Once again Azzam had appeared beside her as if teleported there, for she’d heard nothing of his approach, but how he’d reached her paled into insignificance against the effect the man’s presence had on her. Was it the sight of the light from the fire dancing on his bare chest that sent shivers up her spine? Or was it nothing more than the maleness of him, she who hadn’t known a man intimately, who hadn’t even kissed a man since David’s defection? The man smell—sweat and dust and something deeper. She probably smelt pretty bad herself, but this smell was—
Idiot! Of course it wasn’t intoxicating! She was tired, that was all, and in a strange country with leopards stalking the night it was only natural her instincts would tell her subconscious to seek out a protector.
She took the bread from him and bit into it, finding it so tough she had to tug at it to free a bite. He passed the water bottle, his fingers brushing against hers, an accidental touch that caused much the same reaction as the smell of him had only minutes earlier.
‘I think the little girl’s ICP has decreased slightly,’ she said, reminding herself she was a competent medical practitioner, not a weak and needy—and possibly slightly hysterical—female.
Azzam heard the words, but they seemed so strange, out here in the mountain pass with tumbled houses all around them and coming from a dirty, dishevelled woman standing there, a baby strapped roughly to her chest, and shapely ankles showing beneath the hem of her trousers.
‘That’s good,’ he said, because something was obviously expected of him, but beneath the words he sensed another conversation going on. Was she afraid? Was it fear he could feel in the air between them?
She should be afraid! Alone in an isolated place, in a country she didn’t know, surrounded by strangers, she certainly had cause to be a little fearful if not downright terrified. Yet he didn’t want to diminish the courage she’d shown earlier by saying something—by asking her if she’d like him to stay close to her, to protect her through the night.
No matter how much he’d like to do it!
‘The children? Did you find out anything about them, find anyone who would take care of them now they are apparently orphaned?’
He shook off the strange thoughts he’d been having, thoughts related to being close to this woman through the night.
‘It seems they are incomers, a family who arrived here a few days before the baby was born. They have been living in an abandoned cottage. The father took off within weeks of their arrival, leaving the mother and the three children.’
‘And no one has befriended her?’
Even as Alex asked the question she thought of country towns back home where newcomers might be treated with suspicion but surely not totally ignored.
‘Our connections are tribal,’ Azzam explained, ‘and although the link might be generations in the past, the people of the tribe are all related. Some tribes naturally affiliate with others, but maybe these people were…’
He paused and Alex guessed he was wondering how to explain.
‘Not enemies, exactly, but from a tribe that didn’t intermarry with the locals.’
‘But surely children don’t carry any stigma from their breeding? Wouldn’t someone want to take care of them?’
‘I am guessing here and will continue to ask,’ Azzam told her, ‘and maybe we will find someone, but you must realise these people have lost everything. To take on three extra children when you have nothing…’
He didn’t need to finish. Alex nodded, thinking the villagers had probably been poor before the earthquake had struck, taking away what little they’d had. But she held the baby more tightly against her chest as her heart ached for the children no one wanted.
Azzam was talking again and she stopped thinking ridiculous thoughts of taking the children home with her and listened.
‘I must go,’ Azzam said, though he didn’t want to leave the woman, who looked so vulnerable as she held the baby against her chest. ‘I will take a shift with the men who are patrolling. Someone has found a rifle so don’t be alarmed if you hear a shot. It will probably be someone firing at shadows, but if a leopard should approach, a shot will frighten it away.’
She sank down onto the ground, one arm still held protectively against the baby.
‘I’ll be all right,’ she assured him, but he heard the quiver of alarm in her voice and remembered the tears that had slid down her cheeks earlier.
He knelt beside her and put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close against his body.
‘You have been incredibly brave, you have done more than should be asked of any human for people you do not even know. It is all right to be afraid, even to cry, now the worst of it is over. It is also right to grieve for the ones we couldn’t save.’
‘The mother of the children is dead, and the school teacher and two of the other children, too—one that I rescued and the one I left behind,’ she whispered.
‘But many are alive because of you,’ he reminded her, feeling the softness of her in his arms, the fragility of her small bones—feeling her as a woman so once again his body stirred.
She shook her head as if denying herself the praise and the comfort of his words then shifted so they were no longer touching.
‘You must go—there are things you should be doing.’ Her voice was husky—tears or just exhaustion? He couldn’t tell and didn’t want to think about it as either would strengthen his desire to stay close to her. ‘I’ll be all right on my own.’
‘I must go,’ he agreed, knowing his duty lay outside this shelter, organising, making arrangements to see them all safely through the night. Yet his body was reluctant to move—the softness of the woman a temptation he hadn’t felt for a long time.
Not this woman, his common sense warned.
He rose and left the shelter, not looking back.
Although he would have to return—he knew that. It would be unacceptable to leave Alex and the children on their own throughout the night.
