An Arabian Courtship

by Lynne Graham

  Stalking through the front door, she walked into a bower of flowers. Maggie got up from amongst the beribboned baskets of white roses. ‘These came half an hour ago. Aren’t they gorgeous? Raschid does have style.’

  ‘Raschid sent them?’ Polly gulped, and swallowed. If Chris hadn’t been standing there guiltily ill at ease, she would have sobbed her heart out in absolute despair. It was incredibly hard now to recall that she had once believed she loved Chris.

  ‘Who else?’ Maggie eyed her sister’s drawn pallor curiously. ‘He may not phone much, but he knows how to employ the language of flowers!’

  * * *

  ‘If everyone would remain seated please,’ the stewardess called unexpectedly while Polly was trying to don her aba without elbowing the passenger beside her.

  ‘Is this lady…Her Highness?’

  As Polly triumphed over the aba she recognised Seif and Raoul, dwarfing the stewardess in the aisle. Startled, she stared. Both men bowed low, then Seif motioned a hand. Why were Raschid’s bodyguards collecting her off her commercial flight? He hadn’t tried to prevent her return, and she had clung feverishly to that favourable omission. She had phoned the palace. Medir had told her that Raschid was unavailable. Pressed pitilessly on a third call, he had revealed that Raschid was in the desert at some place called Jebel Kaddish. Polly had duly announced her arrival time at Jumani airport.

  Outside the heat of midday engulfed her. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘To the plane.’

  ‘We’ve just got off the plane!’

  No answer. Her anxiety level was reaching elephantine proportions. They led her on a long trudge round the airport buildings. A curious little craft sat there, a cross between a helicopter and a seaplane without floats.

  ‘I wish to go to the palace,’ Polly declared tautly.

  ‘Princess go join Prince Raschid.’ Seif made idiotic stepping motions into the empty cargo hold facing her, much as though he was trying to coax a bashful sheep into a truck. ‘Long flight, must leave…pronto,’ he produced with a gold-capped grin.

  She boarded with her case. Where her wishes ran contrary to Raschid’s Seif and Raoul became uniformly deaf. A rough bench seat adorned by an incongruous cushion was indicated by the pilot. The two guards remained on the tarmac. Raschid was still in the desert. Did he want to see her somewhere more private than the palace? Or did that whistling pilot have instructions to push her out without a parachute above cloud cover? Polly, get a grip on yourself, she told herself. You’re facing a battle royal, not an execution!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WITHOUT a view the flight was endless. The pilot chain-smoked, making conditions doubly unpleasant. When they landed Polly stumbled gratefully out into the open air. The plane was overhung by a massive black outcrop of jagged rock that protruded like broken teeth into the sky. It screened them from even a whisper of a breeze in the intense heat. Jebel Kaddish was a desolate landmark, surrounded by a barbarously bleak and magnificent landscape of dunes. In the changing light the sands gradually shaded from beige to ochre as they marched in undulating succession into the horizon.

  A shout burst from the pilot and Polly spun round. She had to shade her eyes to see the tribesmen, precariously perched on camels, travelling towards them at speed. The dust they were churning up almost obliterated her glimpse of the rider on the black stallion in their midst. As they approached they spread out and finally reined in, encircling the plane. Steady-eyed Bedouin with thin, weathered faces, they were a ragged collection, yet they possessed the intrinsic dignity of a proud people in their erect carriage.

  Marzouk pranced, reacting to his rider’s fierce tension. Burningly blue eyes slammed into hers. Beneath the aba she couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t break that savage stare either. The pilot broke it, hurrying forward to bow low and engage with gusto on the ritual and lengthy greetings that betrayed his desert origins. Mortified by Raschid’s failure to acknowledge her, Polly studied the ground with burning cheeks.

  A tribesman dismounted and took her case to strap it on to a lone baggage camel while a second led another camel forward and with a practised flick of his cane made it kneel. On its back it bore a basketwork litter draped with bright cloth. Raschid at last walked Marzouk over to her and sprang down.

  ‘Look, I didn’t expect a welcome mat, but—’ she began huskily.

