‘I don’t understand.’
‘Like most of the ruling families in Arabia, in Egypt the pashas care very little for preserving their heritage, unless it has an intrinsic value. But they do care a great deal for accumulating new wealth, and that’s where I come in. Rather than a share of profits from the gold, diamond, copper, whatever find my survey indicates, I earn myself the right to excavate in their kingdoms, and the promise that they will preserve what I find.’
‘That is positively genius,’ Tahira said, quite awed by this.
He laughed. ‘Ingenious, perhaps.’
‘Have you discovered other potential mineral deposits here in Nessarah?’
It seemed to her a natural question, but to her surprise, Christopher’s smile died. ‘I have, and there are certain individuals who would very much like to get their hands on such valuable information, but I aim to disappoint them,’ he said darkly.
But before she could ask him to elucidate, he picked up the lantern and guided her out of the well house, through the ruined garden to the front of the house, where a fire had been set but not lit. ‘We’ve done enough work for tonight. I can continue in the morning, provided I am careful.’
‘But what if you are discovered!’
‘I won’t be. Trust me,’ he said firmly. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
And he would do it, regardless of the risk. A dangerous man. A reckless man. Suddenly, she didn’t care why she was here with him, only that she was. ‘Very well, I shall place myself in your hands, whatever it is you have in mind,’ Tahira said.
His eyes blazed heat at her unwittingly suggestive words. The look he gave her made her blood heat, and made her wonder if the words had been so unwitting after all.
Then he gave himself a little shake, her a lopsided grin. ‘What I have in mind is rather mundane, to begin with. Food. Do you know how to light a fire? No, of course you don’t. One look at your hands tells me you are not of peasant stock.’
Tahira froze. ‘My family have a certain status,’ she said carefully.
‘Then let me show you.’ Hunkering down, indicating that she join him, Christopher handed her a long spill. ‘You can kindle this from the lantern. Light the straw and rushes first, then the—er—the fuel will catch.’
‘Fuel?’ She peered at it, wrinkling her nose. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s a reason why the Bedouins say that they would rather lose their wife than their camel,’ Christopher replied. ‘The ships of the desert aren’t just a means of getting from one place to the other, you know. They are most generous in their other offerings.’
Tahira eyed the smouldering fire. She took a tentative sniff and got a nose full of smoke for her trouble, but nothing more noxious. ‘You are teasing me?’
‘I think you must be teasing me. You surely can’t be so cloistered?’
She could feel herself colouring, and turned away. ‘It appears that I can. You must think me a fool.’
He forced her to turn around, pressing a kiss to her forehead. ‘I think you are extraordinary. And I think this fire is ready for cooking. Are you hungry?’
When she nodded, he smiled, reaching behind him for the rush basket which he had brought from the well house. ‘Desert hare,’ he said, skewering the jointed meat with practised ease, and rubbing it with a handful of delicately scented herbs, before setting it carefully over the fire. ‘There’s a surprising amount of them in this part of the desert.’
In the desert, men hunted with a hawk and a dog, she knew, but Christopher had neither. Had he a gun? She decided she didn’t want to know. The scent of roasting meat was making her mouth water. He placed some flatbreads made from flour, water and salt on a griddle to cook. They puffed up in a matter of seconds. A simple repast, the likes of which she had never eaten, the likes of which would most likely appal her fastidious sister-in-law. Which certainly added to its appeal. Tahira smiled to herself as she watched Christopher tend to their dinner, and settled down to enjoy the ritual of a fire, a meal, and the forbidden company of an extremely attractive man.
* * *
‘That was delicious,’ Tahira said some time later as they drank their refreshing mint tea. ‘Thank you so much for taking such trouble.’
‘It was no trouble,’ Christopher replied, which was not entirely a lie. Hunting for his dinner had become a way of life here in Arabia. Hunting something fit for Tahira to consume—yes, that had been a challenge, but one he’d enjoyed. ‘There’s no shortage of good hunting out there, if you know where to look,’ he said, making a sweeping gesture towards the desert.
‘I know. Sayeed, my pet sand cat, has brought me back many examples, though nothing so big as a hare.’
‘Sayeed, meaning hunter? He is well named then. I thought sand cats were feral creatures, hardly suitable as pets.’
‘Oh, they are, but I found Sayeed abandoned and half-dead when he was just a new-born kitten. I hand-reared him and nursed him back to health, and so he deigns to tolerate me.’ Tahira chuckled. ‘And only me. My sisters have learnt from bitter experience to give him a wide berth. He has a penchant for the vulnerable flesh of bare feet. One of his favourite games is to hide behind a divan and pounce on unsuspecting passers-by. Another is to clamber up on to my shoulder and to perch there imperiously. His claws are sharper than scimitar blades, they make short work of my clothing, let me tell you.’
‘But you let him out at night? I’m surprised he comes back in the morning.’
Tahira grimaced. ‘As I said, usually with a small and bloody sacrificial offering.’
‘You should be flattered.’
‘Oh, no, I think he merely chooses not to bite the hand that feeds him,’ Tahira said. ‘And the lure of a nice soft cushion to sleep off his night’s exertions.’
