“Oh. I didn’t…I thought…”
“We’ll return to the palace tomorrow, I’ll put you on a plane and send you home.” His voice, and his hands, gentled. “And then you can put what happened here out of your mind.”
Put it out of her mind. She’d exchange wedding vows, then put them out of her mind?
“Megan? Do you see how simple this is?”
She looked at Caz again. His gray eyes were steady on hers. He looked like a man who’d just suggested an appropriate dinner menu instead of a marriage, calm and pleasant…except for a tiny flicker of muscle beating in his jaw.
“It isn’t as if the ceremony will have any real meaning.”
“No. I understand that now.”
“All you’ll have to do is play the part of obedient female a little longer.” Caz’s voice roughened. “Obedient, and eager.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ahmet wondered why I hadn’t married you already. It was an excellent question, and I answered by telling him I’d wanted to wait until I could plan an extravagant celebration but that being alone with you these past days had been difficult for me. For you, as well.” Caz slid one hand up her throat; he could feel Megan’s pulse drumming beneath his fingers. “A man doesn’t sleep with the woman he intends to wed,” he said huskily.
Megan nodded. It all made perfect sense. Her head told her so. Her heart was the part of her having a problem. She’d never really thought about marriage but surely if you did decided to say “I do,” it was supposed to have some meaning.
Wasn’t it?
Weren’t you supposed to look at the man you were marrying and feel giddy with excitement? Weren’t you supposed to want his kisses? Weren’t you supposed to want to be with him all the time, to talk to him and yes, argue with him, and laugh with him…and feel everything she felt for Qasim?
The room tilted. Caz tightened his hold on her.
“Kalila. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Something was happening already, but how could she tell him that?
“Besides,” he added softly, “we have no choice.”
His eyes darkened; his gaze fell to her mouth. Later, she would wonder who made the first move, she or he. Not that it mattered. His kiss consumed her, burned away what little remained of reason and replaced it with his taste, his scent, his strength.
Shaken, she stepped back.
“No choice at all,” he said, and left her.
Time slowed to a tortoise’s pace.
Caz didn’t come back. She hadn’t expected him to. Wasn’t there some tradition about a bridegroom not seeing his bride on their wedding day?
And wasn’t that a sad attempt at humor? Megan thought, as she paced back and forth. She wasn’t a bride and Caz wasn’t her groom. They were two people trapped in a nasty game of treachery, and the sooner they got things finished here, the better.
The one person she half expected to see was Hakim, coming to demand she not go through with the wedding…but why would he do that? Hakim would know, as she did, that the next few hours would be a farce.
In midmorning, her serving women showed up with platters of food and pitchers of fruit juice. Their sullen expressions were gone. Now, they approached her with their eyes cast down.
Megan waved the food and drink away. One mouthful of anything and her stomach would revolt. Farce or not, it wasn’t every day she stood at an altar and said “I do.”
The women sat down and watched her. They giggled and whispered to each other. They shot her little looks filled with meaning, poked each other in the ribs and giggled again. She’d gone to enough bridal showers to know what was going on.
“Trust me,” she said, “it’s not like that.”
The youngest of them drew a deep breath. For courage, obviously, because a few seconds later, she spoke.
“The sheikh is very handsome.”
Megan raised her eyebrows. “You speak English?”
“The sheikh is very handsome.”
Megan hunched down in front of the girl. “Tell me, please, what will the wedding be like?”
“The sheikh is very—”
“Handsome,” Megan said glumly, and rose to her feet.
So much for speaking English. So much for finding out what lay ahead. So much for anything, except pacing and pacing, and telling herself this would all be over in a little while.
This wasn’t the way a bride was supposed to feel.
Not that she’d ever thought much about being a bride. Why would any woman want to give up her life?
That was what you had to do, even if the books said you didn’t, even if her oh-so-independent big sister had taken the plunge. Fallon might have forgotten the great lesson of their childhood. She hadn’t. She’d grown up watching their mother put aside her own needs for her husband’s pleasure. Mary would settle into a new place, start turning a usually decrepit four walls into a home, make a few friends and then Pop would come home one night, filled with enthusiasm for some new get-rich-quick scheme, and announce that it was time to move on.
What men wanted always came first. That was just the way it was. Some women were okay with it, but she wasn’t one of them.
Wasn’t it a damned good thing this marriage would only be a sham?
She looked out the window, where trails of fog wound around the stunted scrub as they had last night.
Twenty-four hours, and nothing had changed.
Twenty-four hours, and everything had changed.
Real or not, nothing would be the same after tonight. She had the weirdest feeling, as if someone had popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and the bubbles were effervescing in her blood.
What if the wedding were real? There was no harm in imagining that. What if Caz had come to her and said, Don’t think. Don’t ask questions. Don’t ask for logic, because there isn’t any. I only know that I want you more than life itself. Marry me, Megan. Stay with me forever.
What would her answer have been?
No, of course.
