His Queen By Desert Decree

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Molly swallowed hard on her relief because in the back of her mind she had worried about what could have happened to her body while she was unconscious and had scolded herself for her fears. She breathed in slowly. ‘That is good,’ she muttered a little unevenly as she looked down at the worn mosaic tiled floor, embarrassed by her secret apprehension that she could have been touched while she was unaware of it.

For a split second, she looked so vulnerable that Azrael’s conscience propelled him forward one dangerous step to offer inappropriate sympathy before he stopped himself in his tracks. ‘I do recognise that you have suffered a very traumatic experience,’ he breathed almost harshly. ‘And I deeply regret that a member of my family subjected you to such an ordeal, but be assured that Tahir will be most severely punished. His father is horrified by what he has done—’

‘That means nothing to me,’ Molly broke in quickly, keen to forestall such a shift in their dialogue because Tahir’s family was not her concern.

‘Quarein is much stricter than Djalia when it comes to relations between men and women,’ Azrael extended, royally ignoring her interruption. ‘In Quarein the sexes are segregated and women are very much protected. Men are executed for crimes against women there.’

‘And not here?’ Molly could not resist asking.

‘While Hashem was in power here, men were executed daily for every kind of crime, many for very small crimes and many who were innocent of any crime other than opposition to his regime,’ Azrael told her with gravity. ‘It was an inhumane system.’

‘It’s not my business anyway,’ Molly backtracked hurriedly, wondering how she had got led into such a discussion. ‘My only interest here is in how soon I can go home.’

Azrael opted for honesty. ‘I do not want to release you only for you to return to London to pursue Tahir’s prosecution. I will do almost anything to avoid that happening because I will not have Djalia damaged in the fallout from such an appalling scandal.’

It was his wording that unnerved Molly. Talk of ‘releasing’ her implied that she was not free to leave when she wished. ‘Am I a prisoner here, then?’

Azrael sidestepped that leading question. ‘I am determined to settle this affair for once and all with you before you go home.’

A pair of green eyes inspected him with a level of scorn Azrael had never met in a woman’s gaze before. ‘And how do you plan to settle it?’

Ironically, Azrael was grateful to be urged to that distasteful point. ‘By compensating you liberally for your ordeal in return for your silence.’

Molly was very much taken aback by that declaration. ‘You’re offering me money to keep quiet?’ she gasped in disbelief.

‘Compensation,’ Azrael framed, wishing he could gag her to force her to listen, wishing she weren’t acting shocked because he had been shocked by the concept too until Butrus had laid out all the possibilities before him. He did not wish to see any admirable qualities in her because it only intensified the attraction of something that could never ever be.

After all, in all likelihood he would be married in a few months. He would probably accept the bride from Quarein his stepfather had already suggested to him. Nasira was Prince Firuz’s niece and Azrael had met her when they were both still children, thinking even then that she was rigorously well behaved and very devout. Why did those worthy assets turn him off rather than turn him on? He didn’t want to think about that. He had yet to meet Nasira as an adult and if Prince Firuz’s wishes were followed, he would not get the chance to meet her before marrying her because that was the tradition in Quarein. Worryingly however, a veiled queen would be a retrograde choice in the eyes of his people, whose women had never worn the veil.

‘But money,’ Molly responded in unconcealed disgust. ‘I want justice, not money!’

‘Perhaps in an ideal world,’ Azrael countered. ‘Unfortunately, it is not an ideal world that we live in.’

‘My desire to have your brother prosecuted is stronger than my desire for money,’ Molly assured him fiercely. ‘I am not a forgiving woman.’

‘With respect, I suggest that you consider my offer,’ Azrael advised with icy cool, the hauteur of his finely sculpted features intense. ‘If you do not consider it, we are at stalemate and, as you have already said, you want to go home.’

Something inside Molly just snapped wide open and let out a flood of pent-up anger. Mr Gorgeous was a complete seven-letter word and she was tempted to land him a punch for his nerve in saying that to her. She had been drugged and kidnapped and now pressure was being put on her to accept financial compensation in place of a prosecution! How dared he? How dared he assume that she was the sort of woman who could be bought off? It was true that she was poor and had to work for a living and that more money would certainly come in very handy, particularly with regard to the cost of Maurice’s care, she acknowledged reluctantly, but she also had principles and she knew right from wrong.

‘A crime has to have a punishment,’ she shot back at him, her raised voice reverberating at an embarrassing volume up through the domed ceiling above them. ‘Nothing else is acceptable to me!’

