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She swallowed. ‘I’m a big girl. I can handle it, surely.’
He nodded. ‘As you say.’ He looked back at the road for a moment before he began. ‘There was a blind man in the village where we grew up, a man called Saleem,’ he started. ‘He was old and frail and everyone in the village looked out for him, brought him meals or firewood. He had a dog, a mutt he’d found somewhere that was his eyes. We used to pass Saleem’s house on our way to school where Saleem was usually sitting outside, greeting everyone who passed. Mustafa never said anything, he just baited the dog every chance he got, teasing it, sometimes kicking it. One day he went too far and it bit him. I was with him that day, and I swear it was nothing more than a scratch, but Mustafa swore he would get even. Even when the old man told him that it was his fault—that even though he was blind he was not stupid. He knew Mustafa had been taunting his dog mercilessly all along.
‘One day not long after, the dog went missing. The whole village looked for it. Until someone found it—or, rather, what was left of it.’
She held her breath. ‘What happened to it?’
‘The dog had been tortured to within an inch of its life before something more horrible happened—something that said the killer had a grudge against not only the dog, but against its owner.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The dog had been blinded. So, even if it had somehow managed to survive the torture, it would have been useless to Saleem.’
She shuddered, feeling sick. ‘How could anyone do such a thing to an animal, a valued pet?’
‘That one could.’
‘You believe it was Mustafa?’
‘I know it was him. I overheard him boasting to a schoolfriend in graphic detail about what he had done. He had always been a bully. He was proud of what he had done to a helpless animal.’
‘Did you tell anyone?’
Her question brought the full pain and the injustice of the past crashing back. He remembered the fury of his father when he had told him what he had heard; fury directed not at Mustafa but at him for daring to speak ill of his favoured child. He remembered the savage beating he had endured for daring to speak the truth.
‘I told someone. For all the good it did me.’
Choose your battles.
His uncle had been so right. There had been no point picking that one. He had never been going to win where Mustafa was concerned. Not back then.
She waited for more but he went quiet then, staring fixedly at the road ahead, so she turned to look out her own window, staring at the passing dunes, wondering what kind of person did something like that for kicks and wondering about all the things Zoltan wasn’t telling her.
He was an enigma, this man she was married to, and, as much as she hated him for who and what he was and what he had forced her into, maybe she should be grateful she had been saved the alternative. Because she would have been Mustafa’s wife if this man had not come for her. She shuddered.
‘Princess?’
She looked around, blinking. ‘Yes?’
‘Are you all right? You missed my question.’
‘Oh.’ She sat up straight and lifted the heavy weight of the ponytail behind her head to cool her neck. ‘I’m sorry. What did you ask?’
He looked at her for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not, before looking back at the interminably long, straight road ahead. ‘Seeing as we were talking about Mustafa,’ he started.
‘Yes?’
‘There is something I don’t understand. Something you told me when we rescued you.’
‘Some rescue,’ she said, but her words sounded increasingly hollow in the wake of Zoltan’s revelations about his half-brother’s cruel nature. Maybe he had saved her from a fate worse than death after all. ‘What about it?’ she said before she could explore that revelation any further.
‘How did you convince Mustafa not to take you right then and there, while he had you in the camp? Why was he prepared to wait until the wedding? Because if Mustafa had laid claim to you that first night he held you captive, if he had had witnesses to the act, then no rescue could have prevented you from being his queen and him the new king.’
She swallowed back on a surge of memory-fed bile, not wanting to think back to those poisoned hours. ‘He told me he did not care to wait, you are right.’
‘So why did he? That does not sound like the Mustafa I know.’
She blinked against the sun now dipping low enough to intrude through her window and sat up straighter to avoid it, even if that meant she had to lean closer to him in the process, and closer to that damned evocative scent.
‘Simple, really. I told him that he would be cursed if he took me before our wedding night.’
‘You told him that and he believed you?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘But there must have been more reason than that. Why would he believe that he would be cursed?’
Beside him she swallowed. She didn’t want to have to admit to him the truth, although she rationalised he would find that truth out some time. And maybe he might at least understand her reluctance to jump into bed and spread her legs for him as if the act itself meant nothing.
‘Because I told him that, according to the Jemeyan tenets, if he took me before our wedding night the gods would curse him with a soft and shrivelled penis for evermore.’
‘Because you are a princess?’
‘Because I am a virgin.’
‘And he believed you?’ He laughed then as if it was the biggest joke in the world, and she wasn’t tempted in the least to rake her nails down his laughing face again—this time she wanted to strangle him.