‘You still intend to sleep here with the children?’ Azzam asked, finding Alex much as he had left her two hours earlier, sitting by the children in the makeshift shelter.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The boy is still unwell and the baby will need feeding during the night. I can’t abandon them.’
Neither could he abandon her, Azzam realised. Apart from anything else, she was a guest in his country, his mother’s friend. And he’d heard not fear but distinct uncertainty in her voice as she’d told him of her plans. She wasn’t stupid and would realise that this tent, on the outskirts of the little tent village now set up, would be the first visited by a leopard should one come prowling, yet she’d asked nothing of him.
On the other hand…
How to explain?
‘While it is understood that all people will sleep close to each other for warmth and safety, they will do so in family groups, as that is our way,’ he began, aware he sounded far too tentative but unable to explain the customs that dictated this. ‘The families are already settling into tents but if we share a tent, you and I, it would be…’
‘Remarked on? Unseemly? Not done? There’s been an earthquake, for heaven’s sake. We have to do the best we can.’
He had to smile at the incredulity in her voice, especially when she added, ‘Anyway, if people want to get picky, we can point out we have the children with us as chaperones.’
There was a pause, taut and expectant, before she added, ‘Not that I need you to share the shelter with me. You said people will patrol the camp. I’ll be quite safe.’
If she’d sounded a little less defiant—defiance hiding uncertainty—he might have let it go, but duty to this woman who was helping his countrymen insisted she be protected.
‘The children would not count, neither can I leave you unprotected. I am sorry, but my position—it must seem ridiculous in your eyes, I can see that, but in this village it would be seen as…’
He turned away, battling to find the words he needed, English w
ords that would convey the extent of dishonour him sharing a tent with her would bring, not only to his name but even more so to this woman who was innocent of anything other than a desire to help.
But there were no words—well, none he knew—in English to cover such a situation.
‘It would be impossible!’ He settled for simply dismissing the idea, before bringing up a solution. ‘However, there is a way that we can do this. If you would sleep easier with my company—and I would certainly feel happier about your safety if I was with you—then we can make a marriage.’
‘A marriage?’ Incredulity didn’t cover it—this was stark disbelief! ‘We get married so you can share a tent with me? In an earthquake-stricken village where the choice of shelter is non-existent?’
‘It is an old arrangement, usually made for the convenience of both parties but without the obligations of a real marriage. It is legal to do this, to make a misyar marriage for both our convenience so the people do not think that I am shaming you, or that are you a shameless…’
‘Hussy is the word we’d use,’ she said, actually chuckling as she said it. ‘I can’t believe this. It is just too weird. I know other cultures have their boundaries and it’s the difference between people that makes the world the fascinating place it is, but…’
Laughter swallowed up the words and now instead of fanciful smiles in the night air, Azzam felt the stir of anger.
‘Is marrying me so ridiculous?’ he demanded. ‘Many women would be gratified to—’
‘Be proposed to by a prince?’ The words were accompanied by a further gurgle of laughter. ‘Oh, dear, I have to stop laughing but you must admit it’s funny. Here I am, given a choice of facing a stray leopard on my own or marrying a prince, and I’m dithering over it. And on top of that there’s the fact that you have this convenient kind of pseudo-marriage, which sounds to me as if it’s there to cover men who might want to cheat on their wives.’
‘It was not intended for that.’ He sounded far too stiff and formal, but that was because he knew it was used in that way from time to time. Though not to cheat, for the wife would surely know of it. ‘It is also convenient for older women, widows even, who might be happy on their own but sometimes desire male company.’
He completed his explanation, his voice so cold Alex realised she’d have to stop joking about the situation, although the only way she’d been able to handle the uneasiness inside her that had followed his strange proposal had been with humour. She was wondering if she should apologise when he spoke again.
‘It was intended too, for times like this, for when a woman might need the protection of a man but is without a brother or a father. If it has been made a convenience of by some people, that is by the way. For tonight and however many nights we need to remain here, would you be willing to go through with it?’
‘Marriage or the leopard—it’s really not a choice,’ Alex said, deciding this was just one more bizarre memory she would have to take home with her. ‘What do we have to do?’
‘Agree, have two witnesses and the headman, who will be the local marriage official. I’ll go and see him now.’
Within thirty minutes they were married, it seemed, although her husband had departed with the headman as soon as the ceremony, if it could be called that, was over. He was checking the arrangements for keeping watch, he’d said, and would talk to people about the possibility of someone taking the children into their own family.
Married so they could share a tent?
Forget that—it was nothing more than a formality. She must concentrate on what needed to be done.
Alex fed the baby, cleaned him as best she could, wrapped a bit of cloth around his nether regions then set him down, asleep, beside his sister. She wished she had something to cover them with, but all the available materials had been used.
