Prologue: Families

Prince Abdullah had acquired a second wife in London when he made Madeleine Lascaux pregnant in the year after he married his first wife, Amelia, whom he had renamed Princess Zubeydeh. Madeleine was the insipid little daughter of a French diplomat who, at 22 was already considering herself 'left on the shelf'. He met her at an early evening reception in the Kobekistani Embassy; he was bored and she was the only female there that he did not already know. Most of the others had already been charmed by him; several had been charmed into his bed. He only talked to her because he felt it would be undiplomatic to leave early and yet he did not wish to circulate making small talk. It was, he knew, always permissible for a young Prince to be monopolised by an unmarried relative of an Ambassador.

She, for her part, was captivated by his dashing good looks and obvious wealth and savoir faire. Dinner that evening was encouraged by her father, who saw considerable diplomatic advantage in having a family contact with the second in line for the throne of an oil-rich Emirate, quite apart from the 'problem' that Madeleine was becoming. A second dinner followed, then some skiing near her parents' home in Chamonix. Ambassador Lascaux continued to encourage the liaison and even allowed his daughter to move to live in London in the embassy's official flat.

Madeleine was swept off her feet by the attentions of a man who had effectively infinite wealth and soon found herself naked in his sumptuous apartment, on her back, with her feet scissoring the air as she screamed out the ecstasy of her orgasms. For a while she lived there with him and they made love in every conceivable way at all hours of the day and night. As soon as she was pregnant she received the standard Kobekistani royal family treatment of marriage and then being whisked off in the Emir's private 747 to be ensconced in Prince Abdullah's harem. In deference to her family's wishes, the marriage ceremony was held in Paris, with the reception as perfect as only the Hotel George V can do; a perfection not in the least diminished by the fact that they were given an unlimited budget. Madeleine was somewhat aggrieved to find that she was Abdullah's second wife, and that the Princess Zubeydeh, his Head Wife, had already born him a son.

Madeleine accepted his protestations that he cared for her and his unborn child so much that "to protect their health" he would abstain from all sexual contact with her during her pregnancy. In due time her daughter, whom she named Marianne, was born, but by then the Prince's attention had moved on to other attractive young females. After their arrival in Kobekistan, the Prince never slept with her again; Madeleine was bereft and begged to be sent home to France. Just as she thought she was getting somewhere with this pleading, the Prince broke his neck playing polo and Madeleine found herself and little Marianne moved to the Emir, his father's harem.

Within a week of the funeral the old Emir was sampling the considerable sexual delights of his dead son's wife and flatly refusing to let her go home. Madeleine was a young and vigorous woman who soon forgot her husband, reasoning that he had discarded her long ago, and reacting enthusiastically to the physical pleasures offered by the virile older Emir. They made a very successful couple in the bedroom and she was often chosen in the early months of her widowhood. Sadly she and her son by the Emir both died in childbirth about eighteen months after her husband's accident and little Marianne was left an orphan to be raised in the Emir's harem with her birthright status of a Princess.