Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(102)

So she'd had to speak. And then she'd had to wait, her future and her family's honour held in the palm of a man she'd known less than one week. “And have you carried this dreadful burden these two months all alone, my Sahlah?” And when his arm went round her shoulders, Sahlah realised that she'd been saved.

She'd wanted to ask him how he could take her as she was: defiled by another, pregnant with that other's child, tainted by the touch of a man who could never be her husband. I've sinned and I've paid the price of sinning, she wanted to say. But she said nothing, merely weeping in near silence and waiting for him to decide her fate.

“So we'll marry sooner than I had expected,” he'd said meditatively. “Unless … Sahlah, you don't wish to marry your child's father?”

She'd clenched her hands together between her thighs. Her words were fierce. “I don't. I can't.”

“Because your parents …?”

“I can't. If they knew, it would destroy them. I'd be cast out. …” She could say nothing else as the grief and fear within her—so long held in check—were finally given release.

And Haytham required no other explanation from her. He'd repeated his initial question: Had she carried the burden alone? Once he understood that she had, he sought only to share it and to comfort her.

Or so she had concluded, Sahlah thought now. But Haytham was a Muslim. Traditional and religious at heart, he would have been deeply offended at the notion that some other man had touched the woman meant to be his wife. He would have sought a confrontation with that man, and once Rachel had alerted him to the existence of a gold bracelet, a very special gold bracelet, a gift of love …

All too clearly, Sahlah could picture the meeting between them: Haytham asking for it and Theo eager to comply. “Give me time,” he'd begged her when she'd told him she would marry a man from Pakistan chosen by her parents. “For God's sake, Sahlah. Give me more time.” And he would have struck out to buy himself that time, eliminating the man who stood between them in order to prevent what he saw he couldn't stop: her marriage.

Now she had a surfeit of time and no time at all. A surfeit of time because there was no man waiting in the wings to rescue her from disgrace in such a way that she would not lose her family as a result. No time at all because a new life grew in her body and promised the destruction of all that she knew, held dear, and depended upon. If she did not act decisively and as soon as possible.

Behind her, the bedroom door opened. Sahlah turned as her mother entered the room. Wardah's head was covered modestly. Despite the unabating heat of the day, her entire body was clothed so that only her hands and her face were bare. Her choice of dress was dark, as was her custom, as if she were permanently in mourning over a death that she never acknowledged in words.

She came across the room and touched her daughter's shoulder. Silently, she removed Sahlah's dupattā, and loosened her hair from its single plait. She took a hairbrush from the chest of drawers. She began to brush her daughter's hair. Sahlah couldn't see her mother's face, but she could feel the love in her fingers, and she could sense the tenderness in every stroke of the brush.

“You didn't come into the kitchen,” Wardah said. “I missed you. I thought at first that you weren't home yet. But Yumn heard you come in.”

And Yumn would have reported, Sahlah thought. She'd be maliciously eager for her mother-in-law to know Sahlah's every lapse in duty. “I wanted a few minutes,” Sahlah said. “I'm sorry, Ammī Have you started dinner?”

“The lentils only.”

“Then shall I—”

Wardah pressed her daughter's shoulders gently when Sahlah would have risen. “I can cook the dinner with my eyes closed, Sahlah. I missed your company. That's all.” She curled a long lock of Sahlah's hair round her hand as she brushed it. She laid the lock against Sahlah's back and chose another, saying, “Shall we speak to each other?”

Sahlah felt the pain of her mother's question like a fist that was gripping her heart. How many times since her childhood had Wardah said those same six words to her daughter? A thousand times? A hundred thousand? They were an invitation to share confidences: secrets, dreams, puzzling questions, ruffled feelings, private hopes. And the invitation was always extended with the implicit promise that what was said between mother and daughter was to be held in trust.

Tell me what happens with a man and a woman. And Sahlah had listened—both frightened and awestruck—as Wardah explained what occurred when a man and a woman bound themselves to each other in marriage.

But how do parents know what person is good for a marriage to one of their children? And Wardah quietly delineated all the ways in which fathers and mothers are fully capable of knowing their children's hearts and minds.

And you,Ammī? Were you ever frightened to marry someone you didn't know? More frightened to come to England, Wardah told her. But she'd trusted Akram to do what was best for her, just as she'd trusted her father to choose a man who would care for her throughout life.

But weren't you ever afraid in your life? Even to meet Abhy-jahn? Naturally, her mother said. But she'd known her duty, and when Akram Malik had been presented to her, she'd thought him a good man, a man with whom she could make a life.

This is what we aspire to as women, Wardah told her in those quiet moments when she and her daughter lay side by side on Sahlah's bed in the darkness before Sahlah fell asleep. We achieve fulfillment as women by meeting the needs of our husbands and our children, and by sending our children into marriages of their own with suitable mates.