And there was sex of course. Leo’s experience might be limited. But she realised that the sexual current between her and Amer was powerful by any standards. He would not want to leave that unexplored. She shivered, remembering.
Hari said that Amer had not been short of love. She believed him—if love was what you called it. Those lazy, laughing kisses. The unhurried touch. Even that final glinting triumph. They all spoke of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Skill like that, thought Leo wincing, only came with practice.
She could feel the heat in her cheeks. Oh it was effective, all right. It might not have much to do with love but a woman could forget that in the intoxication of those moments in his arms.
Her memories were too graphic. She banished them, resolutely. It was as well she did. Hari’s confidences had become crucial.
‘Everyone thought he would not marry again after all this time. Your news will be a great joy to everyone.’
Leo gaped. Hari smiled reassuringly and, quite unconsciously, added the final drop to her cup of despair.
‘His Majesty will come round in time. You’ll see.’
In London Amer was in his final and most important meeting. It was not one his father knew anything about, although both the Finance Ministry and the Department of Health had contributed to the paper under discussion. There were four men on the other side of the table.
‘It is all very well,’ said a dark, angry man. ‘But why is it taking so long?’
‘You know why, Saeed,’ said one of his companions patiently. ‘This time it will be different.’
‘Because Sheikh Amer will pretend that these things are needed for his excavation.’ The man was contemptuous. ‘Why is the truth not enough? Our people have poor water and no electricity. Dalmun is not a poor country. We have oil, minerals. And His Majesty buys racehorses and bits of foreign industry! It is an outrage.’
Privately Amer agreed with him. He was too loyal to his father to say so, however.
Instead he said soothingly, ‘Well, as you see from the papers in front of you, the electricity infrastructure will start to be installed next month. After that we start to implement the water conservation project.’
Saeed was not soothed. He was the only man in the room in flowing traditional dress. It kept tangling round the legs of the hotel chairs, as he kicked his feet in frustration.
He said mutinously, ‘We have been waiting too long. People have stopped believing Sheikh Amer’s promises.’
There was a chorus of protest from the other three. Saeed seemed to take confidence from it. He stopped wrestling with his robes.
‘I warn you,’ he said directly to Amer. ‘There will be action.’
Amer broke into the outcry.
‘What sort of action?’ he said softly.
Saeed’s expression became shifty. He shrugged. ‘They don’t tell me. I am too far away. But there will be something.’
‘Another kidnapping?’ Amer said lightly. ‘I’m told it’s starting to be offered as an exciting option for adventurous tourists.’ His eyes were watchful.
‘It is no joke to people who get sick from bad water,’ said Saeed hotly.
‘And I am not laughing at them,’ Amer said at once. ‘But is it sensible to deal with modern problems by thirteenth-century strategies?’
Saeed looked at him with dislike. ‘Maybe we should be more focused,’ he said mockingly.
Amer stiffened.
But Saeed’s colleagues shouted him down so loudly that Amer judged it diplomatic not to pursue the subject. He did not forget it, though. As soon as he came out of his meeting he called Dalmun with an urgent message.
And then he gave instructions to the crew of the private jet which had been on stand-by all day.
A car with screened windows met Leo at the airport. Hari assured her it was to protect them from the sun but Leo was not convinced. It felt as if she were being kept out of sight. Though, when it was Amer himself who insisted on her coming to his country, she could not imagine why. She said so.
‘Not at all,’ said Hari.
He was sweating silently. It was not the first time he had adapted the truth to suit Amer’s purposes. But, under Leo’s sceptical gaze, he found it amazingly difficult to sustain. The gorgeous Julie in Cannes had been a lot easier to deal with, he thought.
As instructed, he took her to Amer’s palace in the foothills.
‘You will be pleased with it,’ he said pleadingly. ‘Amer inherited it from his grandfather and he has kept it traditional. The sunken garden and the courtyard with the fountains are exactly as they have been for centuries. For the rest—well he put in electricity and some modern plumbing, that’s all.’
It was dark by the time they reached the palace. Pushing aside the curtains, Leo saw great wooden gates open silently. They were set in pale walls that must be twenty feet high, she thought.
‘It’s a fortress,’ she said, taken aback.
Just for a moment she thought she caught a glimpse of a mountain ridge against the starlit sky. But then they swept into the courtyard and there were too many people for her to concentrate on the landscape. They surrounded the car with greetings and offers of service.
In spite of the vocabulary Leo had picked up in Egypt, their Arabic was too rapid or too accented for her to follow. She turned to Hari. She had the feeling that all was not well. It made her feel helpless. She did not like it.
Hari assimilated the information fast and, although he hardly reacted at all, Leo was convinced that her suspicions were right.
‘What is it?’ she said in quick concern.
But he was smiling, saying it was nothing, a few administrative matters only. She would be tired after her journey. She would want to rest. A room had been prepared for her in the women’s quarters. Fatima, who spoke English, would show her the way and fetch her a light supper if she required it.
Leo smiled at Fatima, who had gentle eyes and was looking excited by their arrival. But all her instincts told her that something was wrong.
She said sharply, ‘Has there been a message from Amer?’
