Beloved Sheikh
ALEXANDRA SELLERS
THE SEDUCTIVE SULTANSheikh Rafi could have a harem of women… but he wanted bewitching Zara Blake. And just as the prince was about to steal that first, sizzling kiss from Zara, she was stolen from him - abducted by his archenemy!HIS CAPTIVE QUEEN-TO-BEZara's head was spinning - she'd been kidnapped! And her captor was a dead ringer for the prince. Then Rafi appeared with a rescue plan and a promise to make her his queen. Was this a trap… or the only way back into the arms of her beloved sheikh?Powerful sheikhs born to rule and destined to find love as eternal as the sands… SONS OF THE DESERT.
She Was A Stranger In A Strange Land, A Woman Desired By A King. (#uc33647e8-4637-5659-af35-a4b2fdc25e85)Letter to Reader (#ud5010912-bddf-5c8c-a89f-983c09e650cb)Title Page (#ub03d774a-bc43-512a-a195-53f6b0d75474)Dedication (#u4ca6668c-6a71-5f6b-9deb-089dded2ab85)ALEXANDRA SELLERS (#ue30aa044-cce5-54b6-a5e8-3709a2b5cc8b)Rafi’s Inheritance The Sword of Rostam (#u21ffcf5b-4589-5558-8994-380175ba225d)Chapter One (#uc4354fb3-6383-5706-91ca-0fe03c1b0157)Chapter Two (#uc539aea6-8a99-5af3-b51d-9f3024fd44f7)Chapter Three (#uf194eea5-d007-54d5-ba86-50406aec951d)Chapter Four (#u2c51830c-a858-5a18-9fe9-ac720dfc471e)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
She Was A Stranger In A Strange Land, A Woman Desired By A King.
Suppose Zara gave in to Prince Rafi for one night, or one week, or... What would it mean, in the end? Did kings let women go, after they had loved them, or did they guard them jealously, not willing that any other man should ever have the power of being compared with the king as a lover?
Zara heard a clinking sound, and something that sounded like a horse whinnying. In sudden alarm, she lifted her head.
“Who’s there?” Zara called, realizing she had been a fool to come wandering in the desert on her own. She ran light as wind toward the sheltering rocks. Damn the moonlight!
Then a black horse reared up in front of her. Out of the shadows, a body bent down and dark hands reached for her.
The prince?
She clung to him for safety; there was nothing else to do.
Dear Reader,
Why not sit back and relax this summer with Silhouette Desire? As always, our six June Desire books feature strong heroes and spirited heroines who come together in a highly passionate, emotionally powerful and provocative read.
Anne McAllister kicks off June with a wonderful new MAN OF THE MONTH title, The Stardust Cowboy. Strong, silent Riley Stratton brings hope and love into the life of a single mother.
The fabulous mimseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES concludes with Undercover Groom by Merline Lovelace, in which a sexy secret agent rescues an amnesiac runaway bride. And Silhouette Books has more Fortunes to come, starting this August with a new twelve-book continuity series, THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS.
Meanwhile, Alexandra Sellers continues her exotic SONS OF THE DESERT series with Beloved Sheikh, in which a to-die-for sheikh rescues an American beauty-in-jeopardy. One Small Secret by Meagan McKinney is a reunion romance with a surprise for a former summer flame. Popular Joan Elliott Pickart begins her new miniseries, THE BACHELOR BET, with Taming Tall, Dark Brandon. And there’s a pretend marriage between an Alpha male hero and blue-blooded heroine in Suzanne Simms’s The Willful Wife.
So hit the beach this summer with any of these sensuous Silhouette Desire titles...or take all six along!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Please address questions and book requests to
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Beloved Sheikh
Alexandra Sellers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is dedicated to my niece
Jessica Sellers Stones,
that rarest of creatures—a poet
ALEXANDRA SELLERS
was born in Ontario, and raised in Ontario and Saskatchewan. She first came to London to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and fell in love with the city. Later she returned to make it her permanent home. Now married to an Englishman, she lives near Hampstead Heath. As well as writing romance, she teaches a course called “How To Write a Romance Novel” in London several times a year.
Because of a much-regretted allergy, she can have no resident cat, but she receives regular charitable visits from three cats who are neighbors.
Readers can write to her at P.O. Box 9449, London, NW3 2WH, England.
SHEIKH’S RANSOM, Prince Karim’s story, April 1999
THE SOLITARY SHEIKH, Prince Omar’s story, May 1999
BELOVED SHEIKH, Prince Rafi’s story, June 1999
Available only from Silhouette Desire.
Rafi’s Inheritance The Sword of Rostam
To Prince Rafi’s lot fell the Kingdom of East Barakat, a land of richly varied landscape, extending from marshlands at the seacoast, through the broad desert with its ancient remnants of civilisations long dead, to the broad flowing river called Happiness, and into the mountains, where his palace lay.
To him also was given the great Sword of Rostam. This fabulously jewelled and inscribed sword had, according to the ancient story, once been the battle sword of the great hero Rostam. Since that time, any King of Barakat who drew the sword in anger signalled to his people and to the enemy against whom he drew it that there should be no respite from battle until one or the other was vanquished. Once the Sword of Rostam was drawn, negotiation was no longer possible.
Therefore a king must be very certain of his ground before drawing the Sword of Rostam.
There was once a king of ancient and noble lineage who ruled over a land that had been blessed by God. This land, Barakat, lying on the route of one of the old Silk Roads, had for centuries received the cultural influences of many different worlds. Its geography, too, was diverse: it bordered the sea; then the desert, sometimes bleak with its ancient ruins, sometimes golden and studded with oases, stretched inland for many miles, before meeting the foothills of snow-capped mountains that captured the rain clouds and forced them to deliver their burden in the rich valleys. It was a land of magic and plenty and a rich and diverse heritage.
But it was also a land of tribal rivalries and not infrequent skirmishes. Because the king had the ancient blood of the Quraishi kings in his veins, no one challenged his right to the throne, but many of the tribal chieftains whom he ruled were in constant jealousy over their lands and rights against the others.
One day, the king of this land fell in love with a foreign woman. Promising her that he would never take another wife, he married her and made her his queen. This beloved wife gave him two handsome sons. The king loved them as his own right hand. Crown Prince Zaid and his brother were all that he could wish for in his sons—handsome, noble, brave warriors, and popular with his people. As they attained the age of majority, the sheikh could look forward to his own death without fear for his country, for if anything should happen to the Crown Prince, his brother Aziz would step into his shoes and be equally popular with the people and equally strong among the tribes.
Then one day, tragedy struck the sheikh and his wife. Both their sons were killed in the same accident. Now his own death became the great enemy to the old man, for with it, he knew, would come certain civil war as the tribal chieftains vied for supremacy.
His beloved wife understood all his fears, but she was by now too old to hope to give him another heir. One day, when all the rituals of mourning were complete, the queen said to her husband, “According to the law, you are entitled to four wives. Take, therefore, my husband, three new wives, that God may bless one of them with a son to inherit your throne.”
The sheikh thanked her for releasing him from his promise. A few weeks later, on the same day so that none should afterwards claim supremacy, the sheikh married three beautiful young women, and that night, virile even in his old age, he visited each wife in turn, no one save himself knowing in which order he visited them. To each wife he promised that if she gave him a son, her son would inherit the throne of Barakat.
The sheikh was more virile than he knew. Each of his new wives conceived, and gave birth, nine months later, to a lusty son. And each was jealous for her own son’s inheritance. From that moment the sheikh’s life became a burden to him, for each of his new young wives had different reasons for believing that her own son should be named the rightful heir to the throne.
