The Sultan's Heir. Alexandra Sellers

go. I’m late.”

      “Goodbye, Rosalind,” he said, picking up his case. “I’ll be in touch.”

      He strode down the corridor to the wrought-iron cage that held the elegant Art Deco lift. But before he could push the button, it clanged and heaved and started its upward journey from the lobby.

      Rosalind bit her lip. Instead of closing the door she stood there, nervously planted in the doorway, following the sound of the machine’s tortured progress. How could she have failed to think of this?

      Najib glanced at her, his eyes widening and then narrowing into alertness at what he saw in her face.

      Rosalind waited with a kind of fatalistic foreknowledge as the lift creaked up three floors and ground to a stop. Then the door opened and, as she had known they would, a small, excited boy and a pretty teenage girl stepped out.

      Najib, holding the door open with one arm, turned to watch in disbelief as the child shot down the hall towards Rosalind, a decorated sheet of blue construction paper clutched in one tiny hand. Rosalind knelt down and held her arms open.

      “Mommy, Mommy!” cried Sam, his eyes glowing, as he flung himself into her embrace. “Look what I made you!”

      Over his head, Rosalind saw Najib al Makhtoum’s dark, accusing gaze rake over her for one horrible moment. Then he turned and stepped into the lift.

      “He’s the living spit of the old man,” said Naj.

      “Damn,” came Ashraf’s fervent voice. “Damn, damn, damn.”

      The was a silence. “And she knows nothing about the Rose?”

      “So she said. But she is living in a place she certainly did not buy on a translator’s income. In Kensington.”

      Ashraf cursed again. “You think she sold the Rose? Who to?”

      Naj shook his head, his lips pursed. “No guesses there. Depends how much she knew.”

      “She knows enough to deny the kid is Jamshid’s.”

      “And maybe when she’s had a little time to absorb the facts she’ll stop denying it. She naturally assumed we all knew about the exchange of letters and left her to swing in the breeze. And God knows what she thought Jamshid’s motives were.”

      “Naj, if he gave her the Rose she can’t have doubted his sincerity.”

      “True. Well, maybe she sold it because Grandfather’s letter killed off any sense of loyalty.”

      “It’s not fitting together,” Ash said.

      “She’ll tell me eventually,” Naj said, though he wondered whether it would be himself who cracked. “It may take her time to get up the courage to confess.”

      “We don’t have that luxury, time,” Ashraf pointed out. “We have to bring the boy here, and we have to do it yesterday.”

      “I know.”

      “Can you handle it, Naj? Want any backup?”

      He thought of her eyes in that odd, fleeting moment when life had seemed different. There had been a promise there, of a kind he had been waiting for all his life without realizing it.

      “I’ll handle it,” he said.

      Sam and Rosie sat on the sofa, Rosie cuddling her son as she read him a story from a book they had chosen from the library and he told her about the pictures. It was something they did nearly every day.

      But he was making do with less than her full attention today. Rosalind stroked her son’s head, kissed his hair, and murmured approvingly as he talked, but her eyes kept dropping to the beautiful ring, and her mind kept slipping back to her meeting with Najib al Makhtoum.

      Her head was buzzing with questions. Why had Jamshid never told his grandfather about the marriage? Why had he not told her he was from such a rich family? Had they really only found the will recently, or did the family have some reason for suddenly being willing to part with her inheritance?

      If so, that reason centred in the possibility that Jamshid had an heir. He had spoken about a jewel, but how likely was it that they really believed Jamshid would have given her anything so valuable? She looked at the diamond Najib had put on her finger. She knew little about precious stones, but this one had to be two carats at least. Bigger than this one—what were they talking about? The Koh-i-Noor? Why would Jamshid have given it to her when he hadn’t even told her about his wealthy background?

      He had given her gifts, of course. But nothing more valuable than an ordinary man would give his fiancée. He had bought her a leather jacket she had admired, and given her a gold chain with a heart on her birthday. Rosalind’s eyes drifted down to the coffee table. And the little antique crystal ornament when she told him she thought she was pregnant. That was absolutely all.

      She stared at the diamond ring Najib had just given her. She still could hardly believe it. Was it even real? But the light caught it as she moved her hand, and her question was answered. There was unmistakable fire in the heart of the stone.

      Someone somewhere was very disturbed, that much was clear. Najib al Makhtoum had come, not so much to right an old wrong, not to see that she got her inheritance after five years, but to discover if Jamshid had a son.

      She wondered if Najib had asked his sister about her. But anything Lamis might have told him was now overshadowed by the fact that he had seen Sam. He would be back, of course. She would have to plan what to say to him when he came.