The Governess and the Sheikh (24 page)

She handed him his ring. The ring of Daar-el-Abbah, with the seal. The ring he had left on the altar of the ancients. Jamil stared at it in astonishment.

‘In my dream, your heart was bleeding,' Cassie told him. ‘You'll think that's silly. Hearts don't bleed, you'll say.'

‘No. I was wrong. I know now they can and they do.'

He had not intended to declare himself like this. Though Cassie was still weak, he found he could wait no longer. Kneeling down on the floor, he took her hand in his. ‘My heart was bleeding for you. I love you, Cassie. I was wrong. It exists. True love. Real love. One love. I love you with all my heart.'

‘Jamil!' A single tear trickled down her pale cheek.
‘Don't say it unless you really mean it. Please, I don't want you to say it just because you think it's what I want to hear. Or out of honour or duty because you think I saved your life. Or because you feel sorry for me. Or because—'

‘Darling Cassie,' Jamil said with a smile, ‘I am saying it only because it is true. You will forgive me for not saying it earlier, but I didn't realise I was in love with you. Halim did. And Celia did, too. I was too blind, too stupid to see it, but now I do.'

‘Please tell me this isn't a dream.'

‘It is no dream. Or if it is, it is the most wonderful one, one we will never wake up from.'

‘Jamil,' Cassie said softly, ‘I love you, too.'

‘My darling.' He kissed her. Gently, a whisper of his mouth on her cracked lips. He held her tenderly against his heart, felt the faint flutter of her own against his chest, and felt a settling take place inside him as if something was finally resolved, concluded. As if something had taken root. Happiness.

He held her until she fell asleep, her head nestled into the crook of his arm. He held her while she slept, and he was still holding her when she woke again, ready to reassure her, to tell her how much he loved her, how much he would always love her, how he already loved her more than when he had first told her and how he would love her more again the next time she asked.

 

Ten days later, Cassie's strength was fully returned. She and Celia were sitting by the sun fountain. Linah was taking an afternoon nap. With baby Bashirah
asleep in her basket in the same room, the sisters were free to talk confidentially.

‘We thought we were going to lose you,' Celia confessed. ‘I even wrote to Papa, to prepare him for the worst.'

‘Lord Armstrong will have had a surfeit of mail from Arabia then, because I, too, wrote to him,' a strong male voice said.

‘Jamil,' Cassie said, jumping to her feet.

‘Cassie. You look well.'

‘I am well. I'm very well. I've never been healthier,' she said fervently. ‘In fact, I am completely recovered, am I not, Celia?'

Celia, too, got to her feet, shaking out her caftan. ‘Completely,' she said with a smile.

‘No small thanks to you, Lady Celia. You have my eternal gratitude. But your work here is done and you must be anxious to be reunited with your husband.'

‘I confess I am.'

‘As you should be,' Jamil said with a smile. ‘I have taken the liberty of readying your caravan. Your maidservants have just finished your packing. My guards will escort you to the border, where your husband will be waiting to meet you. He will be as pleased to see you both as you are to see him, no doubt.'

‘He is a good husband and a fine father. I am blessed,' Celia replied.

‘He is to be envied,' Jamil said.

‘I am sure one day soon you, too, will make an admirable husband and father,' Celia said, with a sidelong glance at Cassie.

‘Jamil,' Cassie said quickly, embarrassed by her
sister's blatant probing, ‘You mentioned writing to my father. What about?'

‘We will discuss it later,' he said with an enigmatic smile. ‘First you must say your farewells to your sister. If you will excuse me, I have some things to take care of.' He raised her hand to his mouth, and planted a kiss on her palm.

Cassie stared after him in consternation. ‘What…?'

Celia chuckled. ‘What do you think? He wants to be alone with you. Now come and help me change into my travelling clothes.'

 

Celia left just an hour later with Bashirah strapped, Bedouin-style, across her chest. The caravan disappeared out of the palace gates, leaving Jamil and Cassie alone. She was nervous. So, too, it seemed, was he, though she could not understand why.

‘I have a surprise for you,' he said, taking her by the hand and leading her to the eastern wing of the palace. She had been there just once before, but she had never forgotten it. The door to the courtyard had been newly painted. It stood ajar. She looked up at Jamil questioningly, but he said nothing, only urging her forwards, into the ante-room.

White tiles, with a mosaic pattern of emerald-and-turquoise. The sweetest smell of orange blossom and something more familiar. Lavender, that was it.

