Defiant in the Desert (6 page)

‘So how did you—a boy from the wrong side of the tracks—ever come into contact with someone as important as the Sultan?’

There was silence for a moment. Sara thought she saw a sudden darkness cross his face. And there was bitterness, too.

‘I grew up in a place called Tymahan, a small area of Samahan, where the land is at its most desolate and people eke out what living they can. To be honest, there was never much of a living to be made—even before the last war, when much blood was shed. But you, of course—in your pampered palace in Dhi’ban—would have known nothing of those hardships.’

‘You cannot blame me for the way I was protected as a princess,’ she protested. ‘Would you sooner I had cut off my hair and pretended to be a boy, in order to do battle?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course not.’

‘Carry on with your story,’ she urged, leaning forward a little.

He seemed to draw in a quick breath as she grew closer.

‘The Sultan’s father was touring the region,’ he said. ‘He wanted to witness the aftermath of the wars and to see whether any insurrection remained.’

Sara watched as he took a sip from his beaker and then put the drink back down on the low table.

‘My mother had been ill—and grieving,’ he continued. ‘My father had been killed in the uprisings and as a consequence she was vulnerable—struck down by a scourge known to many at that time.’ His mouth twisted with pain and bitterness. ‘A scourge known as starvation.’

Sara flinched as guilt suddenly washed over her. Earlier, he had accused her of self-pity and didn’t he have a point? She had moaned about her position as a princess—yet despite the many unsatisfactory areas of her life, she had certainly never experienced anything as fundamental as a lack of food. She’d never had to face a problem as pressing as basic
survival
. She looked into his black eyes, which were now clouded with pain, and her heart went out to him.

‘Oh, Suleiman,’ she said softly.

His mouth hardened, as if her sympathy was unwelcome. ‘The Sultan was being entertained by a group of local dignitaries and there was enough food groaning on those tables to feed our village for a month,’ he said, his voice growing harsh. ‘I was lurking in the shadows, for that was my particular skill—to see and yet not be seen. And on this night I saw a pomegranate—as big as a man’s fist and as golden as the midday sun. My mother had always loved pomegranates and I...’

‘You stole it?’ she guessed as his words faded away.

He gave her a tight smile. ‘If I had been old enough to articulate my thoughts I would have called it a fair distribution of goods, but my motives were irrelevant since I was caught, red-handed. I may have been good at hiding in the shadows, but I was no match for the Sultan’s elite bodyguards.’

Sara shivered, recognising the magnitude of such a crime and wondering how he was still alive to tell the tale.

‘And they let you off?’

He gave a short laugh. ‘The Sultan’s guards are not in the habit of granting clemency to common thieves and I was moments away from losing my head to one of their scimitars, when I saw a young boy about the same age as me running from within one of the royal tents and shouting at them to stop. It was the Sultan’s son, Murat.’ He paused. ‘Your future husband.’

Sara flinched, for she knew that his heavy reminder had been deliberate. ‘And what did he do?’

‘He saved my life.’

She stared at him in bewilderment. ‘How?’

‘It was simple. Murat was protected and pampered—but lonely and bored. He wanted a playmate—and a boy hungry enough to steal from the royal table was deemed a charitable cause to rescue. My mother was offered a large sum of money—’

‘She took it?’

‘She had no choice other than to take it!’ he snapped. ‘I was to be washed and dressed in fine clothes. To be removed from my own country and taken back to the royal palace of Qurhah, where I was to be educated alongside the young Sultan. In most things, we two boys would be as equals.’

There was silence while she digested this. She could see how completely Suleiman’s life would have been transformed. Why sometimes he unconsciously acted with the arrogance known to all royals, though his was tempered by a certain
edge.
But his mother had
sold
him. And there was something he had omitted to mention. ‘Your...mother? What happened to her?’

This time the twist of pain on his face was so raw that she could hardly bear to observe it.

‘She was given the best food and the best medicines,’ he said. ‘And a new dwelling place was built for her and my two younger brothers. I was taken away to the palace, intending to return to Samahan to see my family in the summer. But her illness had taken an irreversible toll and my mother died that springtime. I never...I never saw her again.’

‘Oh, Suleiman,’ she said, her heart going out to him. His mother’s sacrifice had been phenomenal and yet she had died without seeing her eldest son. How terrible for them both. She wanted to go to him and take him in her arms, but the unseen presence of the servants and the expression on his face warned her not to try. Only words could convey her empathy and her sorrow and she picked the simplest and most heartfelt of all. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘So very sorry.’

