The Governess and the Sheikh (23 page)

 

Meanwhile, Jamil had concluded the better part of the treaty negotiations. The Princess Adira had graciously accepted his apologies for the inconvenience and, with even more alacrity, accepted his gifts of jewels and precious stones. The concessions that Jamil had prepared in advance with Halim, he allowed her father to barter hard over. Honour was finally satisfied. The old man's sensibilities were further oiled by the gift of an unusual rose-coloured diamond. The celebratory feast was an elaborate affair. Tables groaned with food and drink, musicians played in the background. The festivities were in full flow when the messenger bearing the letter summoning Jamil home arrived. Reading it with numb disbelief, Jamil felt as if his own senses had been kidnapped. Abandoning his caravan and his host summarily, and leaving Halim to smooth things over, he selected the best of his guards and set out in
the dark. Stopping only for water, he rode the whole long night and morning before reaching Daar.

Let her be alive.

Let her be safe.

Cassie. Cassie. Cassie.
He muttered her name to himself like a talisman as he urged his camel to a speed that even his pedigree beast found difficult to sustain. He prayed. He bartered with the gods. He prayed again. He offered himself in her stead. He would have offered his kingdom. That was when he realised. He would have given anything to have her back and safe. She was more important to him than life itself.

He loved her.

This need for her. This passion. This urge to keep her only to himself. The desire always to be by her side. The way he wanted always to talk to her, to ask her opinion. The way her face was etched in his mind. The feeling he had, that part of him was missing when she was not there. He loved her.

Not in a flowery, sentimental way either, but in a profound, deep-rooted way. What he felt for her, he felt in his bones. In his soul. In his heart. Truly, in his heart, just as Cassie had described it. That aspect of what the poets said was true. He thought of her and his heart ached.

He loved her. He was in love with her. In love. The realisation brought with it an elation and an enormous sense of relief, as if he were breaking free from a prison, the prison of his tormented past. He was not alone. He did not have to stand alone any longer. With Cassie by his side he was strong enough to conquer the world.

By his side. If she died—if she died so, too, would he. He loved her so much. He would not let her die.
Cassie. Cassie. Cassie.
On and on Jamil rode, the beating of his camel's hooves pounding out her name, his love, her name, his love, over the miles of desert that separated him from Daar.

He would not believe she was dead. He would know. He would feel it. Here, in his heart, he would feel it. He would know. He told himself that as the grey light of dawn broke and despair began to rise with the sun. He would know. Of a certainty he would know.

That they had parted in anger he could not bear to think about. That they had parted without him telling her how he felt, he could not abide.

He loved her. And she loved him.
How could he have been so blind?

That was why she would not marry him. Not because she didn't love him, but because she did. Believing him to be indifferent, she knew only unhappiness could result. He would change all that. He would make her happy. He would make her happiness his life's work. By the gods, let her be alive. Let him have the chance to put things right.

‘I love you.' He said it under his breath. The words sounded strange, but pleasing. ‘I love you,' he said, looking up at the fading sky. Altair, the eagle star, one of the brightest, could just be made out. Jamil closed his eyes and wished on it, just as he had as a child, mindless of how nonsensical it was. ‘Be safe, Cassie,' he wished. ‘I love you.'

As he spurred his flagging camel towards the Seats of the Gods mountain range that marked the home
strait, Jamil, Sheikh al-Nazarri, Prince of Daar-el-Abbah, felt a tightening in his chest.
I love you.
The words, in Cassie's breathy voice, were so clear he had to check over his shoulder to make sure they hadn't been carried to him by the wind.

She was alive. He would find her if he had to rake the desert inch by inch with his bare hands.

 

He reached the royal palace mid-morning and headed straight for the schoolroom courtyard where he found Celia pacing the oval perimeter and muttering to herself.

‘Thank God,' she exclaimed, all formalities abandoned as she rushed towards the prince with whom she was barely acquainted. ‘Oh, thank heavens you have come. My sister…' Celia stopped, her voice weighted with tears. She blinked rapidly, taking several deep breaths. ‘I'm sorry. I just—I have been so worried. But then so must you. Linah. Your daughter, she's all right. Cuts and bruises, nothing more. She's still very upset, not surprisingly. But she was very brave, she rode all the way back on that little pony of hers, you must be so proud of her. You'll want to see her, of course.'

He was pale, coated from head to foot in dust, his mouth a thin, set line. His eyes—such striking eyes, she had forgotten—were fixed piercingly on her. ‘In a moment. First, tell me exactly what happened,' he said curtly.

She did, as succinctly as possible, gathering all the salient facts and placing them before him in a logical, orderly manner, from the kidnap to the various searches she had organised. Later, her handling of the
situation would earn his admiration, but at present, he was impatient for her to be finished.

