Read Online Beloved by Bertrice Small - Free Book Online

wed him, so be it.”
    “You say that eventually I must marry, Father. The prince has asked for me, and I will agree. If I must wed then at least it will be to a man who lives in Palmyra, so I may at last be free of your desert.” She twinkled mischievously at him, and Zabaai chuckledindulgently. How he loved this child. “The prince is handsome,” continued Zenobia. “He has always been kind to me, and I have never heard anyone say that he is not a fair or good ruler. There seems to be no malice in him at all.” Zenobia knew no matter how fair her father meant to be she could not refuse the prince. Still, she loved Zabaai all the more for pretending the choice was hers.
    “You say nothing of love, my child. For a marriage to be successful there must be love between a man and a woman. The moment I saw your mother those long years ago in Alexandria I knew I loved her, and she knew she loved me. Love sustains a man and woman in the hard times.”
    “You and Mother were unusual, Father. Tamar tells me that love is something that grows between a man and a woman. I believe that, given time, I can love Odenathus, and he already loves me. I can tell. Did you see how foolishly he behaved today? I didn’t mean to laugh at him, but he looked so silly with his mouth open.” She giggled with the memory.
    Zabaai didn’t think that this was the time to explain to his daughter the difference between lust and love. Let her believe that Odenathus was already in love with her. It wouldn’t hurt to give the prince that small edge. “Make yourself beautiful, my child,” he said, and then in a rare show of open affection he kissed her cheek. “You may eat with us instead of the women this evening.”
    Left alone, Zenobia turned to her mirror, a round of burnished silver. Pensively, she stared into it. Everyone said that she was a beauty, and compared to other girls her age she was. But would she be able to compete with the women of Palmyra? Would Odenathus think that she was beautiful? She knew all about his concubine, Deliciae, and she would have to accept the woman. A slave girl from northern Greece, Deliciae was said to be very beautiful, fair-skinned, azure-eyed, yellow-haired.
    Zenobia looked at herself with a critical eye. Pale-gold skin, the cheeks of her oval face touched with apricot; long, thick, straight dark hair, silken to the touch, so perhaps it would be pleasing to him. She seemed to remember that he was always caressing her head.
    She looked harder at herself. She was tall for a woman, she knew, but her body was flawless, her limbs well rounded without being fat, thanks to the active life she led. She gently slipped her slender hands beneath her breasts, and looked at them critically. They were round, firm, and full. She knew the value that menput on women’s breasts, saw with satisfaction that she would not be found wanting there. Her waist was slender, the hips slim, but pleasingly rounded. Zenobia’s gaze moved upward again in the mirror, to her face, and she stared hard.
    The cheekbones were high, the nose quite straight and classic, the lips full and generous, the chin small, square, and determined. Her eyes, she decided, were her best feature. Almond-shaped, topped by slender, arched, black brows and thickly fringed with black lashes, they were deep gray with tiny golden flecks, like leaves in a winter pond. The color darkened to almost black when she was angry, remaining a deep gray at other times. They were the kind of eyes a man couldn’t resist looking into. Although Zenobia was too young to realize it, her eyes were the mirror of her soul, telling anyone who was wise enough to look deeply into all her secrets.
    “If he does not find you the most beautiful woman in the world then he is blind in both eyes, little sister.”
    Zenobia turned her eyes from the mirror. “It is his favorite concubine I am worried about, Akbar. Men of the desert are susceptible to fair women.”
    “He has not married