With an unspoken plea?
He hesitated. Then he held out his hand. She took it, started to her feet—and stumbled. He caught her by the shoulders to steady her but she fell against him anyway. He felt the quick brush of her body and then she was on her toes and her lips were at his ear.
“For God’s sake,” she hissed, “are you blind? They’re lying. Your father. My father. Damn it, can’t you tell that I’ve been forced into this?”
Khalil blinked. She was steady on her feet now, standing with her head bowed, making no protest as Omar stepped forward, cupped her elbow and marched her away. It was almost as if nothing had happened.
But something definitely had.
Her whispered words had not been spoken in Arabic.
They had been spoken in flawless American English.
CHAPTER THREE
LAYLA’S keepers—it was the only way to describe them—led her away. The thug first, then Layla with one woman on either side, then Omar, bringing up the rear.
Khalil stood staring after the little procession.
Had he really heard what he thought he’d heard?
No. It was impossible. The woman could not have spoken in English. Perfect American English. No accent, no stress on any but the correct syllables. And what she’d said, what he thought she’d said, was even more impossible.
“Khalil?”
Lies? Lies, told him by his father? That Omar would lie was no surprise. The man had a reputation for craftiness and there were times the word was nothing but a synonym for dishonesty.
But his own father… Would he lie?
“Khalil? I’m talking to you!”
The bitter possibility of duplicity crept into his bones.
His father might lie. He might do whatever he thought necessary for the good of Al Ankhara. Or the lies—if they were lies—might have begun with his ministers. Khalil suspected that Jal and his allies would not be above twisting facts when it served their purpose.
He’d tried telling that to his father more than a year ago but the sultan had refused to hear it.
His ministers’ sole concern was protection of the throne, he always said. Khalil saw their actions as an attempt to maintain the status quo. It was why he had rejected much of the so-called advice they’d given him over the years.
He’d chosen Harvard over the smaller universities they had recommended, studied finance rather than foreign affairs, opted to remain in the States to run his family’s investment conglomerate instead of returning home and taking the position of liaison the ministers had wanted to create for him.
“Liaison,” he was certain, would have meant becoming their puppet. He’d long ago made up his mind not to be used by them.
Was he being used now?
“Khalil!” His father clasped his shoulder. “Pay attention when I speak to you.”
Khalil took a breath and did his best to put a noncommittal look on his face.
“Sorry, Father. I was, ah, I was—”
“You were thinking about the woman.” His father smiled. “I understand. She is beautiful. You would not be a man if you did not notice.”
“She is beautiful, yes, but—” But why does she speak like an American? Why does she say you lied to me?
The words were on the tip of his tongue. Somehow he managed to keep them there and to match the sultan’s knowing smile with one of his own.
“But she is not quite what she seems, Khalil. Perhaps you should be aware of that.”
Khalil’s pulse quickened. Here it was. The explanation he needed.
“Isn’t she?” he said, as casually as he could.
His father shook his head. “She is woman with, ah, with wayward tendencies.”
What did that mean? Was she not a virgin? That was important here.
“Wayward?”
His father nodded. “She has been a problem for Omar. She flaunts rules. She speaks of independence.”
“And yet, she has agreed to marry Butrus.”
Just for a second the sultan looked uncertain.
“Well, yes. Omar says she has repented.”
“And Butrus knows she has been difficult in the past?”
“No, certainly not. It is one of the reasons Omar is so pleased. He secures an ally, does a service for the throne and finds a husband for a daughter who is a problem.”
“By burdening his old enemy with a woman no one else would want,” Khalil said coldly.
“Butrus wanted a woman who is beautiful. He is getting one.”
“And what of the woman? What happens to her when Butrus realizes he’s been duped?”
“Jal and I discussed it.”
“Jal,” Khalil said, even more coldly.
His father leaned close. “Omar says her mother was a sorceress. Perhaps she is, too.”
A sorceress, Khalil thought with contempt. Among some of his people, that was an ancient and easy way to label a woman as evil.
“That’s nonsense,” he said brusquely.
His father shrugged. “Either way, Omar and Jal agree that she can take care of herself.”
“No matter what Jal claims,” Khalil said, “he is not the sultan.”
His father’s face darkened. “Nor are you. Not yet. And I do not have to explain my actions.”
It was true. Besides, what good could come of this discussion? Plans and promises had already been made.
“My apologies,” Khalil said smoothly. “I only meant that you are Al Ankhara’s ruler, not the council.”
“A wise thing to keep in mind.” The older man’s expression softened. He chuckled and dug an elbow lightly into Khalil’s side. “Imagine that sly fox, Omar, with such an attractive daughter! Who would have thought it? I asked him where he’d been hiding her and he said he had done precisely that. Hidden her to keep her from her willful ways, until the time came when he could give her to the right man as a wife.” The sultan clapped Khalil on the back. “Thank you for agreeing to help us. Some of my ministers feared you’d become too Westernized to undertake this mission.”
“Jal, you mean.”
“I know you don’t like him, but Jal wants to do only what is best for our people.”
“As do I,” Khalil said quietly, “whatever it may be—and however unpopular it might make me.”
His father nodded. “Good. I will send our plan to you. Read it, then meet with us in the council chamber in an hour.
Khalil returned to his rooms. A servant brought him a leather portfolio.
It contained the council’s plan for Layla’s delivery to Butrus in Kasmir. Khalil leafed through it and almost laughed. The plan was twenty pages long, each page stamped with the embossed seal of the sultan, but it could have been condensed to one cogent paragraph.
Khalil’s plane would make the trip carrying him, Layla and the original wedding party, augmented by three dozen of the sultan’s personal guard. The plane would land at Kasmir where it would be met by Butrus