‘You say they have found no trace?'

‘Nothing. No trail, nothing. No one knows who they might be, nor does anyone claim to have seen them before. Have you any enemies, someone who bears you a grudge?' she asked.

Jamil shook his head. ‘None that would dare encroach upon my territory. The culprits are more likely to be opportunistic brigands. They probably don't even know Linah and Cassie belong to the royal household or else they would not have dared attack them.'

‘Perhaps when they realise the error of their ways they will release her,' Celia said hopefully.

‘Perhaps, but I do not intend to leave that to chance. In saving Linah, Cassie has placed her life in danger. I warned her—more than once, I warned her not to go out without an escort.' Jamil ran his fingers through his hair and sank on to the wall of the sun fountain. ‘I should not have left. We argued.'

‘She told me,' Celia said gently, perching beside him.

‘What did she tell you?'

‘Enough.'

‘I see. You must think me an arrogant fool.'

Celia smiled. ‘You will forgive my presumption in the circumstances, but I think you no fool, merely a man in love.'

Jamil rubbed his knuckles in his eyes. ‘Cassie always said you were the clever one. It seems you knew before I did.'

‘The main thing is you know now. Now go and find
my sister, Prince Jamil. Bring her back safe and well, I beg of you, for both our sakes.'

He grasped her hands between his. ‘By all that is sacred, I promise that I will.'

He left immediately, pausing only to hug his daughter fiercely to his chest, to tell her she was as brave as a panther, to promise her, to fervently promise her, that he would bring Cassie back.

T
he brigands brought her water. She remembered, just in time, Jamil's warning not to drink too thirstily and forced herself to sip it slowly. They untied her and watched impassively as she struggled to her feet, her ankles throbbing painfully as the blood returned to them. To her utter relief, they allowed her to remain upright, though she was still hobbled like a camel. The air in the dank cave was fetid.

‘What do you want of me?' she asked in her faltering Arabic.

The man with the scar, clearly the leader, leered and rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘Money. Someone will pay a fine price for a pretty filly such as you.'

‘It is you who will pay the price when Prince Jamil hears of this.'

‘What has the prince to do with it?' the scarred man snarled.

‘You don't know what you've done, do you?' Cassie
replied triumphantly. ‘The little girl with me? She was Princess Linah. I am her governess. Prince Jamil will have you hunted down and killed like dogs if any harm comes to me.'

‘Numair,' one of the other men said, his voice tinged with fear, ‘I want no part of this. Let her go now or Prince Jamil's wrath will descend on all our heads.'

‘Silence, you spineless cur,' Numair said. ‘I need time to think.' They left Cassie alone in the cave.

Later, she woke from a light-headed doze to hear raised voices outside. Creeping cautiously towards the cave's entrance, which seemed rather strangely to be uphill, she listened hard.

One of the others seemed to be arguing for her release. ‘Gold is no use to a dead man,' she heard quite distinctly. ‘He will show us no mercy. We have offended his household. I say let her go.'

But the man called Numair shook his head vehemently. ‘No. We have hooked a bigger fish than we intended, that is true. But if we keep our heads then the price of our catch will be higher, too.'

Something alerted them to her presence. Numair stood up and grabbed her, holding his knife to her throat. Cassie felt it graze the skin. ‘You were spying on us,' he said. ‘Maybe it would be better to kill you, cut our losses.'

‘I won't say anything,' Cassie said, her voice a mere thread. ‘Please, just let me go and I promise I won't say anything.'

Numair simply snarled and pulled her clear of the cave's entrance, which turned out to be no more than a hole in the ground, forcing her to her knees in front
of him. ‘Move another muscle, and I will make sure you never speak again. Maybe I should sample this fine catch of ours first, make sure it is of the requisite quality.'

With a swift movement, he cut the front of her riding habit open with his knife. Cassie screamed, piercingly loud. She was released so suddenly she fell to her knees. Numair laughed contemptuously. ‘Not yet, not yet, perhaps. But soon, you have my word on it.'

 

Jamil patted the glittering scimitar which he wore unsheathed in his belt. Not the ornamental weapon of state, but a working sword, with a chased silver hilt and a steel blade freshly sharpened that morning. His dagger, he wore in the classic position for war, strapped between his shoulders, and tucked into his boot was another, smaller dagger with an ivory handle.

He rode out on a fresh camel, the royal colours of emerald green and gold flying like a flag from the saddle covers, his emerald cloak and head dress a challenge in themselves. He was the Prince of Daar-el-Abbah and he wished the scum who had kidnapped Cassie to know who they were dealing with.

