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She looked out the window, where trails of fog wound around the stunted scrub as they had last night.
Twenty-four hours, and nothing had changed.
Twenty-four hours, and everything had changed.
Real or not, nothing would be the same after tonight. She had the weirdest feeling, as if someone had popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and the bubbles were effervescing in her blood.
What if the wedding were real? There was no harm in imagining that. What if Caz had come to her and said, Don’t think. Don’t ask questions. Don’t ask for logic, because there isn’t any. I only know that I want you more than life itself. Marry me, Megan. Stay with me forever.
What would her answer have been?
No, of course.
That’s what she’d have told him, wasn’t it? Or would she have gone into his arms, forgotten what she knew of marriage, forgotten that she knew this man only a handful of days.
Would she have brought his mouth down to hers, whispered her answer against the warmth of his lips?
Her throat constricted. She swung around and stared at the silent women.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t—”
The door swung open. Two more servants bustled into the room, hands and arms filled with silks and cashmeres and jewels.
Megan turned to the girl who’d spoken those half dozen words of English.
“Help me,” she begged. “Please, get me out of here! I don’t want to marry the sheikh. I can’t—”
The women descended on her like wolves on a lamb. Megan shrieked, struck out in desperation, but there were eight of them and one of her. They stripped her of her clothes, dumped her in a wooden tub that appeared as if by magic, washed her body, her hair, dried and perfumed her.
“Stop it,” she kept saying, “damn you, keep your hands off me!”
Maybe they thought it was a game. Maybe tradition said the bride was supposed to put up a fight. Nobody listened, nobody paid attention, nobody even spoke to her until she was dressed and hung with jewels.
Then the two eldest women dragged her in front of the full-length mirror that had appeared at the same time as the tub.
“Look,” the youngest woman, the one who’d pretended not to speak English, said.
Megan looked. And stared at what she saw.
The glass was old. Some of the silver backing had worn off; in other places, her reflection seemed to shimmer like waves on the sea.
But the image was clear enough to make her catch her breath.
Looking back at her was a stranger, a seductive creature draped in jewels that were ancient and beautiful, her hair woven with flowers, her body draped in royal-blue silk.
/> Something old, she thought giddily, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
“You see?” the youngest of the women whispered.
Yes. Yes, she saw. They had changed her. Megan O’Connell was gone. In her place was—
“The sheikh’s bride,” the young woman whispered.
Less than an hour later, that was who she became.
The ceremony was long and probably beautiful.
If she’d been watching it in a travel film, that’s how she’d have described it. An enormous room lit by candles. A pathway, strewn with rose petals. An altar. A canopy, at any rate, made of royal blue silk shot with gold.