Or the lure of a delightful mistress, Christopher thought. Now that they were done with cooking, he had stoked the fire. The flames danced, casting light and shadows on to Tahira’s face. She was smiling softly to herself. Having discarded her riding boots, she sat cross-legged. Her feet were high-arched. Her toes were painted with a scarlet lacquer. He had never seen painted toe nails before. He had never before found toes arousing.
‘This Midas touch you have,’ Tahira said, interrupting his bemused study of her feet, ‘is that why you took up surveying?’
‘No, it was my interest in ancient sites which came first. I was raised near the city of Bath, which the Romans knew as Aquae Sulis for the hot springs which fed the ancient baths there. Though there is no trace of the original baths now, when I was a boy, we were surveying the River Avon for signs of ancient sewers, and I found a Roman coin there.’
‘Your first find! How wonderful. Mine was a mere shard of pottery, most likely from a cooking pot. Were you very young? Did you know what it was? Who did you imagine it belonged to? Do you have it still?’
Tahira’s eyes were alight with interest. Christopher smiled, taking the coin from the pouch where he kept it with the amulet, his smile broadening when she handled it reverently. ‘I was just a boy, five or six years old,’ he said, ‘so naturally I imagined it had belonged to a Roman centurion. Some brave, battle-hardened noble fellow in glittering armour, who saved all his emperor’s coins to send home to his family. The truth,’ he added ruefully, knowing as he did now, that baths and brothels were almost always built together, ‘was likely to have been rather different.’
‘And so you became a surveyor, because you wished to become an archaeologist?’
Christopher’s smile faded. ‘I became a surveyor because I had to earn a living, and because it happened to be the profession of the man who passed his love of the past on to me.’
‘The same man who was with you when you discovered the coin?’ Tahira asked brightly, handing it back to him. ‘You said we were surveying.’
‘Yes. Andrew Fordyc
e. The same one.’
‘A family friend?’
‘You could say that.’
A faint frown marred her forehead. His curt tone clearly confused her, but he couldn’t do anything about that as he stared down at the Roman coin and the memory of that long-ago, never-forgotten day assaulted him. They were both soaked through from paddling in the shallows of the river, their boots and stockings caked in mud. He recalled the excitement as his chubby fingers closed around the metal disc. ‘Mind now, it might be nothing,’ he’d been cautioned as he stooped to rinse the mud and grime away, whooping with glee as the ancient markings appeared. And then the proud smile, the pat on the back he’d come to take for granted as the years passed. ‘Well done, lad. It seems you’ve a nose for these things, right enough.’
How innocent he had been. How much he had taken for granted. But none of it was as it appeared. What he had assumed to be love and affection were baser feelings, fed by blood money. Christopher opened his eyes, not realising they had been closed. Tahira was looking at him expectantly. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You were a thousand miles away,’ she said. ‘I was asking what your father did for a living, and why you did not follow his profession.’
‘My father...’ He caught himself curling his hand into a fist around his coin just in time. ‘The last thing my father would wish is for me to follow in his footsteps. And it is the very last thing I would wish either.’
Once again his vehemence puzzled her, and more worryingly intrigued her. He could almost read the questions forming and being discarded in her head. ‘We are not close,’ Christopher said, before she could ask any of them. ‘In fact, it would be fair to say that we could not be far enough apart.’ He cast the leaves of his tea into the sand, irked at his lack of self-control.
Tahira frowned. ‘But with your mother dead, I would have thought—and you have no brothers, you said. What about sisters?’
I have five daughters, sir. Christopher winced. ‘I was raised an only child.’
Her expression softened. ‘Oh, how sad. That is, I did not mean—it is only that I would hate to be without my sisters.’
‘Though you would happily do without your brother.’
She smiled faintly at this, but was not to be distracted. ‘So there was no older sister to step into your mother’s slippers, as I did for my sisters? Who then had the care of you as a child?’
Christopher gritted his teeth, tempted to tell her to mind her own business, but reckoning that to do so would only make her more curious, he opted for a form of the truth. ‘The wife of the man who taught me to survey.’
‘Oh.’ Tahira pleated her brow. ‘She was your father’s housekeeper?’
He chose not to answer this. ‘She died thirteen years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry. And her husband?’
‘He died too. Just last year.’
‘Oh, Christopher, how dreadful. Then there is only your father left alive?’
‘As far as I am concerned, my father is also dead. Now, I trust you are you done with digging up my past, because I am most certainly done with talking about it.’
She flinched at his tone. ‘I did not mean to offend you, and I most certainly didn’t mean to upset you, especially when you have done me the honour of inviting me here, and gone to so much trouble to make me feel welcome. I wished only to get to know you a little better. I had no idea the subject of your family was so painful.’
‘It is not painful,’ he said, as much for his own benefit as for hers. ‘It is simply irrelevant.’
Tahira smiled uncertainly. ‘You don’t think it’s rather paradoxical that you should say such a thing? An archaeologist, a man whose raison d’être is digging up the past, but has no interest in his own? You told me that you feel a connection with the past, Christopher, like I do—something tangible...’
