went through an inner door, so when the outer door opened she turned, expecting it to be Harry, feeling disappointment when she saw the traditionally dressed woman, a long black cloak covering whatever she was wearing underneath, a headscarf wrapped in some mysterious fashion around her hair.
Miryam, the baby’s mother!
She moved on soundless feet across the room, sinking down beside Sarah, taking her hand.
‘I must thank you for what you did today, for saving my baby. I know Rahman feels the loss of his profession very keenly, and he must have great trust in you to ask you to do it.’
Sarah, embarrassed by the praise, tried to brush it away.
‘It was nothing—anyone would have done it—’
‘No, not anyone. Only someone who has lost a child would understand my terror. Rahman told me of your accident. It makes your action today even braver.’
Tears were sliding down Miryam’s face, and Sarah put her arm around the woman, blinking away her own tears.
‘There, he’ll be all right now and I would think he’ll be out of Recovery very soon. You’ll want to be with him, I know.’
Miryam nodded, then found a tiny scrap of lace handkerchief somewhere in her voluminous robe and wiped her eyes.
‘I’ll go but you will be in my heart, forever in my gratitude for what you did.’
She rose gracefully, touched Sarah on the shoulder then glided away—soundlessly again.
Sarah mopped her own eyes. The young woman’s gracious words had touched her heart, and once again she wondered about her future.
Was it too late to go back—to join a paediatric surgical team and start again at the bottom to achieve that old dream?
She heard the door but no footsteps—not Harry, then—and turning saw another figure robed in black.
The grey eyes told her all she needed to know even before the woman introduced herself as Hera, Rahman’s mother.
Uh-oh!
Sarah put aside the discomfort she felt at this gracious woman’s presence.
‘Hera is a pretty name—wasn’t she a goddess in ancient times?’
Hera smiled.
‘The goddess of women and marriage. Our families go back a long, long way,’ she said, and although she possibly didn’t mean as far back as Greek gods and goddesses, she was making a point.
A ‘keep away from my son’ point?
An ‘I’m in charge of his marriage’ point?
Sarah didn’t have a clue, although she didn’t feel any animosity as the woman settled on the couch beside her.
‘I wish to thank you for coming to help our family and invite you to stay with us for as long as you like. Your luggage has already been taken to the palace, and my son will bring you there when he finishes his business.’
Oh, dear—what now?
‘That’s very kind but I don’t know that I can stay,’ Sarah began, while her mind searched wildly for an excuse. She was too superstitious to say one of her family was ill in case it came true and she brought illness on someone she loved, but—
‘Rahman, or Harry, as I suppose you call him, would be disappointed if you didn’t stay,’ Hera told her. ‘He is looking forward to showing you his country and introducing you to his family—and Rajah, of course.’
Not wanting to argue that her hanging around was probably the last thing Harry wanted, Sarah seized on Rajah.
And smiled!
‘Yes, I’d like to meet Rajah. Harry talked so much about him, but—’
‘But there is something between you and my son that would make things awkward?’
Sarah could only stare at the woman by her side. How could she know if Harry hadn’t told her?
The she felt the softness of the woman’s hand on hers.
‘Harry is seeing to things now. We women—and women all over the world—make plans for our children, but the children don’t always follow those plans. We know this even as we make our plans, and know not to be disappointed when they don’t work out, because all we want is for our children to be happy.’
‘But the plans you had—they’re important for both family and political reasons, aren’t they? Harry loves his country, I can hear it in his voice whenever he speaks of it. He’s not a man to walk away from his responsibilities!’
Now Hera smiled, her grey eyes twinkling.
‘We knew he was going to be different from the beginning. It wasn’t only his passion for an elephant but his insistence on choosing “Harry” for his school name, and his determination to make it to the top of his chosen profession. After the encephalitis, he came back to us a broken man, but now he’s back, and whatever path he’s chosen will probably be tough because he’s not a man who does things the easy way.’
She paused but Sarah knew there was more coming.
‘But whatever he does his family will always be behind him. Always!’
She repeated the last word very firmly, although Sarah was still trying to fathom the entire conversation, not just the final declaration.
Uncertain how it had happened, Sarah found herself accompanying the gentle Hera back to the palace in another long, dark limousine. Hera pointed out the city sights, but the city fell behind them as they drove out along a wide, flat road that ran along the shoreline, sunlight dancing off the slightly ruffled blue water.
‘I will leave it to Harry to show you around,’ Hera said. ‘But for now you must rest. The flight, the operation... We have been taking advantage of your good nature. And if you need to contact your family to let them know you will be a little late, there is a private phone in your room.’
If she was dazed by being practically kidnapped by this woman, Sarah was even more dazed—or perhaps dazzled was a better word—by the sight that met her eyes as she entered the palace.
The floor of white marble, veined with fine threads of gold and stretching, it seemed, forever, was littered with bright rugs. Having left her shoes with others outside the door, Sarah found the rugs so soft beneath her feet it felt like walking on a cloud.
An arched opening on the left led into a room even more spacious than the entrance hall. Within, a crowd of women in dazzling dresses ceased their chatter when they saw Hera, rushing towards her like a flock of bright budgerigars.
‘The baby is all right?’
‘The doctor came?’
‘Rahman saved the child?’
The questions flew through the air and, understanding them, and the accents, Sarah realised that all the women must have been educated in England or America.
Although maybe they spoke French and Spanish and even Russian with equal ease.
This was a country that would be full of surprises, and now she wanted so much to stay, to talk to the women, listen to the things they talked about, learn just a little about their culture and customs and how they lived in a world that was being fast-tracked into the twenty-first century.