‘It happened a long time ago,’ he said harshly. ‘It’s all in the past. And that’s where it should stay. Like I said, the past is irrelevant. Now perhaps you will understand why I prefer not to talk of it?’

She looked at him. All these years she’d known him—or, rather, had thought she’d known him. But she had only seen the bits he had allowed her to see. He had kept this vital part of himself locked away, until now—when it had poured from his lips and made him seem strangely vulnerable. It made her understand a little more about why he was the kind of man he was. Why he kept his feelings bottled away and sometimes seemed so stubborn and inflexible. It explained why he had always been so unquestioningly loyal to the Sultan who had saved his life. He was so driven by duty—because duty was all he knew.

Suddenly she realised why he had rejected her on the night of her brother’s coronation. Again, because it was his
duty
. Because she had been betrothed to the Sultan.

Yet the price of duty had been to never see his mother again. No wonder he had always seemed so proud and so alone. Because essentially he was.

And suddenly Sara knew that she could not seduce him as some cynical game-plan of her own. She could not use Suleiman Abd al-Aziz to help her escape from this particular prison. She could not place him in any position of danger, because if the Sultan were ever to discover that his bride-to-be had slept with the man he most trusted in all the world—then all hell would be let loose.

No. She lifted her hand to brush a strand of hair away from her cheek and she saw his eyes narrow as the bells on her silver bangles tinkled. She was going to have to be strong and take responsibility for herself.

She could not use sex as an instrument of barter, not when she cared about Suleiman so much. If she wanted to get out of here, then she was going to have to use more traditional means. But she was resourceful, wasn’t she? There was nothing stopping her.

She needed to make her bid for freedom without implicating Suleiman. Even if he was blamed for her departure, he should not be party to it. Somehow she needed to escape without him knowing—and escape she would. She would return to the military airfield and
demand
to be put on a plane back to England—promising them a sure-fire international outcry if they failed to comply with her wishes. They kept wanting to remind her that she was a princess—well, maybe it was time she started behaving like one!

She rose to her feet but Suleiman was shadowing her every move and was by her side in an instant.

‘I must turn in for the night,’ she said, giving a huge yawn and wondering if it looked as staged as it felt. ‘The effects of the desert heat are very wearying and I’m no longer used to it.’

He inclined his head. ‘Very well. Then I accompany you to your tent.’

‘There’s no need for you to do that.’

‘There is every need, Sara—for we both know that snakes and scorpions can lurk within the shadows.’

She wanted to tell him that she knew the terrain as well as he did. That she had been taught to understand and respect its mysteries and its dangers, because he had taught them to her. But perhaps now was not a good time to remind him that at heart she was a child of the desert—for mightn’t that alert him to all the possibilities which still lay beneath her fingertips?

The beauty of the night seemed to mock her. The sky was a vast dark dome, pinpricked by the brightest stars a person was ever likely to see. The moon brightened the indigo depths like a giant silver dish which had been superimposed there—the shadows on its face disturbingly clear. For a moment she wished that she had supernatural powers—that she could leap into the air and fly to the moon, like the most famous of all the Dhi’banese fables she had heard as a child.

But her sandaled feet were firmly on the ground as she walked through the soft sand, her eyes taking in her surroundings. She looked at the layout of the camp as she walked. She saw where the horses were tethered and where the bodyguards had been stationed. Obviously they were close enough to keep her from harm, but far enough away for propriety to be observed.

They reached the tasselled entrance of her tent and she wanted to reach up and touch Suleiman’s face, aware that the sands of time were running out for them. If she could have just one wish, it would be to run her fingers through the thick ebony of his hair and then to kiss him. But nothing more. She’d changed her mind about that. She suspected that to have sex with him would rob her of all the strength she possessed, and leave her yearning for him for the rest of her life. Perhaps it was best all round that making love was an option which was no longer open to her. But oh, to be able to kiss him...

Would it be so very wrong to bid him goodnight, as she had done to male friends in England countless times before?

On impulse, she rose on tiptoe and brushed her lips over first one of his cheeks, and then the other. It could not have been misinterpreted by anyone. Even the Sultan—if he had been standing there—would have recognised it as a very unthreatening form of western greeting, or farewell. He might not have liked it, but he would have understood it.

