To Tame a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 1)

Each time she looked behind her, more women had joined the queue, and soon there were a few dozen of them, smiling from ear to ear and giggling in her wake.

Each group of four was dressed in the same outfit, with the colors of each group’s attire a variation in deeper shades of the same cream and beige colors. By the time she looked back before they reached the main palace floor, the formation of the queue and the gradation in colors from lightest right behind her to the deepest at the end of it left her in no doubt.

They were her bridal procession.

She heard Laylah groaning. “Oh, man. I feel like a peacock!”

Aliyah looked down at her dress of deep reds and oranges. “And I feel like a fire breathing dragon. Someone should have told us what the color scheme was going to be.”

“By someone,” Laylah put in, in case Johara missed it, which in her condition, she had, “we mean your groom, who’s going to pay big-time for deciding your bridal procession outfits based on the dress he picked for you, and leaving us in the dark. Or I should say, in Technicolor.”

“Years from now,” Aliyah groaned, “your children are going to look at your wedding album and ask you why their aunties were perched on your sides looking like parrots.”

“You’re actually the splash of color bringing all this to life.” They both gave her yeah, sure, looks and she insisted, “I could never carry off those colors, and Shaheen knew it. But your brand of vivid beauty should never be subjected to anything less fiery and vital. And that is my professional opinion. I would never pick anything but bold, vibrant colors for either of you. And I can’t wait to design you some outfits that only you can do justice!”

“I always thought I’d like you if I got to know you. I was wrong.” Laylah hugged her exuberantly. “I’m going to love you.”

Aliyah hugged her on the other side. “I already do. It’s enough to feel how much you love Shaheen.”

Johara met Aliyah’s eyes and realized that was why Aliyah had decided she was innocent of stealing the jewels. As a woman in love herself, Aliyah had recognized that Johara would rather die than cause Shaheen heartache or harm.

Feeling her tears welling, she distracted herself by focusing on her surroundings. She wasn’t going to Shaheen with red eyes and streaked makeup.

Soon, the splendor she was rushing through occupied her focus for real—the palace she’d considered home, where she’d lived for most of her childhood, the best part of her life.

It was growing up here that had fanned the flames of the artistic tendencies she’d inherited from her parents. Moving from the plain practicality of New Jersey to this wonderland of embellishments and exoticness and grandeur blended from Persian, Ottoman and Mughal influences had fired her imagination from her first day here.

The palace had taken thousands of artisans and craftsmen three decades to finish in the mid-seventeenth century, and it had always felt to her as if the accumulation of history resonated in its halls, inhabited it walls. As much as the ancient bloodlines with all their trials and triumphs coursed through Shaheen’s and his family’s veins and stamped their bearing and characters, each inch of this place had been maintained as a testament to Zohayd’s greatness and the prosperity of its ruling house.

But all that would be for nothing if the jewels were not found. If she couldn’t figure out who’d forged them…

“We’re here!”

“Here” was before the doors to the ceremony hall where the bridal parade had been held for Shaheen. Though it had been agony to be there that night, she’d still felt the wonder of being there again.

As a child she hadn’t been allowed to attend royal functions held there. But when all was quiet, Shaheen had taken her there as frequently as she wished, to stay as long as she wanted, having the place all to herself to draw each corner of it, each inlay detail, each pierce work, each calligraphy panel.

The octagonal hall had always felt as if all the greatness, purpose and philosophy of the palace’s design converged there. It was the palace hub, gracefully enclosed by its central marble one-hundred-foot wide and high dome, its walls spread with intricate, geometric shapes, its eight soaring arches defining its space at ground level, each crowned by a second arch midway up the wall with the upper arches forming balconies. It was from those that she’d learned her best lessons of drawing perspective.

A few dozen feet from the hall’s soaring double doors, which were heavily worked in embossed bronze, gold and silver Zohaydan motifs, the music became louder. The quartertone-dominated Zohaydan music with its Indian, Turkish and Arabian influences and exotic instrumental arrangement and rhythm swept through the air, riding the fumes and scents of incense.

Then four footmen in black outfits embroidered with gold thread pulled back the massive doors by their circular knobs.

She stumbled to a stop, everything falling away.

She’d thought the ceremony would be a damage-control affair that would boil down to two purposes—the king’s to publicize their so-called secret marriage, and theirs, to get her hands on the fake jewels. But this…this…

She hadn’t, couldn’t have expected this.

She moved again, propelled by the momentum of her companions across a threshold that felt as if it opened into another realm. Into a scene lifted right out of the most lavish of One Thousand and One Nights.

From every arch hung rows of incense burners and flaming torches, against every wall rested miraculous arrangements of white and golden roses among backgrounds of lush foliage. Each pillar was wrapped in bronze satin that rained silver tassels and was worked heavily in gold patterns. Sparkling gold dust covered the marble floor. Everything shimmered under the ambient light like Midas’s vault, among the swirling sweetness of ood, musk and amber fumes.

And studding the scene were far more than the two thousand people who’d populated the first and only ceremony she’d attended here. A mind-boggling assortment, from those dressed in the latest exclusive fashions to those who did look as if they’d just stepped out of Arabian Nights.

Her feverish eyes made erratic stops as she recognized faces. King Atef and King Kamal, sitting on a platform to one side on thronelike seats. Dozens of highest-order international political figures and celebrities. Queen Sondoss and Shaheen’s half brothers, Haidar and Jalal, among probably every other adult Aal Shalaan and their relatives.

The only one she couldn’t see was Shaheen.