Jamila set down a dish in front of her, and Aly looked up and said, “Shokran.” Jamila replied with a smile and a comment she didn’t follow.
“Do you speak Arabic?” Arif asked. There was a slight frown between his eyebrows, and she wondered if he was hoping for the answer no.
“No. I did a few hours of a basic tourists’ course before coming. I’m signed up to start a proper academic course at university this autumn.” She dug into the concoction of delicious baked eggplant. Heaven on the tongue. She looked at Arif. Now he would be heaven on the tongue.
“You are going to make a study of the language? Why?”
She chewed thoughtfully, gazing at him. Never a painful occupation. He had a face a person could look at all day and not get tired of. Strong, handsome, noble…maybe a little too stern, but that softened when he laughed. And just altogether the stuff of fantasy.
“I am hoping to spend the next few years of my life on Cheloniidae johariae, you know,” she said. “At least. With a little luck and a bit of financing, I might be able to come and live here for the entire nesting season each year. And do some research in your university libraries. There’s quite a lot of early writing on the turtle that’s never been translated.”
Arif made the little twist of his head that was already familiar to her. “You are a woman of surprises,” he said, and just with that, even knowing he could mean nothing by it, her blood warmed, her abdomen coiled expectantly, her nerves tingled in her fingertips.
“So tell me more about Solomon’s Foot,” she said brightly. “Is there much rebuilding going on? Will there be a lot of traffic on the beaches?”
“We have a certain etiquette in Bagestan,” Arif said with a slow smile. “We don’t discuss business over food. We believe it is bad for the digestion. In fact, many of the problems of the West, we think, can be attributed to the dysfunctional approach to food so evident there.”
It was said to be provocative, she knew that by the glint in his eye, and Aly laughed.
“Maybe if our national cuisine offered anything half as tasty as what I’m eating right now, England would never have bothered with Empire, in short?”
His deep laughter joined hers, his face warming into an approval that drew her like a fire on a winter’s night. “While you are studying the language, I hope you will also be moved to study the history of the Arab empire, if that is what you think.”
“I do know you conquered the world while we were still in mud huts,” she said, with a grave mouth and a flick of smiling eyes, and was stunned by the look that entered his eyes now. Not just approving, but lazily, sexually approving. A look she never, but never, got from men.
And she wasn’t getting it from him, either. It was a trick of the light.
“Why do you wear no ring?”
The question came straight at her blind side, and all she could do was blink at him.
After a moment she explained dryly, “I’m not big on jewelry since we had to sell everything to pay toward my father’s debts a few years ago. I was allowed to keep the string of pearls I inherited from my grandmother. I haven’t troubled much with decoration since.”
He gave her a look from under his brows. “I meant, why does your lover let you travel the world without his ring on your finger?”
“Lover?” she squeaked, before she had time to think.
He smiled in apparent satisfaction, but that was crazy. He couldn’t mean that. Her vision was being distorted by heat. His body heat.
“You have no lover? A woman like you?” His smile disappeared. The blue eyes probed her, setting fire to her thighs. “Why not? You do not like men?”
If she said no now, she’d be safe forever from any risk of exposure. If she said no now, he would never guess if she slipped and betrayed her interest one fine day. No, I don’t like men, that was all she had to say.
“Men don’t like me, I suppose,” her mouth said, before she could gather her forces for the lie.
Arif snorted. “What nonsense. Why do you tell me such fantasies? Do you expect me to believe that, when I have eyes in my head?”
She had no idea what he was after. Only one thing was certain—this was not what it appeared. Why he would pretend a sexual interest in her she didn’t want to imagine, but it seemed that was what he was doing.
Just for a moment, just for one moment, she wished she could be Viola right now. Wished that she had her sister’s way with an eyelash, with that mane of hair. That she could believe what he seemed to be saying. Wished she could inhabit the kind of beauty that made men look at women with the look that the light—or his guile—tricked into Arif’s eyes, and mean it. Wished she could think that the roiling heat that curled in her abdomen might be matched in his.
“That’s enough about me. Your turn. Tell me how you come to have blue eyes,” she said.
…
He was used to hearing the question from women, but not usually asked with such cool scientific detachment. “My mother is Irish,” Arif said shortly.
“And how does an Irishwoman end up marrying a Bagestani sheikh?” she asked with a smile.
Arif drank, set down his glass, leaned back in his chair. “My father is the founder and CEO of Bagestan Telecom. My mother was one of a group of adventurous foreigners who came out to Bagestan to work in the early days. My father saw her and fell in love, and my mother never went home again.”
Aly’s eyes went wide. “Never? She’s never once been back to Ireland?”
“Of course she goes for visits, several times a year now. As she gets older her heart, I think, is more torn.”
“You mean she regrets her marriage?”
Arif shrugged. “She doesn’t say so, but I think any woman is bound to regret such a choice to some extent, don’t you?”
“Why? It’s been happening throughout history, after all. You said your father fell in love—did your mother love him, too, or was she just taking the path of least resistance? I can see her regretting that kind of decision.”
