Lorna gazed, wildly, unbelievingly at the man. She watched speechlessly as he leapt into the saddle of his horse, his cloak like a dark wing about him. Her hands were slack on the reins of her mount as she took in the meaning of his words . . . he was not taking her to the hotel but to his camp ! He was abducting her, and certainly not for ransom! His clothes, his entourage, his entire manner proclaimed him as someone of importance ... one look at his men was enough to tell her that they were trained to the eyebrows to obey him. His will was theirs !
They were trained to obey his slightest whim, but she wasn't! Digging her heels into her horse's flanks she broke through their ranks and galloped madly away. She wasn't giving in tamely to any man, least of all that tall, mocking devil with eyes as tawny as the desert sands.
CHAPTER THREE
HE allowed her to get ahead of him for about a mile, then with superb ease he rode her down, swooped in close, like a hawk on its prey, encircled her with his arm and swept her in front of him.
As she felt his touch, as she heard him laugh, she began to fight him with a desperation almost primitive, punching his shoulders, wishing she had fingernails long enough to claw out his eyes. His teeth were a flash of white against his bronze skin, and with his knees alone he gripped and guided his horse until he had Lorna bound firmly in the folds of his cloak.
She lay panting across his saddlebow, bruised by his hands, hot and dizzy with rage and hate. 'You brute!' The words broke from her. 'What do you think you are doing?'
`I should think the answer was obvious—go gently, Caliph!' He addressed his horse, alarmed by the struggle that had just taken place on its back. 'We have a little wildcat with us—yes, ma fille, you would have my eyes if you could get at them, eh?'
He laughed down into Lorna's eyes and he subdued her as if she were no more than a child with a child's strength. 'Little fool, you have fatigued yourself all for nothing . . . do you think Kasim ben Hussayn is to be overcome by a wisp of a girl?'
He touched the wave of hair above her eyes and subjected her to a look that chased the angry colour out of her cheeks. 'Tell me, is your hair truly this colour?' It was a look not of mere admiration, such as she was used to, but that of a man who took what he desired and begged for nothing.
`Sole sauvage.' He gazed fascinated at the silvery-gold strand of hair he wound about his brown hand. `Wild silk, golden as the desert itself.'
Lorna shrank from him as far as possible. 'You ... you flogged that other man for stealing a horse !' Her blue eyes held a terror she had never known before. This man frightened her far more than the bearded Arab who had carried her away from the oasis. It made no difference that the cloak around her was clean as the desert air and faintly redolent of Turkish tobacco—an aroma she recognized because her father had smoked such cigarettes. It didn't help that the lean hands that subdued her were as clean as his robes. His very handsomeness made her go cold.
`My horses are valuable to me and I won't have them stolen and misused.' He gazed down into Lorna's eyes and she was reminded of a leopard, arrogant and sure of other people's fear of him. 'I never grow tired of my horses. They are beautiful, voiceless, and loyal. Can the same be said for many women?'
As his horse bounded forward into the flamy light that was spreading across the desert, his men fell into rank behind him. Lorna closed her eyes to shut out his face above her, then she opened them again and tried to read in the bronzed features some sign of mercy ...
but there was none.
This was real and not a nightmare. She lay doubly imprisoned by the folds of his dark cloak and his strong arm. She felt the movements of the horse, but in her tired state was only half aware when the sun died in a blaze of colour and night fell quickly, purple-shadowed beneath the Arabian stars.
It was a strange lullaby, the clinking of bridles and the silver adorning them, and sometime later the rhythm of the riders altered and Lorna stirred out of the strange dream into which she had fallen . . . and found that it was night-time.
She was wrapped more comfortably in the great riding cloak, and the Shaikh and his men had come to a standstill in a moonlit encampment of black tents. She saw the kneeling shapes of camels, and the glow of camp fires. She heard voices speaking in Arabic, and still confused she was lifted to the ground. She felt stiff, and was only vaguely aware of the exotic wonder of the night and the vibrations of the big camp all around her.
