Sweet Revenge

“You are welcome here,” Sara said in a whispery, musical voice that stumbled over the English phrase.
    “This is Princess Yasmin.” Adrianne’s aunt put a hand on the shoulder of a girl of about twelve with dusky cheeks and thick gold hoops through her ears. “Your sister.”
    She hadn’t expected this. She’d known she would meet Abdu’s other children, but she hadn’t expected to look into eyes the same shape and color as her own. She wasn’t prepared for the spark of kinship or recognition. Because of it, her greeting was stilted when she bent to kiss Yasmin’s cheeks.
    “Welcome to my father’s house.”
    “Your English is good.”
    Yasmin lifted her brows in a gesture that told Adrianne though she was months away from the veil, she was a woman. “I attend school so that I will not be ignorant when I go to my husband.”
    “I see.” The acknowledgment was equal to equal as Adrianne removed her
abaaya.
Gesturing a servant aside, shefolded it herself, and carefully. Sewn into the lining were the tools of her trade. “You’ll have to tell me what you’ve learned.”
    Yasmin studied Adrianne’s simple white skirt and blouse with the eyes of a fashion critic. Once Duja had smuggled in newspaper pictures of Adrianne, so Yasmin knew her sister was beautiful. She thought it a pity Adrianne hadn’t worn something red that glittered.
    “First I will take you to my grandmother.”
    Behind them women were already dipping into the buffet. Food, the richer the better, was a favored recreation. Talk was already centering around babies and shopping.
    The old woman seated in a brocade chair was resplendent in emerald green. The wrinkles and folds of her face had fallen into jowls, but her hair was stubbornly hennaed. Fingers, curled a bit with arthritis, were studded with rings that flashed as she cuddled a boy of two or three on her lap. Two servants flanked her, waving fans so that the smoke from a brass incense jar would scent her hair.
    It had been nearly twenty years, and Adrianne had been only eight when she’d left, but she remembered. The tears started so abruptly, so stunningly, she could do nothing to stop them. Instead of the greeting expected, she went to her knees and laid her head in her grandmother’s lap. The mother of her father.
    Her bones were thin and brittle. Adrianne could feel them beneath the stiff satin. Her scent was the same, incredibly the same, a mixture of poppies and spice. As she felt the hand stroke her hair, she leaned into it. The sweetest, the kindest memories she had of Jaquir were of this woman brushing her hair and telling her stories of pirates and princes.
    “I knew I would see you again.” Jiddah, a frail seventy, the mother of twelve, the only wife King Ahmend had ever taken, sat stroking the hair of her much-loved grandchild and cuddling her newest against her breast. “I wept when you left us, and weep when you come back.”
    Like a child, Adrianne dried her cheeks with the backs of her hands. She rose up for the kiss. “Grandmother. You’re more beautiful than I remembered. I’ve missed you.”
    “You come back to me a grown woman, with the look of your father.”
    She stiffened, but managed to smile. “Perhaps I have the look of my grandmother.”
    Jiddah smiled back, showing teeth too white and straight to be her own. The dentures were new, and she was as proud of them as she was of the emerald collar at her throat. “Perhaps.” She accepted tea from a servant. “Chocolate for my granddaughter. You still have a taste for it?”
    “Yes.” Adrianne settled on a cushion by Jiddah’s feet. “I remember that you used to give me a handful all wrapped in red and silver paper. I’d take so much time unwrapping them that they’d melt. But you never scolded me.” She noticed then that Yasmin was still standing beside her, her young face impassive but for a glint in her eyes that might have been jealousy. Without thinking, Adrianne lifted a hand and drew her down to the cushion. “Does Grandmother still tell stories?”
    “Yes.” After a brief hesitation, Yasmin unbent. “Will you tell me about America and the man you will marry?”
    With her head against her grandmothers knee, and a cup of green tea in her hand, Adrianne began. It wasn’t until later that she realized she’d been speaking in Arabic.
    As far as palaces went, Philip decided he preferred the European style. Something in stone with mullioned windows and old, dark wood. This one