‘Abandon.’ A shiver of delight ran up her spine. ‘I would very much like to behave with abandon,’ Constance said. And there was so very little time left to do so. Such a heartbreakingly tiny amount of time. But that was better than none. ‘If you are certain it is not unwise, that we will not give in to temptation?’
‘I am sure it is very unwise, and I make no such promise.’
‘Then let us be unwise,’ she said fervently.
‘Then so it shall be. A hiatus,’ Kadar said. And finally, he kissed her.
* * *
The next morning, Constance, perched on one of the wooden bollards used for securing the various craft to the quayside, watched on as Kadar readied their dhow to set sail.
He seemed unburdened, after yesterday’s astonishing confessional on the beach. She would not have dreamed such intimate revelations possible from the man she had first encountered, whose every feeling had been guarded, whose every word was considered. And to have entrusted her with such deeply personal thoughts, such—such painful thoughts. She was beyond honoured. She could have no more doubts that he would find happiness in his future now, and that knowledge must bolster her resolve to leave Murimon in pursuit of her own happiness. She was under no illusions. Kadar’s road to freedom and her own would never converge. Tempting as it was to postpone her own journey, every day she spent in his company increased her love for him, and increased the heartache she would suffer when she left him. She had to leave while she still had the will and resolve to do so.
This fact lurked like a tempest on the horizon. But today the sky was a perfect blue and the water was a sparkling turquoise and Kadar was smiling up at her from the dhow, his bone-melting smile, and her bones and her heart were duly melted. A hiatus. Yes, she intended to enjoy her hiatus to the full.
‘Ready?’ he called, and she got to her feet.
Kadar was dressed in plain white cotton trousers and tunic. His feet were bare. Constance removed her own slippers, casting them down ahead of her into the boat. His eyes were more green than grey today, taking their colour from the sea, she thought fancifully as she took his hand and clambered down from the jetty into the dhow. She was also dressed simply, apricot pantaloons and camisole, a darker orange overdress trimmed with apricot braid, her hair tied back with a matching ribbon, though she doubted it would remain confined for long, once they set sail.
This dhow was painted white, trimmed with blue and yellow, low in the water at the aft, rising in a sleek curve to the pointed prow. The white triangular sail which sat at an angle on the central mast was already set, though the sailcloth was not yet filled by the wind. Though the boat was diminutive compared to some of the other commercial craft moored in the harbour, now she was on board, Constance could see it was considerably bigger than the little boat they had sailed to the swimming beach in.
‘Won’t you need help to sail this?’ she asked.
‘I have all the help I need,’ Kadar replied, laughing when she looked around her, as if there was another crew member lurking somewhere. ‘You did say that you wanted to learn, didn’t you?’
Her heart gave a little skip of excitement. ‘I’d love to learn,’ Constance said, eyeing the sail, which seemed much bigger now she was standing next to it. ‘But why this dhow? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to learn in something smaller?’
‘The other boat is only really suitable for sailing close to the coast,’ Kadar replied.
It took her a moment to understand his meaning, and when she did, she dropped onto the narrow seat, her stomach fluttering with apprehension. ‘We’re going out to sea.’
‘Not if you don’t want to, Constance.’ Kadar sat down opposite her. ‘You told me that learning to swim would overcome your fear of drowning, but I thought you’d like to prove it to yourself before you sail away to the ends of the earth as you said you wished to do.’
She smiled faintly at the memory. ‘Only because you couldn’t give me a ladder to reach the stars.’
‘If I could I would, I promise you, but even princes have their limitations. I can promise you a night lying on the beach with the waves murmuring and the stars sparkling overhead, just as you wished for,’ Kadar said. ‘If you think you can brave the voyage?’
A trial run for the longer sea voyage to come. His thoughtfulness brought a lump to her throat, but at the same time she felt as if her heart was being squeezed at this evidence that he accepted her departure was both inevitable and imminent. He was now free to embrace his own future. Which, after all, is what she wanted for him, even though that future did not include her. She knew that. Yes, she knew that perfectly well.