She trembled, but not with cold. Overhead the moon was a sickle of gold, and the profile of her captor was outlined against the moonlit sky as he gave orders to his men in deep, commanding Arabic, not a word of which she understood.
Then abruptly he turned to Lorna. She saw the arrogant smile on his lips and torn between fury and fear she awoke out of her dream state and lifting a hand she struck him across the face. Once . . . twice . . . needing an outlet for the terror he awoke in her, hoping he would break her neck.
But he only laughed deep in his throat and swung her up into his arms. The people watched, their faces like golden masks in the firelight, as he strode with her to the great tent that stood in splendid isolation beyond the ring of camp fires.
With a thrust of his shoulder he opened the flap of the tent and strode inside with her, his booted feet abruptly silenced on the deep pile of the carpets that covered the floor. He stood holding her a prisoner. She sustained his arrogant gaze, though it weakened her and frightened her.
`You barbarian !' she raged. 'If you think you can get away with this, then you're in for a surprise. I'm a British subject !'
`Undoubtedly,' he re-joined lazily. 'I am on my own territory and subject to no one but myself. Tell me, little spitfire, what is it I intend to get away with?'
His look mocked her, and she saw every detail of his face in the light from the brass lamps that emitted an aroma of sandalwood. The outer corners of his eyes had a faint slant to them; the sculpturing of his brow and his nose was faultless; his nostrils were tempered, and his jawline had a clean, hard sweep to it.
She looked at his mouth ... imperiously quirked in a smile that took no heed of her feelings.
`I have money.' There was a note of torment in her voice. 'You can have it if you let me go.'
He answered with a soft laugh and dropped her to her feet. 'I have no need of your money, so I fear it cannot buy your freedom. There is only one thing that can, and you are surpassingly innocent if you don't know what it is.'
She stared at him, her eyes like bruised flowers in her pale, shocked face. 'I don't know,' she whispered.
`Really?' His eyes flicked over her. 'With your unusual looks, you tell me you don't know what a man means when he brings you to his tent. Ma belle femme, I think you do know.'
And as the words sank into her brain, she backed away from him until brought up short by a divan. She drew his cloak about her slim body and gazed around wildly for some means of escape from him. There was a beaded partition that led into another part of the sumptuous tent, but directly Lorna's gaze fell upon it, she realized with a thump of her heart that it was the harem section of his tent.
As her desperate glance united again with his and she saw the smile glimmering deep in his eyes, she said with icy fury, 'I'm not a fille de joie! I am here in the East on holiday and when I'm found to be missing a search will be made for me. You will be punished if I come to... to any sort of harm.'
`The tyrant trembles !' He took a stride forward and whipped the cloak away from her, leaving her revealed in her flimsy open-necked shirt and boyish breeches. Never had she been looked at so brazenly. Never had she been so aware of being an attractive female.
`A girl such as you should not be allowed to wander alone like a gipsy,' he said, and his gaze was on the sensitive curve of her lips. 'It is a folly to be young, eh? To follow the impulse rather than take notice of those who are wiser? I am sure you were warned that the desert could be . . . dangerous. I am equally sure that you took no heed of the warning. How very rash of you.'
A shiver
ran over her, for each deliberate word was like the tip of a lash laying bare the fear in her heart. She drew back with a gasp as he curved a hand around the nape of her neck and forced her to look at him. 'You are lovely as golden gorse and as thorny to the touch—in a symbolic sense,' he added with a smile, his gaze on the soft slim line of her throat. 'You don't lie a man to touch you, eh? Where have you been to acquire such coolness—in a convent?'
`You ... you needed to go nowhere to acquire your cruelty,' she choked. 'You are a devil !'
`I am merely a man.' His smile was slow, dangerous, showing the edge of his white teeth. 'I believe that everything hinges on fate and I would no more argue with le destin than I would with a sand cat. Fate has thrown us together—comprenez-vous?'
`I understand only one thing,' her heart beat frantically as she gazed up into the face that was so ruthlessly handsome. 'You will not only dishonour me if you keep me here.'