Except that this time, that quick brush of her lips was threatening her very sanity. She could feel the hammering of her heart and the hot flush of colour to her face. She could feel the whisper of her breath on his cheeks as she kissed each one in turn. And she could hear, too, the startled intake of breath he took in response. It should have been innocent and yet it felt light years from innocence. How could that be? How could one innocuous touch feel so powerful that it seemed to have rocked her to the core of her being?

Their eyes met and clashed in the indigo light as silent messages of desire and need passed between them. Her skin screamed out for him to touch it. The thrum of sexual tension was now so loud that it almost deafened her.

Slowly, his gaze travelled from her face, all the way down her lavishly embroidered gown, until it lingered at last on the swell of her bodice. The sensation of him looking so openly at her breasts was so
exciting.
It was making her nipples prickle with hunger and frustration. She sucked in an unsteady breath which made her chest rise and fall, and she heard him utter a soft groan.

For a moment he seemed about to move towards her and she prayed that he would. Kiss me, she prayed silently. Just kiss me one more time and I will never ask again.

But the suggestion of movement was arrested as quickly as it had begun for suddenly he stiffened, his face hardening into a granite-like mask. His eyes deadened into dull ebony
and when he spoke, his voice was ragged and tinged with self-disgust.

‘Get to bed, Sara,’ he bit out harshly. ‘For God’s sake, just get to bed.’

CHAPTER FIVE

S
ARA
AWOKE
EARLY
. Before even the early light they called the ‘false dawn’ had begun to brighten the arid desert landscape outside her tent. She lay there in the silence for a moment or two, collecting her thoughts and wondering whether she had the nerve to go through with her plan. But then she thought about reality. About needing to get away from Suleiman just as badly as she needed to get away from her forced marriage to the Sultan.

She had no choice.

She
had
to escape.

Silently, she slipped from beneath the covers of her bedding, still wearing the clothes she had slept in all night. Just before dismissing the servant last evening, she had asked one of them to bring her a large water-bottle as well as a tray of mint tea and a bowl of sugar cubes. The girl had looked a little surprised but had done as requested—no doubt putting Sara’s odd request down to the vagaries of being a princess.

Now she wrapped a soft, silken veil around her head before peeping out from behind the flaps of the tent, and her heart lifted with relief. All was quiet. Not a soul around. She glanced upwards at the sky. It looked clear enough. Soon it would be properly light and with light came danger. The animals would grow restless and all the bodyguards would waken. She cocked her head as she heard a faint but unmistakable noise. Did that mean one of the guards was already awake? Her heart began to pound. She must be off, with not a second more to be wasted.

Stealthily, she moved across the sand to where the horses were tethered. The Akhal-Teke palomino she had been riding earlier greeted her with a soft whinny and she shushed him by feeding him a sugar cube, which he crunched eagerly with his big teeth. Her heart was thumping as she mounted him and then urged him forward on a walk going with the direction of the wind, not giving him his head and letting him gallop until they were well out of earshot of the campsite.

Her first feelings were of exhilaration and delight that she had got away without being seen. That she had escaped the dark-eyed scrutiny of Suleiman and had not implicated him in her flight. The pale sky was becoming bluer by the second and the sand was a pleasing shade of deep gold. Suddenly, this felt like an adventure and her life in London seemed a long way away.

She made good progress before the sun grew too high, when she stopped beside a rock to relieve herself and then to drink sparingly from her water bottle. When she remounted her horse it was noticeably hotter and she was glad of the veil which shielded her head from the increasingly strong rays. And at least the camel trail was easy enough to follow back towards the airbase. The tread of the heavy beasts was deep and there had been none of the threatened sandstorms overnight to sweep away the evidence of their route.

Did she stop paying attention?

Did her ever-present thoughts of Suleiman distract her for long enough to make her stray from the deep line of animal footprints she’d been following so intently?

Was that why one minute she seemed so secure in her direction, while the next...?

Blinking, Sara looked around like someone who had just awoken from a dream, telling herself that the trail was still there if she looked for it and she had probably just wandered a little way from it.

It took only a couple of minutes for her to realise that her self-reassurance was about as real as a mirage.

Because there was nothing. Nothing to be seen.

She blinked again. No indentations. No little telltale heaps where a frisky camel might have kicked out at the sand.