‘If that is the case I am sorry for it,’ Azrael grated, thoroughly tired of the way she shouted at him. She was a hot-tempered virago of a woman, he decided, pleased to have found a fatal flaw hidden at the very heart of such beauty. As a man who rarely lost his own temper, he had little tolerance for those with less control. Furthermore, he hadn’t been shouted at since he was a soldier in training and it was one aspect of military life that he did not miss.

‘And I am sorry that you are a king who does not appear to know right from wrong,’ Molly fired back with an unconcealed contempt that sent Azrael’s stunning deep-set eyes flaring to a scorching rage-filled gold.

But, raised in a much harsher school than she had been, Azrael gritted his teeth and exerted restraint over the teeming volatile emotions he had learned to rise above as a teenager when, innocent of fault, he had been whipped and humiliated. He had taken his punishment like a man to protect his mother. He knew that he could withstand any punishment to protect his country. And what were words? Opinions? Was he so weak that he could even react to such a condemnation from someone who knew nothing of the sacrifices he had been forced to make throughout his life? No, he was not weak.

In a stormy tempest of fury, Molly raced back up the spiral staircase and felt momentarily dizzy, realising then that it was a very long time since she had last eaten. Gamila appeared with another tray while Molly was struggling to decide what to do next. This time, Molly accepted the meal, acknowledging that Azrael was unlikely to be planning to either drug or poison her. Was she being naïve though? Should she be scared? Azrael was determined to prevent her from returning home to report Tahir’s crime and clearly hoping that time would take care of her opposition.

Well, she had already lost her waitressing job. A failure to turn up for her shift was all that would take, she reflected gloomily. Was she being naïve about her safety in this desert castle? Wouldn’t it suit everyone here very well if she were simply to disappear? A cold shiver snaked down her spine despite the humidity. Nobody back home even knew where she was, nor would anyone find out. Her friend, Jan, would try to phone her and then might mistakenly assume that she had found more lucrative part-time work. Sadly, Molly worked such long hours that she had had little recent time free to catch up with Jan, who had recently given birth to her first child.

She shouldn’t have eaten that food, she thought fearfully. How could she possibly be safe in Djalia when so much appeared to hinge on her keeping quiet about Tahir’s crime? And here she was refusing and arguing with the Djalian King, who froze into an ice statue of chilly dignity every time she raised her voice. Not exactly the way to make friends and have a positive influence on people, was it?

But she was a victim and she wanted the perpetrator punished. Was that so wrong? Unnerved by her own flailing thoughts, Molly sat there wondering what to do next. She refused to be coerced into not doing what she had the right to do and that was reporting Tahir to the UK police. No doubt there would be some people back home just as eager to make the story go away if offending people in high places in an oil-producing country would result. No, she was not that naïve, but she was also determined.

And if Azrael wasn’t prepared to return her to the airport she would get herself there. It couldn’t be far away. Djalia was a tiny country, wasn’t it? She seemed to recall Tahir making some remark of that nature, a vaguely derogatory one. And if she had been recovered at the airport and brought to the fortress it was unlikely that the airport could be that far away, she reasoned, immediately feeling more upbeat about her prospects of escape under her own steam. Why should she sit here acting like a willing prisoner?

She was utterly innocent of fault in what had happened. But did Azrael believe that? Or did he suspect that she had encouraged Tahir in his delusions? She knew that there were women who would have encouraged Tahir simply because he was rich and willing to buy expensive gifts but she wasn’t one of them. But did Azrael know that or did he believe the worst of her? Sixth sense suggested that Azrael cherished a half-empty-cup view of life while she preferred the half-full-cup version. He would believe the worst and, in the circumstances, be glad to believe the worst of her if it made his half-brother’s wrongdoing seem more understandable and more forgivable.

It would undoubtedly not occur to Azrael that she was a good deal less experienced with men than most women in her age group. Had that not been the case, would there have been anything in Tahir’s attitude that she would have recognised as threatening? Could she somehow have averted that threat? How could she tell? Aside of the few casual dates she had enjoyed as a schoolgirl and the single boyfriend she had had since her grandfather went into care, Molly had had neither the freedom nor the time to explore the world of sex. The boyfriend had been short-lived because she hadn’t particularly enjoyed his kisses and when he had demanded more she had ditched him, reckoning that if he had been right for her she would have wanted to have sex with him, instead of being repulsed by the idea of it. There was the possibility, though, she conceded wryly, that she had a naturally low sex drive because she was not remotely bothered by her lack of experience and only very mildly curious about what she might be missing. Although, if she was honest, she reflected grudgingly, she had been considerably more curious since she first laid eyes on Azrael...

