Sweet Revenge (49 page)

“What a thing to ask. Better start working on the key, darling. I’m almost through.”

“My hero.”

“Keep that in mind.”

They worked side by side, Philip on the last combination, Adrianne on the unwieldy key. Twice he stopped her because her filing distracted him.

“That’s that.” He stepped back. “I’d almost forgotten what a delightful sound tumblers make.” With a quick check of his watch, he grinned. “Thirty-nine minutes, forty seconds.”

“Congratulations.”

“You owe me a thousand pounds, darling.”

She swiped sweat from her brow as she glanced up. “Put it on my tab.”

“Should have known you’d welch.” Sighing, he bent over her shoulder. “Nearly done?”

“I gave you the easy part,” she muttered. “It’s a very complicated design. If I take too much off at once, I won’t be able to make it work.”

“I could try my hand at picking it. Might eat up an hour.”

“No, I’m getting closer.” She put the key in, turned it gently left, then right. She could feel the resistance in her fingertips. With her eyes closed she could almost see the brass rubbing against the fittings. Pulling it out again, she filed a fraction here, a fraction there, adding drops of oil, then switching to sandpaper for the more intricate work. Her fingers cramped like a surgeon’s during a long, tedious operation.

It took thirty more long minutes. At last she slid the key in, turned, and felt the lock give. For a moment she could only kneel where she was, the key still in her hand. All of her
life she’d been driven toward this moment. Now that it was here, she couldn’t move.

“Addy?”

“It’s a little like dying, you know? To finally accomplish the most important goal in your life. To know that when it’s done, it’s done, and nothing else you ever do will have the same impact.” She drew the key out, then placed it back in her pouch. “Still, it’s not done yet.” Taking out the remote control, she punched in the code. The light blinked red. The diamond on her finger flashed as she set the bypass. The red light winked out and its mate lit in a steady green.

“That should do it.”

“Should?”

She turned to smile at Philip. “It didn’t come with a warranty.”

Because he understood, he stepped back and let her pull open the vault door herself. There was a rush of hot air. Adrianne could almost hear it. Perhaps it was the long-dead queen weeping. She swept her light into the vault, where it glinted on gold and silver and precious stones.

“Aladdin’s cave,” Philip said. “Every thief’s ultimate fantasy. My God. I thought I’d seen everything.”

Gold bars were stacked in a waist-high pyramid, silver ingots beside them. There were cups and urns and platters made out of the same precious metals, some crusted with jewels. A woman’s headdress with rubies dripping like blood was set beside a crown starred with diamonds. In a chest which Adrianne opened were uncut stones deep enough so that a man could reach in and bury his arm to the elbow.

There was art as well, works by Rubens, Monet, Picasso. The kind of paintings Abdu would never display in the palace but that he would be wise enough to invest in. They caught Philip’s eye, taking his attention away from the flash of jewels. He stooped, playing his light over canvases and thinking.

“The king’s treasure.” Adrianne’s voice echoed dully. “Some bought with oil, some with blood, some with love, some with treachery. All this, and my mother died with nothing but what I could steal for her.” He straightened and turned to her. “And the worst, the worst is that she died still loving him.”

Gently, Philip ran his thumbs over her cheeks to dry the tears. “He isn’t worth it, Addy.”

“No.” With a sigh she rid herself of the rest of the grief. “I’ll take what’s mine.”

She turned her light on the opposite wall, skimming slowly. When she found it, The Sun and the Moon seemed to explode with life.

“There.”

She moved toward it. Or perhaps it pulled her. Now her hands did tremble, but not from fear, not from grief. From excitement. It was enclosed in glass, but the glass couldn’t dim the fire. Love and hate. Peace and war. Promise and betrayal. One had only to look at it to feel the passions and the pleasures.

All jewels were personal, but none would ever be so personal as these.

Philip played his light over the necklace, crossing and merging the beam of his with hers. “God, it’s more than I imagined. Nothing I’ve ever fantasized about taking compares to it. It’s yours.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Take it.”

She lifted it out and held it. It was heavy. Somehow the weight surprised her. It looked like an illusion, as if it might pass through the hands of anyone who tried to claim it. But it hung heavy in hers, pulsing with life, glowing with promise. As the light ran over it, she could almost see the flow of blood that had washed it so many years before.