‘Ancient history, not my past. My personal history has no bearing at all on my work.’
‘But your work here has everything to do with the amulet,’ Tahira persisted. ‘And the amulet connects you to your mother as my Bedouin star connects me to mine.’
‘The amulet does not concern us tonight,’ Christopher said, thoroughly rattled. Jumping to his feet, he held out his hand to help her up.
‘Indeed, I’m sorry. You’ve had more than enough of my company tonight. Thank you for the lovely meal, and for showing me your home, and...’
‘I didn’t bring you here just to make you dinner.’
‘You didn’t? What else do you have planned?’
Imagining her surprise made it easy to cast aside the spectres she had raised. He caught her hand, pressing a fleeting kiss to her fingertips. ‘Come with me, and all will be revealed.’
* * *
They were making for the nearest dune. Walking across the sands, her excitement mounting with every step, Tahira eyed the large rectangular object which Christopher carried wrapped in a sheet. What on earth could it be? As they began to climb the sharp, steep ridge of the sand dune, her inkling of what he intended became a delightful certainty. Wildly curious as she was, she bit her tongue. Christopher had gone to a deal of effort to please her. The least she could to was permit him to explain in his own time.
He did speak finally, stopping short of the top of the ridge to allow Tahira to catch her breath, though the subject was not what she expected.
‘In the winter, in England, it frequently snows,’ Christopher said. ‘Imagine waking up one morning to find the whole landscape has turned glittering white overnight. Soft, powdery snow is best for sledding.’
‘Sledding?’ she repeated the word with difficulty, for it was quite foreign to her. ‘What is that?’
‘I don’t know if there is an equivalent in your language. A sled is a sort of chariot which glides across the snow. It can be pulled by horses or dogs. Or, you can just point it down a hill. When I was a boy I used a tin tray—we weren’t rich enough to afford a proper sled. Which is where I got the inspiration for this.’ He pulled back the sheet with a flourish to reveal a large metal platter, a very inferior version of the solid silver-and-gold salvers used to serve food in the palace.
Tahira stared at it, completely nonplussed. ‘Where did you get such a thing?’
He laughed. ‘The means of making your wish come true are my business. Yours is simply to enjoy the experience.’
Which meant he had no intention of explaining himself. Which meant that he had most likely—no, Christopher was right. Best not to know. Best simply to enjoy. ‘Are we going to use this thing as a—what did you call it?’
‘Sled. We are indeed. My theory is that the sand will act just like snow, and we can slide all the way to the bottom on it.’
‘Like a dhow riding an ocean wave,’ Tahira said entranced. ‘When I said I wanted to slide down a dune, I did not think—thank you, Christopher. This is far beyond what I had imagined.’
‘Save your thanks for when we get to the bottom of the dune in one piece. There was a hill, not far from our house, which was just perfect for sledding. Not too high, not too steep, and most importantly not too bumpy. Rather like this dune, in fact. I still fell off regularly.’
Tahira shivered theatrically. ‘You must have been soaking wet and freezing afterwards.’
He laughed. ‘I was never allowed out until I was wrapped up in so many layers of clothes that I could hardly walk. Fortunately, cold is one of the things we don’t have to worry about. Come, let us finish our climb to the top.’
Who took the care to wrap you up in so many layers of clothes? Tahira wanted to ask. His father’s housekeeper? It was odd, wasn’t it, that he chose to share such personal childhood memories with her unsolicited, yet any time she questioned him about his family, he seemed to retreat. When he talked of finding the Roman coin, and just there, when he talked of this English sledding,
it was as if in his memory he was quite alone. Who were these people he had erased? And why?
But to bring it up again would spoil the mood of this precious night that he had gone to such an effort to make perfect for her. She ought to be making the most of it, not pondering ways to make a mess of it. They were nearing the top of the ridge. Christopher was just ahead of her, for he’d moderated his long-legged stride to accommodate her shorter one, continually turning back to check on her progress, to lend her a helping hand. When they finally reached the top, she was panting hard, while he showed no signs of effort. He stood, hands on hips, his pale tunic and trousers, his halo of golden hair outlined starkly against the midnight blue of the night sky behind them, like one of the Egyptian pharaohs he knew so much about, or one of their ancient gods, imperiously surveying his realm. And then he turned towards her and smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and her heart did a little flip. Not a god, but a flesh-and-blood man, who made her blood heat and her flesh crave his touch.
He held out his hand, drawing her into the warmth of his side. ‘It is a magnificent sight, isn’t it, the desert at night? Quite awesome.’
It was. The dune was so high, she felt as if she could reach up and pull a star down from the canopy of silver suspended above them. The moon glowed pale luminescent gold. The dunes stretched out before them had been sculpted into a complex patchwork of shadowed ridges and plateaux which looked deceptively permanent, though the landscape could shift and change so fundamentally by morning that it would be unrecognisable. Below them, the little complex of buildings which Christopher had claimed for his home, and in the far distance, Nessarah, her home.
Claiming His Desert Princess Page 7