Sweet Revenge

of Abdu in her veins, but she was not his daughter.
    When it was over, when the long fanfare of celebration had ended, she would do what she had come to do. What she had sworn to do. Revenge, still hot after so many years, would be both wild and sweet.
    When it was done, all ties to family would be irrevocably severed. She would suffer for that, ache for that. Adrianne knew it already. There was a price for everything.
    The women of the house joined her while she was still damp from her bath. They came to scent her skin, to scent her hair, to darken her eyes with kohl, and redden her lips. It became like a dream, the incessant music of the drums, the feel of fingertips on her skin, the sound of women’s voices murmuring. Her grandmother sat in a gilded chair instructing, approving, dabbing her eyes.
    “Do you remember your wedding day, Grandmother?”
    The sigh came, as thin and fragile as her bones. “A woman does not forget the day she truly became a woman.”
    They slipped silk over Adrianne’s body, sheer, embroidered white on white. “How did you feel?”
    Jiddah smiled, remembering. She was old for a woman of her culture, but she remembered being a girl. “He was handsome and straight, and so young. You have the look of him, as does your father. We were cousins, but he was much older, as is fitting. I was honored to be chosen for him, afraid I would not please him.” Then she laughed, and her sexuality, undimmed, flashed in her eyes. “But that night I was no longer afraid.”
    Jokes were made about the wedding night to come, some with amusement, some with envy. Hands were in Adrianne’s hair, braiding, crimping, curling while smoke from incense was fanned into it. Adrianne couldn’t find it in her heart to object.
    Most of the women were shooed out when the couturiere arrived with the wedding gown. With tongue clicking and muttered instructions, Dagmar helped Adrianne into thedress. She had had enough of paradise and wanted Paris, where the worst a woman could expect on an afternoon stroll were a few whistles and propositions. There were oohs and aahs as she fastened an array of two dozen covered buttons.
    “You make a magnificent bride, Your Highness. Wait.” Dagmar gestured impatiently for the headdress. “I want you to see the full effect when you look.”
    Filmy tulle was draped in front of her eyes. A veil, even now. Only more of a dream, Adrianne thought as she looked out in the misty light. The mirror was turned and she saw herself draped in icy white satin and stiff lace with a luxurious train that gleamed in the light as it poured to the far end of the room. Seamstresses had worked more than a hundred combined hours sewing on the pearls that adorned it. The headdress glittered, a small crown of pearls and diamonds circling before it fell into yards of thin tulle.
    “You look stunning. The dress is everything I promised.”
    “Yes, and more. Thank you.”
    “It’s been a pleasure.” And a relief to be done with it. “I’d like to wish you happiness, Your Highness. May today be everything you want.”
    She thought of The Sun and the Moon. “It will be.”
    She accepted the bouquet of orchids and white roses.
    She was a bride, but there would be no wedding march, no shoes tied to a bumper, no rice thrown. It made it easier somehow to pretend it was only a show, one more part of the game.
    With her hands cool and steady, her heartbeat easy, she followed her attendants into the room where she would be presented to her husband and the men of her family.
    She took his breath away. There was no other way for him to describe it. One moment he was breathing, thinking like any man, and the next, the moment he saw her, everything stopped. Even his fingers went numb. The nerves he thought he didn’t have reached up and grabbed him by the throat.
    She was kissed by each male relative in turn, sometimes solemnly, sometimes joyfully. Then stiffly by her father. Abdu took her hand and placed it in Philip’s. And he was finished with her.
    They were blessed. Words from the Koran were read,but in Arabic, so Philip understood nothing except her hand was cold in his and just beginning to tremble.
    She hadn’t known he would wear the white
throbe
and headdress of Islam. It should have made it only more unreal, but somehow it struck her that no matter how much she pretended or denied, the marriage was fact. It would be temporary and easily dissolved, but today it was real.
    It was more than an hour