“It might have been made for her.”

“Perhaps it was.”

That made her smile because she knew he understood. “I always wondered what it would be like to hold my destiny in my hands.”

“And?”

She turned to him, the necklace draped over her hands like a promise. “I can only remember how it sounded when she laughed. My one regret is that I can’t give it back to her.”

“You’re doing more than that.” He thought of the rat-infested building in Manhattan that Adrianne was going to turn into an abuse clinic. “She’d be proud of you, Addy.”

With a nod she took the roll of velvet out of her pouch and laid the necklace inside. “He’ll come for it.” She covered
the diamond, covered the pearl. Her eyes were as passionate as the necklace. “You understand that.”

“I understand that life with you won’t be boring.”

She took a last sweep with her light. Some carving on the wall behind the empty case caught her eye. Moving over, she studied it. It was old but still clear enough. It might have been carved into the wall with a diamond.

“What does it say?”

“It’s a message from Berina. It says I die for love not shame.
Allahu Akbar’
” She reached for Philip’s hand. “Maybe now she can rest in peace as well.”

It was going to hurt. Adrianne continued to pack as Yasmin wandered the room, stopping here to sniff at a bottle of perfume, pausing there to toy with the petals of a wilting flower. The sunlight streamed through the window and fell over the bright stripes on Yasmin’s dress, glinted on the gold she wore on her wrists, her fingers, and at her ears. Adrianne wished it had been the sun that made her eyes ache and tend to water. It had hurt when she’d left Jaquir before, but she’d survived it.

This time she was taking the necklace with her. But she was leaving more behind than she’d ever thought possible.

“You could stay longer, another day.” Yasmin watched Adrianne fold a long skirt into a suitcase. It didn’t seem fair that she should be given such a beautiful and fascinating sister only to lose her again so quickly. Her other sisters were boring, if for no other reason than she’d known them all of her life.

“I’m sorry. I can’t.” It would have been easier if she hadn’t discovered how simple it could be to love. She tucked away a box that held a wide double bracelet of hammered gold, a gift from Rahman. He wanted to be an engineer—for the glory of Allah. Was it odd, or was it fate, that he shared the goal of her childhood? Adrianne took the box out again, then slipped the bracelet onto her arm. On the lapel of her suit she fastened the jeweled panther. “Philip has business. He’s already stayed away too long.” And so had she if she had time to regret. She closed the top of the case. It would have given her great pleasure to throw it and its contents of long, concealing skirts and high-necked blouses out of the plane
and into the sea. “When you’re allowed to come to America, you will stay with me.”

“To see the place you told me of—Radio City?”

Adrianne had to laugh even as she cloaked herself in the
abaaya
. “That and more.”

“Bloomerdale’s.”

“Bloomingdale’s.” Adrianne covered her hair with the scarf.

“It’s truly bigger than the suq?”

It hadn’t taken much time to know where Yasmin’s heart lay. “All the clothes you can imagine in one place, under one roof. Counters and counters of perfumes and creams.”

“And I can have whatever I like if I have the plastic card.”

With a shake of her head Adrianne picked up her veil. “The salesforce is going to love you.” It would happen one day. She needed to believe it.

“I want very much to come and see these places like the subway and the Trump Tower.”

“The Trumps will be delighted to see you too.”

“It’s good to have it to think about while you are gone. But you’ll come back to Jaquir.”

She could have lied. She’d learned to smoothly enough. Turning, she looked at her sister sitting among the mounded cushions on a chaise. “No, Yasmin, I won’t come back to Jacquir.”

“Your husband will not permit it?”

“Philip would, if it was what I wanted.”

Yasmin pushed away from the cushions. “You don’t wish to see me again.”

Weary, Adrianne sat, drawing Yasmin down beside her. “When I came to Jaquir, I didn’t know you, or Rahman; Fahid was still a little boy in my memories. I didn’t think it would matter that I could stay only a short time. Now it breaks my heart to leave you.”

