Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(15)

“I want the oil,” she instructed. “The one that smells of eucalyptus. And warm it in your hands first. I can't bear it cold.”

Sahlah fetched it obediently as Yumn stretched out on her side. Her body was showing the strain of two pregnancies that had followed so quickly one after the other. She was only twenty-four, but already her breasts were sagging and the second pregnancy had stretched her skin and added more weight to her sturdy frame. In another five years, if she adhered to her intention of producing annual offspring for Sahlah's brother, it was likely that she'd be nearly as wide as she was tall.

She coiled her braid to the top of her head and fastened it there with a hair pin she took from the bedside table. She said, “Begin.”

Sahlah did so, pouring the oil first into her palms and smoothing them together to warm it. She hated the thought of having to touch the other woman's flesh, but as the wife of her older brother, Yumn could make demands of Sahlah and could expect them to be carried out without protest.

Sahlah's marriage would have ended Yumn's suzerainty over her, not because of the mere fact of the marriage but because the marriage would have taken Sahlah out of her father's house and out from under Yumn's spatulate thumb. And unlike Yumn, who, despite her domineering ways, was forced to put up with a mother-in-law to whom she had to subjugate herself, Sahlah would have lived with Haytham alone, or at least until such a time as he began to send to Pakistan for his family. None of that would happen now. She was a prisoner, and everyone in the household on Second Avenue—save her two small nephews—was one of her gaolers.

“That's very nice,” Yumn sighed. “I want my skin to gleam. He likes it that way, your brother, Sahlah. It arouses him. And when he's aroused. …” She chuckled. “Men. What children they are. The demands they make. The desires they have. How miserable they can make us, eh? They fill us with babies at the wink of an eye. We have one son and before he's six weeks old, his father is upon us, wanting another. How lucky you are to have escaped this miserable fate, bahin.” Her lips curved, as if she had a source of amusement to which only she was privy.

Sahlah could tell—as Yumn intended—that she felt no misery at her fate. Rather, she revelled in her ability to reproduce and how she could use that ability: to get what she wanted, to do what she desired, to manipulate, cajole, wheedle, and demand. How had her parents come to choose such a wife for their only son? Sahlah wondered. While it was true that Yumn's father had money and her generous dowry had paid for many improvements in the Malik family's business, there had to have been other suitable women available when the elder Maliks had decided it was time to seek a bride for Muhannad. And how could Muhannad bear to touch the woman? Her flesh was like dough and her scent was acrid.

“Tell me, Sahlah,” Yumn murmured, closing her eyes in contentment as Sahlah's fingers kneaded her muscles, “are you pleased? It's quite all right to tell me the truth. I won't speak a word to Muhannad about it.”

“Am I pleased about what?” Sahlah reached for more oil, poured it into the bowl of her palm.

“To have escaped doing your duty. Providing sons for a husband and grandchildren for your parents.”

“I've not thought about providing my parents with grandchildren,” Sahlah said. “You're doing that well enough.”

Yumn chuckled. “I can't believe I've gone all these months since Bishr's birth without another on the way. Muhannad only touches me and I usually come up pregnant the next morning. And what sons your brother and I have together. What a man among men Muhannad is.”

Yumn flipped onto her back. She cupped and lifted her heavy breasts. Her nipples were the size of saucers, as dark as the copperas collected from the Nez.

“Just look at what child bearing does to a woman's body, bahin. How lucky you are to be slim and untouched, to have escaped this.” She gestured listlessly. “Look at you. No varicose veins, no stretch marks anywhere, no swellings or pains. So virginal, Sahlah. You look so lovely that it makes me wonder if you really wanted to marry at all. I dare say you didn't. You wanted nothing to do with Haytham Querashi. Isn't that right?”

Sahlah forced herself to meet her sister-in-law's challenging stare. Her heartbeat felt as if it was sending blood to her face. “Do you want me to continue with the oil?” she asked. “Or have you had enough?”

Ever so slowly, Yumn smiled. “Enough?” she asked. “Oh no, bahin. I've not had enough.”


FROM THE LIBRARY window, Agatha Shaw watched her grandson getting out of his BMW. She looked at her watch. He was half an hour late. She didn't like that. Businessmen were supposed to be punctual, and if Theo wanted to be taken seriously in Balford-le-Nez as the scion of Agatha and Lewis Shaw—and consequently a person to be reckoned with—then he was going to have to learn the importance of wearing a wrist watch instead of that ridiculous slave-thing he favoured. What a ghastly gewgaw. When she was his age, if a twenty-six-year-old man had worn a bracelet, he'd have found himself at the unfortunate end of a lawsuit in which the word sodomite was bandied about with rather more frequency than was particularly appealing.

Agatha stepped to the side of the window's embrasure and allowed the curtains to shield her from view. She studied Theo's approach. There were days when everything about the young man set her teeth on edge, and this was one of them. He was too like his mother. The same blond hair, the same fair skin that freckled in summer, the same athletic build. She, thank God, had gone to whatever reward the Almighty reserved for Scandinavian sluts who lose control of cars and kill themselves and their husbands in the process. But Theo's presence in his grandmother's life served always to remind her that she'd lost her youngest and most beloved child twice: first to a marriage that resulted in his disinheritance, and second to a car crash that left her—Agatha—in charge of two unruly boys under the age of ten.