Instead she turned away, pretending to stare out of the window and at the sea, fat tears squeezing from her eyes, but only half from the humiliating memories of being poked and parted and prodded by the wiry fingers of some old crone who smelt like camel dung.
The other half was because it never occurred to Zoltan to believe her. It never occurred to him that she might be telling the truth, that she might actually be a virgin. And the rank injustice of it all was almost too much to bear. She angled her body away from him to mask the dampness that suddenly welled in her eyes.
To think she had saved herself all this time only to be bound to someone like him instead. The one thing she had always thought hers to give; the one thing she had thought hers to control, and when all was said and done she had no control at all. No choice. It was not to be given as a gift, but a due.
What a waste.
‘It would seem your half-brother is superstitious,’ she managed to say through her wretchedness to cover the truth.
And from behind the wheel, Zoltan’s words sounded as though he was still smiling. ‘Yes. He always was a fool.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE could smell the salt on the air long before she could see the sea. They had left the highway some time ago. The track across the desert sands was slower going, until they topped one last dune and suddenly a dry desert world turned into paradise.
From their vantage point, she could see the rocky peninsula jutting into the crystal-clear sapphire waters, and where before she had seen no signs of vegetation beyond small, scrubby salt-bushes clinging to the sand for their meagre existence for miles, now the shores and rocks were dotted with palms, the rocky outcrops covered with lush, green vegetation.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said as they descended, heading for the long, white strip of sandy beach. ‘But how?’
‘A natural spring feeds this area. If you like, I will take you and show you where the water runs clean and pure from the earth. If I try hard enough, I’m sure I’ll remember the way.’
The offer was so surprising, not only because he was asking her again, but because he had revealed a part of himself with his words—that he had been here before, and clearly a long time ago.
‘I would like that,’ she said, wondering what he would have been like as a child. Overbearing, like he was now? Although that wasn’t strictly true, she was forced to admit. He wasn’t overbearing all the time.
Which was a shame, really, because he was much easier to hate when he was. And she didn’t want to find reason not to hate him, because then she might be tempted to wonder.
But no. She shook her head, shaking out the thought. She didn’t wonder. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to know what it would be like to be made love to by a man like this one, who clearly was no virgin himself, who had no doubt had many lovers and who probably knew all about women and what they might enjoy.
‘Is something wrong, Princess?’
She looked up at him, startled. ‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘Because you made some kind of sound, kind of like a whimper. I wondered if there was something wrong.’
‘No.’ She turned away, her cheeks burning up. ‘I’m fine, just sick of sitting down. Are we nearly there?’
Thankfully they were. A cluster of tents had been erected below a stand of palm trees in preparation for their arrival, one set apart from the rest.
‘Is that one mine?’ she asked, half-suspecting, half-dreading the answer.
‘That one is ours, Princess,’ he said, pulling open her door and offering her his hand to climb from the car. ‘It would not do to let everyone know the true state of our marriage.’
‘But I told you …’
He found it hard not to grind his teeth together. So she had—how many times already? Did she think he wanted to be reminded how much she did not want to lie with him? ‘I am sure you will be more than satisfied with the sleeping arrangements.’
She looked down at his hand, as if assessing whether he was telling the truth. ‘Fine,’ she said, finally accepting his offer of assistance. ‘But, if not, then I will not be held accountable for the bruise on your ego.’
‘I’m sure my ego can take it, Princess. It is the damage you do to the monarchy that is my more immediate concern, and indeed the damage you could do to your own father’s. So perhaps you might keep that in mind.’
Her face closed, as if she’d pulled all the shutters down to retreat into herself.
So be it.
She might be used to having things all her way when she was at home leading her sheltered spoilt-princess life, but she was here now, she was his wife, and she would start doing her duty and acting like his wife before they left and before the coronation. Nothing was surer.
Still, for what it was worth, he let her lead the way into their tent to inspect the sleeping arrangements, to check out the large sofa that could double for a bed if needed, and the large bed he was hoping would be the only sleeping arrangement required.
Besides, following her was hardly a hardship. Not when he had the chance to check out the rhythmic sway of her hips under the coral-coloured abaya she wore today.
As he followed her he could not work out whether he liked her dressed more like this—in a cool cotton robe that only hinted at the shape beneath, but did so seductively and unexpectedly when a helpful on-shore breeze ventured along and pushed the fabric against her shape—or in trousers, like she’d worn that first day at the palace, that fitted her shape and accentuated her curves.
