Bethany hovered in a daze of bewilderment until Zulema drew her behind the screen. Very seriously the little maid covered her eyes. ‘I not look, sitt...only help.’
Bethany heard herself laugh, her fierce tension suddenly evaporating, and why not? Common sense insisted that Razul could not possibly be intending to really go through with his threat to make her marry him. It would be just too ridiculous. He had spoken in anger. Later she would gently call his bluff and reason with him, hopefully without offending that unquenchable pride which was so much a part of him. It had been a very melodramatic threat...but very Arabic and very Razul, she reflected helplessly.
She would accept his hospitality for another few days and see how she felt then. Really there was absolutely no reason for her to go rushing off home like a Victorian virgin threatened with ravishment! That would be a repeat of the same cowardice that she had exhibited in England. There was no good reason why, having come this far, she should not allow herself the luxury of getting to know Razul a little better. What would that cost her? And, in the meantime, she could even begin her research...
She slid into the warm, scented water, wryly accepting Zulema’s assistance and bending her head obediently as her hair was carefully wetted and then shampooed. Cocooned in towels, she emerged again and sat down to have her hair combed out and her nails painted. Why all the fuss? she wondered.
‘You look tired, sitt. Lie down and rest for a while,’ Zulema urged. ‘The party will last for hours.’
Party? So somebody was throwing a party. Her curiosity satisfied, Bethany smiled and lay down. She could hear a helicopter.
When she opened her eyes again, she could still hear a helicopter, or was it helicopters? She was surprised to realise that she had slept for several hours but then she hadn’t had much sleep the night before.
Zulema extended a shimmering, heavily embroidered golden caftan. It was really quite exquisite. The silk flowed across her body with a wonderfully sensuous feel. A vast square of gold chiffon was produced and draped around her head. ‘You look very beautiful, sitt,’ Zulema sighed admiringly. ‘You come now?’
Bethany followed her out into the hot, still air. She only had to walk a few yards before she was in another tent the size of a marquee. It was crammed to capacity with richly dressed but mainly middle-aged and elderly women. One by one they came up to greet her and kiss her on each cheek. They were terribly friendly but nobody spoke English and Bethany was quite frustrated, for she would have loved to chat and ask questions. An enormous banquet was spread out on a white cloth in the centre.
Bethany wasn’t very hungry but she picked at a few dishes out of politeness. The meal went on for ages but she wasn’t bored. There was so much going on around her that she was fascinated, and when the food was cleared away the dancing started to the strains of Arabic music issuing from a huge set of speakers. It got very noisy, but everyone was having a good time and there was a lot of laughter, particularly when a very large woman took the floor to undulate and shake like a belly dancer.
‘Please follow me, sitt.’ Zulema appeared beside her out of the crush. ‘It is time.’
As Bethany stood up the music went off. Time for what? she almost asked, but presumably Zulema meant that the party was now over, and she still didn’t know what the celebrations had been about. There were loud cries of ‘Lullah...lullah!’ She assumed these to be some form of goodbye angled at her, and she waved and smiled, which seemed to go down very well, before accompanying Zulema through the hangings at the far end which divided off a section of the tent.
Razul was standing there surrounded by older men. He looked so heartbreakingly handsome in a white linen robe with a dark blue, gold-edged overlay that her mouth went dry and her heart leapt like a dizzy teenager’s inside her chest as she crossed the floor to him. A bearded old man was speaking and receiving the utmost solemn attention from his assembled audience.
When that same old man abruptly moved forward, reached for her hand and looped a scarf round her wrist, Bethany was astonished. He looped the other end of it round Razul’s wrist and began speaking. Bethany froze. What the heck was going on? As her wrist was released again comprehension splintered through her in a violent wave and plunged her deep into shock. The old man had to be an imam or priest. Unless she was very much mistaken ...but she had to be mistaken...
