Conveniently His Princess, page 15
“No matter what—” Johara explained Maram’s exclamation “—we end up preparing royal weddings in less and less time.”
Kanza grinned at all the ladies present, still shell-shocked that all the women of the royal houses of Zohayd, Azmahar and even Judar were here to help prepare her wedding. “Take heart, everyone. This is only a quasi-royal wedding.”
“It is a bona fide royal one around here, Kanza.” That was Talia Aal Shalaan, Johara’s other sister-in-law. “It’s par for the course when you’re a friend or relative to any of the royal family members. And you and Aram are both to so many of us. But this is an all-time crunch, and there is no earthshaking cause for the haste as there was in the other royal weddings we’ve rushed through preparing here.”
“Aram can’t wait.” Johara giggled, winking to her mother, then to Kanza. “That is earthshaking.”
Talia chuckled. “Another imperious man, huh? He’ll fit right in with our men’s Brotherhood of Bigheadedness.”
Maram pretended severity. “Since this haste is only at his whim, this Aram of yours deserves to be punished.”
“Oh, I’ll punish him.” Kanza chuckled, then blushed as Jacqueline Nazaryan, her future mother-in-law, blinked.
Man, she liked her a lot, but it would be a while until the poised swan of a French lady got used to Kanza’s brashness.
Maram rolled her eyes. “And if he’s anything like my Amjad, he’ll love it. I applaud you for taming that one. I never saw Amjad bristle around another man as he does around Aram. A sign he’s in a class of his own in being intractable.”
“Oh, Aram is nothing of the sort….” Kanza caught herself and laughed. “Now. He told me how he locked horns with Amjad when he lived here, and I think it’s because they are too alike.”
Maram laughed. “Really? Someone who’s actually similar to my Amjad? That I’d like to see. We might need to put him in a museum.”
As the ladies joined in laughter, Carmen Aal Masood came in. Carmen was the event planner extraordinaire whose services Aram had enlisted in return for contributing an unnamed fortune to a few of her favorite charities, and the wife of the eldest Aal Masood brother, Farooq, who gave up the throne of Judar to marry her. The Aal Masoods were also Kanza’s relatives from their Aal Ajmaan mother’s side.
Yeah, it was all tangled up around here.
“So you ready to hop into your dress, Kanza?” Carmen said, carrying said dress in its wrapping.
Kanza sprang to her feet. “Am I! I can’t wait to get this show on the road.”
Lujayn, yet another of Johara’s sisters-in-law, the wife of Shaheen’s half brother Jalal, sighed. “At least you’re eager for your wedding to start. Almost every lady here had a rocky start, and our weddings felt like the end of the world.”
Farah, the wife of the second-eldest Judarian prince, Shehab Aal Masood, raised her hand. “I had my end of the world before the wedding. So I was among the minority who were deliriously happy during it.”
“Kanza doesn’t seem deliriously happy.” Aliyah, King Kamal Aal Masood of Judar’s wife—the queen who wore black at her own wedding then rocked the whole region when she challenged her groom to a sword duel on global live feed—gave Kanza a contemplative look. “You’re treating it all with the nonchalance of one of the guests. Worse, with the impatience of one of the caterers who just wants it over with so she can get the hell home.”
Kanza belted a laugh as she ran behind the screen. “I just want to marry the man. Don’t care one bit how I do it.”
Feeling the groans of her half sisters flaying her, she undressed and jumped into her gown. They were almost haybeedo—going to lay eggs—to have anything like her wedding. And for her to not only have it but to not care about having it must be the ultimate insult to injury to them.
Sighing, she came out from behind the screen.
Her sisters and stepmothers all gaped at her. Yeah, she’d gaped, too, when she’d seen herself in that dress yesterday at the one and only fitting. If you could call it a dress. It was on par with a miracle. Another Aram had made come true.
Before she could get another look at herself in the mirror, the ladies flocked around her, adjusting her hair and veil and embellishing her with pieces of the Pride of Zohayd treasure that King Amjad and Maram were lending her.