The Princess Goldar, whose exotically hooded green eyes she had bequeathed to her son, Omar, based her claim on the fact that she herself was a descendant of the ancient royal family of her own homeland, Parvan.
The Princess Nargis, mother of Rafi and descended from the old Mughal emperors of India, had in addition given birth two days before the other two wives, thus making her son the firstborn.
The Princess Noor, mother of Karim, claimed the inheritance for her son by right of blood-she alone of the wives was an Arab of noble descent, like the sheikh himself. Who but her son to rule the desert tribesmen?
The sheikh hoped that his sons would solve his dilemma for him, that one would prove more princely than the others. But as they grew to manhood, he saw that each of them was, in his own way, worthy of the throne, that each had the nobility the people would look for in their king, and talents that would benefit the kingdom were he to rule.
When his sons were eighteen years old, the sheikh knew that he was facing death. As he lay dying, he saw each of his young wives in turn. To each of them again he promised that her son would inherit. Then he saw his three sons together, and on them he laid his last command. Then, last of all, he saw the wife and companion of his life, with whom he had seen such happiness and such sorrow. To her willing care he committed his young wives and their sons, with the assistance of his vizier Nizam al Mulk, whom he appointed Regent jointly with her.
When he died the old sheikh’s will was revealed: the kingdom was to be divided into three principalities. Each of his sons inherited one principality and its palace. In addition, they each inherited one of the ancient Signs of Kingship.
It was the will of their father that they should consult the Grand Vizier Nizam al Mulk for as long as he lived, and appoint another mutual Grand Vizier upon his death, so that none would have partisan advice in the last resort.
Their father’s last command had been this: that his sons should never take up arms against each other or any of their descendants, and that his sons and their descendants should always come to each other’s aid in times of trouble. The sheikh’s dying curse would be upon the head of any who violated this command, and upon his descendants for seven generations.
So the three princes grew to maturity under the eye of the old queen and the vizier, who did their best to prepare the princes for the future. When they reached the age of twenty-five, they came into their inheritance. Then each prince took his own Sign of Kingship and departed to his own palace and his own kingdom, where they lived in peace and accord with one another, as their father had commanded.
One
A horseman, his companions lined on either side, his black charger beneath him, galloped across the desert under the morning sun, while the wind scorched his face and lungs, and his horse’s tail streamed out behind. His companions, in high spirits with the impromptu race, laughed and called, their voices ringing on the air as they urged their mounts on.
Some distance ahead of them, beyond a harsh rocky outcrop enclosing a few date palms, stood the fallen white stone pillars of an ancient ruin, encircled by the low green roofs of tents. But it was not towards this settlement that they headed. The goal of the race was the rocky outcrop and its sparkling waterfall and pools. The rider on the black broke from the rank with a cry, surged ahead of the others and passed through a narrow defile in the rock walls, one arm and his horse’s tail high in the air to signal his triumph.
His companions followed closely, but the gap was torturous and some were obliged to check their mounts as others passed in. Three who were hot behind were in time to see their leader halt his snorting mount abruptly and give a smothered cry. Then they, too, pulled up in amazement.
To see a woman in the desert is not entirely unexpected, of course. To see a half-naked, perfectly formed beauty of delicate stature standing under the waterfall of their favourite resting place, her curling black hair streaming down around her shoulders and back as she raised her face and arms to the cool torrent, was like something out of the ancient tales.
Still unconscious of their presence, for no doubt the sound of their hooves had been smothered by the thunder of water in her ears, the girl lazily moved out of the stream of water, opened her eyes, and saw them. Her eyes and mouth opened wide for a moment of startled stillness as she stared at the dark, handsome horsemen all around her.
There was silence. Then the girl stepped a little away from the waterfall on the rock ledge and said gravely, “Salaam aleikum.”
Her accent was foreign, and so was her cool, haughty dignity, the faint air of challenge. The leader gazed speechlessly. She was lovely as a gazelle, the water drying on her skin as he watched, leaving it soft and glowing, her mouth the perfect bow of the ancient paintings that adorned his palace, her wet hair a wild mane of curls that the paintings also showed. Her breasts were high and rounded, her hips slim but very female. Her bathing suit was a soft colour that matched her lightly browned skin. Her legs were slender and curved, her bare feet sure on the smooth wet rock.
His brain stupidly told him that she was one of the Peri of the old tales. In a moment she would disappear.
Around him his men flicked him glances and waited for their lord to speak. Her dark eyes, too, were upon him. Her eyes had been drawn to him from the first, and she seemed to realize that he was their leader.
He gazed steadily at her. When the silence stretched too long he saw alarm kindle behind her gaze, and then, still speechless, he saw decision there and watched aghast as she turned and agilely began to climb the dangerous rock face beside the falling water. It was not a long way up to that other small pool above. In a moment, just as in the tales of Peris, she had indeed disappeared.
Around him, his men began to talk and exclaim. The leader shook himself as if from a dream. He realized that, from the moment of their entering the place, no more than a minute or two had passed. In so short a space of time, his world had changed.
“What the heck is happening out there?” Gordon asked. Most of the team were already sitting around the long lunch table by the time he arrived, stepping under the long green canvas roof with relief and pulling off the hat that was an absolute necessity for anyone working under the blazing sun.
“Haven’t you heard?” squealed Lena, delighted to have someone to pass the news on to, since she herself had been one of the last to hear. “That’s the tent of the sultan himself going up.”
Gordon blinked, but whether it was from his eyes’ difficulty in acclimatizing to the shadow or from astonishment was impossible to say.
“We’ve all been invited to dinner tonight, the whole team,” Ryan, the site director, informed him. “Those are his minions out there preparing for the feast.”
Gordon strode to the edge of the canvas shelter and gazed out over the desert to where the circular red-and-blue tent was going up. “It looks the size of a football stadium,” he observed mildly. “How many of us does he think there are?”
Gordon was English and it was a point of honour with him never to show excitement. Zara had seen the facade crack only once—when the first clear evidence was found that they really were at the site of ancient Iskandiyar, that all his educated guesswork had paid off at last. This would be the crown of his long career as an archaeologist They had all stood around cheering and jumping for joy then, and Gordon had joined in. No mere feast laid on by the Prince of East Barakat would evoke such a response in him, though.
“He asked for exact numbers,” Zara said now, “but who knows how many of his own court will be in attendance?”
Someone said, “What’s the point of it all? Why is he doing it?”
“To welcome us to his country, according to his messenger.”
“We’ve been in his country for three months.”
“The wheels of princes grind slowly.”
“I suppose it’s possible that someone finally gave him the message I sent telling him that we had found the gates that confirm that this is ancient Iskandiyar,” said Gordon.
“Maybe he figures it’s time to check up on us in case we’re about to find treasure.”
“He’s as rich as a sheikh already,” said Warren.
“He is a sheikh,” Lena pointed out in her scratchy, breathless voice. “He’s not married, either,” she went on. She was completely unaware of the non sequitur, and when the shout of laughter went up she looked around.
“Why are you all laughing? He really isn’t, I heard it on the radio. Don’t you remember when that woman was kidnapped by the sheikh of West Barakat awhile ago when that guy stole something from him?” Of course they all remembered, they had talked of nothing else for days. “Then she ended up engaged to him. They said then that his two brothers weren’t married.”
Lena sighed, making them all laugh again. She blinked at the grinning faces around her and shrugged goodhumouredly. “All right, what did I say this time?”