Panic rose in her throat like bile but she fought to keep it at bay. Because panicking would not help. Most emphatically it would not. It would make her start to lose her nerve and she couldn’t afford to lose anything else—losing her way was bad enough.

She didn’t even have a compass with her.

She dismounted from her horse, trying to remember the laws of survival as she took a thirsty gulp of water from her bottle.
She should retrace her steps. That was what she should do. Find where she’d lost the path and then pick up the camel trail again. Bending, she lifted a small pebble out of the sand. Sucking it would remind her to keep her mouth closed and prevent it from drying out.

She patted the horse before swinging lightly into the saddle again. It was going to be all right, she told herself. Of course it was going to be all right. It had only been a couple of minutes since she’d missed the path and she couldn’t possibly be lost.

It took her about an hour of fruitless riding to accept that she was.

* * *

‘What do you mean, she’s not there?’

His voice distorted with anger, Suleiman stared at the bent head of the female servant who stood trembling before him.

‘Tell me!’
he raged.

The girl began to babble. They had thought that the princess was sleeping late, so they did not wish to disturb her.

‘So you left the princess’s tent until now?’

‘Y-yes, sir.’

Suleiman forced himself to suck in a deep breath, only just managing to keep his hot rage from erupting as he surveyed the bodyguards who were milling around nervously. ‘And not one of you thought to wonder why one of the horses was missing?’ he demanded.

But their shamefaced excuses were quelled with a furious wave of his hand as Suleiman marched over to the horses, with the most senior bodyguard close behind him. Because deep down he knew that he was not really in any position to criticise—not when he was as culpable as they.

Why hadn’t
he
been watching her?

His mouth hardened as he swung himself up onto the biggest and most powerful stallion.

Because he was a coward, that was why.

Despite his supposedly exemplary military record and all the awards which had been heaped upon him—he had selected a tent as far away from hers as possible. Too unsure of his reaction to her proximity, he had not dared risk being close. Not trusting himself—and not trusting her either.

He hadn’t imagined the white-hot feeling of lust which had flared between them last night and he was too experienced a lover to mistake the look of sexual yearning which had darkened her violet eyes. When she was standing in front of him in her embroidered robes—her hair woven with fragrant leaves—he had never wanted her quite so much.

Hadn’t he wondered whether her western sensibilities might make her take the initiative? Hadn’t he wondered whether she might boldly arrive naked at his tent under cover of darkness and slip into his bed without invitation, as so many women had done before?

He stared down at the senior bodyguard. ‘You have checked her trail?’

‘Yes, boss. She has headed due north—taking the same path by which we came, back towards the airbase.’

Suleiman nodded. It was as he had thought. She was trying to get back to England on her own—oh, most stubborn and impetuous of women! ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will follow her trail. And you will assign three men to take up the other three points of the compass and to set off immediately. But no more than three. I don’t want the desert paths disturbed any more than they need be. I don’t want any clues churned up by the damned horses.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘You will also send someone to find a high enough vantage point to try to get a mobile phone signal. I want the military base informed and I want every damned plane at their disposal out looking for her. Understand?’

The bodyguard nodded. ‘Understood.’

‘And believe me when I tell you that you have not heard the last of this!’

With his final, angry words ringing Suleiman galloped off at a furious pace, the warm wind streaming against his face as he followed the mixed track of the camels and the newer footprints of Sara’s horse.

He had already realised that there would be repercussions. By involving the military, word would inevitably get back to the Sultan that the princess was missing. But he didn’t care what criticism or punishment came his way for having lost the future Sultana of Qurhah. They could exile him or imprison him and he wouldn’t care.

He didn’t care about anything other than finding her safe and well.

He had never known such raw fear as he travelled beneath the heat of a sun which was growing ever more blistering. Even though she was out of practice, he knew that she was a sound horsewoman—a fact which had always been a source of pride since he had been the one to tutor her, but which now gave him only comfort. And he found himself clinging to that one small comfort. Please let her ride safely, he prayed. Please not let something have frightened the horse so that Sara might be lying there buckled and broken on the sand. Alone and scared while the sun beat down on her and the vultures waited to peck out her beautiful violet eyes...

He sucked in a breath of hot air which felt raw as it travelled down his throat. He should not think the worst. He would not think the worst. Think positive, he told himself. At least no snake or brown scorpion could touch her when she was high up on her horse.

