Sweet Revenge

actress but not to the woman. She trusted people, the wrong people. That’s what killed her in the end.”
    “Your father?”
    He cut cleanly to the bone, so cleanly, Adrianne didn’t feel the pain until after the cut bled. “He broke her.” She rose then, to wrap her arms tight around her body and pace. “Bit by bit, day by day. And he enjoyed it.” There was no weakness now. Her voice rang as clear as the bells in the square that had heralded Christmas, but without the joy. “He married the woman who was considered the most beautiful of her time, A Western woman. An actress men thought of as a goddess. She fell in love with him and gave up her career, her country, her culture, then he proceeded to destroy her because she was everything he wanted, and everything he despised.”
    She walked to the window. The sun was strengthening, shooting diamonds onto the clear water. The sweep of beach was empty.
    “She didn’t understand cruelty. She had none. There was so much I didn’t know until years later, when it all began to pour out of her in her despair and confusion. In Jaquir she would talk to me because there was no one else she could talk to.”
    “Why didn’t she leave him sooner?”
    “You’d have to understand Jaquir, and my mother. She loved him. Even after he took another wife because she’d displeased him by giving him a female child, she loved him. He insulted and humiliated her, but she hung on. She spent her days trapped in the harem while his second wife swelled with his son, and she loved him still. He beat her, and she accepted it. She couldn’t have more children, and she blamed herself. For nearly ten years she stayed, veiled and abused while he destroyed her confidence, her ego, her self-respect. The damage was great, but she held on. For me. She might have been able to get out, to escape, but she thought first of me.”
    She took a long breath, looking out blindly at the sun-washed sand. “Everything she did, everything she didn’t do, was for my welfare.”
    “She loved you.”
    “Perhaps more than she should have, more than was good for her. She stayed with him year after year because she wouldn’t leave me. He beat her. He humiliated her. Heraped her. God knows how many times he raped her. But once I was there, curled under the bed, with my hands over my ears trying to block it out. And hating him.”
    His eyes sharpened at that. The sympathy he’d been feeling changed to a dull, throbbing anger. She’d have been only a child. He started to speak, then held his tongue. There was nothing he could say to gloss over that kind of pain.
    “I don’t know if she ever would have found the courage to leave. Then one day when I was eight, Abdu told her he was sending me away to school. I was to be betrothed to the son of an ally.”
    “At eight?”
    “The marriage would have waited until I turned fifteen, but the betrothal was a good political move. There must have been some of the actress in her yet. She accepted his decision, even seemed pleased by it. And she talked him into taking me along to Paris with them to teach me a little of the world. If I was to be a good wife, I should know how to behave outside of Jaquir. She convinced him that she was delighted with his interest in my welfare, that she approved of the coming marriage. It’s not uncommon for a woman of my country to marry at fifteen.”
    “Whether they want to or not?”
    She had to smile. He sounded so British. “Marriages are still arranged in Jaquir, from the farmers daughter to the king’s. Its purpose is to strengthen the tribe and legitimize sex. Love and choice have nothing to do with it.”
    The light was changing. She saw a young man, covered with sand, walk groggily along the edge of the beach. “When we were in Paris, she managed to contact Celeste. Celeste arranged for tickets to New York. Abdu cultivated a progressive image outside of Jaquir, so we were allowed to shop and go to museums. My mother was permitted to have her hair unbound and her face unveiled. We lost the bodyguards in the Louvre, and ran.”
    She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. They were swollen and gritty. The bright beam of sun made them ache. “She was never well again, and she never stopped loving him.” She dropped her hands to her sides before she turned. “It taught me that when a woman lets herself love,she loses. It taught me that to survive, you rely on yourself, first and last.”
    “It should also