by Liz Fielding
As he turned on him the boy flinched, stuttered to a halt. But he bravely stood his ground.
‘You’ve done everything that is required,’ he repeated. ‘There can be no doubt that she’s British. Her embassy will take care of the rest.’
‘I will be the judge of when I have done everything required, Zahir.’ Then, irritably, ‘Where is he? The doctor?’
‘He was called to another emergency. I’ll have him paged for you.’
‘No.’ It wasn’t the doctor who held him where he least wanted to be, but his patient. ‘Where is she?’
There was another, almost imperceptible, pause before, apparently accepting the inevitable, Zahir said, ‘She’s in the treatment room. The last door on the left.’
Lucy Forrester was looking worse, rather than better than when he’d carried her into the A and E department.
In his head, he was still seeing her in that moment before she’d fainted, with long hair spread about her shoulders, fair skin, huge grey eyes. Since then the bruising had developed like a picture in a developing tank; her arms were a mess of ugly bruises, grazes, small cuts held together with paper sutures and there was dried blood, like rust, in her hair.
The hospital had treated her injuries—her right leg was encased below the knee in a lightweight plastic support—but the emergency team hadn’t had time to do more than the minimum, cleaning up her wounds, but nothing else. Presumably that was the job of the ward staff.
For now, she was lying propped up, her skin clinging to fine bones, waiting for someone to decide where she was going. She looked, he thought, exhausted.
Her eyes, in that split second before she’d lost consciousness, had been wide with terror. Her first reaction now, starting, as if waking from a bad dream, was still fear and, without thinking, he reached for her hand. Held it.
‘It’s all right, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You’re safe.’
Fear was replaced by uncertainty, then some other, more complex, emotion that seemed to find an echo deep within him.
‘You saved me,’ she mumbled, the words scarcely distinguishable through her bruised, puffy lips.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Lie back. Take your time.’
‘I thought… I thought…’
It was all too clear what Lucy Forrester had thought, but he did not blame her. She’d been hysterical and there had been no time for explanations, only action.
He released her hand, bowed slightly, a courtesy that would not normally be afforded to any woman other than his mother, his grandmother, and said, ‘I am Hanif al-Khatib. You have friends in Ramal Hamrah?’ he asked. Why would a woman travel here alone except to be with someone? ‘Someone I can call?’
‘I—’ She hesitated, as if unsure what to say. She settled on, ‘No. No one.’ Not the truth, he thought. Not the whole truth, anyway. It did not matter.
‘Then my home is at your disposal until you are strong enough to continue your journey.’
One of her eyes was too swollen to keep open. The other suggested doubt. ‘But why—?’
‘A traveller in distress will always find help, refuge in my country,’ he said, cutting off her objection. He was not entirely sure ‘why’ himself, beyond the fact that he had not rescued her from death to abandon her to the uncertain mercy of her embassy. At least with him, she would be comfortable. And safe. Turning to Zahir, he said, ‘It is settled. Make it happen.’
‘But, Excellency—’
Hanif silenced him with a look.
‘Go and find something warm for Miss Forrester to travel in. And send a nurse to clean her up. How could they leave her like this?’
‘It may be a while,’ his cousin said, disapproval practically vibrating from him. ‘They’re rushed off their feet in A and E.’
Lucy watched as her Samaritan impatiently waved the other man away before turning to the cupboards where dressings were stored, searching, with growing irritation until he finally emerged with a stainless steel dish and a pack of cotton wool. He ran water into the bowl, tearing off chunks of cotton and tossing them in to soak.
‘I’m not a nurse,’ he said, turning to her, ‘but I will do my best to make you more comfortable.’
‘No,’ she said, scrambling back up against the raised head-board. ‘Really, there’s no need.’
‘There is every need,’ he said. ‘It will take Zahir a little while to organise the paperwork.’ He didn’t smile, but he was gentleness itself as he took one her hands, looking up in concern as she trembled. ‘Does that hurt?’
