The Sheikh Doctor's Bride. Meredith Webber

she knew she couldn’t ask. Questions about families were taboo.

      Although she could ask Ibrahim!

      With two feet and one hand painted?

      No, she couldn’t stop this process now, but she needed to speak to Ibrahim—to demand to know if he’d chosen her because she bore some curious resemblance to Fareed’s mother.

      She’d tell him …

      What?

      That she couldn’t be part of a plan to deliberately hurt Fareed?

      That she couldn’t go through with the wedding?

      And tell her mother and Billy what, when she returned home and Tippy was sent to another trainer?

      She breathed deeply, hoping to calm her racing thoughts, but the coldness remained in her body, although in her heart she felt a spark of pity for the man she was pledged to marry.

      The morning of the wedding arrived. Kate woke and stared in fascination at the intricate patterns decorating her hands and feet. The henna paste had been put on thickly and allowed to stay there for many hours before being washed off to leave the delicate pattern behind it.

      The women she couldn’t help thinking of as her handmaidens appeared in a welter of excitement, each bearing articles of clothing that appeared to be made out of spun gold. They shouted orders at the two servants, Mariam and Layla, who would appear from nowhere whenever Kate came to her room or woke from sleep.

      ‘Cloth of gold out of one of the treasure chests, no doubt,’ Kate muttered at Mariam, whom, she knew, spoke no English. Mariam was trying to remove Kate’s pyjamas—old favourites she’d brought from home and refused to be parted from.

      Dodging the ministrations of her helper, she grabbed Layla, whom she knew did speak English, and told her she would dress herself.

      ‘But you must bathe, and be made up, and properly dressed from the skin out, for he will want to unwrap you like a precious parcel.’

      The excitement in Layla’s voice suggested this was the most momentous moment in a woman’s life.

      There’ll be no unwrapping of this parcel, Kate told herself, although this time silently because making a mockery of the wedding in front of these women would be unkind, and probably go against her part of the bargain.

      She and Fareed would sort out what happened after the wedding, and whatever they decided would be their business. And in spite of her nerves, she was fairly certain she could reach some arrangement with him—after all, she was probably the last woman on earth he’d want to marry. This was not an affair of the heart but a business arrangement and she could—she would—make it work.

      So she went along with being bathed in water with rose petals floating in it, in being massaged with cream that made her skin feel like silk and being dressed in golden knickers and a golden bra, a long golden underskirt and a huge, all-encompassing golden gown on top of it all.

      As if this was not enough, a golden shawl was draped across her hair, and a fine gold veil drawn down across her face.

      At least she thought it was her face, although it, too, had been painted, her eyes outlined in thick, dark kohl, her eyebrows extended, so from behind the veil all that could be seen were dark, mysterious eyes.

      Behind her geeky spectacles that she’d deliberately chosen after losing so many smaller, fashionable pairs, or broken them by sitting on them, or mutilated them in a dozen different ways.

      ‘You cannot wear them,’ Farida decreed, seizing them from Kate’s hand and secreting them in a pocket in her gown. ‘It spoils the whole look.’

      ‘But I can’t see where I’m going without them,’ Kate protested.

      The young women laughed.

      ‘We are to escort you to your throne and you won’t have to move from there until the party is over and the prince comes to claim his bride. Then he will guide you to the marriage chamber.’

      ‘Marriage chamber?’

      Kate’s voice faltered over the words and the women laughed again, making jokes in their own language and dissolving into hilarity.