Read Sweet Revenge for Free Online

she acting every day? In America she could give Adrianne a good life.
    She couldn’t leave. Phoebe shut her eyes and tried to block out the sound of drums. To leave Jaquir a woman needed written permission from a man of her family. Abdu would never give it to her, for as much as he hated her, he wanted her.
    She had already begged him to let her go, but he had refused. To escape would take thousands of dollars, and a risk she was nearly ready to take. But she would never make it out of the country with Adrianne. No bribe was large enough to tempt a smuggler to give illegal passage to the daughter of the king.
    And she was afraid. Afraid of what he might do to Adrianne. He would take her away, Phoebe thought. There would be nothing she could do to stop him, no court to pleadto but his court, no police to go to but his police. She would never risk Adrianne.
    More than once she had thought of suicide. The ultimate escape. She thought of it the way she had once thought of lovemaking, as something to be desired, treasured, lingered over. Sometimes on hot, endless afternoons she stared at the bottle of pills and wondered how it would feel to take all of them, to drift finally, completely, into the fuzzy world of dreams. Glorious. She had even gone so far as to pour them into her hand, to count them, to fondle them.
    But there was Adrianne. Always Adrianne.
    So she would stay. She would drug herself until reality was bearable, and she would stay. But she would give Adrianne something of herself.
    “I want the sun,” Phoebe said abruptly. “Let’s walk in the gardens.”
    Adrianne wanted to stay where she was, lulled by the scents and the sounds, but she rose dutifully and went with her mother.
    The dry heat surrounded them. As always, it hurt Phoebe’s eyes and made her long for a Pacific breeze. Once she’d owned a house in Malibu and had loved sitting by the big, wide window and watching the water swell with waves.
    Here there were flowers, lush, exotic, and dripping with perfume. The walls rose high, to prevent a woman who walked there from tempting any passing man. Such was the way of Islam. A woman was a weak sexual creature without the strength or intellect to guard her virtue. Men guarded it for her.
    The air in the garden oasis was alive with birdsong. The first time Phoebe had seen this garden, with its tangle of rich blossoms and heady scents, she had thought it straight out of a movie. All around the desert sands shifted, but here there were jasmine, oleander, hibiscus. Miniature orange and lemon trees thrived. She knew their fruit, like her husband’s eyes, was bitter.
    Irresistibly, she was drawn to the fountain. It had been Abdu’s gift to her when he had brought her to his country as his queen. A symbol of the constant flow of his love. The love had long since dried up, but the fountain continued to play.
    She was still his wife, the first of the four his lawsentitled him to. But in Jaquir her marriage had become her prison. Twisting the diamond circle on her finger, she watched the water tumble into the little pond. Adrianne began to toss in pebbles to make the bright carp swim.
    “I do not like Men,” Adrianne began. In a world as restricted as a harem, there was little to talk about except the other women and children. “She pokes out her belly and smiles like this.” She screwed up her face and made Phoebe laugh.
    “Oh, you’re good for me.” She kissed the top of her head. “My little actress.” She had her father’s eyes, Phoebe thought as she brushed the hair back from Adrianne’s face. They helped her remember the time when he had looked at her with love and warmth. “In America they’d line up for miles to see you.”
    Pleased with the idea, Adrianne smiled. “The way they did for you?”
    “Yes.” She looked back at the water. It was sometimes hard to remember the other person she had been. “They did. I always wanted to make people happy, Addy.”
    “When the reporter came, she