  Without a word he scooped her up and settled her into the litter, indifferent to the ill-tempered camel’s vicious attempts to snap at him. His prompt response to his wife’s reluctance provoked many covert smiles, and Polly’s anxious eyes brightened with indignation.

  The camel lumbered upright and the world lurched sickeningly. As they moved off at a steady pace, the swaying movements of the litter sentenced her to motion sickness. It was some time before she realised that by relaxing her body and keeping her attention off ground level, she could banish it. By then the only sounds were the crunching footfalls of the four-legged beasts of burden and the riotous clamour of her own heartbeat.

  They came upon the camp suddenly over a rise, a cluster of around twenty black tents and bush fires sending up smoking grey spirals. Darkness was falling now with astonishing speed and her muscles ached in every joint. The logic behind bringing her here evaded her, but she was very grateful that the journey was over.

  As she clambered stiffly from the litter, two manservants she recognised from the palace bowed low. Raschid trailed her unceremoniously past them into the shadowy depths of the nearest tent and pressed her round behind an interior wall of intricate leather and beadwork. Rugs and quilts were heaped there on a low rope bed, and she sat down immediately. Her legs were shaky supports.

  ‘Remove the aba. Only the elderly women mask their faces here.’

  Obeying, Polly glanced up, wet tendrils of hair clinging to her brow. And neither the searing intensity of his stare nor his dangerous stillness could quell the treacher-ous rush of excitement seizing her. It was a dark en-chantment that stripped her of pride and principle. If she had ever been strong with Raschid, she had never been weaker than she was now. The silence tortured her. ‘Say something!’

  A lean hand clenched to show the white of bone. ‘Keep yourself from my sight!’ he said icily.

  She scrambled up, blocking his exit. ‘At least hear what I have to say!’

  ‘Cry it to the wind. You are as likely to hear an answer there,’ he gritted in caustic derision. ‘With every hour that passes you will regret the insolence and the false confidence which encouraged you to disobey me.’

  A creature recognition of cold threat enforced her retreat. And he was gone in a flicker of movement with the soundless grace of a hunting animal. Nervously Polly looked around. Her surroundings were basic. She was not surprised. The servants were a necessary sacrifice to status, but Raschid wouldn’t flaunt his wealth here. In a corner she espied a radio apparatus and two elaborate bronze oil lamps. Beyond the dividing wall she found tinned goods and sacks and a second doorway. She knew that the very front section of the tent was reserved for the all-male bastion of the traditional coffee hearth where the men entertained. From outside drifted the aromatic enticement of cooking food.

  He couldn’t ignore her presence indefinitely, could he? Yet he must want to do just that. The most expensive bride in the Middle East had given the poorest satisfaction. In one way or another she had fought him every day of their marriage. He could have strung her along, he could have pretended it was forever and by now she would have been eating out of his hand. But while she acted on her emotions, Raschid acted according to his principles. He would not have lied to her.

  How much had her bloody-minded behaviour before he saw her in Chris’s arms contributed to his distrust? Oh, how childish she had been! Out of her depth and trying to keep her head above water, she had used the only means of defiance at her disposal. In some ways, she acknowledged unhappily, it had almost been a game to her while she tried to raise a real live emotional reaction from Raschid. But w
here did all that inappropriate groundwork leave her now? He didn’t want her here. So what’s new, Polly…? Her thoughts were bitter. But he would believe her, surely he would? If he didn’t…no, she refused even to think of that eventuality. This was just a stupid storm in a teacup, she reminded herself. It was just that he hadn’t realised the fact yet.

  Mahmoud brought her a savoury meat and rice concoction and a frothy cup of milk, and she ate hungrily. He reappeared with a shallow dish of water in which she was evidently expected to wash. Doing her best, she dressed again, frowning over the tightness of her waistband. Her mother was right and the scales were wrong. She was putting on weight. As a long shadow darkened the magazine she had taken out to read, she glanced up apprehensively.

  ‘You should be in bed. Before dawn we break camp.’

  ‘Can we talk now?’ Already Raschid was removing his clothes in quiet, economic movements.

  ‘I have no desire to talk.’ In the soft light shadows obscured his expression.