Then again, he hadn’t yet seen her without her clothes. And, while he’d felt the firmness of her flesh under his hands, and felt the delicious curve of her belly and roundness of her bottom hard against him, there was still that delicious pleasure to come.
Now, there was something to think about.
She turned, her hand on the tent flap, just about to enter. ‘Did you say something?’
‘No,’ he said, struggling to adjust to the conscious world. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I thought you said something. Though, now I think of it, it sounded more like a groan. Are you sure you’re all right?’
But before he could find the words to answer, she had angled her head to the notes being carried intermittently on the breeze. ‘What’s that?’
Never had he been more grateful for a change of topic as he strained his ears to listen. The knowledge that she had made him so oblivious to his own reactions was a cold wake-up call. He could not afford to let such lapses happen, not if he was to be King.
And suddenly the notes made sense on the breeze and reminded him of something he’d been told. ‘There is a camp of wandering tribes people nearby. A few families, nothing more. They will shortly move on, as they do.’
‘They are safe, then, these tribes people?’
And he realised that even to ask that question showed she wasn’t as unconcerned at the thought of being recaptured by Mustafa as she wanted him to think.
‘They would not be here if they were not. But they have been advised of our coming and they value their privacy too. So rest assured, Princess, they will keep their distance and they will not harm you.’
She’d only been here an hour and already she loved it. Being on the coast meant on-shore breezes that took the sting from the heat of the day and made being on sand a pleasure, rather than torture—at least if you had taken off your sandals to paddle your feet in the shallows.
And she hadn’t minded a bit when Zoltan had had to excuse himself to take care of ‘business’, whatever that meant. Because it gave her the chance to truly relax. Despite all the beauty of this place, the endless sapphire waters, the calming sway of palm trees and the eternal, soothing whoosh of tide, there was no relaxing with that man about.
But still, she was glad she had come. Already, without the overwhelming weight of the palace and the duty it carried, she felt lighter of spirit. She knew there was no way of evading that duty for long. She knew she could not forever evade the chore that life had thrown her way.
But for now the long beach had beckoned her, drawing her to the point at the end of the peninsula, and she was thinking it was time to return when she heard it, the cry of a child in distress.
It came on the breeze, and disappeared just as quickly, and for a moment she thought she’d imagined it or misread the cry of a sea bird, and already she’d turned for the walk back when she heard it again. Her feet stilled in the shallows. A child was definitely crying nearby and there was no hint of any soothing reply to tell her anyone had heard or was taking any notice.
She swivelled in the shallows, picked up the hem of her abaya in one hand and ran down the beach towards the headland as fast as she could.
It was only when she rounded the rocky outcrop at the end she found the child sitting in the sand and wailing. She looked around and saw no-one, only this young girl squealing and clutching at her foot. Her bleeding foot.
‘Hello,’ she said tentatively as the girl looked up at her with dark, suspicious eyes, her sobs momentarily stopping on a hiccup. ‘What’s wrong?’
The young girl sniffed and looked down at her foot, saw the blood and wailed again.
Aisha kneeled down beside her. ‘Let me look,’ she said. She took her foot gently in her hands and saw a gash seeping blood, a broken shell nearby, dagger sharp, that she must have trod on with her bare feet.
‘Ow! It hurts!’ the young girl cried, and Aisha put a hand behind her head, stroking her hair to soothe her.
‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to wrap this up and it might hurt a little bit.’ She looked around, wishing for someone—anyone—to appear. Surely someone must realise their child was missing and take charge so she didn’t have to? Because she had nothing with her that might help, and the swaying palm trees offered no assistance, no rescue.
‘Where is your mother?’ she asked, once again scanning the palms for any hint of the girl’s family as she ripped the hem of her abaya, tearing a long strip from the bottom and yanking it off at the seam. She folded the fabric until it formed a bandage she could wrap around the child’s foot.
‘Katif was crying. And Mama ran back to the camp and told me to follow.’ And then she shrieked and Aisha felt guilty for tying the bandage so tight, even when she knew the girl was upset about not being able to follow her mother and her mother not coming back.
‘Your mother knows you are okay,’ she soothed, sensing it was what the child needed to hear. ‘Your mother is busy with Katif right now, but she knew I would look out for you and she could check on you later.’
The girl blinked up at her. ‘You know my mother?’
There was no way she could lie. ‘No, but I know she is good to be taking care of Katif, and I know someone will be here soon for you.’
And even as she spoke there was a panicked cry as a woman emerged running from the trees. ‘Cala! Cala!’