‘Yes indeed,’ said Hari. ‘He will be here tomorrow afternoon.’
Relieved to be able to tell the truth, he beamed at Leo. She distrusted him deeply. But he was right in one thing at least. After her sleepless night, and the conflicting emotions of the last twenty-four hours, she was exhausted.
So she let Fatima conduct her to a cool, vaulted room. The leaded windows looked out onto a skyline of palm trees. Above them, the stars seemed to quiver with the intensity of their light. A new moon curved like a scimitar slash above the horizon.
She opened the window and leaned out. The scent of the night rolled in at once. The smell was of heat and herbs she did not know. Leo suddenly felt very small and alien. And alone. She shivered.
There was a touch on her arm. She looked round, startled.
Fatima was offering her a small porcelain cup of some golden liquid. It was steaming. Her eyes were kind.
‘Sheikh Amer will be here tomorrow,’ she said comfortingly.
For no reason that Leo could think of, she found her eyes filling with tears. She dashed them away angrily. Tiredness, she thought. That was all it was. The mere presence of Amer—or anybody else for that matter—was not enough to make her feel at home in an alien land. That took time and patience and study; and depended entirely on the effort she put into it herself. Amer was irrelevant.
But it would clearly have been a waste of time to tell this to Fatima. So she shrugged and let herself be shown the beauties of the suite which the Sheikh had ordered to be prepared for her. Apart from the bedroom, there was a bathroom that could rival any she had seen in the most luxurious hotels in the world, a sitting room furnished with exquisitely carved furniture and strewn with jewel-coloured cushions, and a small roof terrace. The terrace was triangular and at its apex there was a statue of a falcon with its beak open.
‘When the wind blows, the falcon breathes,
’ Fatima explained poetically. ‘There is a legend…’
But Leo’s eyelids were drooping. Fatima was sympathetic. She made sure that Leo had everything she needed and left.
Leo wanted to think but she could not. She fell into a bed. And a sleep too deep for dreams.
In the morning, of course, it was different. She awoke with a start, her heart pounding. At first she did not know where she was and the leaded lights in the window looked like prison bars. But then she saw the doors open to the terrace, with full daylight streaming in, and she remembered. She sank back among the pillows with a gasp of relief.
It was quickly succeeded by all the doubts that had beset her yesterday. Where was she? With the curtains closed she had not really been able to detect much of the route they had taken from the palace. Hari had taken charge of everything, including her passport. The prison analogy did not seem so far-fetched after all.
She pulled on yesterday’s clothes and went to look for someone, anyone. She needed to assert that it was she—not Amer and certainly not Hari—who was in charge of her life.
She found them easily enough. Asserting herself was more difficult. For one thing, everyone denied knowledge of Hari’s current whereabouts.
‘Perhaps he has gone to the airport to meet the Sheikh,’ Fatima suggested helpfully.
She was delighted to bring Leo food. She attended assiduously to her comfort. She showed her round the palace and its shaded gardens. And when Leo grew restive, she introduced her to a quiet scholarly man who laid out books and maps and the Sheikh’s archaeological finds for her admiration until Leo thought she would scream.
‘Look,’ she said dangerously, ‘I’m not interested in His Excellency’s leisure activities.’
‘I hope you don’t mean that,’ said a voice from the doorway. An amused voice. One, she now realised, that had whispered through her dreamless sleep.
She swung round and yelled at him, ‘Don’t you laugh at me. Don’t you dare laugh at me.’
Her quiet companion folded maps and retreated rapidly.
‘You’ve embarrassed Hussein,’ said Amer reproachfully.
Leo was shaking. With fury she told herself.
‘Never mind Hussein. Where is Hari? And what has he done with my passport?’ she burst out.
Amer blinked.
‘And welcome home to you, too,’ he said drily. ‘Yes thank you, the flight was quite pleasant.’
‘I don’t care what sort of flight you had,’ shouted Leo, thoroughly upset. ‘I want to get out of here.’
Amer sat down on the other side of ancient map table and folded his hands together into a pyramid. He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Leo glared. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Nobody likes being held a prisoner.’
Amer remained calm.
‘And what has convinced you that you’re a prisoner?’
She made a despairing gesture. ‘I don’t know where I am. Nobody will tell me anything. They just say to wait for you. And they took my passport away.’ To her dismay, her voice choked on this last statement. She looked away.
‘I see.’ He sounded unforgivably calm. ‘Do you want to run away so soon?’
Leo rummaged in her trouser pocket for a handkerchief and failed to find one. She sniffed as unobtrusively as she could.
‘I want to be in control of my own affairs,’ she said when she thought she had mastered her voice again.
There was a pause which she could not interpret.
‘A modern woman,’ he teased. ‘My father will be shocked.’
Leo raised her head, arrested. ‘Your father?’
‘We are having dinner with him,’ Amer told her gravely.
Leo’s heart fluttered in her breast. ‘A-are we?’ she said, uncertain all of a sudden.
He gave her that terrible, tender, deceiving smile. ‘Unless you’d rather take your passport and go, of course.’