‘Constance? It is too much. I’m sorry...’
‘No.’ She would not permit such thoughts to blight this day, and she would make very sure that Kadar was not even aware of her having thought them. Having vanquished the ghosts of his lost love, she had no desire to burden him with the guilt of failing to return hers. ‘No,’ she repeated firmly, rising from the narrow bench. ‘I want to learn to sail, and I want to face down my fears.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m certain,’ she said with a great deal more confidence than she felt.
‘Courageous Constance,’ Kadar said, kissing her hand.
‘Let us hope that I don’t prove to be Catastrophic Constance,’ she said, ‘the captain’s capsizing crew member. Now, let us set sail before my courage fails me.’
* * *
She need not have worried. Kadar was an expert sailor and an excellent tutor. From the moment they sailed out of the harbour and the breeze filled the lateen sail, he entrusted her with the tiller, assuring her that the boat was almost impossible to capsize. For the first half hour, she felt as if she were doing her best to prove him wrong as she guided them flawlessly at precisely the wrong angle into every oncoming wave, tipping dangerously into the swell as they reached deeper waters, and at one point sending a wave crashing right over them both, drenching them in spray.
‘Kadar,’ she shrieked, terrified and exhilarated, her hair dripping wet, her hand slippery on the smooth wood of the tiller. ‘Please take over, I have no aptitude for this.’
But he shook his head, continuing to sit with apparent confidence by her side, tending sporadically to the sail. ‘How will you develop aptitude without practice?’ he asked her.
His hair too was dripping. His thigh was pressing against hers. His tunic clung to his chest. His smile made her heart turn somersaults. The sail whipped in the breeze, and the waves crested around the slim hull, which rose and fell with a soft smack on the swell, as Constance finally began to steer with more confidence. Spray stung her cheeks. Her ribbon long lost, her hair flew around her, thick with salt and doubtless tangled beyond redemption. The dhow scudded over a larger wave, lifting her from her seat and dropping her back down with a thump.
‘I feel as if I am flying,’ she exclaimed, laughing with the sheer exhilaration of it. ‘This is truly wonderful.’
Kadar, laughing with her, wiped the spray from her face. ‘You certainly seem to have lost any remaining fears you had of the sea.’
‘Oh, I don’t fool myself into thinking that I would be able to swim far in this swell, but I know enough now to keep myself afloat, thanks to you.’ Constance lifted one of her hands briefly from the tiller to touch Kadar’s knee. ‘You did that. I was shipwrecked, cast adrift in this beautiful, strange, exotic land, and I have not only survived, I’ll never be the same. Thanks to you, I am a new, stronger Constance.’
‘Confident Constance,’ he said. ‘No longer afraid of anything.’
Save leaving you. ‘Save capsizing this dhow,’ she said, hastily replacing her hand on the tiller as a cross-wind caught the sail, the struggle to regain control banishing this melancholy thought. Confident Constance, Kadar had said, and there had been a touch of pride in his voice that
made her determined to live up to his expectations.
‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘you told me that you regretted the years which separated you and your brother. It made me think of how much I regretted the years in which I allowed my parents to deprive me of my grandfather’s company, but it also made me realise—oh, I have wasted so much time nurturing resentment, in railing at my father’s failings and my mother’s blind loyalty. I wasn’t exactly unhappy, but I could have been so much happier. Being here, thanks to the freedom you have given me, I see that I don’t need to accept the hand fate has dealt me. Like you, I can take charge of my own destiny. Like you, I am done with the past. I want to be Courageous Constance. I don’t want to let you down, Kadar.’
‘It is not possible. You have only to be yourself in order to succeed.’
If she chose to, she could read tenderness in his expression as well as admiration. How much she wanted to. ‘Well, then I will succeed,’ Constance said, hoping that the tears which spilled over onto her cheeks would be mistaken for sea spray. ‘I am determined to be myself. Free, under any circumstances. I know it’s not going to be easy, because my circumstances can’t be anything other than constrained, but they will be my choice, those constraints, and that is what matters.’
