Free To Catch a Bride by Anne Gracíe Page A

little gesture with her bound hands. “Here, there is only Ayisha.”

Four

    H e let you go?” Laila was stunned. “He knocked you out and tied you up, and then he just let you go ?”
    “Yes,” Ayisha said. “He said I was to think it over and go back.” She’d returned to Laila’s house the moment the city gates were unlocked.
    “Go back for Ali—he is all right?”
    “Yes, I told you.” Ayisha had told Laila a dozen times that Ali was all right, but Laila had been up all night fretting and would not be wholly reassured until he was home, safe.
    Ayisha squatted to feed the oven fire. Laila was usually up at dawn to start the baking, but today she was fretting instead. So they’d started the baking late.
    She found the Englishman’s action puzzling, too—more than puzzling—it was disturbing. She didn’t understand what game he was playing, but she was sure it was a deep one.
    “How will we get Ali free? Is it money the Englishman wants?” Laila asked, with a glance at their hiding place behind the bricks.
    “No. He has more money than you and I will ever see in a lifetime.” Ayisha thrust a handful of twigs in the fire.
    Laila pulled off pieces of risen dough and rolled them into balls. “He wants you in exchange for Ali?”
    “Yes,” Ayisha said. The morning air was chilly, so the heat of the oven was a comfort. She washed her hands and face in a bucket of warm water.
    “But he had you. He could have kept you.” Laila kneaded dough briskly. “So why set you free?”
    “He wants me to come back of my own free will,” Ayisha said with irony.
    “And you really are English?” Laila was still not convinced.
    “Half English, yes.”
    “And your father was a lord? And you can speak English?”
    “Yes.”
    “Say something.”
    “Laila is my best friend,” Ayisha said in English.
    Laila pinched her chin affectionately. “And you, little chick, are the daughter of my heart,” she responded in the same language. They stared at each other and laughed.
    “You speak English?” Ayisha exclaimed.
    Laila chuckled. “Not so good as you. I learn when I was girl. I work for English people before I marry. And look at you—all this time, and I never guess you are English girl.” She flattened dough balls into rounds.
    “I’m not. I was born here.”
    “Phhht!” Laila waved that notion away. “Your father was an English lord. That make you English. And all this time you have been hiding in fear, dressed as a boy.”
    Ayisha said, “You know why.”
    Laila waved the reason away with a floury hand. “Of course I know why. But now it will be different. Let this man, this Englishman, take you to this grandmother in England. Why not?”
    “Laila, you know why not.”
    “Pah! They do not know, so why should you care? The old lady will look after you and you will take good care of her, and after she dies you will be rich and own her house and will want for nothing.”
    “I cannot do it.”
    Laila slapped dough balls flat. “What is wrong with you, girl? It is everything you have dreamed of and more.”
    “I know, but—”
    “But nothing. This is the chance you have been waiting for. And if this old woman is indeed your grandmother, you must go to her and take care of her, for she is your blood and you are hers. And this you know is true.”
    Laila dusted flour off her hands and stroked Ayisha’s cheek with the back of her hand. “To have imagined yourself all alone in the world, Ayisha, child—and then to find you have family—it is a gift, a holy gift.” Her soft brown eyes were moist with emotion.
    “But I—”
    “Not you, the old lady. She has lost her husband and her only son and now, when she is in the twilight of her life, alone, lonely, and without hope, here is the beautiful young granddaughter she thought was dead and gone, restored to her. Of course it is a holy gift and you cannot refuse, little one.”
    “But you and I both know it’s not me she wants. You are my family,