The search parties had tried all the obvious places, but no one knew this desert—
his desert
—like he did. Putting himself in the minds of the brigands, it came to him. The Belly of the Vulture, an hour beyond the Maldissi, where there were a set of underground caves formed by a long dried-up oasis. An obvious place, if you knew about it. Few did.

As he neared the desolate location, Jamil's hands tightened on the reins of his camel, slowing the beast
down to a walk, anxiously scanning the barren remnants of the well. Hoof prints. Feet. Three sets. He saw them, cowering behind a rock, near the entrance to the cave.
Bastards.

Raising his scimitar, he drew his camel to a halt a few yards in front of them. Already, two were shuffling backwards, fear in their eyes. They would cause him no problems. The other one, the one with the scar, looked like more of a challenge. A heavy-set man, but muscled. Jamil's blood lust rose.
Bastards.

He addressed himself directly to the leader. ‘Where is she?' His voice was cool, steady as a rock. Show the enemy no fear.

‘Safe enough where she is,' the man replied, spitting contemptuously on the ground.

‘Bring her out.'

‘For a price. One might even say a princely sum.' He smiled, showing yellow, uneven teeth.

‘I do not pay scum like you,' Jamil snarled. ‘Bring her out,' he said to the other two,
‘now!'

They did as he bid them, ignoring their leader's protests, too overcome with awe and fear to do otherwise. Bowing and scraping, they disappeared into the depths of the cave, emerging almost immediately with a bedraggled figure, bound at the ankles and wrists.

‘Cassie.' In an instant Jamil dismounted from his camel and strode over to her, scimitar drawn, though it was not needed, for the men made a final obeisance before taking advantage of his distraction to turn on their cowardly tails. Gathering her close, keeping one eye on the scarred leader, Jamil looked anxiously at Cassie. ‘Are you harmed?'

She gazed up at him in stupefaction. Three days without food, only a minimum of water, and her hold on reality was extremely loose. ‘Jamil?'

‘Cassie, have they harmed you?'

She must be dreaming. Only in her dreams did he look at her so tenderly. Only in her dreams did he gaze at her in just this way, as if she were the sun and moon and stars to him. As he was to her. She must be dreaming. ‘Jamil.' She clutched at his arm. It felt real. ‘You came.'

Her voice was no more than a whisper. There was dried blood on her neck. A huge purple bruise on her temple. Her skin was hot and dry, her eyes glazed. A cold fury such as he had never known possessed him. Gently, he laid her down by the cave's entrance, hastily cutting her bonds, handing her his flask before turning his full attention on her captor.

The scarred man, realising he had been abandoned, was himself trying to back away, frightened now, alarmed by the murderous look on his prince's face. ‘She took no harm, Highness,' he said, raising his hands as if in surrender.

A thirst for vengeance swelled within Jamil, granting him the power of a hundred men. He seemed to visibly grow with it. ‘No harm! You call that no harm,' he growled, releasing the catch on his cloak, testing the weight of his scimitar, slicing it over his head.

‘Highness,' the scarred man said, ‘forgive me.' He made as if to throw himself on the ground, but in the same movement drew his own sword. He had nothing to lose now. With a guttural cry, Numair launched himself at his prince.

 

Cassie couldn't understand what was happening. She wasn't in the cave any longer. She had been dreaming that Jamil came to her rescue. Jamil, in an emerald cloak, looking so fierce and so angry. Because she had disobeyed him by taking Linah out alone. Because he had been put to the effort of rescuing her.
I'm sorry
, she wanted to tell him.
I love you
, she longed to say.

But it was a dream. And now he wasn't there and she was sitting outside in the sun, leaning against a rock. Her head was buzzing. She raised a hand to rub her brow and realised she was no longer bound. Dazedly, she looked down at her ankles. Free.

Just in front of her, there was a flurry of movement. Two men. Fighting with scimitars. She couldn't focus. She could hear the hiss as the blades arced through the air, she could hear heavy breathing, and the scuffling noise of feet in the sand. She got shakily to her feet. The scarred man. Numair. And Jamil.

She almost called his name. Luckily it stuck in her throat. She almost ran towards him. Luckily she stumbled. Luckily, for just then the scarred man raised his sword and were Jamil's attention not completely focused he would have been slain there and then.

Cassie watched, scarcely able to breathe as the battle raged. The men were well matched, but Jamil fought with the skill and determination of a man possessed. It felt like for ever, but it was over in minutes. A feint. A side step. A movement of the arm that was almost balletic, and Jamil's scimitar sliced through Numair's shoulder, neatly disabling the arm. Blood spurted, crimsoning on the sand. Numair fell to his knees, screaming
in agony, his own scimitar dropping useless to the ground.