“Nothing, Lena, it’s just that you’re so obviously hoping that this one will kidnap you,” Zara told her kindly.
“Oh, am I that obvious? Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?”
Zara shuddered involuntarily. She still hadn’t told the others about her experience at the wadi. Partly because she knew she would get blamed: they had all been warned that there were bandits in the desert and they should never venture off the dig unaccompanied. But there was more to her reluctance to talk about the incident than that.
She had felt so exposed when the bandit chief—she supposed he must have been that—had stared at her. It was as if her whole being had stopped for a moment while he had entered like a conqueror and taken possession. Even now she wasn’t sure what had given her the strength to break out of the prison of his gaze and climb the rock face. Or why he had let her escape.
She had been terrified that when she got to the other side of the outcrop he and his men would be waiting there, and when he was not she had run, slipping and gasping, sobbing with exertion, all the way to the camp, not looking back, but with every cell of her body listening for the sound of hooves.
She knew that Lena was a fool to fantasize about being kidnapped—it must be a dreadful, hellish experience, and if that had been the bandit’s impulse she was glad he hadn’t acted on it. And yet there was a part of her that was sorry to think she would never see him again... sorry that...
“Listen, that reminds me,” she said now, still unwilling, but knowing it had to be confessed. “I think I ran into that bandit and his men.”
That got their attention. Some of them choked on their coffee, and everyone’s eyes were on her. “Where?” two or three demanded at once.
“I went to the wadi early a couple of days ago,” she said softly.
“By yourself?” said Gordon. “Zara, that was very unwise.”
“Yes, well, I won’t do it again. They galloped in while I was standing under the waterfall. I didn’t hear a thing. I opened my eyes and there they all were, on horseback, snorting and stamping.”
“The bandits were snorting and stamping?”
They laughed lightly, but this was serious and no one was pretending it wasn’t. “Did they see you? How did you get away?”
Zara swallowed. She was not sure why she was so reluctant to tell them the details. “I went up over the rocks and ran like hell.”
“If they’d seen you they could have caught up with you, on horseback,” someone said. “They must not have seen you.”
Zara said nothing, got up and wandered over to the fridge to get a cold drink, then leaned against it, drinking and staring out over the site, leaving the rest of the team to talk over this latest development.
She was amazingly lucky to be on this dig, which was now certain to make archaeological history. The fourth- and third-century B.C. city called Iskandiyar had been mentioned by several classical authors. Its whereabouts had puzzled modern archaeologists, though, because it was described as being on the banks of the river which now bore the name Sa’adat, Happiness. For more than a century travellers had searched in vain for some sign of it. Such an important city should have left extensive ruins.
Some had even suggested that the classical writers were confused, or inaccurate . . . but Gordon had never doubted them. Gordon had researched Iskandiyar throughout his career, and one day had stumbled on a much later reference to the fact that, “in her lifetime Queen Halimah of Barakat built bridges and tunnels and many public buildings. She changed the course of rivers, even the mighty River Sa’adat, when it suited her...”
That was the clue he needed. If the course of the river had been changed eighteen hundred years after the city had been built, then it followed that the city’s ruins would no longer be on the banks of the river.
By good luck and good timing, Zara was taking Gordon’s classes during the time that he found a possible site in the desert south of the river, and by even better chance she had graduated by the time his funding was in place. And best of all, he had offered her a place on the team.
Until they had uncovered the massive marble lion from the sands of time, there could be certainty only in their hearts. But the classical authors had described Iskandiyar’s “Lion Gates,” and now it was proven almost beyond doubt. This was a city founded by Alexander the Great on his victorious Eastern march more than two thousand, three hundred years ago. Not long after his conquest here, he would weep because there were no more worlds to conquer.
And now here she was, finding history and making it at the same time Zara gazed out at the white pillars that shone so harshly in the fierce sun. She wondered sometimes about Alexander’s tears on that occasion. Had there been a hollow inside him that he could ignore as long as he kept on the move, kept fighting, kept conquering all he met and saw? Was it a lack in his own life rather than the lack of new worlds that had made him weep?
Zara wasn’t thirty-three, the age by which Alexander had conquered the then known world, and although to be associated with such exciting success was a wonderful piece of luck for someone so young, she still had plenty of worlds left to conquer. But sometimes she had the urge to weep, because in unguarded moments her life seemed empty. She didn’t understand why. It was as if she had a voice inside telling her she had missed something, had left something out, as though there was something else she should have done or be doing.
She loved her work. She had always loved history, right from the moment she had understood what history was. She enjoyed the mental exercise of trying to understand old ways, the things that had motivated cultures long disappeared. As a child she had been taken on a class field trip to a new archaeological dig on a site in downtown Toronto, and she could still remember her thrilled amazement when she realized that history could be touched, smelt, dug up out of the ground. From that moment she had known what she wanted to do with her life.
Nothing at all stood in her way. She got the marks, she was accepted at the University of Toronto, and Gordon had recognized her commitment and taken her under his wing, as he had several promising students before her, who now had reputations of their own in the field. She couldn’t have asked for a better start to her professional career than to work under a man of Gordon’s calibre on a find of such importance.
Her personal life was comfortable. She had had an easy, fairly happy childhood, and had come through the teenage years with only a couple of years of tears and slamming doors and impossible parents before things had righted themselves. Zara dated only casually, and kept things light. Of course one day she hoped to fall in love, but she was in no hurry.
And yet . . . like Alexander, she wanted to weep.
Why? What was missing from her life? What did she want?
For no reason at all, she was suddenly remembering the piercing eyes of the bandit chief as he stared at her on that morning a few days before. There had been another world in his eyes, a world far from her own neat, comfortable existence. That dark, hungry gaze had promised her a passion, a way of living she had never even dreamed of... till now.
For a moment she thought of what it would have meant if he had come after her... swung her up on his horse and ridden away with her. They said he might try to take a hostage, but he had not looked at her like a man who sees a potential hostage. Zara shivered at the memory of how he had looked at her.
She had run harder, faster than she had ever run in her life to escape him. Her heart had never beaten so hard. She closed her eyes, shutting out the glare of the sun on the desert, but the bandit’s eyes were still with her.
Two
The preparations at the sheikh’s tent went on all afternoon. Helicopters flew in, disgorging lines of people carrying food and supplies, and took them away again; men came and went in Jeeps and on horseback. Except for a moment when it seemed as if the half-erected tent would blow away in a sudden breeze, no shouting was heard, there was no running. Everything was done with an orderly calm and neatness that, as Lena said, made the archaeological team feel “sort of like a low-budget film.”
One thing the women were all agreed upon, and that was the necessity of dressing in their best for the feast. By common consent everyone downed tools early to take time to prepare. One of the volunteers produced an iron and asked if she could plug it into the generator lead. The other women fell on this with cries of delight.
“How wonderful! Whatever made you think of it, Jess?”
“I didn’t. My mom packed for me. I told her I’d never use it, but she insisted.”
“I kiss your mother. Please thank her from all of us in your next letter!”
“I don’t have an ironing board, though.”
“A towel! All we need is a towel on one of the tables...”
The men went away scratching their heads.
There were lineups for the shower and for the iron, and a lot of excited repartee as people dashed to and fro. Fortunately nearly everyone had something suitable to wear, since everyone had expected to be sampling the city nightlife of the Barakat Emirates some time or other during their stay. But some—the lucky ones—had what Gordon called “the full monty.” Including Gordon himself, who stunned everyone when he appeared just before time in white tie and tails and polished shoes.