“Love can be bought at too high a price. I have watched my mother’s attempts to stay connected to her heritage all my life. I would not put any woman in the same position. I am Bagestani and I will marry a Bagestani woman.”
She frowned. “But blue eyes is a recessive gene.”
“It is what? What is your point?”
“You couldn’t have blue eyes just from your mother. It means another of your ancestors married out. At least one.”
“Of course, you are a scientist.” He bent his head in cold acceptance. “My grandmother was a Parvani.”
“So in fact, you are less than half Bagestani, by blood?”
Cold fury enveloped him, and he said stiffly, “Blood is not everything. I was raised a Bagestani. My father has been devoted to this country, in good times and bad. He refused to flee after the coup, although all the family wealth was seized, and as a distant member of the royal family, he was warned his life might be at risk. He was determined to raise his children here.”
“And your mother was opposed to that? You speak fluent English, after all.”
“My mother did insist on our being partly educated abroad. And she always spoke to her children in English.” He smiled. “Until I was fifteen, I thought that was what ‘mother tongue’ meant.”
Aly laughed appreciatively. For some reason the sound went straight to his groin.
“Did she have to fight your father over the issue? She must be a strong woman.”
“She is a strong woman, but my father did not disapprove. He said the world was changing and we would need to be flexible. He foresaw English becoming the lingua franca of the world many years ago.”
“And will you do your own children the same favor?” Aly asked.
Her words hit him hard. He had never been able to see the way for his future children, and he knew that was a weakness. He shook his head like a boxer, shrugging a half-formed thought away. She got in under his defenses in a way no other woman did. He didn’t like it.
…
At the end of the meal Arif started the engine and put the yacht on automatic pilot. As he came to sit down again, Jamila set a tray with two little cups of strong, sweet coffee in front of them.
“We’ll be at Solomon’s Foot before midnight. You’ll be able to start as early as you wish in the morning.”
“That’s good. I want to get on the beach at first light,” Aly said.
“Not a problem. A helicopter will be arriving at Fajr, or close to it, to drop off some papers for me. Farhad will collect them and take you to the beach immediately afterwards.”
“But what time will the helicopter come? How far away is Fajr from where we’ll be moored? I should get started before sunrise, you know.”
Irritation pricked through his blood. The moon still sailed the serene black overhead. Did she have eyes? “Fajr is what we call the dawn prayer. The helicopter will be here as soon as there is sufficient light to land.”
Apart from the one moment when he had seemed to see the woman in her eyes, she had been imperviously impersonal throughout the meal. If he mentioned the stars, she replied about light years and galaxies. When the crescent moon rose, as haunting as the boat that Khosrow had sailed in with Shirin, she discussed how the turtle hatchlings would be drawn to the sea by its light glinting from the water.
“Sorry,” she said now, picking up the little cup with an apologetic smile that soothed him in spite of himself. “I didn’t know what that word meant. The islands were deliberately depopulated under Ghasib, weren’t they? Wasn’t he bribed by some multinational that wanted to exploit the area?”
He sighed. And now she was into the history of the islands. Surely it could only be nervous awareness that aroused such determination in her. Arif thought of a cat at a mouse hole, and relaxed and waited and played her game.
She went on. “Big Pharma wanted sole rights to the medicinal herbs that are unique to the islands, so they bribed Ghasib to depopulate the whole area, wasn’t that it?”
“Yes.” Ghasib had perpetrated many evils in his time, but his inhumane treatment of the Gulf Islanders deserved as much contempt as any. “The damage here was lasting, and is hard to undo. And as for the corporation that financed such destruction in the name of profit…” He did not have words.
“But now the people are coming home?”
“Yes, the objections of environmental groups such as your own delayed the repatriation for some time, but they lost that battle in the end.”
“Not us,” Aly interjected hastily. “Turtle Watch was never aligned with Save the Aswad Turtle, and never took the position that restoring human presence to the islands presented a risk to Cheloniidae johariae. But we were too small to be heard against the blast from Save the Aswad Turtle. Richard always wondered who was behind them, because they had a bundle of money. And the group has completely disappeared since.”
Arif took that in with a nod. “It is a pity that we did not know this at the time. We are faced with new problems now. The people live by fishing and gathering medicinal herbs, which they sell to the mainland. The problem now is that the young people no longer wish to return to the islands. Many have spent their entire childhood in the cities or in camps, and the prospect of a hard island life no longer appeals to them.”
Aly closed her eyes and took a breath as he watched. Even without the caring intelligence blazing from her eyes, her face was engaging. A slender nose that was slightly bent from true; straight, strongly-marked eyebrows that slanted a little upwards at the tip; delicately pointed chin…the rosebud lips. Arif enjoyed the lack of final perfection in her face. It was a pity how so many beautiful women saw any deviation from perfection as a flaw, rather than a gift of individuality. He had known more than one woman who, after going under the surgeon’s knife, had expected him to approve her bland beauty afterwards, when what had caught him before was the very idiosyncrasy she had had removed. Westerners complained about the Islamic veil because it robbed a woman of her individuality, and that was true. But a woman could always take a veil off. The Western smoothing out of individual uniqueness in the name of some arbitrary ideal of beauty was permanent.