Cassie took a tentative step through and into the courtyard. It had been transformed. Gone was the panther-cub fountain. In its place, a new fountain tinkled, with a mermaid as its centre piece. Outside, the garden had been replanted. Bay trees and lemons, oranges and
figs. Gone was the air of desolation. Gone were all traces of Jamil's boyhood quarters. The place had been transformed into a riot of colour and light.

A little stream meandered into a pool where water lilies floated and silver fish darted in the green depths. A delightful little pavilion was tucked into another corner, jasmine and honeysuckle mingling on its trellis. The jasmine flowers were closed with the rising heat, allowing the sweet scent of the honeysuckle dominance. Delighted, Cassie smiled up at Jamil. ‘The hedgerows in England are a riot of honeysuckle in the early summer. How did you know I loved its scent—oh, Celia, I suppose. There's a lane going down to the mill pond at home, I used to sneak out of the house before any of my sisters were awake, to walk there—and sometimes if there was no one around I would bathe. Jamil, this is beautiful. It's wonderful. How did you manage to do all this without my knowing?'

They wandered arm in arm through each of the rooms, Cassie's fingers trailing over delicate hangings, her slippered feet curling into rich carpets. The bathing chamber had the most enormous bath she had ever seen. Sunk into the floor, with two steps leading down into the tub, it had gold taps in the shape of fishes. ‘Big enough for two,' Jamil said with a smile that made Cassie shiver in anticipation. The whole place gleamed with vibrant colour; it sang with vibrant life.

‘You like it?' he asked when they had finally completed the full circuit of the rooms.

‘I love it. It's magical.'

‘Our own quarters. Yours and mine. I wanted to make a break with tradition, I don't want to spend any
more time apart from you than I have to.' Jamil led her back to the fountain. ‘This is one tradition—an English tradition—I want to respect, though.' Dropping gracefully to his knees, he took her hand. ‘You can do me no greater honour than to be my wife, Cassie. You can make me no happier than to say you will spend your life with me. All I have is yours. I offer you my heart. That, too, is yours, always. Say you'll marry me.'

Cassie dropped to her knees beside him. ‘Oh, Jamil, yes. Yes. For you have my heart, too, my dearest, darling Jamil. My own desert prince.'

His kiss was resonant with love. Always, afterwards, Cassie would associate lavender and jasmine with the most extreme happiness. For the first time ever, he kissed her as a lover, as if she were the most precious thing in the world, and the most desirable. Tenderly and passionately he kissed her, as if it were his first kiss, as if he had never kissed, as if he would never leave off kissing. Her lips. Her lids. Her cheeks. Her ears. Her throat. Murmuring his love. Whispering her name. He kissed her, and she returned his kisses, as lovers do, with adoration and fervour, just exactly as if they had never kissed, and always would.

He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the sleeping chamber. Placing her on the divan, he kissed her while he removed each scrap of her clothing. Kisses that coiled their wispy magic around her, raising her pulse, heating her blood, so gradually she did not notice at first. She lay spread before him naked, relishing the reverence in his face, in his touch, on his lips, relishing the way he looked and tasted and touched, anxious to do the same, tugging at his caftan until he lifted
it over his head and stood before her proudly erect, magnificent.

He kissed her thighs, then licked into her sex. ‘Wait, wait, wait,' she said, tossing and turning, clutching, trying to hold on, but he would not let her. He kissed her and she came, wildly, jerked into paradise with the force of it, clutching his shoulders for fear of being lost, saying his name over and over.

Even as the pulsing shook her, he pulled her on top of him, easing her down on to the long silken length of him, his face etched with the pleasure of it. Even as the throbbing receded and began to build again, he lifted her, showing her how to sheathe him and how to unsheathe, to move to a rhythm that was just theirs, only theirs, lost in the power of his thrust conjoined with her own, lost in the beauty of him, below her, inside her, swelling and pulsing until he came, crushing her to him, holding her tight against his chest, his heart beating the same wild rhythm as her own.

Her fingers traced the small scar above his heart. The place where he had bled for her. His fingers traced the deeper scar on her arm, where she had bled for him. ‘You were right. To embrace true love is a sign of strength, not of weakness. You make me stronger. I love you, Cassie. I will always love you,' Jamil said hoarsely. ‘I will never, ever tire of making love to you.'

‘I know,' she said. Because she did.