But what on earth did it matter what Azrael thought of her? Why would she even care?

Well, the unwilling prisoner was about to make a run for it, Molly decided. Recalling all those soldiers on the floor below, she realised she would have to wait until night fell and most people were asleep and then creep out. Buoyed up by the belief that she could thumb her nose at Azrael’s coercion and escape Djalia, Molly lay back on her bed, smiling for the first time that day. Throwing a spanner in the works of Azrael’s god complex held immense appeal for her.

Luckily she hadn’t unsealed the water bottle that had arrived with her very tasty meal. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could head into the desert heat without water, but she wondered how far and in which direction the nearest road lay. Positioning herself by the window for a couple of hours, she kept watch for vehicles, and there were several four-wheel-drive rough-terrain cars that rolled down the dunes but they all traversed the same route, she noted with satisfaction. She would follow their tracks out back to civilisation and freedom.

* * *

‘Tahir will be harshly punished by his father,’ Butrus reminded his monarch. ‘Prince Firuz is a severe man.’

‘As I have cause to know,’ Azrael reminded the older man wryly, for Firuz was his stepfather.

Some years after Azrael’s father had been executed in Djalia, Azrael’s mother had returned to Quarein and remarried. The following year Tahir had been born. A former princess of Quarein, Azrael’s mother’s marriage to the ruling sheikh of Quarein had been as much a political alliance to strengthen her teenaged son’s standing as a personal relationship. Always guiltily aware of that truth, Azrael had grimly tolerated Firuz’s tough parenting regime and pitied his kid brother for what lay ahead of him.

‘He will not escape a whipping,’ Butrus mused out loud with a faint but perceptible shudder. ‘You should tell Miss Carlisle that. Tahir will pay heavily for his stupidity. His father will ensure it. Prince Firuz makes no allowance for youthful mistakes.’

‘Unhappily for Tahir, this was much worse than youthful idiocy. It was a crime,’ Azrael pronounced stonily. ‘I feel dirtied by the whole business. For the first time in my life I have threatened a woman.’

‘Our country comes first and last,’ his advisor murmured heavily. ‘Occasionally there will be a need to face repugnant choices and choose the lesser of two evils.’

Azrael excused himself for the night. His brain recognised that Butrus was correct and that being a king would sometimes plunge him into contentious issues, but in his heart he was too conflicted to accept it. He had always tried to be an honourable, decent man but now he was utilising coercion on an innocent woman and the necessity of that treatment inflamed his pride and his own sense of justice. He felt guilty now.

About an hour before dawn, Molly crept down the spiral staircase carrying her shoes, the little tube of lip salve she had had in the pocket of her jeans and the bottle of water in a carrier bag she had found stuffed in the bathroom cabinet. She had tucked in a towel to cover her head from the heat because she had no hat to use. She had left her jeans behind, seeing no reason to burden herself with having to carry anything she couldn’t use. The forecourt, which had been so busy earlier in the day, was deserted but for one soldier stationed by the wall smoking. She lurked in the shadows until he began patrolling the battlements again and turned his back to the steps that led down to the next level. Then quick as a flash she darted out into view barefoot and sped down the steps.

There appeared to be no more guards but she still had to find her way out of the fortress. Fortunately for her, everywhere seemed to be deserted and she went down another flight of steps to find herself in a walled courtyard with closed gates and a pack of parked four-wheel drives. She wished she could steal a car and wondered what the punishment for that would be in Djalia. But starting up a car engine would attract attention, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Vehicles had been coming and going at all hours late into the night while she’d watched. At the same time she doubted her ability to drive up a steep sand dune and feared coming to grief at that first hurdle.

Picking her way between the cars while on the watch for anyone moving, she reached the gates and, with all the strength she had, she thrust down the iron bar on the gate to open it. As it creaked noisily open she slid out through the gap with a fast-beating heart and fled.

CHAPTER THREE (#u7c7e6737-b7a1-5882-ab84-83db99dd94e6)

MOLLY RAN UP the dune through the deep pitted tracks left by the cars, desperate not to be spotted by guards at the fortress before she could get out of sight. She reached the peak and, because it was much colder than she had expected, she drew in a deep breath and kept on running, grateful that she was fit. Running was, after all, what she did for exercise at home, but running in a dress was another story altogether, she discovered, with the stretch of her legs restricted and her strides shortened. She thought about simply pulling the dress up to her waist but, although she could see no sign of life in the moonlit landscape, she didn’t want to expose herself in her underwear in a country where that was probably unacceptable.