“Can’t let the side down,” he said by way of explanation when the others fell back in amazement at this vision of British Establishment eccentricity.
“Gee, Gordon,” Lena said in stunned tones, “it’s just like one of those films—you wearing all that in the desert and all.”
Blonde Lena herself got the prize for feminine magnificence in a low-cut, blush pink dress under a matching gauzy pink georgette coat embroidered in the Eastern fashion with lots of silver thread.
But it was Zara who really stopped them in their tracks. Small and slender, wearing a beautifully simple, high-necked, long-sleeved white dress in heavy raw silk that hung straight and smooth to her bare brown feet in delicate gold sandals, her curling cloak of hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, one gold bangle at her wrist, she was a vision. Lena eyed her with mock dismay.
“I dunno, you kinda make me feel overdone,” she observed plaintively. But a chorus of voices assured her that many men preferred the obvious, and large numbers of those who did were Oriental potentates.
“And me,” said one male voice. Greg moved to her side and mock-ferociously put an arm around her, leering down into her cleavage. “Any Oriental potentate is going to have to get past me first.”
“That’ll take about a minute,” another man observed.
Lena giggled and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Greg, as if I’d look at you if the prince wanted me!”
“Right, are we all here?” said Gordon’s dry voice above the nervous, excited banter. “Before we start, may I just remind you all that we will very likely be sitting on cushions on the floor, and that it is considered rude in this part of the world to direct the soles of your feet at anyone. So don’t think you can lie stretched out with your ankles crossed and feet pointing towards the prince. You sit with your feet tucked under you, one way or another. In addition—” He gave them several more pointers and then consulted his watch and said, “Right. Time we were off.”
And in a column of twos and threes they left the dining enclosure and began to move across the sand in the direction of what they were still laugingly calling the sultan’s tent.
They had barely set out when they saw lights, and a moment later they were greeted by a party of servants with flaming torches and a man dressed in peacock blue magnificence who bowed and introduced himself as Arif ur-Rashid, Cup Companion to the Prince.
“Very flattering,” Gordon muttered into Zara’s ear. “By tradition the further the king or his emissary comes to meet his guests, the higher the honour. We’ve been met effectively at our own doorstep. Very nice indeed I think we can look forward to a substantial feast. Pearls in the bottom of our wine goblets and told to keep them sort of thing.”
Zara gurgled into laughter. She was one of the few who recognized when Gordon was joking, and his eyes glinted approvingly down at her.
But it wasn’t quite so much of a joke as he had imagined. All the archaeological team gasped with awe when they passed through the doors into the tent.
It was like entering Aladdin’s cave. Everything glowed with richness and warmth. The colours were deep and luxurious—emerald, ruby, sapphire, turquoise. Every inch of walls, floor and ceiling was hung and draped with carpets, tapestries, or beautifully dyed cloth, and the furniture—of walnut, mahogany and other unknown, fabulously grained woods—had such a deep polish it seemed as if it would shine “even if no fire touched it ”
All the light came from naked flame, or flame under delicately painted or cut crystal globes that sent light shimmering around the room like a thousand flung diamonds. And all around them were handsome men in exotic dress introducing themselves as the Cup Companions of the prince. The team felt as if they had stepped back centuries in time, straight into the pages of the Arabian Nights.
One of the Companions had visited the dig earlier in the afternoon, and had been introduced to every member of the team by Gordon, and now they were all greeted by name. For several minutes they made conversation.
Then the heavy sound of a helicopter was heard close by. There was an expectant pause, during which the team found it impossible to chat normally. All of them were surreptitiously watching the entrance. Suddenly a group of men erupted into the room, talking and laughing, and bringing a vital and very appealing energy with them. As one man, the Companions in the room turned and bowed.
The new arrivals were all just as exotically and colourfully dressed as the Companions, and the brilliance of the prince himself was breathtakingly unmistakable.
His long, high-necked jacket was cream silk and seemed to be studded with pinpoints of green light from elbow to wrist and around the collar. His flowing Eastern trousers were deep green. Diagonally across his breast he wore a cloth-of-gold sash, and a double rope of absolutely magnificent pearls at least a yard long was looped and draped over his chest, and fixed at one shoulder with a ruby the size of an egg. He had a lustrous black moustache and thick, waving black hair, which, like the heads of all his Companions, was bare. His fingers were clustered with a king’s ransom in gold and stones.
He put up one arrogant hand in a gesture that in any other man would look, Zara thought, ridiculously theatrical, but in him seemed perfectly natural and engaging. Smiling broadly, he recited something in Arabic, and then said in English, “It is very kind of you all to come to my poor table. May so propitious an occasion be blessed.”
The efforts of the team to think of some suitable response would have made Zara laugh if she hadn’t been similarly dumbstruck herself.
Prince Rafi recognized Gordon in the throng and strode to his side to greet the director, where Arif joined him. The prince chatted briefly to Gordon and then Arif introduced Maeve, then followed the prince slowly through the room, introducing him to each member of the team. The prince tilted his head solicitously to each and shook their hands, exchanging a few words before moving on.
He made his way around the room and at last appeared at Zara’s side. Now she was aware of two things not quite so obvious from a distance—a heady yet elusive scent of sandalwood or myrrh or something similar, and the powerful physical aura of the man. He was not tall, but he exuded power.
“Miss Zara Blake, Your Highness,” said Arif, and a well-shaped, graceful hand was extended to her. Aware that she was blushing, Zara flicked her eyes to his face as she put her hand into his. “Miss Blake, His Serene Highness Sayed Hajji Rafi Jehangir ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi.”
The name rolled off his tongue like poetry.
“Miss Blake, it is a very great pleasure,” said the prince in a tiger’s fur voice, with such emphasis she almost believed him.
“How do you do, Your Highness,” Zara murmured, finding that, whatever her democratic principles, her head seemed to bow of its own accord. Dimly she supposed that was the definition of true royalty—when you couldn’t help bowing.
“I hope your stay in my country will be long and fruitful,” he said.
Zara looked up again, but found that she could not meet his dark eyes for long. She blushed even more warmly, though she had hardly blushed in her life. “Your Highness is very kind,” she murmured.
She expected him to move on then—he had only exchanged a few words with each of the others—but to her surprise he asked, “Your name is Zara?” He pronounced it with a little explosion of air on the first vowel. Zahra.
“Yes.”
“This is a very beautiful name. In my language it means both flower and splendour, beauty.” Without saying it, he managed to imply that she was well named.
“Ah . . . oh.”
“Are your parents perhaps Arabic speakers?”
“No . . . my father’s background is French and my mother—” she shrugged and tried to smile “—just plain Canadian. Sort of mixed.”
Zara was amazed to find herself so stumbling and confused. It was not at all like her, and she was furious with herself. He was a prince only by the luck of birth, and his compliments were no more significant than anyone else’s! There was no reason to start blushing like a fifteen-yearold. A glance around the room showed her that the others had noticed his interest. Passionately she wished he would move on to the next team member.
He did not. She looked at him again in time to intercept the tiniest flick of his long black lashes to Arif ur-Rashid.
The Companion nodded, raised his mellifluous voice slightly for attention, and said, “Here in Barakat, ladies and gentlemen, we do not follow the Western custom of preliminary drinks and hors d’oeuvres while standing. You are invited now to sit at the prince’s table.”
The wall behind Zara suddenly opened, and only then did she notice the big wooden arch she had been standing in front of, revealed as a doorway as servants lifted the heavy draperies that had closed it.
Prince Rafi lifted his arm. “Allow me to escort you, Zara.”