‘I have no doubt that you will succeed in whatever you do,’ Kadar said, kissing her cheek, ‘but you know that I can help you, remove some of those constraints.’
That look again. It was not tenderness. ‘No,’ she said, determinedly focusing on the sea ahead. ‘Please,’ she added, when he would have protested. ‘This is our hiatus. Let us have no more talk of the past or the future.’
He nodded, though reluctantly, and another whip of cross-winds forced him to turn his attention to the sail. Her future would be hers alone, without Kadar. Her choice. She loved him, and she could choose to make a slave of herself to that love, but she would not. Another thing she had learned here. Such a marriage would indeed be a prison, unless he loved her back—then their marriage would be without bars. But he did not love her. Her time here had always been an interlude for both of them, and that interlude was coming to an end.
But it was not over yet. When Kadar returned to her side, slipping his arm around her waist, she nestled closer. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For today. Now I really can sail away to the ends of the earth without fear, if I choose.’
He pressed a swift kiss to her lips. ‘Never mind the ends of the earth. Do you think you’re ready to steer us onto landfall?’
He gave her no chance to decline, placing his other hand on top of hers on the tiller. At first she thought they were headed for the huge grey outcrop of rock that rose rather like a loaf of bread from the sea, but as they sailed towards it, she could see a cluster of smaller islands sheltering in the lea of the larger one. Some were simply huge crags, others were smaller, no more than a sandy shore and a clump of rock, forming a chain around a larger, central island.
‘That is where we will land,’ Kadar said, his hand now firmly guiding hers through the narrow channel, where the water turned from azure to turquoise, clear enough and shallow enough for her to see the bottom. ‘Hold her steady,’ he said, ‘and aim for that gap in the rock there.’
She did as he bid while he tended to the sail, returning to help her steer just as the inlet loomed up with frightening speed. A natural harbour, it seemed to be, with the rock forming a jetty, against which the dhow came to rest. Kadar jumped lithely out, quickly securing the vessel, leaning down to help her ashore. Constance staggered, her sea legs turning to jelly on the land. He took her by the hand, leading her up a rough-hewn set of steps. ‘What is this place?’ she asked in wonder.
‘It’s known as Koros.’
Behind her, on the other side of the harbour, scrub grew out of the rocks. At the top of the steps they came to a wall constructed of white stone, and Kadar ushered her through a doorway, at which point Constance stopped in her tracks, speechless with wonder. The wide flat space looked to be an ancient marketplace or forum. The remains of the tall pillars which would have formed the arcade stood in two lines, some as tall as twenty feet, some a mere three or four, the height of a single stone block. Remnants of the pillars lay on the ground, along with other long, flat stones which must have formed other parts of the building. The forum stood open on three sides to the sea, but it was built up on one side, a steeply angled wall with a set of stairs leading to another, higher and narrower terrace.
It was here that the tent was pitched in the shelter of a group of palm trees, looking outrageously exotic. Scarlet trimmed with gold tassels, it was enclosed on three sides, the front open to face out to the sea. Constance clasped her hands together, quite overcome with delight as she stepped inside. The tent was lined with silk, the floor covered with rich rugs, scattered with heaps of plush velvet cushions. Lamps were hanging from the ceiling in readiness for the night, and a wide, low divan stacked with blankets, also in readiness. She shivered in anticipation, wondering what other delights night might bring, but there was too much to distract her for her to dwell on it. A low table was set in the cooler part of the tent, where the palm trees overhead protected it from the heat of the sun. Beside it sat several huge hampers. The kind designed to keep the contents cold, she saw, gratefully accepting a drink of lemon sherbet which Kadar poured for her.
‘How? Where are they all?’ she asked in wonder, looking around her for the retinue of servants it must have taken to set up.