London—two months later

‘H
enry, haven't seen you in ages.' Lord Torquil ‘Bunny' Fitzgerald strode across the salon and helped himself to a glass of their hostess's rather poor claret and plonked himself down opposite his old friend. ‘Frightful squeeze this, only came because I heard Wellington was bound to drop by. Didn't realise we'd be subjected to some damned caterwauling female though.'

‘La Fionista,' Lord Henry said. ‘If you've seen her, you'll realise why Wellington's here—you know how much he likes a good vibrato!'

The two men chuckled heartily. ‘Saw your good lady wife somewhere,' Bunny said, flicking open his snuff box. ‘Here with one of your daughters—sorry, can't remember her name. The plain one, intimidating gal, bookish.'

‘Cressida.'

‘Aye, that's the one. Pity she took after your side of the family. T'other one now, she's a fine-looking girl. Cassandra.' Bunny lowered his voice confidentially. ‘Last time we met she was in a bit of a spot—assume you got it all sorted, right and tight?'

Lord Henry took a generous pinch of snuff, inhaled it, sneezed twice, wiped a few specks from his coat sleeve and drained his glass. ‘I suppose you could say that,' he said, waving the waiter over and telling him to leave the bottle. ‘Aye, you could say that, though, by God, Bunny, for a while there it was all hell to pay. After we last spoke, you should know I acted pretty sharply. Sent off a despatch to Cairo; there's a chap there owes me a favour, bit of a bumbler but reliable enough. So I sent him off to fetch Cassandra home.'

‘And?' Scenting scandal, Bunny pulled his chair a little closer.

‘Well, next thing is, I get a letter from Celia—my eldest, married to Prince al-Muhanna—usually very level-headed gal. Chip off the old block and all that. Anyway, she informs me that Cassandra has taken it into her head to become a governess. For this other sheikh. Al-Nazarri. Something about proving herself, I don't understand it—but all perfectly respectable and above board according to Celia.'

Bunny shook his head. ‘And this sheikh, is he…?'

‘Rich as Croesus.'

Bunny drew in his breath. ‘Tricky.'

‘Very. Of course, I sent another dispatch to Cairo, but it was too late, Finchley-Burke had already gone. No post for weeks. No idea what was happening, then I
got three letters all at once. Cassandra blithering on the way she does about what a marvellous job she's doing teaching the Prince's brat—dismissed that, needless to say. Then one from Celia telling me that Cassandra has been kidnapped and stabbed and not likely to survive. Well…' Lord Henry drank deep. ‘You can imagine how that went down with the other girls. Hysterical, they were. Had to call in Sophia. Bella no use whatsoever, burning feathers and drumming her heels. Took myself off to Boodle's pretty damn smart.'

‘My God, I should think so. Another snifter?'

‘Wouldn't say no. Then I read the other letter…' Lord Henry chortled ‘…turns out it's from this prince chappie, Prince Jamil al-Nazarri, demanding Cassandra's hand in marriage.'

‘Good lord. But I thought you said she was dying.'

‘No, she rallied. She's all right now. Fully recovered. Funny, it took Sophia quite a while before she could laugh about it. So there you are,' Lord Henry said with what in a lesser man would have been described as a grin. ‘I've two pet princes in the family now, helped my standing in the Foreign Office no end.'

‘But what about the other one—the chap you were so set on Cassandra marrying—Wellington's protégé?'

Lord Henry guffawed. ‘Another funny thing. Dead. Malaria. Touch of good fortune for me, because I'd as good as promised her. So there you go, all's well in the end.'

‘A toast,' Bunny said, rather sloppily tipping the dregs of the not-so-bad-after-all claret into their glasses. ‘To your new sheikh.'

‘Prince,' Lord Henry corrected.

‘Whatever. Cheers.'

 

The preparations for the wedding of the Prince of Daar-el-Abbah could not be hurried. Everyone wished to pay their respects and their dues. Men of import and influence, heads of tribes, neighbouring princes, distant kith and kin all wished to take part in the celebrations. Not even Halim could find a way of speeding the proceedings along. They went at the pace they needed to go at. It was the tradition. Jamil, conscious of the fact that he was breaking almost every other tradition, determined to give his beloved bride every possible chance of being accepted by his people, had reluctantly accepted the fact that the wedding would take six weeks to organise. In fact, it took eight. Eight long weeks during which he and Cassie spent an agonising amount of time apart. Eight long weeks in which they both counted the days, the hours, until they were formally united. Eight long weeks of nothing but snatched kisses to fuel their passion.

