The Sheikh Doctor's Bride
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Meredith Webber
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Prologue
FAREED IBN JADYM IBN MUSTAFFAH FARUKE eyed the green country through which he travelled with distaste. Not that he didn’t appreciate green. The shiny, almost luminous green of date-palm fronds around an oasis was always a welcome sight, and contrasted brilliantly with the red desert sand through which one had to travel to see them.
But green everywhere, everything green, apart from white paint splashed haphazardly on the fence posts lining the drive down which they now travelled.
Why, in the name of all that was holy, was his uncle coming to this run-down establishment, stuck out in a swathe of green, miles from the city in which they’d been staying?
So his uncle wanted to buy a horse—wanted him, Fareed, to see the horse before the purchase—but could not the horse have come to them? Ibrahim wasn’t one to go out of his way for anything or anyone, however much he loved his horses.
But Fareed’s apprehension about what was going on with his uncle went beyond this trip to a horse stud. Something was brewing in his uncle’s devious mind, and Fareed had a disturbing suspicion that the ‘something’ was to do with him.
Why else would his uncle insist he take leave from the hospital to accompany him on this trip to Australia?
To buy a horse!
And why had Thalia, an old crone who lived somewhere in the palace compound and was said to read the future from marks in the sand, or oil poured on a cup of water, been spending so much time with his uncle prior to this trip? Thalia claimed she was a kahin, from a line of female fortune-tellers that went back into ancient times.
Surely his uncle, English educated, graduate of Oxford and with a further business degree from Harvard, didn’t still believe in the words of a soothsayer?
Fareed shook his head, sorry he was in the lead of the four cars and couldn’t ask his uncle these questions. Then something flashed past the window and soothsayers and his uncle’s devious plans were forgotten.
The horse was a dark caramel in colour, its mane nearly white. It was pounding up the slight slope of a track on the other side of the fence, and on its back, her face alight with the joy of speed, sat a slim woman, taller than most jockeys but riding with her legs tucked up, her body bent along the horse’s neck, flame-coloured hair flying out behind her—a woman at one with the animal.
A painting of the image might be called Freedom, and though Fareed yearned for freedom, duty was a stronger master. Oh, for a while he was okay, working in the hospital, doing what he enjoyed, feeling needed and appreciated, and although, when he did succeed his uncle to the Sultanate, he hoped to continue his medical career at least part-time, he knew his duty was to his people, and to helping them come to terms with the changing world in which they now lived.
But the beauty of the horse and its rider had eased some of Fareed’s apprehension about this trip. Perhaps he should, as Ibrahim kept insisting, simply relax and enjoy the last few days of this break away from work. And, really, was green all that bad a colour?
* * *
The man Kate’s mother was hoping would save the family’s stables arrived in a fleet of long black limousines—if four exceedingly large vehicles could be called a fleet.
According to her mum, he was some kind of Eastern potentate—she read a lot, her mum!
The arrival of the sleek vehicles suggested he might be a very wealthy potentate, though no doubt a con man would have made an equally impressive arrival, Kate told herself.
Cynical?
Kate?
No more so than any other thirty-two-year-old woman who’d grown up with a dearly loved father who had always had a fortune waiting for him just around the next corner; no more so than any other woman who had recently been dumped by a long-term lover who couldn’t believe she would go home to be with her mother after said father’s death, instead of staying with him on the other side of the world.
She turned Marac and headed back to the stables. Mum would offer the potentate some tea so she, Kate, would have time to give the horse a good rub-down and settle him in his stall before the inspection party arrived.
Cantering back down the hill, watching the cars wending their way down the drive, she wondered about the future. If the potentate saved the stables, would she go back to the US, to Mark? Could she go back to a man with so little empathy?
She’d been home two months now, time enough to see the man she’d thought she loved through clearer eyes. No, going back to Mark was not an option.
But, then, if this potentate didn’t buy Tippy, she wouldn’t have to think about options.
Kate tried to see her home through the visitors’ eyes: the lush paddocks shaded by wide spreading gum trees and filled with spectacular horses; the green fields; the placid stream running through the valley; the old stone and bleached-wood stables; and, by the stream, the house, built from stones hauled from the creek over a hundred years ago...
Her mother’s—no, in fact, it was Billy’s heritage...
