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 was angry with him for many reasons, but angriest most for some obscure point he had not managed to expose. He was aware that this situation was difficult, that she would rather be anywhere else other than trapped on this yacht right now. He knew she was unhappy, that she was only just managing to hide that from everyone else. That she was eating little and looking contradictorily pale when in truth her skin was taking on a deeper golden hue with every passing day. He knew that Zafina and Medina used any opportunity presented to them to compare her situation unfavourably with Evie’s. And he wished Raschid had shown some sensitivity to that prospect when he’d made the decision to bring his children along!
The children were a point of conflict he could not seem to deal with. This evening, for instance, when Raschid had brought his son into the salon to say goodnight to everyone, Hashim had run the length of the room with his arms open wide in demand for a hug from Leona. She had lifted him up in her arms and received all of his warm kisses to her face with smiles of pleasure while inside, Hassan knew, the ache of empty wishes must be torture for her.
When she hurt, he hurt. When he had no remedy to ease that pain, he had to turn away from its source or risk revealing to her the emptiness of helplessness he suffered whenever he saw her hugging a son that was not their own.
But in trying to protect Leona from himself he had forgotten the other pairs of eyes watching him. The Al-Mahmuds and the Al-Yasins had seen, read and drawn their own conclusions.
‘A sad sight, is it not?’ Abdul had dared to say.
Leona had heard him, had known what he’d been referring to, and had been shunning Hassan ever since.
‘Talk to me, for Allah’s sake.’ He sighed into the darkness.
‘Find another bed to sleep in.’
Well, they were words, he supposed, then sighed again, took the bull by the horns and pushed himself up to lean over her, then tugged her round to face him. ‘What is it that you want from me?’ he demanded. ‘I am trying my best to make this work for us!’
Her eyes flicked open; it was like gazing into pools of broken ice. ‘Why go to all this trouble when I am still going to leave you flat the first moment I know I can do it without hurting your father?’
‘Why?’ he challenged.
‘We’ve already been through the whys a hundred times! They haven’t changed just because you have decided to play the warlord and win the battle against your rotten underlings without giving an inch to anyone!’
‘Warlord?’