Sweet Revenge (2 page)

Spencer had little trouble adding two and two. “In the Middle East?”

Topping off his cup, Philip shrugged. “Hypothetically.” Whatever the answer, he intended to lead Stuart to the Rubens and to Abdu. Still, he never showed his hand before the final call. “You could say that with the information I give you, England could bring pressure to bear where it might be most useful.”

Spencer looked hard at Philip. They had gone so unexpectedly far beyond discussing diamonds and rubies, crime and punishment. “You’re over your head, Philip.”

“I appreciate the concern.” He sat back again because he sensed the tide was changing. “I promise you, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“It’s a delicate game you’re playing.”

The most delicate, Philip thought. The most important. “One we can both win, Stuart.”

Wheezing a bit, Spencer rose to open a bottle of scotch. He poured a generous amount in a tumbler, hesitated, then poured a second. “Tell me what you’ve got, Philip. I’ll do what I can.”

He waited a moment, measuring. “I’m putting the only thing that matters to me into your hands. You must remember that, Stuart.” He pushed his tea aside and accepted the
tumbler. “I saw the Rubens when I was inside the treasure room of King Abdu of Jaquir.”

Spencer’s normally bland eyes widened. “And what the hell were you doing in the king’s vault?”

“It’s a long story.” Philip saluted Stuart with his glass, then drank deeply. “It’s best to start at the beginning, with Phoebe Spring.”

Jaquir, 1968

Curled on her side and sleepless with excitement, Adrianne watched the clock tick to midnight. Her birthday. She would be five years old. Turning on her back, she hugged her delight to herself. All around her the palace slept, but in a few hours the sun would rise and the muezzin would climb the steps of the mosque to call the faithful to prayer. The day, the most wonderful day of her life, would truly begin.

In the afternoon there would be music and presents and trays of chocolate. All of the women would wear their prettiest clothes, and there would be dancing. Everyone would come: Grandmother to tell her stories; Aunt Latifa, who always smiled and never scolded, would bring Duja; Favel, with her jolly laugh, would lead her brood. Adrianne grinned. The women’s quarters would ring with laughter, and everyone would tell her how pretty she was.

Mama had promised it would be a very special day. Her special day. With her father’s permission there would be a trip to the beach in the afternoon. She had a new dress, a beautiful one, of striped silk in all the colors of the rainbow. Catching her lip between her teeth, Adrianne turned her head to look at her mother.

Phoebe slept, her face like marble in the moonlight and, for once, peaceful. Adrianne loved these times when her mother allowed her to climb into the huge soft bed to sleep. It was a very special treat. She would bundle up close with Phoebe’s arms around her and listen to the stories her
mother told her of places like New York and Paris, Sometimes they would giggle together.

Carefully, not wanting to wake her, Adrianne reached out to stroke her mother’s hair. It fascinated her. It looked like fire against the pillow, a gorgeous, hot fire. At five, Adrianne was already woman enough to envy her mother her hair. Her own was thick and black like that of the other women in Jaquir. Only Phoebe had red hair and white skin. Only Phoebe was American. Adrianne was half American, but Phoebe reminded her of it only when they were alone.

Such things made her father angry.

Adrianne was well tutored in avoiding subjects that might anger her father, though she couldn’t understand why being reminded that Phoebe was American made his eyes harden and his mouth thin. She had been a movie star. That description confused Adrianne, but she liked the way it sounded.
Movie star.
The words made her think of pretty lights in a dark sky.

Her mother had been a star, now she was a queen, the first wife of Abdu ibn Faisal Rahman al-Jaquir, ruler of Jaquir, sheikh of sheikhs. Her mother was the most beautiful of women with her large blue eyes and full, soft mouth. She towered over the other women in the harem, making them seem like tiny, fussy birds, Adrianne wished only that her mother would be happy. Now that she was five, Adrianne fiercely hoped she would begin to understand why her mother so often looked sad and wept when she thought herself alone.

Women were protected in Jaquir. Those of the House of Jaquir were not supposed to work or to worry. They were given everything they needed—fine rooms, the sweetest of perfumes. Her mother had beautiful clothes and jewelry. She had The Sun and the Moon.