Then they pulled back, and it was her turn to gasp.
Who was that woman looking back at her?
The dress’s sumptuous gradations of cream and gold made everything about her coloring more vivid, and the incredible amalgam of chiffon, lace and tulle wrapped around her as if it was sculpted on her. The sleeveless, corsetlike, deep décolleté top made her breasts look full and nipped her waist to tiny proportions. Below that, the flare of her hips looked lush in a skirt that hugged them in crisscrossing pleats before falling to the floor in relaxed sweeps. And all over it was embroidered with about every ornament known to humankind, from pearls to sequins to cutwork to gemstones. Instead of looking busy, the amazing subtleness of colors and the denseness and ingeniousness of designs made it a unique work of art. Even more than that. A masterpiece.
Aram had promised he’d tell her how he’d had it made in only two days, if she was very, very, very good to him.
She intended to be superlative.
Looking at herself now—with subtle makeup and her thick hair swept up in a chignon that emphasized its shine and volume, with the veil held in place by a crown from the legendary royal treasure, along with the rest of the priceless, one-of-a-kind jewels adorning her throat, ears, arms and fingers—she had to admit she looked stunning.
She wanted to look like that more from now on.
For Aram.
The new bouquets had just arrived when the music that had accompanied bridal processions in the region since time immemorial rocked the palace.
Kanza ran out of the suite with her royalty-studded procession rushing after her, until Johara had to call out for her to slow down or they’d all break their ankles running in their high heels.
Kanza looked back, giggling, and was again dumbfounded by the magnitude of beauty those women packed. They themselves looked like a bouquet of the most perfect flowers in their luscious pale gold dresses. Those royal men of theirs sure knew how to pick women. They had been blessed by brides who were gorgeous inside and out.
As soon as they were out in the gallery leading to the central hall, Kanza was again awed by the sheer opulence of this wonderland of artistry they called the royal palace of Zohayd. A majestic blend of Persian, Ottoman and Mughal influences, it had taken thousands of artisans and craftsmen over three decades to finish it in the mid-seventeenth century. It felt as if the accumulation of history resonated in its halls, and the ancient bloodlines that had resided and ruled in it coursed through its walls.
Then they arrived at the hall’s soaring double doors, heavily worked in embossed bronze, gold and silver Zohaydan motifs. Four footmen in beige-and-gold outfits pulled the massive doors open by their ringlike knobs. Even over the music blaring at the back, she heard the buzz of conversation pouring out, that of the thousand guests who’d come to pay Aram respects as one of the world’s premier movers and shakers.
Inside was the octagonal hall that served as the palace’s hub, ensconced below a hundred-foot high and wide marble dome. She’d never seen anything like it. Its walls were covered with breathtaking geometric designs and calligraphy, its eight soaring arches defining the space at ground level, each crowned by a second arch midway up, with the upper arches forming balconies.
At least, that had been what it was when she’d seen it yesterday. Now it had turned into a scene right out of Arabian Nights.
Among the swirling sweetness of oud, musk and amber fumes, from every arch hung rows of incense burners and flaming torches, against every wall breathtaking arrangements of cream and gold roses. Each pillar was wrapped in gold satin worked heavily in silver patterns, while gold dust covered the glossy earth-tone marble floor.
Then came the dozens of tables that were lavishly decorated and set up in echoes of the hall’s embellishment and surrounded by hundreds of guests who looked like ornaments themselves, polished and glittering. Everyone came from the exclusive realm of the world’s most rich and famous. They sparkled under the ambient light like fairy-tale dwellers in Midas’s vault.
Then the place was plunged into darkness. And silence.
Her heart boomed more loudly than the boisterous percussive music that had suddenly ended. After moments of stunned silence, a wildfire of curious murmuring spread.