`I cannot be moved by that plea.' His hand moved to her shoulder and she felt his touch right through the thin material of her shirt. 'What has honour to do with what a man feels for a woman?' He laughed and bent his tall head and laid a kiss against her throat. `How swiftly your pulse beats. Are you so afraid of me?'
`I hate you!' So soft a kiss, yet how it lingered, as if a flame had touched her ... as if always she would be marked. 'I think you're despicable !'
`You I find utterly exiting.' He held her so that she was like a plant leaning back before an unrelenting wind. 'Your hair is like the gold of the desert sun, your eyes are the colour of blue jasmine, and your skin is pale like a desert dawn. I want you, my flower of blue and gold, and I prefer what I take to what I am given.'
`You can't mean . .?' Her words died away and left only a speechless imploration in her eyes.
`You know that I mean every word.' He laughed softly. 'Women are all instinct—your instinct must surely tell you why I bring you to my tent.'
He stroked her hair, ran caressing fingers across her throat, and then when she tried to break away from him, when she again fought with him, he gripped her cruelly, crushed her to him, revealed the strength that could have broken her in twain.
`Beauty and spirit,' he smiled, uncaring that he bruised her. 'A little tiger-kitten who has not yet been tamed. Tres bien, we shall fight and afterwards— afterwards we shall kiss.'
With these words he let her go and swung on his heel. He strode from the tent and as the flap fell into place behind him, Lorna sank down exhausted on a divan and buried her face in her hands. She was trembling from head to foot, but the relief of tears was denied to her. There was no weeping away the knowledge that she had fallen into the hands of a man who made his own laws and was quite ruthless . . . ruthless and handsome in a way she had not associated with men of the East.
Those she had seen in the bazaars had been obese or hungry looking. This man was princely to look at ... an autocrat like those in ancient stories of Harun al Raschid and his pagan court.
What made it worse was that in her own arrogance she had not listened to Rodney Grant when he had warned her not to ride alone in the desert. Rodney had warned ... the sand-diviner had seen the writing in the sand . . . but wilful, restless, wanting no rein but that of the father she had lost, she had let the desert lure her into its golden coils.
The start she gave as someone quietly entered the tent was proof of the shaken state of her nerves. She glanced up wildly, not a tinge of colour in her cheeks as her eyes dwelt on a manservant with a snowy turban encircling his head. He touched a hand to forehead, eyes and lips to indicate that each was at her service.
`Water is being brought so the lella can bathe,' he said in excellent French, 'and also a change of clothing. My master will then eat supper with his—guest.'
That slight, significant pause before the word brought back to Lorna's cheeks the colour that had fled from them. She jumped to her feet and said desperately : 'I must get away from here ! If you will pro- generously vide me with a horse, I'll pay you most
—'
The money would be worthless to me, madame.' The manservant backed away from her. 'My master would punish me within an inch of my life !'
With a bow he retreated from the tent, and Lorna realized forlornly that there probably wasn't a soul in the camp who would dare risk the Shaikh's displeasure.
She pressed a hand to her throat, feeling the place where he had kissed her. The memory of it, so recent and burning, sent her running through the bead curtain into the interior room of the tent . . . the harem.
She gazed around and saw that it was furnished with a low, wide ottoman overlaid by a gold silk coverlet embroidered with blue jasmine flowers. Beside the bed stood an inlaid table holding a lamp, a cigarette-box, and a brass matchbox. Lorna ran the tip of her tongue round her dry lips. Her nerves cried out for a cigarette, and thrusting aside the thought that they were his, she knelt on the bed and reached for one.
They were Turkish but she was too in need of a smoke to care. She struck a match and carried the flame to the tip. The first draw was a trifle harsh, but after a moment or two quite soothing. She sat there on the bed, fatigued and yet tensed for every movement, every sound, taking in the luxurious trappings of her captor's harem.
A tawny leopard skin was spread across the carpets. The brass oil-lamps emitted the faint pervasiveness of sandalwood, and there was a lacquered chest on which stood a mirror and the toiletries of a man.
This room, like the person of the Shaikh, was spotlessly clean. The sumptuous hangings and the huge pillows were without a mark, and across the foot of the ottoman lay a black silk robe and a pair of pyjamas to match.