She stayed on the tracks but they mysteriously petered out around the time the sun started rising and the glare of that alone made studying her surroundings a challenge. She was looking for a landmark of some kind to take as a direction to ensure that she didn’t get lost, but all she could see was marching lines of sand dunes. What did you expect? she asked herself irritably. A signpost to the airport?

Well, no, but she had hoped to find a recognisable road at least, only there wasn’t a road or tracks anywhere that she could see. Yet the cars must have travelled from somewhere, she thought in frustration, veering off to the left when she espied flatter land there because climbing a dune without tracks was too difficult and too tiring to get her anywhere fast. A stony plain stretched before her then, occasional small bits of vegetation appearing, which persuaded her that she was heading in the right direction and likely to draw closer to what she dimly thought of as civilisation. Buildings, roads, cars...people. It infuriated her that probably all those things were close by, but she couldn’t spot them because of the blasted dunes blocking her view. She stilled a few times and simply listened, hoping to catch sounds that would lead her in a certain direction, but there was nothing, only the soft noise of the light breeze in her eardrums and the fast beat of her own heart. While she was sipping her water, mindful that she needed to conserve it, however, Azrael was shouting for the first time in all the years Butrus had known him.

‘How could any woman be that stupid?’ he was demanding wrathfully soon after Gamila had discovered her unoccupied bed and a search had established that Azrael’s guest was no longer anywhere on the premises. ‘There is nothing out there but miles and miles of desert.’

‘But Miss Carlisle doesn’t know that...unless someone mentioned it,’ Butrus remarked, looking at no one in particular. ‘She will soon get tired and too hot and come back. Perhaps she simply went for a walk—’

‘A...a walk?’ Azrael erupted afresh in disbelief. ‘She has run away! She is a very stubborn, determined woman. I tell you...she has run away because I told her that she couldn’t leave!’

‘It is a source of greater concern to me that anyone was able to leave without a single guard challenging them,’ admitted Halim, the commanding officer of Azrael’s household guard, with a frown. ‘There will be an investigation into that worrying event after the woman is found. If someone can get out so easily, someone could have got in and reached His Majesty—’

‘His Majesty is very well able to defend himself!’ Azrael bit out rawly. ‘I am going out to look for her—’

‘I would not advise that,’ Butrus interposed, forgetting his usually punctilious manners in his dismay.

‘Nobody knows this part of the desert better than me...nobody is a better tracker!’ Azrael fired back at him with unarguable assurance.

‘But a severe sandstorm is due to move in before nightfall,’ Halim reminded his royal employer nervously. ‘You must not put yourself at risk when there is no need. The whole guard are already out there searching for her.’

But Azrael had always been stubborn as a rock and highly resistant to advice. He felt personally responsible for Molly’s disappearance and if anything happened to her he knew he would carry the shame of it to the end of his days. Furthermore, having spent his childhood at the fortress and many months in almost the same locality as an adolescent following his father’s execution, he did know the terrain better than anyone else available. When he had changed into more suitable desert apparel, the dark blue robes of his nomadic heritage, he politely refused Halim’s companionship, knowing that Halim’s disability would make hours on horseback a day of physical suffering for him. Halim had stumbled on a landmine during the struggle to topple Hashem from power.

‘You are not to take such risks.’ Butrus was still protesting Azrael’s involvement right to the door of the stables. ‘If anything happens to you, what happens to Djalia? You agreed with the council...no more personal risks.’

‘Don’t be silly, Butrus. This is an emergency,’ Azrael responded squarely. ‘I will scarcely come to harm in a storm. I was a member of our special forces. There is nothing the desert can throw at me that I cannot handle.’

‘The woman is not worth the danger to your life,’ Butrus breathed, his voice quavering with emotion.

Azrael was taken aback to see the level of concern in his adviser’s eyes and he gave his shoulder a rather awkward pat before vaulting up onto the back of his horse. ‘No one life is worth more than another. You taught me that,’ he reminded him with quiet authority.

‘I spoke in error.’ Butrus was still arguing vigorously as Azrael rode out of the courtyard.

Around the same time, Molly was beginning to realise that she might have made a very bad decision when she left the fortress. Once she crossed the flat plain to reach the one and only landmark she had even seen since venturing out, she knew she was weakening. The heat was unbelievable. She had never felt heat of that magnitude in her life. The sun above was relentless and the sand was scorching, burning her feet even through the soles of her canvas shoes. Afraid of getting sunburned, she had pulled her hands up into her sleeves and kept the towel over her head to cover her face.