Yeah. Them and her both. This wasn’t part of the planned proceedings. Come to think of it, not much had been. Aram had been supposed to wait at the door to escort her in. She hadn’t given it another thought when she hadn’t found him there because she’d thought he’d just gotten restless as her procession took forever to get there, and that he’d simply gone to wait for her at the kooshah, where the bride and groom presided over the celebrations, keeping the ma’zoon—the cleric who’d perform the marriage ritual— company.
So what was going on? What was he up to?
Knowing Aram and his crazy stunts, she expected anything.
Her breathing followed her heartbeat in disarray as she waited, unmoving, certain that there was no one behind her anymore. Her procession had rustled away. This meant they were in on this. So this surprise was for her.
God, she hated surprises.
Okay, not Aram’s. She downright adored those, and had, in fact, gotten addicted to them, living in constant anticipation of the next delightful surprise that invariably came.
But really, now wasn’t the time to spring something on her. She just wanted to get this over with. And get her hands back on him. Three days without him after that intensive…initiation had her in a constant state of arousal and frustration. By the end of this torture session, she’d probably attack and devour him the moment she had him alone….
“Elli shoftoh, gabl ma tshoofak ainayah.
Omr daye’e. Yehsebooh ezzai alaiah?”
Her heart stopped. Stumbled. Then stopped again.
Aram. His voice. Coming from…everywhere. And he’d just said…said…
All that I’ve seen, before my eyes saw you.
A lifetime wasted. How can it even be counted life?
Her heart began ricocheting inside her chest. Aram. Saying exactly what she felt. Every moment before she was with him, she no longer counted as life.
But those verses… They sounded familiar….
Suddenly a spotlight burst in the darkness. It took moments until her vision adjusted and she saw…saw…
Aram, rising as if from the ground at the far end of the gigantic ballroom, among swirling mist. In cream and gold all over, looking like a shining knight from a fantasy.
As he really was.
Music suddenly rose, played by an orchestra that rose on a huge platform behind him, wearing complementary colors.
She recognized the overture. Enta Omri, or You Are My Lifetime. One of the most passionate and profound love songs in the region. That was why the verses had struck a chord.
Not that their meaning had held any before. Before Aram, they’d just been another exercise in romantic hyperbole. Now that he was in her heart, every word took on a new meaning, each striking right to her foundations.
He now repeated the verses but not by speaking them.
Aram was singing. Singing to her.
Everything inside her expanded to absorb every nuance of this exquisite moment as it unfolded, to assimilate it into her being.
She already knew he sang well, though it was his voice itself that was unparalleled, not his singing ability. They’d sung together while cooking, driving, playing. He always sang snippets of songs that suited a situation. But nothing local.
While his choice and intention overwhelmed her with gratitude and happiness, the fact that he knew enough about local music to pick this song for those momentous moments stunned her all over again with yet another proof that Aram knew more about her homeland than she did. Not to mention loved it way more.
He was descending the steps from the platform where the orchestra remained. Then he was walking toward her across the huge dance floor on an endless gold carpet flanked by banks of cream rose petals. All the time he sang, his magnificent, soul-scorching voice filling the air, overflowing inside her.
“Ad aih men omri ablak rah, w’adda ya habibi.
Wala da’a el galb ablak farhah wahda.
Wala da’a fel donia ghair ta’am el gerah.”
How much of my lifetime before you passed and was lost.
With a heart tasting not a single joy but only wounds.
She shook, tears welling inside her.
Yes, yes. Yes. Exactly. Oh, Aram…
He kept coming nearer, his approach a hurricane that uprooted any lingering despondencies and disappointments, blowing them away, never to be seen again.
And he told her, only her, everything in his heart.
“Ebtadait delwa’ti bas, ahheb omri.
Ebtadait delwa’ti akhaf, lal omr yegri.”
Only now I started to love my lifetime.
Only now I started to fear its hasty passage.