Adrianne closed her eyes, better to recall the dazzling vision of the necklace on her mother’s neck. How the great diamond, The Sun, flashed and the priceless pearl, the Moon, gleamed. Someday, Phoebe had promised, Adrianne would wear it.

When she was grown. Comfortably, content with the sound of her mother’s even breathing and the thoughts of tomorrow, Adrianne imagined. When she was grown, a worn
an instead of a girl, she would put on her veil. One day a husband would be chosen for her, and she would be married. On her wedding day she would wear The Sun and the Moon and become a good and fruitful wife.

She would give parties for the other women and serve them frosted cakes while servants passed trays of chocolate. Her husband would be handsome and powerful, like her father. Perhaps he would be a king, too, and he would value her above all things.

As she drifted toward sleep, Adrianne curled the ends of a lock of her long hair around her index finger. He would love her the way she wanted her father to love her. She would give him fine sons, many fine sons, so that the other women would look at her with envy and respect. Not with pity. Not with the pity they showed to her mother.

The light from the hallway roused her. It slanted in as the door opened, then fell in a harsh line across the floor. Through the gauzy netting that surrounded the bed like a cocoon, she saw the shadow.

The love came first, in a frustrated burst she recognized but was too young to understand. Then came the fear, the fear that always followed closely on the love she felt whenever she saw her father.

He would be angry to find her here, in her mother’s bed. She knew, because the talk in the harem was frank, that he rarely visited here, not since the doctors had said Phoebe would bear no more children. Adrianne thought perhaps he wanted only to look at Phoebe because she was so beautiful. But when he stepped closer, fear rose up in her throat. Quickly, silently, she slid out of the bed and crouched in the shadows beside it.

Abdu, his eyes on Phoebe, pulled back the netting. He hadn’t bothered to shut the door. No one would dare to disturb him.

There was moonlight over her hair, over her face. She looked like a goddess, as she had the first time he had seen her. Her face had filled the screen with its stunning beauty, its sharp sexuality. Phoebe Spring, the American actress, the woman men both desired and feared for her lush body and innocent eyes. Abdu was a man accustomed to having the best, the biggest, the costliest. He had wanted her then in a
way he’d never wanted another woman. He had found her, courted her in the manner a Western woman preferred. He had made her his queen.

She had bewitched him. Because of her he had betrayed his heritage, defied tradition. He had taken for his wife a Western woman, an actress, a Christian. He had been punished. In her his seed had produced only one child, a girl child.

Still, she made him want. Her womb was barren but her beauty taunted him. Even when his fascination turned to disgust, he wanted. She shamed him, defiled his
sharaf
, his honor, with her ignorance of Islam, but his body never stopped craving her.

When he buried his manhood deep in another woman, it was Phoebe he made love to, Phoebe whose skin he smelled, Phoebe whose cries he heard. That was his secret shame. He might have hated her for that alone. But it was the public shame, the one daughter only that she had given him that caused him to despise her.

He wanted her to suffer, to pay, just as he had suffered, just as he had paid. Taking the sheet, he ripped it aside.

Phoebe awoke, confused, with her heart already pounding. She saw him standing over her in the shadowed light. At first she thought it was her dream in which he had come back to her to love her as he once had loved her. Then she saw his eyes and knew there was no dream, and no love.

“Abdu.” She thought of the child and looked around quickly. The bed was empty. Adrianne was gone. Phoebe thanked God for it. “It’s late,” she began, but her throat was so dry the words could barely be heard. In defense, she was already sliding backward, the satin sheets whispering beneath her as she curled into herself. He said nothing, but stripped off his white
throbe
. “Please.” Though she knew they were useless, the tears started. “Don’t do this.”

“A woman has no right to refuse her husband what he wishes.” Just looking at her, at the way her ripe body quivered against the pillows, he felt powerful, in charge of his own destiny again. Whatever else she was, she was his property—as much as the jewels on his fingers, the horses in his stables. He grabbed her by the bodice of her nightgown and dragged her back.

In the shadows by the bed, Adrianne began to tremble.