At the sound of her name on his lips, Zara stiffened a little. Okay, this had gone far enough, and it was going to stop right here, before she found herself ensconced in the harem.
“Thank you, Rafi,” she said coolly, and put her hand on his arm.
He smiled into her eyes and drooped his eyelids with pleasure, tilting his head in acknowledgement. Zara gasped a little. She was a fool to play games in so different a culture. She had no idea what message she had just sent him. For all she knew she had already said yes to a postprandial romp.
And, she recollected somewhat belatedly, she had more than herself to think of. The whole future of the dig was under this man’s sole sway. He could wave one graceful, masculine hand and the desert would be clear of them tomorrow.
The archaeological team filed after them through the arched doorway and into the dining room, where they stopped amazed, cries of astonishment soft on their lips, and feeling just a little, Zara thought, like barbarians seeing civilisation for the first time. Among them, the Companions moved with polished grace, inviting them individually to sit.
Prince Rafi led her all the length of the room while Zara gazed in unaffected delight at the spectacle before them. Dozens—hundreds!—of multicoloured silk and tapestry cushions lay massed around the long, low rectangular table that stood about six mches off the ground. It shone with cut crystal and painted porcelain, silver and old gold. Down the centre of the table and all around the walls could be seen the flicker of numerous flames under the most artistically painted glass globes. Against one wall there was a large fountain—she couldn’t believe it, but it was a real marble fountain, and the sound of the softly splashing water was better than music. All along the opposite wall, panels had been rolled up to allow the gentle night breeze to cool them, and the moon and the stars and the desert to form part of the decor. Zara had never seen anything to equal it in her life.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said quietly, and Prince Rafi smiled.
“I am very happy to please you, Zara.” He led her to the farther end of the table. The smell of cooking food rose deliciously on the air.
Prince Rafi stopped and guided her to a place. He stood beside her, and with a curious sinking elation she understood that she had been chosen to sit beside him during the meal. A Companion was on his other side, and next to the Companion was Gordon. All around, the others were finding their places, and in a moment it became clear that every second or third place was taken by one of the Cup Companions.
Prince Rafi raised his arms and gestured them to sit. Zara settled herself among the most comfortable cushions she had ever sat on in her life, and tucked her feet neatly beside her. She turned to find that Arif ur-Rashid was on her other side.
Music started playing. Several musicians with stringed and other instruments—some of which she had never seen before—had come in and settled in a corner and were playing a soft accompaniment to the coming meal.
Arif clapped his hands, and a small army of white-clad boys and girls appeared, each boy carrying a pitcher, each girl a basin, all in silver chased with gold. They approached the table and knelt by the diners. One girl knelt between Prince Rafi and Zara, and, balancing the basin on her knee, offered the prince a bar of soap. He spoke a few gentle words, and she blushed and turned to Zara, offering her the bar. Grateful that Gordon had warned them of the ritual, she took the offered bar and washed her hands lightly under the flow of water that the boy produced from the pitcher.
When Zara had finished, the girl reached to take the soap from her, but her hand fell back as Prince Rafi’s own hand stretched across the basin. Her heart beating hard with unaccustomed confusion, Zara slipped the perfumed soap into his hand. His dark hand closed firmly on the slender white bar, and Zara’s mouth opened, gasping for more oxygen than seemed to be available. She watched transfixed as he stroked the bar of soap into a lather between his hands, then, as if without volition, felt her gaze drawn upwards to his face.
He was watching her, a half smile in his dark eyes. Slowly, lazily, he set the soap in the basin and held his hands under the stream the boy carefully poured. The scent of rosewater mingled with the other subtle scents assailing her nostrils.
“The towel is offered you, Miss Blake,” said the prince, and she blinked and smiled at the worried girl who was holding the soft oblong of fabric up for her.
“Thank you,” she said. She dried her hands and watched as the prince did the same. Then the boy and girl moved away to join the phalanx of water bearers, who all bowed and then filed neatly out of the room.
Almost immediately another group of servants filed in, bringing with them this time the welcome, delicious odour of food. Within the next few minutes a feast appeared. Some dishes were placed on the table, some were carried around and offered to the guests. The beautiful silver and gold goblets were filled with water and wine and exotic juices.
After the bustle had died down, Prince Rafi lifted his gold cup. “I extend to all members of the archaeological team my congratulations on the important historical site which you have discovered and will no doubt in the years to come excavate, to enrich the knowledge of my country’s and the world’s ancient history. In particular, I commend Mr. Gordon Rhett, whom I know well from those occasions when he visited and wrote to me in his enthusiasm for this project.”
He turned and saluted Gordon with his glass, and everybody drank.
“But now is not the time for speeches. The pleasures of the mind are offered when the pleasures of the flesh have been satisfied.” He invited them all to eat and drink, but Zara could hardly take in the words. When he said those words, “the pleasures of the flesh,” it was as if his body sparked with electricity so strong she received a shock from it. She was covered in gooseflesh.
She thought, I’m helpless already. If he really does want me, I won’t be able to refuse.
Three
It became clearer and clearer as the evening wore on that Prince Rafi had eyes only for Zara. Whether he was speaking to the whole room, or to an individual, or listening or silent, there was a kind of glow around the two, apparent to almost everyone in the room. Several times, as if hardly realizing it, the prince would break off what he was saying to lean over and encourage Zara to try the most delicious tidbit on the platter that was being offered, or to signal the cupbearers to refill her glass, or to ask her with an intimate smile whether she liked some flavour.
When the whole roast sheep came in, he regaled them all with the story of the time his father had, according to custom, made the grand gesture of giving one of the sheep’s eyes to his most honoured guest—the British Ambassador. He mimicked the British Ambassador’s false expressions of gratitude.
He was a magical storyteller, with the knack of making people laugh. “Did he have to eat it in front of everyone?” Zara asked.
Prince Rafi turned lazily approving eyes upon her, which shocked her system as if with an unexpected touch. “My stepmother, my father’s first and most beloved wife, was then a new bride. She was sitting on the other side of the Ambassador. Just after the sheep’s eye was served to him, my stepmother had the misfortune to knock over her water glass. The ambassador certainly put something into his mouth and ate it with great enjoyment. But it was rumoured that my stepmother afterwards berated my father and made him swear never again to offer sheep’s eyes to a foreign guest.”
They were all laughing. Rafi watched in admiration how Zara’s neck arched, her eyes brimming over with mischief and merriment, her black lustrous curls falling just so with the tilt of her elegant head.
“My stepmother was a foreigner herself,” he said then. “She understood the ways of foreigners, and she gave my father much good advice. She was of great assistance to him in his rule. He always said so.” He paused. “They were much in love, all their lives.”
He said this gazing right at Zara. The laughter died in her, and heat crept visibly up her cheeks. She was beginning to be a little angry now. Making eyes at her was one thing. This was getting ridiculous. She was starting to feel like an idiot.
She returned his look coolly. “It didn’t stop him taking other wives, though, did it? She was not, after all, your own mother.”
Instead of chilling him, this comment had the effect of making his eyes spark with interest, as if she had betrayed jealousy and he counted that a point in his favour. “Ah, you do not know my father’s tragic story!” Rafi exclaimed, He looked around at the musicians. “Where is Motreb? Ask him to come forth.”
A man in curious dress entered carrying yet another unfamiliar stringed instrument not unlike a banjo. “Motreb, I ask you to sing for my friends the song of my father’s love,” cried Prince Rafi.