That’s what she’d have told him, wasn’t it? Or would she have gone into his arms, forgotten what she knew of marriage, forgotten that she knew this man only a handful of days.
Would she have brought his mouth down to hers, whispered her answer against the warmth of his lips?
Her throat constricted. She swung around and stared at the silent women.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t—”
The door swung open. Two more servants bustled into the room, hands and arms filled with silks and cashmeres and jewels.
Megan turned to the girl who’d spoken those half dozen words of English.
“Help me,” she begged. “Please, get me out of here! I don’t want to marry the sheikh. I can’t—”
The women descended on her like wolves on a lamb. Megan shrieked, struck out in desperation, but there were eight of them and one of her. They stripped her of her clothes, dumped her in a wooden tub that appeared as if by magic, washed her body, her hair, dried and perfumed her.
“Stop it,” she kept saying, “damn you, keep your hands off me!”
Maybe they thought it was a game. Maybe tradition said the bride was supposed to put up a fight. Nobody listened, nobody paid attention, nobody even spoke to her until she was dressed and hung with jewels.
Then the two eldest women dragged her in front of the full-length mirror that had appeared at the same time as the tub.
“Look,” the youngest woman, the one who’d pretended not to speak English, said.
Megan looked. And stared at what she saw.
The glass was old. Some of the silver backing had worn off; in other places, her reflection seemed to shimmer like waves on the sea.
But the image was clear enough to make her catch her breath.
Looking back at her was a stranger, a seductive creature draped in jewels that were ancient and beautiful, her hair woven with flowers, her body draped in royal-blue silk.
/> Something old, she thought giddily, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
“You see?” the youngest of the women whispered.
Yes. Yes, she saw. They had changed her. Megan O’Connell was gone. In her place was—
“The sheikh’s bride,” the young woman whispered.
Less than an hour later, that was who she became.
The ceremony was long and probably beautiful.
If she’d been watching it in a travel film, that’s how she’d have described it. An enormous room lit by candles. A pathway, strewn with rose petals. An altar. A canopy, at any rate, made of royal blue silk shot with gold.
And Caz, waiting for her. Caz, in a white silk shirt and black breeches with riding boots the color of the night. Caz, his face serious, his eyes locked to hers. Words spoken by Ahmet, who’d managed to look human for the occasion. Caz’s husky responses, her choked “Yes” when he told her it was time to say the word. And then a roar went up from the throats of Ahmet’s men, and Caz’s arms went around her, and the roar grew louder as he crushed her mouth beneath his.
“You are my wife,” he said softly, and she told herself it was all a game even as her arms went around his neck and she drew his head to hers for another deep, deep kiss.
Hands reached for her. Women’s hands. Laughing, they dragged her away, surrounded her, tugged her along with them while the men did the same thing to Caz. The women brought her to another room, seated her on an intricately carved chair that stood on a high platform. The men seated Caz beside her. Music—the hot beat of drums, the haunting cry of a flute—filled the room.
The women danced. The men strutted. There were platters of food and endless glasses filled with a liquid that had no color.
“Don’t even take a sip,” Caz said, leaning toward her.
Megan looked at him. My husband, she thought. He’s my husband. “Poison?” she whispered.
“Of a sort,” he said solemnly. “It’s what got me so polluted last night.”
He grinned. She laughed. How strange, to hear such an American word in such a foreign setting. To hear the word on her husband’s lips.
“Stand up, sweetheart.”
“Why?”
“It’s time for us to leave.”
To leave. To be alone with this man who she’d just married. Her heart bumped again. “Won’t that be rude? Ahmet might think—”
“Are you afraid to be alone with me?”
She was afraid of what she was feeling, but how could she tell him that?
“No, certainly not. I just—”
Caz rose to his feet and reached for her, lifting her from her chair and high into his arms. A roar went up from the crowd. She felt a rush of heat along her skin; she wound her arms around his neck and buried her face against his throat as he strode from the room.
“Hold tight, kalila,” he said softly, and she did, clinging to him, inhaling his scent until she was dizzy with it as he crossed the floor, climbed and climbed and climbed a staircase that she thought might be winding its way to heaven.
Hakim called out to them. “My lord! Lord Qasim!”
“Leave us,” Caz growled.
“But my lord…”
Megan lifted her head. They had reached a narrow landing. Hakim stood halfway down the steep staircase. His eyes met hers and the hatred she saw in them made her catch her breath.
A massive wooden door loomed ahead. Caz shouldered it open, then kicked it shut behind him.
They were alone.
She knew it even before he slid her slowly down the length of his body and stood her on her feet. All she could hear was the beat of her heart and the snap of logs blazing on an enormous stone hearth.
Slowly she looked around her. They were in a silk-draped room lit by hundreds of white candles. The sole furnishing was a bed draped in sheer white linen and piled high with silk blankets and pillows.
“Megan.”
Caz put his hand under her chin and lifted it. “It’s all done now, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Nobody’s watching us. You can relax.”
Relax? She almost laughed. Or cried. It was hard to know which was the better choice.