Leo wanted to demand her passport and sweep out of the room immediately. At the same time, she wanted him to take her in his arms and tell her that he loved her—and that he wanted her never to leave his side. It was not fair.
Amer sensed her dilemma, it seemed. He stood up and strolled over to an intricately carved cabinet. He opened a small drawer and extracted a little booklet. It was, Leo saw with indignation, not even locked. Amer tossed the passport across to her.
‘There you are, my darling. Your freedom, if you want it,’ he said with irony.
Leo caught it out of the air, like a starving monkey fielding falling fruit. She clutched it to her breast protectively. Amer’s irony deepened.
‘So am I to order the car to take you to the airport?’
To her own complete astonishment Leo heard herself say, ‘No.’
His eyes lifted; lit with a wicked light.
‘Ah.’
‘If your father is kind enough to ask me to dinner, it is only polite to go,’ she said with dignity.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ he said, smooth as silk.
She was sure her colour rose. To disguise it, she looked at her watch in her most efficient manner. ‘Of course, I shall need time to get ready. I’m not sure whether I’ve brought anything suitable to wear. I wasn’t expecting to come to Dalmun when I packed.’
He smiled. ‘I can advise you.’
Leo had a sudden vivid picture of him, inspecting the clothes that Fatima had unpacked for her this morning. Padding around in her bedroom, no doubt as if he owned it. Which of course he did. Her breathing quickened.
‘I think I can manage to sort something out on my own, thanks.’
Amer’s eyes danced. ‘But you will need advice on local conventions of dress.’
‘I’ll ask Fatima,’ Leo said firmly. She was sure her colour was hectic.
He laughed and flung up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘I will tell her that you are to borrow anything you require.’
Leo recoiled. ‘Borrow! From whom?’
Was he suggesting she wear his wife’s clothes? Was this where he told her about his wife at last? Suddenly she did not want to hear about his love for another woman.
He eyed her speculatively. ‘I have guests from time to time. We are out of town here. It is not always possible for them to buy what they need at a moment’s notice. So we keep a few spare clothes for visitors to borrow if necessary.’ He read her mind again. ‘Men as well as women,’ he added kindly.
This time there was no doubt. Leo flushed scarlet. She could feel it.
He laughed again, quite differently.
‘You look agitated. You should rest.’
‘On the contrary,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I slept too long.’
‘Then you have not recovered from the journey yet,’ he said imperturbably. ‘As I have not myself. Let us rest together.’
There was a shattering silence, broken only by the thump of her heart. Leo thought: He didn’t say that. He can’t have said that. He can’t think I’m here to fall into bed with him when he snaps his fingers.
But Hari had said, ‘He wasn’t short of love.’ And she had already fallen into bed with him, hadn’t she? It was no thanks to her that they were not already lovers in all the ways there were.
Amer held out his hand.
She said harshly, ‘You can’t be serious. That is such a cliché.’
He was not put out. ‘I merely suggest what we both want. Where is the cliché in that?’ The grey eyes were warm.
Leo closed her eyes against the allure. If she did not look at him, she would be able to stick to her resolve.
‘It’s feudal.’
‘And are you so modern?’
His voice was a caress. It set little shivers of desire rippling through every nerve ending. Oh, she could close her eyes and maybe her ears but he was in her bloodstream now and her whole body ached to turn to him. It wasn’t fair.
She said, ‘I don’t believe in casual sex.’
He said nothing. Ca
utiously Leo opened her eyes.
Amer had folded his arms and propped himself up negligently against the corner of the table. He did not try to touch her. But he looked as if he was happy to stay there and debate with her forever. Or until she gave in.
‘What sort of sex do you believe in?’ he said in an interested voice.
Leo was thrown off balance. As, no doubt, he had intended, though she did not realise that until too late. Mistakenly she tried to answer him.
‘Oh, when two people know each other. When they—’
‘We know each other,’ he murmured.
She glared. ‘When they have spent time together and know each other’s faults and reached a rational decision—’
He was disbelieving. ‘Rational?’
‘Of course.’
He shook his head. ‘You are even weirder than I thought. What has reason to do with love?’
‘Love,’ said Leo contemptuously.
‘Oh don’t modern women believe in love, either?’
‘We’ll leave my beliefs out of it.’
‘Running away again,’ he said softly.
Leo’s temper surged. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you brought me here because you love me?’ she flashed.
Amer stretched lazily. But his eyes were watchful.
‘Is it so impossible?’
‘You made me a prisoner,’ Leo pointed out. ‘Not very loving, that.’
‘But we are all prisoners when we love,’ Amer said soulfully.
Leo sent him a look of acute dislike.
‘Don’t keep talking about love. It makes me sick. You brought me here because you can’t bear to lose a game,’ she flung at him. ‘Any game, however trivial. And I was winning, wasn’t I? Until I got emotional and handed it to you on a plate.’
For a moment he did not answer. Then he said slowly, ‘You are a very untrusting woman.’
‘I’m a realistic woman. What grounds have I got for trusting you?’
Amer was rather pale. He unfolded his length from the carved table and came towards her.
He said, not laughing at all, ‘But I told you I would marry you.’
The Sheikh's Bride Page 14