“Then why don’t you stay? I’ve heard America is an evil place, with godless men and women without honor.” She conveniently forgot Bloomingdale’s and Radio City. “Better that you stay here, where my father is wise and generous.”

May he always be with you, Adrianne thought. “America is no more evil and perhaps no more good than other places.
The people there are like people everywhere, some good, some bad. But it’s my home, as Jaquir is yours. My heart’s there, Yasmin, but I leave a little piece of it here with you.” She took off a ring, a simple aquamarine, square cut and set in thin gold. “This belonged to my mother’s mother. Now it’s a gift to you, so you’ll remember me.”

Yasmin turned the stone so that it caught the light. Her experienced eye told her it had little real value. But she found it pretty and was woman enough to be sentimental. On impulse she pulled off the thick gold hoops in her ears. “So you’ll remember me. You will write?”

“Yes.” The letters might be seized, but she thought she could count on her grandmother to get them through. To please them both, Adrianne took out her pearl studs and replaced them with the hoops. “One day I’ll show you all the places I’ll write to you about.”

Yasmin accepted the embrace. She was still a child and “one days” were only as far away as her imagination. “You were right about the dress,” she said. “It made me look special.”

Adrianne kissed her again. She wondered if Yasmin’s life would always be as simple as the right dress. Chances were she wouldn’t see her sister again until Yasmin was a grown woman with daughters of her own. “I’ll remember how you looked in it. Come, I must say good-bye to Jiddah.”

She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to feel this wrenching sense of loss. But as she knelt at her grandmother’s feet, the tears came. This was a part of her childhood that had been returned to her briefly, and after today would be gone forever.

“A new bride should shed no tears.”

“I shall miss you, Grandmother, but I shall never forget you.”

Jiddah curled her fingers into Adrianne’s palms as she kissed her cheeks. She knew her son as well as she knew herself. His heart would never open wide enough to include Adrianne. “I love you as I love all the children of my children. I will see you again. Not in this life, but there is another.”

“If I have children, I will tell them all the stories you told me.”

“You will have children.
Inshallah
. Go to your husband.”

There were other good-byes to be said before she stepped through the garden door. More than one woman envied her the freedom to go. More than one woman pitied her for losing the protection of the harem. She kissed Leiha, then Sara. Both of them carried lives that tied her to Jaquir. She would never see them again, nor the children they would bear. As Adrianne turned her back on them, she wondered if she would ever feel that fierce kind of unity again.

Then the harem, with all its scents, all its symbols, was behind her. She heard the waters of the fountains ringing as she walked through the garden and beyond. The palace, and the memories it held, were behind her.

The car was already waiting. Beside it she saw Philip, and both of her brothers.

“I wish you happiness.” Fahid kissed her cheeks. “And a long, fruitful life. I have always loved you.”

“I know.” She laid a palm against his face. “If you come to America, my home is open to you. To both of you.” She stepped quickly into the car.

She didn’t speak on the way to the airport. Philip left her to her thoughts, knowing they weren’t on the necklace in the box strapped in the cargo hold of a plane already heading west, but of the people she was leaving behind. She looked neither right nor left as they drove through the city, nor did she turn even once to look back at the palace as it shrunk with distance.

“Are you all right?”

She continued to stare straight ahead, but laid a hand on his. “I will be.”

At the airport he managed to discourage the wild-tongued Turkish porters who grabbed at bags to carry them to cabs or gates whether the owners wished it or not. With threats and gestures he held them back so that between himself and the driver they carried the bags to the waiting plane. The pilot stood ready, his hand out to assist Adrianne up the ramp.

“Afternoon, sir, ma’am. Hope you had a nice trip.” Philip had an urge to kiss the pilot hard on the mouth for
no other reason than his cheerful British voice. “How’s the weather in London, Harry?”

“Miserable, sir, plain miserable.”

“Thank God.”

“Your room’s booked in Paris, sir. And may I congratulate you on your marriage.”

“Thanks.” He took a last look over his shoulder at Jaquir. “Get us out of here, will you?”

Adrianne had already shed her
abaaya
when Philip boarded. Under it she wore a tailored suit the color of raspberries. Her hair, uncovered now, was in a sleek French twist. He wondered if she knew the style made her seem more exotic than ever.