Her mother was crying. They were fighting, shouting words she couldn’t understand at each other. Her father stood naked in the moonlight, his dark skin gleaming with a film of sweat that sprang from lust rather than the sultry heat. She had never seen a man’s body before, but wasn’t upset by the sight. She knew about sex, and that her father’s manhood, which looked so hard and threatening, could be used to dig into her mother and make a child. She knew there was pleasure in this, that the act was something a woman desired above all else. Indeed, she had heard this a thousand times in her young life, for the talk about sex in the harem was incessant.

But her mother could have no more children, and if there was pleasure here, why was she crying and begging him to leave her?

A woman was to welcome her husband into the marriage bed, Adrianne thought as her own eyes filled. She was to offer him whatever he desired. She was to rejoice to be desired, to be the vessel for children.

She heard the word
whore.
It wasn’t a word she knew, but it sounded ugly on her father’s lips, and she wouldn’t forget it.

“How can you call me that?” Phoebe’s voice hitched with sobs as she fought to free herself. Once she had welcomed the feel of his arms around her, delighted in the way his skin would gleam in moonlight. Now she felt only fear. “I’ve never been with another man. Only you. It’s you who’ve taken another wife even after we had a child.”

“You gave me nothing.” He wrapped her hair around his hand, fascinated by it yet detesting its fire. “A girl. Less than nothing. I have only to look at her and feel my disgrace.”

She struck him then with enough force to snap his head back. Even if she’d been faster, there would have been nowhere to run. The back of his hand smashed across her face, sending her reeling. Driven by lust and fury, he ripped the nightgown from her.

She was built like a goddess, every man’s fantasy. Her lush breasts heaved as terror sent her heart racing. In the moonlight her pale skin glowed, already showing the shadow of bruises from his hands. Her hips were rounded. When passion filled her they could move like lightning, meeting a
man thrust for thrust. Shameless. Desire was like a pain in him, like a devil clawing. A lamp crashed onto the table as they struggled, showering the floor with glass.

Frozen in horror, Adrianne watched as he dug his fingers into Phoebe’s full white breasts. Her mother was pleading, struggling. A man had a right to beat his wife. She could not refuse him in the marital bed. That was the way. And yet … Adrianne pushed her hands hard against her ears to block out Phoebe’s screams as he rose over her, as he plunged into her violently, again and again.

With her face wet with her own tears, Adrianne crawled under the bed. She pressed her hands against her ears until they hurt but still she could hear her father’s grunts, her mother’s desperate weeping. Above her the bed shook. She curled into a ball, trying to make herself small, so small she wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t even be.

She had never heard the word
rape
, but after this night she would never have to have it defined for her.

“You’re so quiet, Addy.” Phoebe brushed her daughter’s waist-length hair with long, slow strokes. Addy. Abdu despised the nickname and only tolerated the more formal Adrianne because his first born was a female of mixed blood. Even so, out of Muslim pride, he had decreed that his daughter be given a proper Arabic name. Therefore, on all official documents “Adrianne” was recorded as Ad Riyahd An, followed by a slew of Abdu’s family names. Phoebe repeated the nickname now and asked, “Don’t you like your presents?”

“I like them very much.” Adrianne was wearing her new dress, but it no longer pleased her. In the mirror she could see her mother’s face behind her own. Phoebe had carefully covered the bruise with makeup, but Adrianne saw the shadow of it.

“You look beautiful.” Phoebe turned her around to hold her. On another day Adrianne might not have noticed how tightly she was held, might not have recognized the notes of desperation in her mother’s voice. “My own little princess. I love you so much, Addy. More than anything in the world.”

She smelled like flowers, like the warm, rich flowers in the garden just outside. Adrianne drew in her mother’s scent as she pressed her face to her breasts. She kissed them,
remembering how cruelly her father had handled them the night before.

“You won’t go away? You won’t leave me?”

“Where would you get such an idea?” With a half laugh Phoebe pushed her an arm’s length away to look at her. When she saw the tears, her laughter stopped. “Oh, baby, what’s all this?”

Miserably, Adrianne dropped her head on Phoebe’s shoulder. “I dreamed he sent you away. That you left and I never saw you again.”

Phoebe’s hand hesitated, then continued to stroke. “Just a dream, baby. I’ll never leave you.”