Her stricken gaze flew to Razul. A faint frown-line divided his ebony brows as he noted her pallor. Her eyes took a dazed flight over the grave-looking men on either side of them. Her teeth sank into the soft underside of her lower lip and the tang of her own blood tinged her tongue. A tide of dizziness ran over her, leaving her light-headed. Dear heaven, unless her intelligence was playing tricks on her, she had just taken part in a marriage ceremony in the role of...?
Bride? She, Bethany Morgan, who was as anti-marriage as a woman could possibly be, had just played an unwitting part in a ceremony to which she had of fered no consent? Fathoms-deep in shock, she trembled. It couldn’t be legal—it couldn’t possibly be legal when she hadn’t understood a word of it or even what was happening to her! The other men were filing out.
‘What is the matter with you?’ Razul murmured in a driven undertone.
Her hands clenched into fists. ‘You ought to be locked up...’ she told him in a quavering voice that sounded alien to her ears. ‘I did not consent to marrying you.’
A dark rise of blood accentuated his hard cheek-bones. Stunned golden eyes flared at her. ‘But I told you we would be married if you remained—’
‘And did I say I agreed?’ Bethany gasped, still seriously weakened by shock.
‘You stayed...I took agreement to be given!’ Razul returned in an equally incredulous undertone. ‘Finally, I believed, you had come to your senses!’
‘There’s a big difference between staying and getting married.’ Bethany pressed damp palms to her cold face. ‘Any sort of married,’ she mumbled in faint addition, and then her anger stirred and she shot him an accusing look of pure outrage. ‘You did it deliberately, didn’t you? You knew I didn’t believe that you were serious and you took advantage of my ignorance to—’
Without warning Razul closed hard fingers over her shoulder and forced her closer. ‘Stop it,’ he bit out. ‘This is not the place for such a dispute...indeed, where could be the place for such a dispute? You are now my wife.’
His wife. Her stomach lurched. His wife...?
‘Do not shame me before my family,’ Razul warned, fiercely scanning her shocked eyes. ‘For that I will never forgive and nor will they. These are serious proceedings ...where is your respect?’
Every last scrap of colour drained from her cheeks. ‘But I didn’t know...I didn’t realise—’
‘Did I not tell you?’
‘Well...yes, but I didn’t believe,’ she began shakily.
‘Believe now,’ Razul gritted.
‘I don’t want to,’ she muttered in a very small voice, her lower limbs wobbling because the shock didn’t recede, it only struck deeper as the minutes passed.
‘Then why did you stay? Why did you not leave for the airport?’ Razul demanded with a scorching undercurrent of embittered anger.
‘I didn’t think you were serious about marrying me...not today, here, now,’ she whispered dazedly. ‘And not in a ceremony like that.’
Had Razul really believed that by staying she was agreeing to marry him? Or had he relied on her lack of Arabic to carry her through to a point where only throwing the most appalling scene would have stopped the ceremony dead? By the time she had realised what was happening it had been too late. And why had she been so blind? When he had talked about marrying her she had not expected an actual wedding. A party and witnesses and the solemnity of an imam had not figured in her dim grasp of what such a temporary contract might entail.
‘What was wrong with it?’
‘Nothing...but I thought...you see, I thought,’ she framed unevenly, ‘that you were intending some sort of contra
ct—’
‘Contract?’ he cut in with a frown.
‘Fatima said—’
‘What did Fatima say?’ Razul prompted with sudden menace.
‘Well, that you weren’t planning on a real marriage, that it would be only a temporary arrangement.’ Her voice began to join her lower limbs in the wobble effect as a flash of distinct incredulity darkened Razul’s eloquent gaze. ‘And, you see, I did once come across a written reference to this...er...this practice called mut’a.’
‘Mut’a...’ Razul whispered, and then he said it again, his flagrant distaste making Bethany wince. ‘In Datar we do not recognise such arrangements for they are open to great abuse. Our rules of marriage are fixed by law and as legally binding as, they are in your own country.’
‘Oh,’ Bethany mumbled.