‘No,’ she managed.
He nodded, as if that was all he needed to know, and began to gently wipe the damp cotton pads over her fingers, her hands, discarding the pads as each one became dirty.
And it was, after all, just her hands.
It was nothing, she told herself. She wouldn’t object to a male nurse doing this and the man had saved her life. But his touch, as he carefully wiped each finger as if they were made of something fragile and fine, did something unsettling to her insides and a tiny sound escaped her. Not nothing…
He glanced up enquiringly and she managed to mouth, ‘It’s okay.’
Apparently reassured, he carefully washed away the dirt and dried blood from the bruised back of her hand before turning it over to clean the palm. He moved to her wrist, washed every bit of her arm with the same care.
Then he began again on the other hand. Time was, apparently, of no importance.
He emptied the bowl, refilled it. ‘Fresh water for your face,’ he said, and she swallowed. Hands, arms were one thing. Her face was so much more personal. He’d have to get closer. ‘I… Yes…’
‘That’s too hot?’ he enquired, as she jumped at the touch of a fresh pad to her cheek, let out an incoherent squeak.
‘No…’ The word seemed stuck in her throat but she swallowed it down and said, ‘No, it’s just…’ It was just that her grandmother’s brainwashing had gone deep. Bad girls let men touch them. In her head she knew that it wasn’t like that, that when people loved one another it was different, but even with Steve she’d found the slightest intimacy a challenge. Not that he’d pressed her.
He’d assured her that he found her innocence charming. That it made him feel like the first man in the world.
Innocent was right. No one but an innocent booby would have fallen for that line.
While she knew that this was different, that it had nothing to do with what her grandmother had been talking about, it didn’t make it any easier, but she managed a convincing, ‘It’s fine…’ refusing to let fall tears of rage, remorse, helplessness—a whole range of emotions piling up faster than she could think of words to describe them. After a long moment in which the man waited, apparently unconvinced, she said, ‘Truly.’
‘You must tell me if I hurt you,’ he said, gently lifting the hair back from her face.
All she wanted was for him to get on with it, get it over with, but as he gently stroked the cotton over her skin it was just as it had been with her hands, her arms. He was tenderness itself and her hot, dry skin, dehydrated and thirsty, seemed to soak up the moisture like a sponge.
‘I’m just going to clean up your scalp here,’ he warned. ‘I think you must have caught your hair when you were struggling with the seat belt.’ It stung a little. Maybe more than a little because he stopped, looked at her and said, ‘Shall I stop?’
‘No. Really. You’re not hurting me.’ Not much anyway.
Pride must abide.
Words chiselled on to her scalp.
He lifted her long tangled hair, holding it aside so that he could wash the nape of her neck, and she gave an involuntary sigh. If she could only wash her hair, she thought, she’d feel a hundred times better.
‘Later,’ he said. ‘I will wash your hair tomorrow.’
She was smiling into the soft wool keffiyeh coiled around his neck before she realized that he’d answered her unspoken thoughts. She considered asking him how he’d done that. Then waited. If he w
as a mind-reader she wouldn’t need to ask…
There was a tap on the door and someone called out.
He rapped out one word. He’d spoken in Arabic but the word was unmistakable. Wait. Then he laid her back against the headrest and she whispered, ‘Shukran.’ Thank you.
She’d bought a teach yourself Arabic course, planning to learn some of the language before joining Steve. She hadn’t just want to be a silent partner. She’d wanted to be useful. A bit of a joke, that. She’d served her usefulness the minute she’d so trustingly signed the papers he’d placed in front of her.
Hanif al-Khatib smiled at her—it was the first time, she thought. The man was so serious…Then he said, ‘Afwan, Lucy.’
Welcome. It meant welcome, she thought. And she knew he meant it.
In all her life, no one had ever treated her with such care, such consideration, as this stranger and quite suddenly she was finding it very hard to hold back the dam of tears.