Lorna felt the nervous beating of her heart as she shrank away from the masculine night attire. The intimacy of the room struck at her like a talon. Here he slept. Here he relaxed at the end of the day and read
the books with French titles grouped in a book-holder beside the bed.
She stubbed the cigarette, and every nerve in her body seemed to shrink as the bead curtain opened to let in a veiled young woman.
`I am Zahra.' The girl stared curiously at Lorna, taking in her fair hair and boyish riding clothes. She released her veil, then darted back through the partition to return a minute later carrying a pair of steaming copper kettles. These she set down on a knee-high table, and swishing aside a brocade curtain she revealed an alcove in which stood a circular, deep-sided copper bowl, large enough for a person to bathe in.
The lella wishes to take a bath?' The girl spoke broken French.
Lorna longed to take one. She nodded and the girl filled the bathing bowl from the two big kettles, then she took bath towels from a carved chest and poured scented bath-oil into the water. The steam arose, aromatic and inviting, and it was a relief to Lorna when the pretty creature slipped through the beaded curtain, smiling to indicate that she was off to fetch something else.
Lorna stripped off her dusty clothes and stepped into the bowl, which was large enough for her to kneel in. She washed herself all over with the scented, soapy water, and was wrapped in one of the huge towels when Zahra returned, carrying some flimsy garments over her arm. She showed each one to Lorna, a shift so fine it was transparent, silk trousers with embroidery around the ankles, a velvet tunic, and a pair of dove-soft slippers with uptilted toes.
Lorna gazed at the garments with scorn in her eyes. It was a harem outfit!
`No.' She shook her head firmly at the girl, who at once looked bewildered and a trifle nervous. 'Quite definitely no.' Lorna turned aside from Zahra and began to don her own clothes; the boyish breeches and boots that made her feel a little armoured against the Shaikh. She buttoned with shaking fingers the apricot-coloured shirt that was so unfeminine beside the garments he had ordered to be brought to her.
She was no harem girl. Frightened of him though she was, she would not submit without a fight.
She tilted her chin and met Zahra's great brown eyes. e suis disolie.' She shrugged her shoulders. 'I cannot wear those thin
gs—cornprenez?'
The girl studied them and was plainly at a loss to understand the lella's reluctance to wear such appealing garments. 'The Prince Kasim will be angry,' she said in awe, in her attractive broken French.
`Prince!' Lorna looked scornful. 'I hope I make him angry enough to break my neck.'
She swung round to the mirror that stood on the lacquered chest and saw that her hair was untidy. With reluctance she picked up the tortoiseshell comb and pulled it through the tangles in her hair. She always carried a lipstick in her pocket and as she applied it a bitter little smile curled her lips. War-paint. Woman's eternal weapon in times of crisis.
When she turned from the mirror she saw that Zahra had slipped away. The silk and velvets lay in a colourful, flimsy heap on a hassock, the scarlet slippers beside them.
`I wouldn't be seen dead in them!' Lorna whispered fiercely, and then because the harem had become unendurable she slipped through the bead curtain into the main part of the tent. She stared at the knee-high table that had been set for two in front of a divan heaped with cushions. There was pearl-handled cutlery and silver-rimmed glasses, adding to Lorna's sense of antagonism.
The man who had brought her to his tent was a handsome, merciless devil who lived like a prince. She bit her lip. He was exactly that, according to Zahra. An arrogant prince ... soon to come sweeping into the tent, tall and tawny-eyed.
CHAPTER FOUR
LORNA gazed around the tent, with its mingling aromas of leather, sandalwood and horses. The interior walls were hung with tapestry, and the lamps lent a lambent glow to the simple luxury of the furnishings. The carpets were Kashan, she was sure of it. And there was an ebony table on which stood a beautifully carved box.
She went and opened the box and a gasp of astonishment escaped her. It contined an ivory chess-set and so exquisitely carved were the pieces they were almost transparent. Lorna, who had been taught some of the rudiments of the game by her father, picked up a Knight and was admiring it when there was a slight movement behind her.
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