‘There’s no one else here now,’ Kadar replied, clearly pleased by her reaction ‘It was prepared for us at first light.’
‘You ordered all of this especially for me? But what if my courage had failed me?’
‘I knew it would not. Do you approve?’
‘I love it. It’s magical.’
‘There’s more,’ he said, taking her hand again and leading her back out, down another set of steps that led directly to the beach, where a huge hammock was strung out between two more palm trees.
Constance jumped into the air with delight. ‘Kadar!’ She threw her arms around him. ‘This is what you meant when you promised me a night lying on the beach with the waves murmuring and the stars sparkling overhead.’
‘According to legend, the sea people, whom you know as mermaids, lived here. Unlike other mermaids, our sea people can live and breathe on the land, provided they stay within sight of the sea. Here, so they say, the mermaids brought the sailors they lured onto the rocks. Only the most handsome, the most virile, the most lustful sailors of course, for these sea sirens had insatiable appetites,’ Kadar said, with a wicked smile. ‘The children of these unions could live underwater. Eventually though, the sailors learned to avoid this place, and the sea sirens no longer had a fresh supply of young men to satisfy their appetites, so they returned to the sea with their children. Though they say that on a stormy night you can hear them calling from that island over there, singing their siren song in the vain hope that some sailor ignorant of the legend will listen and be drawn in.’
Constance shivered, eyeing the forum with fascination. ‘What happened to the sailors they left behind?’
Kadar laughed. ‘Do not be imagining you will encounter their ghosts. I’m afraid the reality is rather more mundane. This was an ancient trading post, abandoned about a thousand years ago.’
‘I prefer the legend of the sea sirens,’ Constance said.
‘So do I. Looking at you, I could easily be persuaded that one of them had returned.’
Her heart began to thump as she looked at him. ‘I have certainly lured the most handsome, the most virile, the most lustful sailor to my den.’
Kadar’s eyes darkened. The air around them positively crackled with awareness. ‘Do you think your appetite is insatiable?’ he asked, his voice husky.
Constance put her arms around his neck, pulling him towards her. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I
’m willing to find out.’
Chapter Thirteen
Kadar had been teasing when he had compared Constance to a mermaid but it turned out his words were prophetic. He could not resist her siren call. He closed his eyes and he kissed her, and Constance let out the softest, most yearning whisper of a sigh and kissed him back, and he was lost. He kissed her—her mouth, her eyelids, her cheeks, her mouth again. And again. Captivating Constance. He was captivated. Her kisses were so sweet, and then the sweetness darkened into sinfulness. So sinful, her lips and her tongue, kisses he wanted to drown in. And it was obvious that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. It was there in her kisses and in her touch, in the way she pressed herself against him, her hands fluttering and clutching and stroking feverishly, over his tunic, under his tunic, her skin on his, making him burn. She wanted him, and he wanted her. He told her so, again and again. And she told him back. His name. Her little ragged sighs. Her searing kisses.
Kisses that had them staggering together across the sands, back up the stairs to the tent. Kisses that continued as they fell together on to the low divan, toppling the neat stacks of cushions and blankets. Kisses that made him achingly hard. He unfastened the buttons on her overdress, placing kisses on her throat. In the valley between her breasts. He pulled her camisole top over her head and kissed her breasts. Soft, creamy, full, the nipples dark, peaked. His hands on them. His mouth. And Constance’s panting response, her urgent little cries for more and more and more.
He knelt between her legs and untied the sash holding her pantaloons, easing them down. Kissing the underside of her breasts, down the taut muscles of her belly. Bestowing kisses on the soft, warm flesh of her thighs. She stilled. She arched under him. Her eyes flew open. Kadar gazed into Constance’s eyes and she smiled. Such a wanton smile, smoky with passion, and as sinful as the lush curves of her body. He became impossibly hard. And then he eased her legs further apart and kissed her again, the sweetest, most intimate of kisses, and the world turned fiery crimson, leaving no room for anything but their all-consuming passion.
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