He leaned to Haroun on his left and murmured a word in his ear, and when the singer-storyteller settled himself to sing the song of the great king who fell in love with a bewitching foreigner, the Companion got up and stood beside him. Between the plaintive lines, Motreb paused, playing his instrument, while Haroun translated the story of King Daud.
“‘And will you take no wife but me? You cannot swear to this, quoth she.’”
Zara, who had never heard the story, was entranced, both by the tale itself and by the haunting ululating melody of the singer’s voice.
“‘I will. I swear. No wife but thee . . .’”
Then she heard the story of how King Daud had married the stranger and to the great joy of his people, had made her his queen. And how thirty years of happy marriage and two sons followed, giving no warning before disaster struck in the shape of a fatal air crash. The king and queen mourned long.
“‘We have lost our beloved sons, my husband. And though with all my heart I would give you more, I am old . . . your promise, too, made in the sweet blossom of youth, is old. I say it is no more. It has died with our sons. Take therefore, my husband, three young wives, and get a son for your kingdom, that this land may remain what men call Blessed.’”
Zara’s eyes burned as the tragic voice sobbed out the story. Somewhere on her right she heard a sniff, Lena probably, which made her own control slip. She dropped her head, surreptitiously pulling a tissue out of her bag with one hand, and dabbed her eyes.
Her free hand was taken in a firm but gentle hold, and her eyes flew to Prince Rafi. He drew her hand up, gave her a long, slow, dark and sexy look, and kissed her knuckles once, twice. Not a simple pressure of the mouth, either, but a dragging pressure from parted lips, his eyes half closed, as if he wanted to eat her. Her body seemed to melt in spite of all her determination to be unaffected. Her heart had been knocked from its moorings and lay kicking helplessly in her breast.
After that, she had trouble swallowing. Never had she experienced so public or so determined a seduction. When the song was over, Prince Rafi himself poured wine into a silver goblet for the singer, who drained it to find a large pearl at the bottom as his reward. He bowed and retired, and there was a pause in the entertainments and the buzz of conversation arose.
The song was followed by stories from one or two Companions, then by gymnastic young performers, then by a very artful belly dancer in the most bewitching costume Zara had ever seen, then by another song. All the artists seemed to be paid with jewels or gold, in scenes straight from the Arabian Nights.
Meanwhile, the food came in a never-ending supply. And so did the approving looks from Prince Rafi’s dark eyes. Zara’s heart seemed to kick into a new, higher, faster rhythm with each look.
He was staggeringly charismatic—handsome, virile, with a smile women probably jumped off cliffs for. But he was also a desert chieftain, however rich, and her own inner response to his admiration frightened her. A girl should have some resistance if she was going to be propositioned, and Zara felt she had no more resistance than a kitten.
When the last empty tray had been carried away, small silver salvers laden with soft Turkish delight in powdered sugar began to make the rounds, and there seemed to be general movement among the guests, led by the Companions. But when Zara tried to get up, Prince Rafi’s firm hand was on her arm. And she was too much of a coward to resist the implied command.
After a few moments, Prince Rafi made a signal to the Companion named Ayman, who had changed his seat and was now lounging on the cushions beside Lena, to the obvious displeasure of Arif. With a nod to his prince and then to Lena, the Companion got to his feet and left the room.
“It was a tradition among my forebears to give robes of honour to those who had performed some signal service,” Prince Rafi began. “Since each of you contributes to the overall achievement of proving not only that the great Iskandar, whom you call Alexander, visited this land, but also uncovering the city that he himself founded, it is my pleasure to reward each of you with the traditional robe of honour. Even so would Alexander have been presented with a robe by my own predecessor.”
At that moment, Ayman returned, leading a train of the boys and girls who had been the water bearers at the start of the evening. Each youth was the bearer this time of a neat cube of folded cloth, all of different colours, in stripes or swirls or solids, glittering with gold and silver threads. Each knelt at the side of one member of the team and offered the robe.
There were loud squeals of surprised and appreciative delight from all the women, but the men, too, were clearly very pleased. People began jumping to their feet to unfold the robes and try them on.
A pretty girl, gazing in deep admiration at Zara, knelt beside her, her arms full of glittering cloth. Zara thanked her. The child flicked a glance at Prince Rafi, who nodded approvingly. To Zara’s surprise, the girl smiled affectionately at the prince, who winked at her, before bowing and departing.
“Who are these servant children?” Zara asked.
Prince Rafi laughed. “They are not servants! They are young courtiers. They are the younger sisters and brothers of my Companions, or my own cousins... all are educated at the palace. As well as academic subjects and languages, they learn the rules of hospitality.”
All around, people were on their feet, trying on and admiring their robes. “Oh, my!” Zara exclaimed breathlessly, as she began to examine her own gift. It seemed to be made of spun gold, and embroidered with fabulous designs in red and green. She had never seen anything so rich and lustrous outside of a medieval painting. “But it’s beautiful!” she whispered helplessly. “I can’t possibly...”
Not far away, Gordon was standing up to model his own very rich robe. Hearing her cry, he glanced down and gave her an admonitory look, which she interpreted as meaning that it would be a grave insult to refuse a robe of honour. If she insulted the prince, the dig might be history. She knew they were hoping to convince the prince to contribute the funding they would need to keep it going beyond this season.
“It’s very beautiful,” she murmured, drawing her feet under her haunches and struggling to stand gracefully amid the cushions. But her foot was on the hem of her dress and before she knew what was happening she had fallen straight onto Prince Rafi.
His arms quickly caught her, and his eyes closed as her long black hair spilled over him. The robe of honour tumbled from Zara’s hands and was splayed out around them, glittering in the lamp flame like something magical, a thing of inestimable value.
Prince Rafi inhaled, his eyes closing, and murmured in her ear, “The perfume of your hair would drive a man mad. I have dreamed of you, waking and sleeping.”
As a tableau it ranked with the most beautiful miniature paintings in the prince’s own extensive collection. Even the Companions were not proof against it. Everyone in the room was frozen in some posture, half with their arms in their robes. All eyes were on them. If she were not so covered with embarrassment, she could have laughed at the picture of so many startled, curious, gawking faces.
But it was her own reaction that was the danger. Zara felt molten, like the golden robe, electrified by the man’s touch, his whispered words.
“I—I’m so sorry,” she stammered, struggling from his grasp to her feet. “I don’t know what made me so clumsy.”
“Do you not?” he smiled. He solicitously helped her to gain her feet.
“Ah... well...” She hardly knew what she was saying. Trying for calm, for the ordinary—so far as anything in this remarkable evening could be called ordinary—Zara lifted the robe and put it on.
It was breathtakingly beautiful, utterly rich and luxurious. It fanned out at the back in a broad curving sweep to the floor, while in front it was cut shorter, the hem just skimming her toes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Trying to give her breathing room, Gordon sat down and said to Prince Rafi, “I think I should tell you that one of our team saw a group of mounted bandits the other morning. There seemed to be quite a number of them, and I’m afraid our security may not be sufficient.”
Prince Rafi’s head straightened with surprise. “Bandits!” he exclaimed. “So near! We do not often see Jalal on our side of the river. His headquarters is in my brother’s land. Where, exactly, were they seen?”
“At the wadi. Members of the team go there to relax away from the heat whenever they get a chance. Everyone has been warned not to go off the site alone, but I’m afraid the waterfall there is very tempting.”
“At the waterfall?” Rafi repeated, in a different voice. He turned his head towards Zara, who had sat down to listen. “When, and how many?”
Zara smiled. “It was three days ago. I didn’t stop to count their numbers. I just took one look and ran! But I think there were ten or twelve, anyway. All on the most magnificent horses.”