 

Eight long weeks, but finally the waiting was over. The betrothal ceremony, the day before the wedding itself, also followed tradition, with the women in one part of the palace, and the men in the other. Celia, who had recently discovered she was expecting her second child, was not present for the celebrations, it being the storm season and Ramiz having too much care for her well-being to allow her to travel. The loving letter she sent was gift enough for Cassie, though. In truth, Cassie would not have cared if they had taken their vows with
no one else present at all. All they needed was each other.

The bride-to-be's hands and feet were painted in henna, her hair braided and oiled, and the women danced together. At this point, tradition would end, for the wedding day was to be spent celebrating the future, which meant, Jamil had informed his shocked Council, that the rites would all be new.

 

The morning saw the bride and groom take breakfast together in the company of their most honoured guests, the women sitting at table with the men, partaking of food from the same dishes. From behind her veil, Cassie's eyes followed her husband-to-be with a longing that was almost tangible—to Jamil, at least. Though this was the most important day of his life, he could not wait for it to be over.

Cassie's wedding gown represented a mixture of east and west. A half-robe of golden silk, with an overdress of gold lace, with long, tight-fitting sleeves, puffed at the shoulder, but instead of an underdress or petticoats, she wore harem pants of gold, generously pleated and caught into her ankles, trimmed with little gold bells that tinkled when she walked. A long cloak of gold lace trailed out behind her, also trimmed with little bells, carried by six little girls at either side, orchestrated by a proud Linah bringing up the rear. On her head, Cassie wore a golden tiara over which another lace veil was suspended, with her long hair brushed into a cloud, cascading freely down her back. On her feet, she wore soft kid slippers edged with diamonds.

Trembling with anticipation, she made the seemingly
never-ending journey down the emerald green carpet from the entrance of the throne room. The guests were so numerous that they filled the ante-room at the back, and spilled out into the corridors, but Cassie looked neither to the right nor to the left, for her eyes were focused firmly to the front where Jamil waited for her, wearing a plain silk tunic, a long gold cloak to match her own and a golden head dress. His scimitar gleamed. On his belt was one of the famous yellow diamonds of Daar-el-Abbah. A matching diamond sat on Cassie's finger. As she reached the bottom of the dais, Jamil stepped down to meet her and put back her veil.

‘You look like a goddess come down from heaven,' he whispered. ‘My beautiful bride. How I have longed for this moment. I can't wait for tonight.'

‘Jamil.' She clutched at his hand, grateful for the support, suddenly unbearably nervous. But he smiled at her, his own particular smile, and she took courage and smiled back.

Their vows were said clearly and with a simple sincerity that made the women weep and the men harrumph.

‘I now declare you my wife,' Jamil said, gazing deep into her eyes.

‘I now declare you my husband,' Cassie replied, dimly conscious of the cheering as Jamil kissed her firmly on the lips.

The wedding banquet was a feast of delights, but she could barely eat. She and Jamil did not dance, but sat watching, their hands entwined, waiting. Finally, Halim stood before them, and informed them that the caravan was ready. ‘My very best wishes, Lady Cassandra,'
he said, bowing low. Halim was too wise a man to do anything other than accept Cassie wholeheartedly into the palace. In time, he would even begin to think, grudgingly, that the influence she had on Daar, and on its prince, was positive.

Climbing on to the high wooden seat of the white camels, Cassie and Jamil showered the cheering well-wishers behind them with gold coins, and were in turn showered with rose petals and orange blossom. They made the short journey to the Maldissi Oasis in a silence stretched taut with anticipation. The tent stood in the lee of the palms—a huge tent, an opulent tent with an enormous round divan taking pride of place. It was hung with garlands and strewn with more rose petals.

‘Darling. My own darling wife. Tonight I will love you as I have never loved you,' Jamil said, scooping Cassie into his arms and carrying her over the threshold. ‘And tomorrow, I will love you more.'

He laid her down on the divan and began to do just that. And later, when they embraced naked in the pool of the oasis, they made love again. The cool of the water and the heat of their skin and the velvet hardness of Jamil thrusting inside her made Cassie certain that she had indeed arrived in paradise.

As he gathered her into his arms and spent himself high inside her, as her own climax pulsed around him, she tilted her head back and saw the stars. So close, they were. It felt as if she and Jamil had taken their place among them, where their love would burn brightly for all eternity.