“Even in the lion’s mouth,” he mocked her.
A jolt of turbulence wiped any retort from her mind. She tumbled back into her seat to the sound of tearing. Her arm hit painfully on something, but Noor suppressed the automatic grunt that rose in her throat and buckled herself in. The webbing abraded the delicate white silk across her breast, tearing the clustered pearl embroidery.
She was sorry about that—it was a beautiful creation.
A pearl fell like a teardrop. A second followed, landing in her palm. Noor’s fingers involuntarily caught it, massaged the cool little sphere between finger and thumb. How completely her dreams were being destroyed. And yet…
If they had gone through with the wedding, there would have come a point when they sat side by side in the plane like this. The thought gave her a curious sensation of being in two lives at once. Was there a parallel universe in which they had been married? That other life seemed so close. She could almost feel it, as if she might blink and find everything the same, but different.
Would she have gone on believing Bari loved her, living her fool’s dream? Would he have kept up the pretence once he had what he wanted, or would she have learned immediately that he had made a fool of her? Would she ever have guessed if she hadn’t overheard the truth…
“She’s so spoiled! All she cares about is clothes and jewellery and having a good time. She’s just totally frivolous!”
Noor had been standing at the mirror, layers of silk and lace surrounding her, her tanned skin and auburn hair gleaming like the rich heart of a white rose, when the bitchy malice filtered through from the room beyond.
“And I don’t believe she’s in love with anyone but herself!”
And just like a droplet of dew on the rose’s heart was the fabulous al Khalid diamond. Bari’s grandfather’s wedding gift to her had simply taken her breath away. Noor was used to wealth and all its pleasures, but Bari’s family fortune went beyond wealth. The diamond was the biggest single stone Noor had ever seen, and it lay against her hand with a dark fire that almost burned her—like Bari’s eyes, she thought with a delicious flutter.
“She is young yet.”
“She’s twenty-four. Why are you making excuses for her?”
Noor let it wash over her. She had heard it before, directly or implied. The women in Bari’s family were not uniformly delighted with his choice of bride, but what should she care about that?
“She has been raised by overfond parents, it’s true,” said the more placid voice of Bari’s aunt. “But she is an al Jawadi by blood. She has more depth than she knows yet.”
Of course they didn’t know she could hear. She was in the large, luxurious bathroom set between her bedroom and another. A moment ago Noor had been at the centre of buzzing activity, the hair stylist and the makeup artist competing with the dressmaker and her personal maid for her attention, but now, with the excuse of one last nervous visit to the toilet, she had stepped in here to be alone for a moment and catch her breath.
And she had heard voices murmuring together in bitchy comfort in the other bedroom.
“He’s only known her a few weeks,” the younger one was still protesting, and Noor wondered if this particular cousin, whoever it was, was in love with Bari herself.
“You are talking like a true Westerner. Why should a man know his bride? It is enough that his family knows her family.”
In a moment she would go back into her bedroom to face the renewed onslaught of perfectionism from her dressers and wait for Jalia and her bridesmaids to tap on the door to tell her it was time. Time to be escorted to meet the richest, the handsomest, the sexiest man ever to have deserved the title “Cup Companion,” the man who had known he wanted to marry Noor Ashkani—Princess Noor Yasmin al Jawadi Durrani—practically from the first glance.
“It’s different when the marriage is arranged, though, isn’t it?” The murmurs in the next room grew louder as the two women moved past the slightly open door, in complete ignorance of the fact that the subject under discussion was on the other side of it. “Then the families at least have—”
“How is it different? This marriage might not have been arranged in the traditional way, but it was your grandfather who chose the bride.”
“Really?” The younger voice sounded both shocked and deliciously intrigued, and Noor’s eyes widened with startled dismay. “You mean Bari isn’t in love with her?”
She sounded thrilled, Noor noted. Cow.
“He was very bitter when his grandfather told him what was necessary.” The voices faded again and she heard the opening of the door that led onto the broad, shady balcony.
“How—but why would Bari agree to something like that? He’s so independent!”
“Bari has no choice.” The other voice was matter-of-fact. “If he wants the right to the property in Bagestan and the money to restore it, he has to marry as he is instructed. Your grandfather wants an alliance with the Durranis. He will leave the property away from Bari if—”
The door shut, cutting the voices off, and leaving Noor stunned and as white as her veil among the broken pieces of her stupid, childish dreams….
A loud rumble brought her back into the here and now, with all its dangers. Oh, if only her father had never told them their history! If only she could return to her ordinary life, and never learn whose blood ran in her veins. Princess! They had been happy as they were! And now…her life had so changed that it might end here, miles from her home, in the next few minutes.
Another, louder crack of thunder, and she bit back a cry. She had seen flickering light within the roiling darkness. If lightning struck…
They hit turbulence and dropped for a few metres before landing with a sickening thud on a boiling air mass. Her stomach churned. Oh, let me not throw up! she begged feverishly.
Lightning danced perilously in the black cloud again, and the noise was deafening. They were at the heart of the storm.
Bari struggled against turbulence, hoping he had a heading towards the Gulf Islands as he came down, but he was far from certain. The instruments were jumping so much they were all but useless. And as a mere human he was in the maelstrom, archetypal Chaos, the place where the ordinary senses were powerless as guides.
Flying by the seat of your pants, they called it. On a wing and a prayer. The clichés recited themselves in his head, describing truths no one with sense wanted to discover for himself.
He had been acting like a fool for too long. His judgement had been faulty ever since hearing his grandfather’s ultimatum, and what a pity he could only recognize that now!
But this wasn’t the moment to fan the flames of his legitimate anger, either with his grandfather or with Noor. His mind needed to be clear of everything except the job at hand.
He could keep dropping lower to try to get below the cloud, but that was risky: some of the islands were high and rugged. And even at the coast the foothills were over a thousand feet high in places. So whether he was badly off course or right where he hoped he was, there was terrible risk involved in flying low.
But to continue to fly inside the storm invited even more certain disaster. He had to take the risk and try to put down, trusting that he would break out of cloud in time to see where he was and take evasive action if it wasn’t where he hoped.
Noor’s mouth was dry. Her heart beat with terror; the metallic taste of panic was on her tongue. She had never been afraid for her life before. They could be struck by lightning. Turbulence could break