Obviously it was shock. Exhaustion. Reaction to the accident…
She sniffed, swallowed. She did not cry. Pain, betrayal, none of those had moved her to tears. She’d learned early that tears were pointless. But kindness had broken down the barriers and, embarrassed, she blinked them back.
‘You are in pain, Lucy?’
‘No.’
He touched a tear that lay on her cheek. ‘There is no need to suffer.’
‘No. They gave me an injection. I just feel sleepy.’
‘Then sleep. It will make the journey easier for you.’ Then, ‘I will return in a moment,’ he said.
She nodded, her mind drifting away on a cloud of sedative. She jerked awake when he returned.
‘I hope you will not mind wearing this,’ Hanif said, helping her to sit up, wrapping something soft and warm around her, feeding her arms into the sleeves.
She had no objection to anything this man did, she thought, but didn’t have the energy to say the words out loud.
‘How is she?’
Hanif had left Zahir in Rumaillah to make enquiries about his guest and now he roused himself to join him in the sitting room of the guest suite.
‘Miss Forrester is still sleeping.’
‘It’s the best thing.’
‘Perhaps.’ She’d been fighting it—disturbed, dreaming perhaps, crying out in her sleep. It was only the sedatives prescribed by the hospital keeping her under, he suspected. ‘What did you discover in Rumaillah? Was the embassy helpful?’
‘I thought it better to make my own enquiries, find out what I could about her movements before I went to the embassy. If you want my opinion, there’s something not quite right about all this.’
‘Which is, no doubt, why you tried to dissuade me from bringing her here,’ Hanif replied, without inviting it.
‘It is my duty—’
‘It is your duty to keep me from brooding, Zahir. To drag me out on hunting expeditions. Tell my father when I’m ready to resume public life.’
‘He worries about you.’
‘Which is why I allow you to stay. Now, tell me about Lucy Forrester.’
‘She arrived yesterday morning on the early flight from London. The immigration officer on duty remembered her vividly. Her hair attracted a good deal of notice.’
He didn’t doubt it. Pale as cream, hanging to her waist, any man would notice it.
Realising that Zahir was waiting, he said, ‘Yes, yes! Get on with it!’
‘Her entry form gave her address in England so I checked the telephone number and put through a call.’
‘Did I ask you to do that?’
‘No, sir, but I thought—’
He dismissed Zahir’s thoughts with an irritated gesture. ‘And?’ he demanded.
‘There was no reply.’ He waited for a moment, but when Hanif made no comment he continued. ‘She gave her address in Ramal Hamrah as the Gedimah Hotel but, although she had made a booking, she never checked in.’
‘Did someone pick her up from the airport, or did she take a taxi?’
‘I’m waiting for the airport security people to come back to me on that one.’
‘And what about the vehicle she was driving? Have you had a chance to look at it? Salvage anything that might be useful?’
‘No, sir. I sent out a tow truck from Rumaillah, but when it arrived at the scene, the 4x4 had gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘It wasn’t there.’
‘It can’t have vanished into thin air, Zahir.’
‘No, sir.’
Hanif frowned. ‘No one else knew about it, other than the woman at Bouheira Tours. What did you tell her?’
‘Only that one of their vehicles had been in an accident and was burnt out in the desert. She was clearly shaken, asked me to describe it, the exact location. Once I had done that she said that I must be mistaken. That the vehicle could not belong to them. Then I asked her if Miss Forrester was a staff member or a traveller booked with them and she replied that she’d never heard of her.’
‘She didn’t want to check her records?’
‘She was quite adamant.’
‘Did you tell her that Miss Forrester had been injured?’
‘She didn’t ask what had happened to her and I didn’t volunteer any information.’
‘Leave it that way. Meanwhile, find out more about this tour company and the people who run it. And Zahir, be discreet.’
