Married to the Sheikh

Published by:

Katheryn Lane on Amazon

Married To The Sheikh

Copyright
©
2013 by Katheryn Lane

All rights reserved

Cover art by Rae Monet, Inc at
www.RaeMonetInc.com

Thank you to The Atwater Group for copy editing this book.

www.TheAtwaterGroup.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

* * * * *

Also by Katheryn Lane

A beautiful doctor from London.

A handsome sheikh from the Middle East.

One happily ever after ending?

When Sarah Greenwich marries Sheikh Akbar, her life is full of wedded bliss in the arms of a loving, passionate man. However, not everyone shares her happiness and Sarah soon discovers that when you’re married to a powerful warlord, problems can come from the most unexpected sources.

Sometimes love cannot overcome the obstacles that are placed in front of it.

Like many brides, Dr. Sarah Greenwich thought that her wedding day was the happiest day of her life, except for the fact that none of her family and friends were there to witness it.

Most of her friends said that they couldn’t afford the trip from England to Yazan, a remote country in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. Her friends who worked with her at the Women’s Hospital, in the country’s capital, all said that they were busy that weekend and gave mumbled apologies. Sarah’s parents had been more honest. They said that they couldn’t possibly condone the event by attending. When Sarah asked them why, her mother simply replied that if Sarah didn’t see what the problem was, she was more of a fool than her mother thought. However, Sarah did know what the issue was. She didn’t have to press the point to know that her friends and family in England thought she was crazy to marry a Bedouin sheikh, a man that lived in a tented encampment in the middle of the desert.

“Sheikh Akbar isn’t even rich,” Sarah’s mother had yelled at her. “Only you could find a poor Arab and then be stupid enough to marry one.” Luckily, Sarah’s mother didn’t know how Sarah had “found” Sheikh Akbar, though her friends in Yazan did and this was the reason that many of them didn’t come to her wedding.

During the long wedding service, Sarah stopped listening to the imam, the local religious man, reciting prayers and reading holy passages that were meant to enlighten the bride and groom, and she began thinking about how she’d first met SheikhAkbar. He had kidnapped her several months ago in the mistaken belief that she was the British ambassador’s wife. However, once he found out that she was just a foreign doctor, he helped her to escape, though by then they had both fallen madly in love with each other.

Unfortunately, most of her friends didn’t understand how Sarah could fall for her abductor. One of her colleagues, Dr. Ralph Warren, even offered to give her psychiatric help, saying that she was suffering Stockholm syndrome, a condition whereby a hostage believes that they are attracted to their abductor. Sarah refused the doctor’s help. She knew that what she felt was genuine and not the result of some mental disorder. After Sheikh Akbar had helped her to escape, they met frequently and she had returned to his encampment many times over the last six months, not as a hostage, but as a lover and as a friend.

Some of her local friends did understand her feelings for the sheikh, but even they were unwilling to come to her wedding as they were scared of leaving the capital and travelling out to the wild empty lands of Sakara where Sheikh Akbar and his people, the Al-Zafir tribe, lived. Sarah tried to reassure them that Akbar ruled peacefully over this territory and no one would dare to attack the friends of his bride-to-be, but it wasn’t enough. Several of her friends, especially her local friends, hinted that they were scared of Akbar and his men and wanted nothing to do with them.

Sarah peered through the heavy veil of linked gold coins that covered her face. It had been a present from the sheikh and through it, she could just see her groom. He sat so close to her that she could feel his knees touching hers and she could see his warm brown eyes gazing back at her, full of love and tenderness. He was wearing traditional white robes embroidered with gold and round his waist was a wide silk sash into which he had struck a jewelled dagger that he said had belonged to the rulers of his tribe for centuries.

Sarah stifled a giggle as she realised that the groom was wearing white while she was wearing black, in a strange inverse of a Western wedding. However, it was hard to see the black cloth of her dress through all the embroidery. Her new mother-in-law, Fatima, had spent untold hours sewing her wedding gown and decorating it lavishly with coloured silks and dozens of gold and silver coins, so that when Sarah first put in on, she almost collapsed under the weight of it.

“Traditionally, a bride does not laugh during the wedding,” Sheikh Akbar whispered to her. He must have noticed the coins on her veil tinkling.

“I am not a traditional bride,” Sarah whispered back.

“But you are a very beautiful one, more beautiful than any princess. The henna is striking on your hands.”

Fatima had painted Sarah’s hands and feet with henna as part of the Laylat Al Henna ceremony. In the absence of her own family and friends, Fatima had also been responsible for all of Sarah’s bridal preparations. Once the henna dried, Sarah was amazed at how strong the elaborate orange designs showed up on her fair, white skin.

“Your mother tried to henna my hair as well, but I refused.” Sarah knew that the dye would turn her pale blonde hair into an orange mess and not the deep rich colour that the local women obtained when they dyed their black hair.

“No one will ever make you do something you don’t want to do and that’s good. Your hair is perfect as it is: gold like the desert sands.” Sheikh Akbar looked out beyond the encampment towards the empty desert ahead of them.

They sat outside, along with the rest of the tribe and their guests, on richly woven carpets that had been laid out in front of the camel-hair tents. To one side, large fires burned and roasted a huge number of goats, chickens, sheep, and camels for the wedding feast. The flames lit up the encampment and made the coins on Sarah’s clothes sparkle like the stars in the night sky above her.

“I’m sorry that your family isn’t here to share our happiness,” the sheikh said.

“I’m sorry, too.” Sarah wasn’t going to let it ruin her big day. “At least all of your family and friends are here, and your family is like my own now.”