“Megan? Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said briskly. “I just…It’s been a difficult day, you know?”
He knew. She’d begun the day an outcast, a modern-day Rapunzel locked away in the castle of a wicked magician, and ended it the wife of a sheikh.
His wife.
His pretend wife. He had to keep remembering that. The ceremony had been real enough, for Ahmet’s people. Real enough for him, had he chosen to let it be so, but that didn’t mean they were actually bound together in marriage.
The words they’d spoken weren’t in his wife’s language. The ceremony wasn’t part of his wife’s culture.
He wasn’t the man his wife would have chosen for her husband.
And, damn it, she wasn’t his wife.
How come he kept forgetting that?
Caz took a deep breath, then exhaled it slowly. Because he wanted her, that was how come. He’d wanted her from the first time he’d set eyes on her, sharp tongue, fiery temper and all. And now she was his.
How was a man supposed to remember he had no right to touch his bride on their wedding night? The moon was climbing the sky, casting its shy light through the window. The fire was as hot as his blood, the bed an invitation. He imagined what it would be like to undress her by the light of all those candles, watch as they cast shadows on her skin, as he exposed her to his eyes…
Hell.
Caz swung away. He was a man of discipline. A sheikh who had long ago learned to ignore his own needs when he had to. Surely, he could keep his hands off his wife for one night.
His wife, he thought again, and he knotted his hands, dug them deep into his trouser pockets and walked to the far side of the room, deliberately putting as much distance as possible between himself and the woman he could not think of as his bride.
“All right,” he said briskly. “I’ll take some of those blankets and pillows and make myself a bed on the floor.”
“You don’t have to. I trust you. You can sleep…”
“No,” he said sharply. “That wasn’t part of our deal. I’ll sleep on the floor. You sleep in the bed. And at first light, I’ll take you away from here. All this will be over, Megan. We won’t have to pretend this is the way we wanted things to be.”
He almost told her more. That if he lay down in that bed with her, nothing would keep him from taking her.
But this was a charade. She wasn’t his. She never could be.
So he tossed some pillows and blankets on the floor, went from candle to candle, snuffing out all but half a dozen nearest the bed so she wouldn’t be trapped in the dark. Then he got beneath the blankets and turned his back to her.
“Get some sleep,” he said gruffly. “You need it.”
She didn’t answer, but he hadn’t expected her to. By now, she was probably terrified. The strange ceremony. The wild dancing. All of it must have struck her as barbaric.
Caz heard the whisper of silk, the creak of the mattress and shut his eyes to the images that danced through his head. His bride was in bed. He was on the floor. Damn Ahmet, anyway. Damn tradition, and custom, and the world itself.
What good was a kingdom when what a man wanted was—when the only thing he wanted was…
His wife.
CHAPTER TEN
HE HADN’T thought he could sleep but exhaustion reached up, dragged him down into the darkness.
Caz slept. He must have slept, because the next thing he knew, the few candles still lit were sputtering, moonlight filled the room…
And his wife stood by the window, weeping.
Caz was off the floor in a heartbeat. “Sweetheart?”
She kept her back to him, shook her head and fluttered her hands in that way women had of saying Don’t, stay away, I’m fine. But he didn’t believe it, not for a minute, and
when he reached her, he took her gently by the shoulders and turned her to him.
“Kalila. What is it?”
Megan looked up. Moonlight striped Caz’s face; she saw herself reflected in his pupils, a small, pathetic woman crying as if her heart might break, and for what reason? He’d done exactly as he’d promised. Saved her from Ahmet by marrying her, by pretending a wedding was what he’d wanted, by carrying her from the hall in the sight of hundreds of cheering barbarians and bringing her to this beautiful room…
To what should have been her wedding night.
The man she’d married was a man of his word. He’d done all he’d said he would…and her heart was breaking. Until this moment, she hadn’t been brave enough to face the reason. Now, in that deepest time of night when truth is all that matters, she understood her despair.
She hadn’t wanted Caz to bring her here and treat her honorably. She’d wanted him to lock the door, take her in his arms, tell her he was going to make her his wife.
“Megan.”
His voice was ragged as their eyes met. Her heart began to race. Could he read her thoughts? What could be more humiliating than to have him realize that she wanted him?
“Megan,” he said again, in a velvet whisper, and he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.
His kiss was soft; his touch gentle. He held her as if she were made of glass.
Still, she wept.
“Don’t cry, kalila. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
He wouldn’t, not if he lost his life defending her. She was safe now, but he knew what it had cost her. He’d put her through hell, brought her into the lair of a barbarian, forced her into marriage.
When you came down to it, how much difference was there between him and Ahmet?
But she’d accepted his kiss, even moved closer to him, her body pressed to his, taking comfort from his strength.
He rocked her against him, whispered words to soothe her in his own tongue.
She smelled of flowers, night and woman. Caz shut his eyes, buried his face in her hair, let her scent fill him.
His mouth twisted with irony.
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