CHAPTER TWO
THE room was cool, quiet, the light filtering softly through rich coloured glass—lapis blue and emerald, with tiny pieces of jewel-bright red that gave Lucy the impression of lying in some undersea grotto. A grotto in which the bed was soft and enfolding.
A dream, then.
Lucy drifted away, back into the dark, and the next time she woke the light was brighter but the colours were still there and, although she found it difficult to open her eyes more than a crack, she could see that it was streaming through an intricately pieced stained glass window, throwing spangles of colour over the white sheets.
It was beautiful but strange and, uneasy, she tried to sit up, look around.
If the tiny explosions of pain from every part of her body were not sufficiently convincing, the hand at her shoulder, a low voice that was becoming a familiar backdrop to these moments of consciousness, assured her that she was awake.
‘Be still, Lucy Forrester. You’re safe.’
Safe? What had happened? Where was she? Lucy struggled to look up at the tall figure leaning over her. A surgical collar restricted her movement and one eye still refused to open more than a crack, but she did not need two good eyes to know who he was.
Knife in his hand, he’d told her to be still before. She swallowed. Her throat, mouth were as dry as dust.
‘You remember?’ he asked. ‘The accident?’
‘I remember you,’ she said. Even without the keffiyeh wound about his face she knew the dark fierce eyes, chiselled cheekbones, the hawkish, autocratic nose that had figured so vividly in her dreams.
Now she could see that his hair was long, thick, tied back at the nape with a dark cord, that only his voice was soft, although the savage she’d glimpsed before she’d passed out appeared to be under control.
But she knew, with every part of her that was female, vulnerable, that the man who’d washed her as she lay bloody and dusty on a hospital couch was far more dangerous.
‘You are Hanif al-Khatib,’ she said. ‘You saved my life and took me from the hospital.’
‘Good. You remember.’
Not that good, she thought. A touch of amnesia would have been very welcome right now.
‘You are feeling rested?’
‘You don’t want to know how I’m feeling. Where am I?’
Her voice was cracked, dry, and he poured water into a glass then, supporting her up with his arm, held the glass to lips that appeared to have grown to twice their size. Some water made it into her mouth as she gulped at it. The rest dribbled down her chin, inside the collar.
He tugged on the bow holding it in place and removed it, then dried her face, her neck, with a soft hand towel.
‘Should you have done that?’ she asked nervously, reaching for her throat.
‘Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the collar doesn’t do much good, but the doctor advised keeping it in place until you were fully awake.’
‘Experience? You crash cars that often?’
‘Not cars. Horses.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they crashed me. Polo makes great demands on both horse and rider.’
‘At least the rider has the choice.’ Then, ‘Where am I? Who are you?’ His name and ‘safe’ told her nothing.
‘When I lived in England,’ he said, ‘my friends called me Han.’
‘When I lived in England…’
Her brain felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, but she was alert enough to understand that this was his way of reassuring her that he understood western expectations of behaviour. Why would he do that unless she had reason to be nervous?
‘What do your enemies call you?’ she snapped back, pain, anxiety, making her sharp. She regretted the words before they were out of her mouth; whatever else he was, this man had saved her from a terrible death. But it was too late to call them back.
His face, his voice expressionless, he replied, ‘I am Hanif bin Jamal bin Khatib al-Khatib. And my enemies, if they are wise, remember that.’
Her already dry mouth became drier and she shook her head, as if to distance herself from what she’d said. Gave an involuntarily squeak of pain.
‘The doctor prescribed painkillers if you need them,’ he said distantly.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She was finding it hard enough to think clearly as it was and she needed all her wits about her. Needed answers. ‘You told me your name before,’ she said. Only this time there was more of it. Steve had explained about the long strings of names and she knew that if she could decipher it she would know his history. ‘Bin means “son of”?’
He bowed slightly.
‘You are Hanif, son of Jamal, son of…’
‘Khatib.’
‘Son of Khatib, of the house of Khatib.’ The name sounded familiar. Had Steve mentioned it? ‘And this is your home?’