With the siblings asleep, she moved across to the next tent where the unconscious girl lay, her father still holding the bag of fluid. The girl’s pupils were still unresponsive to light and her limbs failed to react to stimuli. Despair crept into Alex’s heart as she began to think this child, too, might die, but when she felt the child’s fontanelle, nearly but not entirely closed, she found the small gap between the bones at the top of the skull was no longer bulging. It meant the pressure in the child’s brain had decreased, and she smiled at the girl’s father, hope lightening her heart.
She returned to the children—her children, as she was beginning to think of them. Azzam had left a bottle of water in the tent, and, using her bra as a washer, she wet it with a little of the precious fluid to give herself a quick wash, thankful she’d had the forethought to bring her emergency pack with the spare pair of undies in it, although she hadn’t thought ahead enough to bring nappies for a baby!
The baby—he’d stir, probably wake during the night. Best he sleep next to her. But as she’d retrieved him, she’d felt the little girl’s skin, had felt how cold she was, although the night was still young. She had to find some cover for them.
Her clothes, of course, were filthy, but the tunic top she wore came to just below her knees. She could slip off the long cotton trousers and still be as decent as a woman in a dress at home. There was enough material in the wide trousers to cover the children for the night, and in the morning, before anyone was around, she could pull them back on.
She settled down beside the children—not hers at all but three who needed someone to show care and perhaps a little love towards them. With the baby wrapped against her chest, she curled her body protectively around the siblings, resting her arm across them so they were all snuggled up together.
Azzam stood his shift on watch then walked back to where the children were, looking down at the woman in the light shed by the fire outside the tent. While he’d been gone, she’d lost her trousers, the sleeves of her tunic had fallen back and the hem of it had ruffled up, so shadows of dark and light played across her pale, slim limbs, highlighting scratches that made him angry for some reason.
Angry that she’d been hurt…
He blocked the image and the thought from his mind, seeing the way she had placed herself between the edge of the shelter and the children. She may have been afraid of leopards but that fear hadn’t blotted out her protective instincts.
He lay beside her now, adding another layer of protection for the children, but it was the warmth of her body that stirred him, thoughts of her, not the children, drifting through his mind until sleep claimed him.
CHAPTER SIX
THE baby stirred against her chest and gave a feeble whimper. Not wanting it to cry and wake Azzam or the other children, Alex slid out from between them. She unwound the scraps of material with which she’d bound the baby to her chest, found the bottle of milk, and held the teat to the infant’s lips. She tried not to think where the milk—or the bottle—might have come from, and dismissed all thought of sterility from her mind.
Which wasn’t that hard, as thoughts of the man who’d slept beside her were clamouring for attention.
She’d woken to the feel of his warmth and the solidity of his body, and had felt her own warmth build in response to his closeness. Not sexual warmth—or she didn’t think it was—more just a feeling of security, a sense of shared responsibilities.
He was her husband…
Nonsense, he wasn’t a real husband—not in any sense. It was convenience, nothing more.
Definitely not sexual warmth!
The baby sucked avidly, reminding her of where her attention should be. Holding the bottle and baby with one hand, Alex searched through the medical supplies until she found another sling, and, padding it with cotton wool, fashioned a nappy for the infant.
‘There,’ she said to him as he finished the milk and snuggled against her chest, ‘now you’ll be more comfortable.’
She checked his sleeping siblings then tucked the baby in between them, so she wouldn’t be hampered, and he wouldn’t be disturbed, if she had to move to tend another patient during the
night. In fact, now she was awake she should check on all the patients.
Or was she looking for an excuse to escape the man who lay, sleeping so soundly, right beside her?
An excuse to escape her thoughts?
She smiled to herself as she realised that to someone who’d battled on alone as she had recently, the warmth of shared responsibilities might be more alluring than sexual warmth.
Well, almost…
Although it had been such a long time since she’d felt any stirrings of a sensual nature, she couldn’t really judge. She’d stopped feeling them long before David had opted out her of life so precipitously. When first they’d met, his insistence they not make love until they married had seemed so quaint and old-fashioned she’d admired him for it—even felt special in some way. But why had it never occurred to her to wonder why the decision didn’t irk her?
Because being with David hadn’t stirred her body and her senses the way this man’s presence did?
Because she’d never felt much physical frustration over his decree? Maybe a quiver or two when they’d kissed, but even that had stopped long before they’d parted. In fact, in retrospect, she had to wonder if David had remained engaged to her to protect himself—to avoid a permanent commitment to another woman. Any woman!
So, if she was to feel strange stirrings now, would it be so surprising? Even in the dim light of the dying fire, the man who lay beside her was clearly something special. His face had struck her earlier, outlined against the bright whiteness of his headdress, then his body—his naked chest—so well developed.
Now the heat of him, so close…
She sat and looked at him, aware this wasn’t quite right, to be studying a stranger while he slept.
Except he was her husband—didn’t that excuse her?—even if he had only married her to save her name. Although he had made out it was equally to protect his own good standing that he’d taken the step of marrying her.
His own good standing as prince, or as a man?
She had no answer to that or to any of the questions that taunted her.
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