He was watching her intently. “Were you frightened?”
“Terrified,” she agreed without emphasis.
“Their captain—did you see him?”
“I think so,” Zara told him, repressing a shiver at the memory of the bandit chief’s gaze and her own reaction to it. Not much different from the response Prince Rafi raised in her. Maybe she had a weakness. “There certainly was one man with an air of command.”
“And he—did he see you?”
That passionate black gaze rose up in her mind’s eye, and, pressing her lips together, Zara only nodded.
“But you were not taken? Twelve men and you escaped?”
“I don’t think he—they tried. I am sure if they had ridden out of the enclosure and around—well, on horseback they could have caught up with me before I got back to the tents.” Her mouth was dry, she didn’t know why. Something she had noticed but which hadn’t filtered through to her conscious mind was making her uneasy.
“Then he is a fool,” said Prince Rafi. “When a man sees what he wants, should he not take pains to achieve it instantly?”
Zara smiled. “Maybe he didn’t see what he wanted,” she said, and shivered, knowing it was a lie. The bandit chief had wanted her. There must be something about her that appealed to the Arab temperament, too.
A marriage made in heaven, then, she told herself dryly.
“What man would not have wanted you, so beautiful under the fall of water, your limbs bare and your skin so silken? He must have been jealous even of the eyes of his companions for the fact that they also saw the vision. If he did not pursue you across the sand and catch you up on his horse then, it can only be because he had other plans to obtain you. Did not King Khosrow fall madly in love with Shirin when he caught sight of her bathing? And he stopped at nothing to gain her.”
It was the naked passion in his eyes, more than anything else, that told her the truth. He had been veiling it from her all evening, letting her see only a portion of what was there. But now she saw again the black flame of complete and determined need burn up behind his gaze.
Her hand snapping to her open mouth, Zara gasped, an electric sound that caused conversation everywhere to stop. Her hand slowly lowered, while her eyes gazed helplessly into his. Take away the white keffiyeh that had enwrapped the bandit’s head and chin...
“A man would do all in his power,” Prince Rafi promised her softly.
“It was you!” she whispered.
His black eyes fixed hers, letting her read the truth. That was the reason, then, for the prince’s sudden interest in the team, for this dinner . . . she saw it all..That was why he had singled her out.
His Serene Highness Sayed Hajji Rafi Jehangir ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi was the man at the wadi she had thought the bandit chief.
Four
Zara succeeded in tearing her eyes away from the prince’s at last, and glanced up to see that the gaze of every member of the archaeological team was rivetted on her. The Companions, more socially skilled, pretended not to notice, and were making light conversation to their inattentive neighbours.
She really couldn’t think. She needed air, and solitude.
“Excuse me,” she said. Struggling to her feet again, the coat billowing and glowing behind her, Zara walked down the length of the room, past little clusters of people who tried to cover their fascination with chatter but could not help following her with their eyes.
Outside, the full moon glowed on the broad desert, its sweeping dunes, the tents of the archaeological team in the distance, and closer, the outcrop where the tall palms that surrounded the pool and waterfall were just visible above the rocks.
Pressing her hands to her hot cheeks, the robe billowing behind her, Zara moved towards it. There was a narrow defile in the rocks from this direction, dark now with moonshadow, but she knew her way through. Soon she was inside, listening to the rushing sound of the falling water.
It was Gordon’s theory that this was the original course of the river, before Queen Halimah, in one of her public projects, had diverted it, and that an underground stream remained as testimony, forced to the surface here by some geological fault, to form the delicious waterfall and its pools before disappearing underground again.
She was walking where Alexander the Great had probably once walked. Zara sank down on the rocks by the pool and dipped one hand in, leaning over to press the cool water to her cheeks.
The moon was strong, casting black shadows under the walls of rock, but she sat in full moonlight, and it glistened on the water, on her hair, and on her golden robe.
It was two thousand, three hundred and thirty years since Alexander had come here with his armies, but humankind had not changed very much. Men were still consumed by jealousies and passions . . . and sex was still like this river...try to divert it, and its power went underground, to force its way up at any weak spot...
She did not know what to do about Prince Rafi. That there was a powerful attraction between them she couldn’t, wouldn’t try to deny. She had felt it for him when she thought him a bandit, and finding him a king had certainly not lessened its force.
But she was a stranger in a strange land, a woman desired by a king. She had no idea what dangers awaited her if she gave in to what she felt, what he wanted. She spoke only a little of the language, knew not nearly enough about the country and its culture. Her knowledge of the area was all of the distant past, and she wasn’t sure that the autocratic powers and ways of the ancient kings whose names she knew had altogether passed into history.
Suppose she gave in to him, for one night, or one week, or . . . what would it mean, in the end? Did kings let women go after they had loved them, or did they guard them jealously in their harems, not wanting them, but not willing that any other man should ever have the power of being compared with the king as a lover?
Ridiculous. She was sure that was ridiculous. But what was not ridiculous was the fear she felt. The thought of letting him make love to her frightened her. No man had ever made her so nervous.
She heard a clinking sound, and something that sounded like a horse blowing. In sudden alarm, Zara lifted her head.
She was beautiful, a white dress and a flowing golden robe, and her black curling hair another robe over her shoulders and back, like the descriptions by the poets. Her face a painting, the eyebrows darkly curving, the mouth a perfect bow. The mountain tribes had their tales of the Peri, the race of Other, whose tiny beautiful women enticed men and disappeared, but this was the desert. Behind her the moon shimmered on the rustling water.
This was the one. There could not be another.
“Who’s there?” Zara called, trying to keep any sign of nerves from her voice, realizing she had been a fool to come wandering out here on her own. “Who is it?”
Suddenly the place seemed eerie, full of danger. Zara shivered and got to her feet. What a fool she was! What if Prince Rafi followed her out here? What if he had construed her movements as an invitation?
She heard a footfall. The waterfall disguised everything, but she thought it came from the passage. It was Prince Rafi. She knew it, and panic filled her blood with the urgent command to flee. She ran light as wind towards the sheltering rocks. Damn the moonlight! It caught in the glittering robe and would betray her whereabouts even in the darkest shadows.
Zara turned her head this way and that, peering through the gloom, trying to remember the layout of the place. There was a niche somewhere, a place to hide, but the shadows were very black. There was no time to think. She flung herself into the unknown.
Then she shrieked as the black horse reared up in front of her. Out of the shadows a body bent down and dark hands reached for her. The prince! My God, is he mad? she thought, in the moment before the strong hands grasped her, the powerful arms lifted her, and she felt the horse beneath her thighs and her face was smothered against his chest.
She clung to him for safety, there was nothing else to do. He had already spurred the horse to a wild gallop, and to fall now might kill her. Her heart pounded deafeningly in her ears. In the tiny part of her mind that remained cool, she had time to think, I didn’t scream. I suppose that counts as an invitation in this part of the world.
She couldn’t scream now—she was pressed into his chest, almost smothered. She smelled the odour of male sweat and desert and horse in the all-encompassing burnous he was wearing over his clothes, and the hairs lifted primitively on the back of her neck.
The smell was not right. He had been sandalwood and myrrh, and another scent, all his own, that was missing now.
In the same moment she heard a curse resonate in the chest under her cheek, and the horse veered wildly and half reared, throwing her harder against him. For a moment, one arm loosed her and he wrestled with the reins, and Zara lifted her head and saw a man flung to the ground by the horse’s powerful forequarters as they rode past.