But knowing that did not help him locate her, did it?

Where was she? Where
was
she?

His eyes trained unblinkingly on the ground before him—he saw the exact point where her path had veered off from the main route. Had something distracted the horse? Distracted her?

He pushed forward now, letting the powerful stallion stream across the sands until Suleiman urged it to a halt and then opened his mouth to call across the desolate landscape.

‘Sara! Sa-ra!’

But the ensuing response was nothing but an empty silence and his heart gave a painful lurch.

He forced himself to take a drink from one of the water-bottles he carried, for dehydration would be good for neither of them if he found her.

When
he found her.

He had to find her.

The position of the sun and his wristwatch told him that he had been searching for her for over four hours. He could feel his heart pumping painfully in his chest. The heat of the midday sun was a tough enough combatant but darkness was a whole different ball-game.

He thought of the nocturnal creatures which came out in the cold of the desert night—dangerous animals which populated this inhospitable terrain.

‘Sara!’ he called again and then the horse’s ears pricked up and Suleiman strained to hear a sound that was almost lost in the distance. He listened again.

It
was
a sound. The smallest sound in the world. The sound of a voice. If it had been anyone else’s voice, he might not have recognised it—but Suleiman had heard Sara’s voice in many guises. He’d heard it as a child. He’d heard its hesitancy in puberty and its breathlessness in passion. But he had never heard it sound quite so broken nor so lost as it did right now.

‘Sara!’ he yelled, the word spilling from his lips as if it had been ripped from the very base of his lungs.

And then the shout again. Due east a little. He pressed his thighs against the flanks of the horse and urged it forward in a gallop in the direction of the sound. He heard nothing more and as the silence grew, so too did his fear that he had simply imagined it. An aural version of a desert mirage...

Until he saw the shape of a rock up ahead. A dark red rock which soared up revealing a dark cool cave underneath against which gleamed the metallic golden sheen of an Akhal-Teke palomino. He narrowed his eyes, for the horse carried no rider, and he galloped forward to see Sara leaning back against the rock. Its shadow consumed her with its terracotta light but he could see that her face was white with fear and her eyes looked like two deep pools of violet ink.

Grabbing a water-bottle, he jumped from the horse’s back and was beside her in a moment. He held the vessel to her lips and she sucked on it greedily, like a small animal being bottle-fed. He put the bottle down and as he watched the colour and the strength return to her all his own fear and anger bubbled up inside him.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ he demanded, levering her up against him so that her face was inches away from his.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Her voice sounded weak. ‘I was trying to get away.’

‘You could have died!’

‘I’m not...I’m not that easy to get rid of,’ she said, her lips trying for a smile but he noticed she didn’t quite achieve it—though nothing could disguise the flash of relief which flared briefly in her eyes.

‘Where were you headed for?’ he demanded, watching as he saw her face assume a look of sudden wariness.

She looked at him from the shuttered forest of her lashes. ‘Where do you think? Back to the airport.’

‘To the military base?’

‘Yes, to the military base. To demand to be taken back to England. I...I came to my senses, Suleiman. I realised that I couldn’t go through with it after all—no matter what you or the Sultan threatened me with, I don’t care. I don’t care about political dynasties or forging an alliance between my country and his. My brother will have to find someone else to offer up as a human sacrifice.’

Furiously, he stood up and pulled out his mobile phone and started barking into it in Qurhahian. Sara could hear him telling the military that the search should be called off. That the princess had been found and she was safely in his charge.

But when he terminated the call the look on his face didn’t make Sara feel in the least bit safe. In fact, it made her feel the opposite of safe. His black eyes were filled with fury as he slowly advanced towards her again.

‘So let me get this straight,’ he said, and she could tell that he was only just holding onto his temper. ‘You took off on your own into one of the most hostile territories in the world—even though you have not ridden for years and have been living a pampered life in London—is that right?’

Her gaze was defiant as she met the accusation in his eyes.

‘Yes,’ she said fiercely. ‘That’s exactly right.’

The absurdity of her quest infuriated him. He thought about the danger she’d put herself in and he felt the clench of anger—and fear too, at the thought of what could have happened to her. He intended to give her a piece of his mind. To tell her that he felt like putting her across his knee and smacking her. At least, that was what he thought he intended. But somehow it didn’t work out like that.