Every word, everything about him, overwhelmed her. It was impossible, but he was even more beautiful now, from the raven hair that now brushed his shoulders, to the face that had never looked more noble, more potent, every slash carved deeper, every emotion blazing brighter, to the body that she knew from extensive hands-on…investigation was awe incarnate. To make things worse and infinitely better, his outfit showcased his splendor to a level that would have left her speechless, breathless, even without the overkill of his choice of song and his spellbinding performance.
The costume echoed her dress in colors, from the cream-and-gold embroidered cape that accentuated his shoulders and made him look as if he’d fly up, up and away at any moment to the billowing-sleeved gold shirt that was gathered by a cream satin sash into formfitting coordinating pants, which gathered into light beige matte-leather boots.
She was looking at those when he stopped before her, unable to meet his eyes anymore. Her heart had been racing itself to a standstill, needed respite before she gazed up at him and into the full force of his love up close.
His hands reached for her, burned on her bare arms. Quivers became shudders. She raised her eyes, focused on the mike in front of lips that were still invoking the spell.
His hands caressed her face, cupped it in their warmth and tenderness, imbuing her with the purity of his emotions, the power of their union. And he asked her:
“Ya hayat galbi, ya aghla men hayati.
Laih ma abelneesh hawaak ya habibi badri?”
Life of my heart, more precious than my life.
Why didn’t your love find me earlier, my love?
Shudders became quakes that dismantled her and dislodged tears from her depths. She waited, heart flailing uncontrollably, for the last verse to complete the perfection.
“Enti omri, elli ebtada b’noorek sabaho.”
You are my lifetime, which only dawned with your light.
Music continued in the closing chords, but she no longer heard anything as she hurled herself into his arms.
She rained feverish kisses all over his face, shaking and quaking and sobbing. “Aram…Aram…too much…too much…everything you are, everything with you, from you…” She burrowed into his containment and wept until she felt she’d disintegrate.
He hugged her as if he’d assimilate her, bending to kiss her all over her face, her lips, raggedly reciting the verses, again and again.
She thought a storm raged in the background. It wasn’t until she expended her tears and sobs that she realized what it was. The thunder of applause and whistles and hoots among the lightning of camera flashes and the video floodlights.
Drained, recharged, she looked up at her indescribable soul mate, her smile blazing through the upheaval. “This should get record hits on YouTube.”
It was amazing, watching his face switch from poignancy to elation to devilry.
Only she could do this to him. As he was the one who could make her truly live.
“Maybe this won’t.” He winked. “But this surely will.”
Before she could ask what “this” was, he turned and gestured, and for the second time tonight he managed to stun her out of her wits.
Openmouthed, she watched as hundreds of dancers in ethnic Zohaydan costumes, men in flowing black-and-white robes and women with waist-length hair and in vibrant, intricately embroidered floor-length dresses, poured onto the huge dance floor from all sides, including descending by invisible harnesses from the balconies. Drummers with all Zohaydan percussive instruments joined in as they formed facing queues and launched into infectiously energetic local dances.
He caught her around the waist, took her from gravity’s dominion into his. “Remember the dance we learned at that bar in Barbados?” She nodded hard enough to give herself a concussion. He swung her once in the air before tugging her behind him to the dance floor. “Then let’s dance, ya kanzi.”
Though the dance was designed to a totally different rhythm, somehow dancing to this melody worked and, spectacularly, turned out to be even more exhilarating.
Soon all the royal couples were dancing behind them as they led the way, and before long, the whole guest roster had left the tables and were circled around the dance floor clapping or joining the collective dances.
As she danced with him and hugged him and kissed him and laughed until she cried, she wondered how only he could do this—change the way she felt about anything to its opposite. This night she’d wished would be over soon, she suddenly wished would never end.
But even when it did, life with Aram would only begin.
Twelve
Aram clasped Kanza from behind, unable to let her go for even a moment as she handed back the Pride of Zohayd jewelry to the royal guards at the door.
He had to keep touching her to make himself believe this was all real. That she was his wife now. That they were in their home.