Cassie tottered towards Jamil, calling his name. He turned towards her. She was almost beside him, her arms held out, thinking only that it really was him, it really was, thinking of nothing else, when the glint of steel caught the corner of her eye. Numair had drawn a knife, was holding it in his left hand, was aiming it high, into the middle of Jamil's back.

Cassie screamed and threw herself between them with all her remaining feeble force. The cold kiss of steel pierced her as easily as a needle through silk. Blood blossomed on her dusty habit. She looked at it in astonishment, for she felt no pain. In slow motion, she saw Jamil, his face rigid with horror, pull a small vicious dagger from the strap around his ankle. He sank the dagger deep into Numair's chest. The brigand fell back on to the sand. Blood trickled from his mouth. Jamil turned to her. He was saying something. It sounded like her name. It sounded like ‘I love you'. So this was a dream after all, then. It was a dream and now she was very, very tired. She had to sleep. ‘I love you,' she said to Jamil before she sank into the blissful, black-velvet oblivion of unconsciousness. ‘I love you.'

 

He feared for her life. The blood loss, combined with her weakened state from lack of sustenance, would make it a close-run thing. Though he bound it as best he could, and made the journey back across the desert to Daar at a painstakingly slow pace in order to prevent any jolting causing the wound to open again, by the time Jamil handed Cassie over into the care of
her sister, she looked so lifeless that he could not help thinking the worst.

He paced nervously up and down all through the long night. He prayed as he had never prayed before. He watched, feeling completely helpless, as Celia changed the blood-soaked bandages, changed the sweat-drenched sheets in which Cassie writhed. He listened terrified to Cassie's feverish ramblings. He knelt by her divan, clasping her hot, dry hands in his, willing some of his own life-force to transfer itself to her, offering it all if only she would live.

Still Cassie's fever raged. Not even Prince Ramiz's arrival, along with her infant daughter, could lift Celia's mood.

 

On the fifth night, Jamil rode out alone into the desert, to the sanctuary of the ancients. The ritual was described in one of the oldest texts and kept under lock and key in the vaults of the palace, for its profane practices contravened all the sacred laws. But Jamil was desperate.

The moon was full, a good omen. He took the ring, the great seal of Daar-el-Abbah, from his finger, a symbol of what had been most precious to him. His kingdom. He offered it up as a sacrifice for something more precious still. Cassie.

He laid the ring on the stone boulder that had been used for centuries as an altar. He tore open the front of his tunic to reveal his bare chest. Then he took his dagger and made a cut over his heart, murmuring the ancient words. Blood dripped down his torso on to the
altar. Throwing his arms wide, Jamil looked up at the moon and made his fervent wish. For love to heal.

Dizziness caught him unawares. A rushing in his ears. A blackness, like a thick blanket. He tumbled forward on to his knees. Blood dripped from the cut over his heart, crimson drops on to the silver sand. He fell. As he lost consciousness, a white owl, the traditional messenger of the ancients, hovered overhead, watching.

In the royal palace of Daar, Cassie stirred and opened her eyes.

 

He arrived back at dawn to find the palace in an uproar. Such an uproar he thought at first that Cassie had died, until he saw that Celia, rushing to meet him, was crying from happiness, and that she was smiling. ‘The fever broke in the night,' she said, clutching at his sleeve in a most un-Celia-like manner. ‘She's sleeping now, a proper, restful sleep. Oh, Jamil, I think she's going to live.'

He watched from the curtained doorway of Cassie's chamber, too afraid to wake her, so shaken with love and tenderness that he could not, in any case, trust himself with more for the present. Beside him Linah tucked her little hand into his. ‘She's going to get better,
Baba
,' she whispered. ‘Now you don't have to be sad any more.'

Jamil stooped down to give his daughter a hug, holding her fiercely close. ‘No, now none of us need be sad any more,' he said gruffly.

 

He watched for hours. He had no comprehension of time. Cassie slept. Jamil stood guard. He was almost asleep on his feet when she spoke.

‘Jamil.'

Her voice was so faint he barely heard it. Instantly, he was at her side, gazing anxiously into her beloved face, so pale and wan. Her eyes though, her beautiful turquoise eyes, no longer had the opaque glaze of fever.

Cassie blinked. She was so tired. How could she be so tired, when she felt as if she had been sleeping for ever? ‘Jamil. What are you doing here? What happened? Why can't I move my arm?'

‘The brigand stabbed you. You saved my life.'

She remembered. Vague pictures, becoming clearer. ‘You killed him.'

‘Yes,' Jamil said tersely.

‘I'm glad. He was going to kill you. I couldn't bear that. Is Linah…?'

‘She's all right. You can see her later.'

‘I had the strangest dream about a white owl. When I woke up I found this in my hand.'