  Tension formed an iron band across her temples. She had already opened her case, but little within was suitable for a desert sojourn. What might have been comfortable would not be deemed respectable among nomads, whose women were shapelessly if colourfully covered from head to toe. Pulling out a lawn nightdress, Polly hesitated, her fingers coiled tight in the fabric. ‘I was crying and he was comforting me. He kissed me…I didn’t kiss him.’

  He grated an Arabic profanity, his teeth a feral white slash against his sunbronzed features. Frustration and strain summoned tears to her eyes. Granted more privacy than tent walls, she would have dared his anger and persisted. Edgily she began to undress again. Never had she been more conscious of Raschid, never had skin seemed more indecently naked.

  Impatient fingers wrenched the nightdress from her grasp and flung it aside before she could drop it over her head. As she collided in shock with incandescently blue eyes, the brand of fear she could taste flooded her mouth. ‘No…!’ she shuddered in stricken understanding.

  Raschid doused the lamps, plunging them into darkness. He found her with ease. There was no place to go, no room for evasive action, and if she cried out, the whole camp would hear her. Whatever she did, it would not turn Raschid from his cruel purpose. He was in the merciless grip of a murderous rage which had smouldered unabated for over five days. The icy mask of disdain he had shown her at Ladybright had been a fa;alade, no more indicative of his real feelings than a smile would have been.

  He laced a hard hand into the silken fall of her hair. ‘Let me show you how I would treat a whore,’ he invited with soft, biting menace. ‘If I thought of you as my wife, I would kill you with my bare hands. Yes, you succeeded, aziz. Celebrate your hour of victory now, for the glory will be brief. You twisted my guts with jealousy, and for that education, I am ungrateful.’

  ‘There’s nothing between Chris and…’ His hand clamped over her lips.

  ‘I doubt if he’ll want you back when I am finished with you. That lingering and so appealing innocence of yours will be gone. And then he would have to wait a very long time. For as long as it amuses me you will remain in Dharein, and when I wish, I will lie with you,’ he swore with muted savagery. ‘You have no rights. I grant you none, and I thank you for revealing your true self. I have you on my terms now, and I will yield you no quarter.’

  Polly was paralysed by the raw force of his invective. A sleeping tiger had been kicked into wakefulness and uncaged. She had yearned for the power to pierce his detachment, but not with the violent, destructive drive of emotions that had splintered his control. For that sin and for this vengeful act of subjugation he intended, Raschid would never forgive her. He would despise himself for using force with a defenceless woman. Her brain functioned frantically as he joined her, his lean body achingly familiar, but the hands sweeping her shrinking flesh were coolly set to shame, not to pleasure.

  ‘I…I need to go…outside,’ she stammered in desperation.

  Releasing his breath in a hiss, he folded back. Barely able to credit the success of her gambit, Polly blindly fumbled for some clothing and footwear, pulling on what she suspected was his discarded woollen tobe.

  ‘Don’t get lost.’

  For once, intuition was letting him down. Until he cooled off, Polly had no other objective inside her panic-stricken head. Raschid was not presently accessible to reasoned persuasion.

  Fortunately their tent was set some distance from the others near the edge of the camp. As a dog barked she quickened her step. Her energy level was on an adrenalin boost. Moonlight cast a black and white photographic clarity on the desert, and she ran like the wind. Glancing back to check that her flight had gone unnoticed, she hurried on again without looking—and stepped into mid-air. She went head over heels down a slope that had lain concealed by shadow, sand gritting her mouth and her nose, but she didn’t cry out. At the bottom, winded, she got up and shook herself, her heart thumping fit to burst.

  It seemed common sense to travel along the meandering valley of low ground between the dunes rather than exhaust herself trying to climb. Besides, she wasn’t planning on straying too far. The air was surpris-ingly humid, lacking the frost she had expected, and she settled into a half trotting, half walking pace in the eerie, supernatural quiet. Raschid would look for her, and by the time he found her—lord knows, a herd of camels couldn’t have left clearer tracks—she prayed that he would have calmed down. Should anyone else be involved in her disappearance, he could say that she had lost her bearings. Nobody would suspect that it hadn’t been an accident. Well, what else could she have done?