In the moonlight the colour of his coat seemed purple, but he was impossible to mistake. Prince Rafi leapt to his feet and gave chase as she watched, but the horseman had goaded his horse into a violent gallop and in seconds he was left far behind.
She screamed then, loud and long, but it was too late. All around her stretched the glow of moonlight on the wide, bleak, empty desert. Fear was nearly overwhelming. She gasped and choked, but before she could scream again the strong hand came up and pressed her face into the stifling folds of the burnous.
She was afraid of falling off the horse as it made its headlong plunge down a cliff of sand, but the suffocating hold was too firm. The sickness of terror was in her throat and she wondered which would be worse—what the bandit had in mind for her, or being crippled or killed under the sharp hooves.
She must get calm. She gained nothing by thinking of what lay ahead. She had to plan. She had already missed a crucial opportunity. If she had not believed it was Prince Rafi on the horse, she might have . . . but it was no use thinking of that, either. She should think of escape now.
“If you struggle I will tie you over the saddle,” the man grunted as she stirred. “If you scream I will knock you on the head.” Shivers of terror chased up and down her spine at the threat in his voice. He sounded like a man who said what he meant, who would stop at nothing.
“I can’t breathe!” she cried, and he must have some humanity, she thought, because he let her turn her face into the air.
He kept one hand over her mouth, her head pressed back against him. Zara impatiently forced her stupid mind to think. There must be something she could do! They would follow her. Prince Rafi, Gordon—they were sure to chase the bandit. They might already be in the helicopter. And there were the Land Rovers, too.
He had thought of the same thing, she realized, for after a time she could not measure they left the sand and entered an area of stony ground they had been galloping at an angle to for some time, and here he turned the horse so sharply that it was almost facing back on its own path. He had ridden away from the camp towards the east, but now she thought they were headed west north west. How long would it take the searchers to give up on the easterly direction and search other possibilities?
Far to the left now on the clear desert air they heard the sound of the helicopter beating the air. Her head was pressed firmly back against the bandit’s chest, but she could just see the light in the distance that told her the helicopter had a searchlight. If only she could leave some sign, some signal of the way they had gone! Something that would shine in the searchlight . . . her sandals were gold.
She still had both her sandals on. It seemed impossible, after all that had happened. There was a little strap between each toe, fanning out to a lacy pattern over her instep. She had never realized before how firmly they held.
Slowly, trying not to think of what she was doing lest the bandit pick up the thought, Zara worked one sandal off her foot and kicked it free. She didn’t look back, didn’t try to see how it had fallen. It might be days before it was found, if ever. A few miles later she let the second sandal drop.
The helicopter was going the wrong way, carefully following the horse’s first easterly direction. The sound grew faint. Her captor’s firm hold on her slackened. “They will not hear you now, if you scream,” he told her. But the horse’s pace continued.
Her hip felt bruised and she shifted to a more comfortable position. The golden robe was billowing in the wind. She pulled at it, amazed to find that she was still wearing that, too. “Where are you taking me?” she asked. Her throat was hoarse.
“To my camp.”
“Isn’t your camp on the other side of the river?”
He glanced down at her, the moonlight full on his face, and did not answer. She caught her breath on a gasp.
“You look like Prince Rafi!” she whispered.
The man laughed, flinging his head back. “Do I so?”
Fear chased up and down her spine. “Who are you?”
“Have not you been told tales of me? I am Jalal the Bandit, grandson of the great Selim.”
“Who—” Zara began, but he interrupted her.
“Do not waste your breath with asking questions. I will answer nothing and we have a long, hard way to go.”
He hadn’t been exaggerating. Zara had lost track of time. She had rarely been on a horse for longer than an hour, and she was sitting sidesaddle, one hip thrust higher than the other in a posture that became increasingly uncomfortable as the time passed. She was glad when numbness set in, but even that was painful.
“I must blindfold you now.”
She surfaced from the daze she had sunk into, and wondered how long they had been riding. The horse was covered in lather, and obviously miserable, but doing his best for his master.
Jalal lifted an arm and pulled the large keffiyeh from his head. “Wrap this around your head and eyes.”
They must be near some landmark that she would be able to identify. She prayed that this meant that he intended to keep her alive—for otherwise why bother about what she saw?—and sobbed once with the relief of a fear she hadn’t been letting herself feel.
She cast one last glance around her, trying to memorize the scene, imprint it on her mind, as she reached to take the cloth and wrap her face in it. Ahead there was a mound of rock, made huge with shadow. She thought she heard the sound of running water in the distance, but the desert was full of moonshadows that made it hard to distinguish features.
A buffet of wind caught them then, and her golden robe suddenly snapped and billowed out behind her.... Zara thought, It’s the one certain marker I could leave—if she could drop it without his noticing. If they found it, Prince Rafi would recognize it, she was certain. He would know that she had passed this way... if anyone, nomad or trader, ever passes this way, she told herself ruthlessly. And if the wind hasn’t buried it, and if the nomad takes it to his prince . . . but she had to try something. If she gave up hope now she was lost.
Under cover of wrapping her head, Zara released one arm from the beautiful robe. Now it was held on only by one arm. She finished wrapping the scarf around her eyes. Then blindly, inch by inch, working by touch alone, she drew the robe into a bundle in her lap.
The horse, very tired now, struggled on for minutes while she nearly suffocated with fear behind the constricting cloth. At last it was reined to a very slow walk. Zara tensed for action. She sensed an echo, their approach to something large. They were about to enter some place. Pulling her arm from the robe, she screamed and began to struggle.
She was no match for the bandit’s strength, and her rebellion lasted hardly more than a second. But the robe was now loose in her hands. “Bend down, it is low,” he ordered curtly, pushing her flat against the horse’s neck and bending over her. This was her last chance. Lying over the horse’s neck, Zara dragged the crushed robe from under her and flung it away. A moment later the sounds told her that they were entering something like a cave.
“Cover your face,” he ordered again.
Behind them, the golden cloth glittered for a moment in the moonlight as it fell to the desert floor.
Rafi ran all the way to the helicopter and pulled futilely at the door before he realized that Ammar had locked it. Precautions against Jalal, he reflected grimly, but this would give the bandit a head start he would probably never lose. Rafi ran back towards the tent, calling for the Companions. But the party was noisy, drowning his cry as it had drowned the sound of the horse and Zara’s scream.
By the time he had reached the tent again, he knew too much time had passed. The bandit could be heading anywhere, and in darkness his trail would not be easy to follow. At last Rafi was close enough for his cries to be heard, and the party was silenced. There were shouts, and the Companions came spilling out of the tent on the alert. All the archaeological team followed, calling questions.
Rafi curbed his impatience to be gone, told them what had occurred, and gave orders for some to take the land vehicles in a search that would be virtually useless. Even if they could find the trail, the land vehicles would not be able to follow everywhere a horse led.
“He galloped east till he was out of sight,” he said. “But he is not a fool. He might be headed anywhere.” Seconds later he set off running across the sand back towards the helicopter, with Arif and Ammar silently pacing him.
“What a fool to have set no guard tonight!” he berated himself as they flung themselves into the cockpit and Ammar started the rotors slowly beating.
“Shall we go to his camp, or follow his trail?” demanded Arif as they lifted off.
“Follow his trail,” said Rafi briefly, straining to see against the deep moonshadows on the desert.
“His camp is still on the other side of the river, is it not?” Ammar said, as he flicked on the landing light. All three peered out, but this was not a military helicopter and it was not a powerful searchlight. “He can only get across if he goes to the bridge. Why not meet him there, Lord?”
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