Perhaps this was the source of Aly’s lack of feminine confidence—that she thought nothing beautiful except the empty perfection of a magazine cover face. A burst of protectiveness of her awkward charm pulsed through his blood. She would not go under any knife if he could help it.
The thought gave fuel to his intent. He would make her see her own beauty, he would have her glory in it, before the six weeks were up. He would do that.
She opened her eyes again, sorrow swimming in the depths. “So they’ve won. Big Pharma has won,” she said. “They’re playing the long game. In fifty years, when the older generation has died off, the islands will be empty of people. And maybe of turtles.”
“Don’t despair so completely. We are looking at ways to tempt the young people back to their traditional homes,” he said. “There are…”
“Tomorrow I have to go alone,” she interrupted with rough urgency, in a leap that he could not follow. “We wasted time double walking that beach today. I’ll make better time if I’m on my own.”
Arif sat looking at her for a long moment. First she had ruined her presentation at the banquet. Now she was determined to mark the nests alone. And maybe even her shy sexuality was a ploy. He must not let his blood lead him into error.
“All right, I will not walk with you tomorrow,” and watched that rosebud mouth smile with relief.
…
Back in her cabin for the night, Aly pulled on the faded shirt that she wore as a nightgown, combed her hair, put out the light. Then she stood for a moment at the porthole, gazing out at the moonlight rippling on the black water. The engines were silent. They were anchored off. With luck even now a female turtle was making the journey up the beach to lay the eggs of the next generation.
And with luck in the morning she’d be able to false mark the nest.
Her own deep instinct now urged her to confide in the sheikh. He seemed to her strong, upright, utterly moral, and committed to his country’s wellbeing. But how far her instinct was based on emotion—the desire to trust him just because the alternative was so ugly, or worse, because he made her weak with longing and she wanted to believe she could trust the look she’d seemed to see in his eyes—she couldn’t trust herself to know.
Their only hope lay in the fact that the saboteurs didn’t know they suspected sabotage. Once that advantage was lost…they were helpless.
Richard did not trust him. Richard trusted no one in high office on principle, and he had met plenty and he had good reason. If she was going to discount Richard’s instructions, she needed more than gut instinct as a guide. She could not take the risk on instinct alone.
People had trusted her father, after all. “What a wonderful man your father is, I’d trust him with my life.” She’d heard that more than once. It had made her doubt herself, because she had never trusted her father.
But that didn’t mean a different sort of man might not get in under her radar. A man like Arif. Who might even be trying to do just that. He’d probably figured her for sex-starved from the get-go. And for sure a man like him would know how to play on that. Those eyes had been knocking them dead since he was in his highchair. If he really got her in his sights she didn’t stand a snowball’s.
Did a snowball enjoy the melt?
Chapter Nine
It was still dark when the faint cry pierced her dream. Aly stirred and woke in sudden alarm. Then she heard it clearly: Allahu akhbar…
With a little puff of relief she sank back against her pillow. The call to prayer. What had he called it? Fajr. Surely they were too remote here to pick it up from a minaret? So someone had turned on a radio. Jamila and Farhad, perhaps, preparing themselves for the day. She wondered if Arif was doing the same.
If she got up now she would h
ave time for coffee before it was light enough to start work. Suiting the action to the thought, Aly flung herself to her feet, glanced out the porthole in passing to see nothing but the dark sea, and stepped into the neat little bathroom. Fifteen minutes later she had showered, dressed, made her bed, and tidied the cabin. Her backpack was packed and ready.
She picked it up and went out. She passed through the still shadowed main cabin into the galley, where she flicked on lights and was hunting for a coffee pot when Jamila came in. Aly mimed coffee and was shooshed out with frowning smiles. Jamila would bring breakfast on deck.
Aly pointed to her watch and mimed the limited time, and Jamila nodded and exclaimed reassuringly. So Aly obediently went up on deck. She dropped her pack by the ladder and stood at the rail to watch the sky turn pale. Farhad was already on deck, and she exchanged morning nods with him.
The fresh smell of morning greeted her. Solomon’s Foot lay before them in the first faint blush of dawn, a tiny island, with a craggy black outcrop curving up at one end and a white sandy flat at the other. And in between, slanting from high to low, a rich green forest. This eco-system, she knew, was unique to these islands. Some scientists believed this area was the last remnants of a much wider area that had been the Garden of Eden. Clear evidence for pre-historic climate change, a warning that it could happen again.
But what interested Aly right now was the long white sweep of the beach just becoming visible in the pink-gold gloom, and the fact that they had low tide. Perfect.
She heard a whup whup whup that made her think of a war movie in Sensurround, and a thread of adrenaline zinged through her. “What am I, Pavlov’s dog?” Aly asked herself aloud.
“Is that what you call a leading question?” The voice behind her was Arif’s, and her adrenaline count shot even higher. She blew out tension on a breath and turned to grin at him.
“My animal brain has been programmed by war movies,” she explained. “I hear a helicopter coming in low and my instinct is to run for cover.”
“An instinct which will serve you well in many areas of the world, but is surplus to necessity here in the Gulf Islands.”
Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) Page 8