Sweet Revenge by Nora Roberts Page B

herself as she wiped a film of sweat from her brow. She would get Adrianne to Paris, and they would never come back.
    “When I go to Paris, I will buy trunkfuls of beautiful clothes.” Duja watched Adrianne slip on a gold bracelet and tried not to be jealous. “My father says we will eat at a place called Maxim’s and that I will have anything I want.”
    Adrianne turned. Her palms were continually damp from nerves, but she was afraid to wipe them on her dress. “I will bring you a present.”
    Jealousy forgotten, Duja grinned. “Only one?”
    “A special one. We are going to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and to a place where they have thousands of paintings. And then—” She pressed a hand to her stomach. “I am sick.”
    “If you are sick, you will not go, so you will not be sick. Leiha is sulking.” She said it only in hopes to make Adrianne feel better. Servants had already taken the bags, so Duja put her arm around Adrianne’s shoulder to lead her out. “She wants to go, but the king takes only you and your mother. Leiha has to be content that she is pregnant again.”
    “If I can buy presents for Fahid and my sisters, you will give them?”
    “I will.” She kissed Adrianne’s cheek. “I will miss you.”
    “We will be back soon.”
    “But you have never gone away before.”
    The harem was filled with women and the excitement of the journey only two would take. There were embraces to be exchanged, and laughter. Phoebe stood in her veil and
abaaya
, her hands knotted together at her waist, her face impassive. The scents, the dark, smoky scents of the harem weighed down on her until she thought she could almost see them. If there were a God, she would never see these people or this place again. For once she was grateful for the scarves and the veil. It meant she had to control only her eyes.
    The wave of regret surprised her as she kissed her sisters-in-law, her mother-in-law, the cousins by marriage. All the women she had lived with for almost a decade.
    “Adrianne must sit by the window,” Jiddah told Phoebe as she kissed and embraced them both. “So she can look down at Jaquir as the plane rises.” She smiled, pleased that her son was at last showing an interest in the child who was secretly her favorite. “Do not eat too much French cream, my sweet girl.”
    Adrianne grinned and rose on her toes to kiss Jiddah one last time. “I will eat so much that I will get fat. You will not know me when I return.”
    Jiddah laughed, patting Adrianne’s cheek with a hand lavishly decorated with henna. “I will always know you. Go, go now. Come back safe.
Inshallah.”
    They walked out of the harem, through the garden and beyond the wall, where a car was waiting. Adrianne’s nerves were too tightly strung for her to notice her mother’s silence. She chattered about the plane ride, Paris, what they would see, what they would buy. She asked a question, then hurried on to another without expecting an answer.
    By the time they reached the airport, Adrianne was sick with excitement. Phoebe was sick with fear.
    Thus far, the coming of Western businessmen had only complicated airport procedure. Planes landed and departed more often, and ground transportation was limited to a smattering of cabs whose drivers spoke no English. The small terminal was already packed; women shuffled to one end, men to the other. Confused Americans and Europeans fought to guard their luggage from overenthusiastic porters while searching desperately for connections often delayed for days. Those czars of capitalism more often than not were stalled, victims of a culture gap that had widened to a chasm over the centuries.
    The air roared with the noise of planes, the cacophony of voices in different languages that rose and fell often without understanding. Adrianne saw a woman sitting by a pile of baggage, her face wet with tears and pale with exhaustion. Another rode herd on three young children who stared and pointed at the Arabic