She had rationed her water, belatedly realising that she had brought nowhere near enough water to meet her needs in such a challenging environment. Simultaneously she had asked herself what she had planned to do if she had miraculously found the airport. She had not thought through what she was trying to do. How could she have boarded a plane to go anywhere? She had no money, no identification, no phone, no passport, none of the necessities required for travel...

Now as she headed for the little triangle of shade she could see below the giant rocky outcrop, she was getting scared because she was down to her last inch of water in the bottle and, although she wasn’t yet admitting it to herself, she knew she was lost because when she had, at one nervous point, attempted to retrace her steps she had discovered that the steadily building breeze had already covered them up, leaving her with no idea of which direction she had come from. Now her head was aching and she was getting cramps in her legs and resting until the heat at least eased off seemed the best option available.

She hated deserts because everything looked the same, she told herself fearfully as she slumped into the shade, and something with more legs than she cared to count scampered out of the gloom and sped off, as alarmed by her approach and startled cry as she was by its flight. She didn’t like insects or snakes or lizards and she had already seen far too many such creatures to relax, having discovered that although the landscape looked reassuringly empty, that was a misconception. A whole host of nasty things lurked in unexpected places. She rocked back and forth, dimly appreciating that she was no longer quite firing on all mental cylinders and that she was unwell.

She had done the Djalians’ work for them, she reflected dizzily. She had wandered off, got hopelessly lost and now she was going to die in the desert. She had another tiny sip of water, moistening her dry mouth while noticing that her arm had developed a sort of tremor that was unnerving.

Like Azrael—unnerving like Azrael. He had disturbed her, set off her temper and enraged her. It was his fault this had happened to her, his fault she had made such a dumb decision, she brooded, steeped in physical misery. She was hot, thirsty, dirty, sore and the tip of her nose hurt where the sun had got at it. The King, who had tried to buy her off.

Although the money would have come in useful, she acknowledged sleepily, her thoughts beginning to slow down, making her feel a little like a clock that badly needed winding up. Maurice would miss her visits, she thought, even if he couldn’t tell her apart from the mother she barely even remembered. And she didn’t mind that reality, no, of course she didn’t, when her grandfather had been the only person who ever seemed to love her. Did that mean that she was just unlovable? She had often wondered that. Her father hadn’t cared enough about her to protect her from his wife, while her stepmother had hated her almost on sight. Tahir had liked her in the wrong way, she reasoned in a daze, while Azrael... Why was she thinking about him again? Well, Azrael had hated her on sight too.

And then suddenly there was noise, the ground beneath her shifting as a horse galloped across the sand towards her. Poor horse, she thought numbly; if it was too hot for her, it had to be too hot for the horse as well. The horse, however, carried some sort of tribesman and she contrived to stretch out an arm and wave from the shade as though she were hailing a bus to stop for her.

The figure vaulted off the horse and the ground under her hips moved at the thump of booted feet.

‘You stupid, stupid woman,’ a familiar voice scolded.

And a weird kind of joyous relief engulfed Molly as she struggled to focus on those intense dark golden eyes, which were all that showed in the headdress he wore that covered his mouth as well. Azrael had found her and, instantly, she knew she would be all right.

Azrael was less confident because the storm was moving in fast in a threatening dark smudge, which he could already see on the horizon. The high winds had brought down the mast and his phone had not worked since his last call when he had phoned in to share that he had identified Molly’s tracks. Now they were too far from the fortress to make it back ahead of the storm. How the hell had she got so far before he found her? She had travelled miles into the desert, through mile after mile of the most blazingly unwelcoming landscape on earth. And she had done it without adequate clothing or footwear and any of the many pieces of equipment that would have kept her comfortable and safe. She was crazy but she was also strong, Azrael acknowledged, squatting down to hand her a water bottle and grab it off her again before she made herself sick.

‘Hands off, Mr Grumpy,’ she told him with a giggle.

She was delirious from heat and thirst, Azrael interpreted in frustration. He lifted her and bundled her into a cloak, noting the red tip of her nose with a groan.

‘What’s wrong?’ she slurred.

‘You have burned your nose.’

‘Do I look like Rudolph?’

‘Who’s Rudolph?’ Azrael lifted her and draped her over his horse like a folded carpet. She was safe: he had found her. A little of the tension holding his powerful frame taut dissipated. He would take her to the cave and plunge her in the pool to cool her off. Hopefully by that stage the storm would have passed and they could be picked up. No aircraft could take off in such weather because it was too dangerous.