Chapter 15: Dinner With The Prince

Princess Elaheh was bidden to dine in the Emir's suite one evening a few days later and she wondered what this might portend. He had kissed her just the once as a lover might, and she wondered if he intended to make incestuous love to her. She had drawn away in shock and surprise on that occasion, but now she considered the possibility seriously. Clearly if he wanted her in his bed, he could compel her to be there and to cooperate. The whips were all too real, and she did not care to experience a punishment whipping. Play whipping as part of a sexual session excited her, but she thought that real pain would not be any sort of fun at all.

Would sleeping with her natural father be so bad? She had never known him as her father, and if he had not told her of the relationship she would certainly have been prepared to sleep with him to gain the sort of life she now had. On the whole, she decided, a few nights as a concubine to her father would be a small price to pay for the luxuries and power she had now begun to understand were hers for the taking. It might even be fun.

When she reached his suite, in a trouser suit and escorted by a junior eunuch from her own harem, she found a handsome young man of about her own age was already talking to the Emir.

"Ah, here you are," the Emir greeted her, "Come and meet your eldest brother, Crown Prince Mustapha, he is a few months younger than you, and will one day be the Emir."

She offered her hand and said, "Hullo. I'm Elaheh, but my friends call me Ellie."

He did not shake the proffered hand, but looked her up and down as though she were a horse he was being offered, but did not want to buy.

"It is customary to make obeisance when entering the presence of my father, His Magnificence, the Emir Mahmoud Abdullah, may he live for ever," said the Prince coldly.

"Nonsense," said the Emir, "We are all family here. That is only necessary in public, Mustapha. After all, you don't do it in private, so why should she?"

"She is not the Crown Prince," he replied, "merely a woman."

"She is my first born," said the Emir firmly, "And you two will not fight. I order it."

Dinner was very strained and there were two separate conversations, one between the Emir and his son, and the other between the Emir and his daughter. Neither of the young people addressed a single remark to the other all evening. As soon as it was decently possible, and even before coffee was served, the Crown Prince Mustapha made his farewells to his father and left the two together.

"I think he will come round when he gets to know you," said the Emir after the Prince had left, "He is really rather shy in private with people he does not know well."

"I'm sure we will be friends," said Elaheh, somewhat sarcastically, "After all you have decreed it so."

Privately she was shocked to think, 'Over one or the other's dead body, and it won't be mine if I can help it.'

"Come and sit beside me," said the Emir, patting the sofa on which he had settled with his coffee.

Elaheh sat next to him and accepted a coffee from the immaculately attired butler.

"We haven't met," she said to the butler.

"I am Robinson, Princess," the servant replied, "I have had the honour of being butler to His Magnificence for some years now."

"You're English?" she asked, slightly surprised.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And are your family here?"

"Yes ma'am."

'He doesn't want to know, ' she thought, 'His loss.'

'Stuck up little cow thinks she can suck up to me, ' Robinson thought, 'No chance.'

During his early days in the Golden Palace, the Emir had allowed Robinson to enjoy the favours of two of the Emir's wives and the Emir had bedded the butler's wife, but nothing much had come of it and such occasions were now very rare. True, one of the children of Princess Alima, the Emir's younger wife, was supposed to have been sired by Robinson, but he had never seen the child and anyway it signified nothing. He certainly knew his place, and it was not as a servant to any female, not even the Emir's favourite Princess.