But staying would mean seeing more of Harry, staying would mean seeing Harry knowing what they’d had was over—unable to touch him, to lean into him, to share his bed...
Unless?
What had Hera meant when she’d said that Harry was seeing to things?
And would Hera have asked her to stay—insist she stay—and that Harry show her around if her presence would be an offence to a bride-to-be?
But being here, being with Harry and not able to touch him, kiss him, sleep with him would be torture.
These frantic thoughts were tumbling through Sarah’s head as Hera was hushing the women, telling them she would speak with them soon, and summoning a slight young woman to show Sarah to her room.
‘You must rest,’ Hera said to Sarah. ‘Your luggage is already in the room, and there is a bell to ring for anything you want. Anything at all!’
And Sarah believed her, for hadn’t a six-year-old been given an elephant?
Not that she wanted any exotic creature—only Harry.
Although here, wasn’t he an exotic creature—so far out of her realm she’d barely known him?
Although her body had.
‘This way,’ a soft voice said, and Sarah sensed she’d said it earlier, while thoughts of elephants and Harry had swirled in her head.
She followed the woman along the length of the great entrance hall, passing rooms off to both sides, done in different colours, but all with the bright carpets on the marble floors and silky-looking curtains swathing all the windows.
At the end of the hall they turned down a passage to the right.
‘This is for visitors,’ the woman said. ‘Madam Hera says you are to go in Yellow—because of your hair she said, although your hair is red, is it not?’
Sarah agreed her hair was indeed red, and as some of the women who had surged around Hera on their arrival had touched her hair and murmured to each other about it, Sarah had realised it made her different.
‘Maybe she thought the red hair would clash in another colour of room,’ she said, and the woman smiled.
‘And maybe, too, it is because Yellow opens to its own courtyard and you can be private.’
Private alone, or private with Harry?
Surely his mother wasn’t giving tacit consent to their continuing affair?
Well, hardly affair. And there was no way they could be having sex in a courtyard at the palace no matter how private it might be.
Could they?
No and no and no. It had been a fling and it was over. Harry had duties here, and his position demanded respect, so he could hardly be seen dallying, or even thought to be dallying, with a guest—especially when he was due to marry someone else.
Sarah looked around a room that could have been lifted out of a very posh decorating magazine, and sighed.
It was beautiful, no doubting that. Not yellow yellow but more lemon, with some hints of lime thrown in. Pale lemon silk curtains hung across the wide doors that opened onto a covered area outside, with steps leading down to an oasis of green in the small, enclosed garden beyond.
An embroidered silk spread in the same colour as the curtains covered the bed, where pale lime cushions were piled at the end. The lime colour was repeated in the ornate bedside cabinets and the carved-legged writing desk over by the windows that held the phone and heavy writing paper.
Through an arch opposite the windows was what must be a dressing room, walls of cupboards with the same lemon silk on the doors, padded and indented by lime-green buttons.
And through that door a bathroom, the floor and walls the same white marble that provided flooring throughout the palace, with stacks of pale lemon towels on an antique cabinet, a shelf above it containing a range of toiletries to shame most department stores.
‘You will be comfortable? I will bring tea and you can rest, Madam Hera says.’
So what Madam Hera says is law, Sarah thought as the woman left the room. Well, she’d take the tea but she doubted she would rest. There were too many thoughts and impressions swirling in her head. Rahman al-Taraq was there—a little too often—but other things, like right and wrong, and Harry and fiancées, and family, and traditions, swirled in the mix until her brain gave up in sheer exhaustion and she pulled back the coverlet on the bed, flung the cushions to one side, and slept.
* * *
So much for not resting. That was Sarah’s first thought when she woke two hours later. A tea tray sat on the little writing desk and to her delight the teapot was insulated and the tea still piping hot.
Either that or the almost silent servant had come and gone at intervals to replace the pot.
However, it had happened, the tea was wonderful, and the little pastries, hidden beneath a snowy-white napkin, delicious. So, with something in her stomach, Sarah debated. Did she want to explore the little courtyard, or shower before she went exploring?
Shower, she decided, but first she had to find her clothes.
Not difficult when she opened the first cupboard door and saw her things hanging there, her underwear neatly stacked in a drawer beside them.
But the clothes brought a sigh. She’d packed for an English winter and because she’d been in air-conditioned vehicles or the hospital or this coolly luxurious palace, she hadn’t felt hot, but she was relatively certain it would be hot outside.
The thought had barely left her when the silent woman returned.
‘Madame Hera said there are other clothes you might wish to wear, both European and traditional. You will find them here, and here.’
The woman walked to the other side of the dressing room and threw open more cupboard doors.
It was like walking into an upmarket boutique, as the clothes came in all colours, shapes and sizes and all still held store tags dangling from them—though no sign of price!
Feeling she’d look foolish in a local outfit no matter how the colours called to her after four years of black and white, she chose instead from the first section, sticking to loose linen trousers—black—and a silk shirt.
She’d reached for the white shirt but something seemed to nudge her hand and she lifted out a similar one in emerald green—the colour of the scarf she’d wished for on the island.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling at the woman before collecting her own underwear and heading for the bathroom.
In there, she took a deep breath. She wouldn’t take advantage of these people, kind as they were, but would wear the black slacks and some simple shirts while she was here.
And she’d use her own toiletries and cosmetics, no matter how enticing some of the expensive body lotions and face creams might look.
But she did wonder just what happened with this kind of generosity. She had no idea how many guest rooms the place might hold, but if all rooms were supplied with brand-new toiletries for every guest, there must be awful wastage.
That or the servants must all have perfect skin!