Sweet Revenge

off with my very favorite.
To Catch a Thief.
You’d love it.”
    “Maybe,” he said, looking into his mother’s guileless eyes. How much did she know, he wondered. She never asked, certainly never questioned the little extras he brought into the house. She wasn’t stupid. Just optimistic, he thought, and kissed her cheek again. “Why don’t I take you on your night off?”
    “That would be lovely.” She resisted the urge to stroke his hair, knowing it would embarrass him. “Grace Kelly’s in it. Imagine, a real-life princess. I was thinking about it this very morning when I opened up this magazine to an article about Phoebe Spring.”
    “Who?”
    “Oh, Philip.” She clucked her tongue and folded the page out. “Phoebe Spring. The most beautiful woman in the world.”
    “My mother’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said because he knew it would make her laugh and blush.
    “You’ve a way with you, boy.” She did laugh, hugely, robustly, as he loved to hear her laugh. “But just look at her. She was an actress, a wonderful actress, then she married a king. Now she’s living with the man of her dreams in his fabulous palace in Jaquir. It’s all right out of a movie. That’s their daughter. The princess. Not quite five years old but a regular little beauty, isn’t she?”
    Philip gave the picture a disinterested glance. “She’s just a baby.”
    “I wonder. The poor mite has the saddest eyes.”
    “You’re making up a story again.” His hand closed over the pouch in his pocket. He’d leave his mother to her fantasies, her dreams of Hollywood and royalty and white limousines. But he’d see she rode in one. Hell, he’d buy her one. Maybe she could only read about queens now, but some fine day soon, he’d see she lived like one. “I’m off.”
    “Have a good time, dear.” Mary was already engrossed in her magazine again. Such a pretty little girl, she thought again, and felt a maternal tug.

Chapter Four
    Adrianne loved the suqs. By the time she was eight, she had learned to appreciate the difference between diamonds and sparkling glass, Burmese rubies and stones of lesser color and quality. From Jiddah, her grandmother, she learned to judge, as shrewdly as a master jeweler, cut, clarity, and color. With Jiddah she would wander for hours, admiring the best stones the suqs had to offer.
    Jewels were the security a woman could wear, Jiddah told her. What good to a woman were gold bars and paper money stored in a bank? Diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, could be pinned on, clipped on, strung on so she could show her worth to the world.
    Nothing pleased Adrianne more than watching her grandmother bargain in the suqs while the heat rose in waves to make the very air shimmer. They went often, clutches of women cloaked in black like a band of blackbirds to finger ropes of gold and silver, to push polished stones onto their fingers or simply to study the gleam of gems through dusty glass while the smells of animals and spice hung in the still air and the
matawain
roamed in their straggly henna-tipped beards ready to punish any infraction of religious law. Adrianne never feared the
matawain
when she was with Jiddah. The former queen was revered in Jaquir. She had borne twelve children. When they shopped, the air would be crowded with sound, the squawks of bargaining, the bray of a donkey, the slap of sandals on the hard ground.
    When prayer call sounded, the suqs would close. Then the women would wait while men lowered their faces to the earth. Adrianne would listen to the click of prayer beads, herhead bowed like those of the other women. She was not yet veiled, but no longer a child. In those last days of the Mediterranean summer, she waited, poised at the edge of change.
    So did Jaquir. Though the country struggled against poverty, the House of Jaquir was wealthy. As the first daughter of the king, she was entitled to the symbols and signs of her rank. But Abdu’s heart had never opened to her.
    His second wife had given him two daughters after Fahid. It had been murmured in the harem that Abdu had flown into a rage after the second girl and nearly divorced Leiha. But the crown prince was strong and handsome. Speculation ran that Leiha would soon be pregnant again. To insure his line, Abdu took a third wife and planted his seed quickly.
    Phoebe began to take a pill each morning. She escaped now into dreams, sleeping or waking.
    In the harem, with her head comfortably nestled on her