in which she'd thought she'd somehow got events confused, with Sahlah's morning retching beginning after Haytham's advent instead of before it, making Haytham the father of Sahlah's child.
But she knew that this was not the case. She knew that Sahlah had been pregnant already when Haytham arrived. Thus his acquiescence to a marriage - taken in conjunction with his utter placidity once informed of Sahlah's sin - could mean only one thing. He'd known about her condition and he'd agreed to marry her anyway. The little bitch was saved, Yumn had realised. She was saved from disgrace and saved from dishonour because Haytham was eager, ready, and willing to take her away from the family home as soon as she wished to leave it.
The situation could not have been one iota more unfair. Having been forced to endure her mother-in-law's extolment of Sahlah's virtues for nearly three years, Yumn had been taking great pleasure in every opportunity she had to torment the girl. She'd heard quite enough about Sahlah's beauty, her artistry with those pitiful baubles she made, her intellectual gifts, her religious piety, her physical perfection, and especially her adherence to duty. Upon that last characteristic of her beloved child, Wardah Malik was fully capable of waxing utterly intolerable. And she had no compunction about invoking the image of Sahlah's earnest docility every time Yumn displeased her.
If she overcooked the sevian, Wardah was good for twenty minutes on the subject of Sahlah's expertise in the kitchen. If she dared to omit one of the five daily prayers - and she was very likely to forgo the namaz of sunrise - she was regaled with a ten-minute discourse about Sahlah's devotion to Islam. If she failed to dust well enough, to scour the bath completely, or to search out every cobweb in the house, her slovenly habits were compared to Sahlah's which were, of course, immaculate. So it had been a source of great enjoyment to Yumn, having a nasty little piece of knowledge to hold over her sister-inlaw's head.
And it had been a source of even greater enjoyment, knowing how she was going to be able to put that knowledge to use for her own benefit.
Yumn had almost had to relinquish all of her dreams about indefinitely holding little Sahlah hostage to her wishes and commands once Haytham declared his intention of marrying her despite her sins. But now Yumn held the girl's future in her palm once again. And in Yumn's palm was where Sahlah Malik so richly deserved to be.
Yumn smiled down at her son. She began to