  Raschid was half out of his mind with jealousy. A dark, profoundly sexual jealousy, new to his experience, had ripped the lid off his outer skin of cool to reveal the passionate turbulence of the emotions beneath, and the strength of those emotions had shattered her. If he had felt like that, why had he left her with Chris in England?

  Without warning the entire surrealistic landscape around her was brilliantly illuminated by a forked flash of lightning. A fine mist of sand sprayed her shocked face as a wind came up out of nowhere and the first drops of rain sprinkled down. Above her the black velvet heavens were suddenly ripped asunder by spearing arrows of blinding light that jetted down into the ground with a ferocity that terrified her. Like a strobe disco display magnified a thousand times, the elements began to go mad.

  The rain now fell in a lashing blast, plastering fabric wetly to her limbs, stinging her exposed skin. Instinctively she crouched down, trying to protect herself from the incredibly heavy downpour. When an animal leapt at her, she was knocked flat, and since she hadn’t seen what had attacked her, she screamed so loudly that she hurt her throat. The dog stood over her whining, while its panting mate raced up and licked at her hand.

  Raschid barked a command and the dogs retreated. The noise of the thumping rain prevented Polly from hearing what he slung at her. Water streamed down his face as he lifted her and practically threw her up on to Marzouk’s back. Her instant of unholy relief at first sight of him was limited by the realisation that he had put his saluki hounds on her trail. He had hunted her down like an animal.

  It was a nightmare trek back to the camp. Her teeth chattered convulsively, her skin numb from a cold that penetrated to her bones. Raschid had to carry her into the tent.

  ‘If I took a whip to you now, no man would blame me!’ he roared at her above the storm. Ablaze with dark fury, he dropped down to strip the sodden tobe from her shivering limbs.

  ‘You put dogs on me, you brute!’ she gasped.

  He produced a towel and began to rub it roughly over every complaining, squirming inch of her. As her circulation revived, the exercise became painful. Unsympathetically he glowered at her. ‘What were you waiting out there for?’ he demanded. ‘Noah’s Ark? You lie in a shoeb…a dry torrent bed. Didn’t you see the water pooling? Within minutes it would have flooded. In winter there are flash floods in the desert. My own people have drowned. The storms come suddenly
and it’s not always possible to reach higher ground!’

  ‘Stop shouting!’ she begged.

  He rolled her dexterously into a quilt and tugging her forward, towelled dry her dripping hair. ‘Another few minutes and the salukis would have lost your scent in the rain,’ he bit out rawly. ‘You could have died. Your tracks would have been washed away and the sands above you would have slipped down to conceal your body. Allah be praised that you are saved and that no man lost his life in pursuing the most stupid, reckless…’ At that point words seemed to fail him and he subsided. Rain-washed violet eyes framed by spiky wet lashes surveyed her pallor with grim satisfaction.

  In the electric silence, he slowly breathed in and screened his eyes. ‘I shout at you, but the blame is mine,’ he asserted in a roughened undertone. ‘In threatening you, I have shamed myself more than you have shamed me in the arms of your lover.’

  Polly’s eyes ached. Her hand crept up uncertainly on to the brown fingers resting tautly on his thighs. ‘He’s not my lover—I was telling the truth. It was an emotional moment and Chris made a mistake,’ she cited unsteadily. ‘But if you won’t believe me, if you won’t listen, what more can I do to convince you?’

  Raschid’s hard-set profile was unresponsive. He looked at her small hand and it retreated immediately. He got up. ‘You should not have returned,’ he said very quietly. ‘But what choice had you? I placed you in an intolerable position with your family.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I must attend to Marzouk.’ He vanished back out into the slackening rain before she could utter the heresy that his horse was more expendable than he was and he was still soaking wet.

  An opportunity to vent some of his pent-up anger had made him more approachable, and even in anger he had automatically taken care of her needs. What agonised her was the suspicion that, guilty or innocent, she was no more welcome. Then that scarcely fitted his behaviour. Jealousy suggested…what? Caring? She grimaced. It was more likely to be the reaction of a very possessive male, enraged by the slur on his masculinity and the insult to his pride. He had walked away from her in England. Yet he had arrived that day with flowers and an evident intent to surprise her. It didn’t make sense.