Defiant in the Desert

‘I am hoping to do this without a fight, Sara.’

His voice was smooth. As smooth as treacle—and just as dark. But nobody could have mistaken the steely intent which ran through his words. She looked into the flatness of his eyes. She looked at the hard, compromising lines of his lips and she felt another whisper of foreboding shivering its way down her spine. ‘You think I’m just going to docilely agree to your plans? That I’m going to nod my head and accompany you to Qurhah?’

‘I’m hoping you will, since that would be the most sensible outcome for all concerned.’

‘In your dreams, Suleiman.’

There was silence for a moment as Suleiman met the belligerent glitter of her eyes, and the slow rage which had been simmering all day now threatened to boil over. Had he thought that this would be easy?

No, of course he hadn’t.

Inside he had known that this would be the most difficult assignment of his life—even though he had experienced battle and torture and real hardship. He had tried to turn the job down—for all kinds of reasons. He’d told the Sultan that he was busy with his new life—and that much was true. But loyalty and affection for his erstwhile employer had proved too persuasive. And who else possessed the right amount of determination to bring the feisty Sara Williams back to marry the royal ruler? His mouth hardened and he felt the twist of something like regret. Who else knew her the way that he did?

‘You speak with such insolence that I can only assume you have been influenced by the louche values of the West,’ he snapped.

‘Embracing freedom, you mean?’

‘Embracing disrespect would be a more accurate description.’ He drew in a deep breath and forced his lips into something resembling a smile. ‘Look, Sara—I understand that you needed to...what is it that you women say? Ah yes, to find yourself.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Fortunately, the male of the species rarely loses himself in the first place and so such recovery is seldom deemed necessary.’

‘Why, you arrogant piece of—’

‘Now we can do this one of two ways.’ His words cut through her insult like a honed Qurhahian knife. ‘The easy way, or the hard way.’

‘You mean we do it your way, rather than mine?’

‘Bravo—that is exactly what I mean. If you behave reasonably—like a woman who wishes to bring no shame onto her own royal house, or the one you will embrace after your marriage to the Sultan—then everyone is happy.’

‘Happy?’ she echoed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘There is no need for hysteria,’ he said repressively. ‘Our journey to Qurhah may not be an expedition which either of us would choose, but I don’t see why we can’t conduct ourselves in a relatively civilised manner if we put our minds to it.’

‘Civilised?’ Sara stood up and pushed herself away from the desk so violently that a whole pile of coloured felt-tips fell clattering to the ground. But she barely registered the noise or the mess. She certainly didn’t bend down to pick them up and not just because her skirt was so short. She felt a flare of rage and impotence—that Suleiman could just march in here as if he owned the place. Start flexing his muscles and telling her—telling her—that she must go back and marry a man she barely knew, didn’t particularly like and certainly didn’t love.

‘You think it’s civilised to hold a woman to a promise of marriage made when she was little more than a child? A forced marriage in which she had no say?’

‘Your father himself agreed to this marriage,’ said Suleiman implacably. ‘You know that.’

‘My father had no choice!’ she flared. ‘He was almost bankrupt by that point!’

‘I’m afraid that your father’s weakness and profligacy put him in that position. And let us not forget that it was the Sultan’s father who saved him from certain bankruptcy!’

‘By demanding my hand for his only son, in return?’ she demanded. ‘What kind of a man could do that, Suleiman?’

She saw that her heartfelt appeal had momentarily stilled him. That his flat black eyes had narrowed and were now partially obscured by the thick ebony lashes which had shuttered down to veil them. Had she been able to make him see the sheer lunacy of his proposal in this day and age? Couldn’t he see that it was barbaric for a woman of twenty-three to be taken back to a desert kingdom—no matter how fabled—and to be married against her will?

Once Suleiman had regarded her fondly—she knew that. If he allowed himself to forget that stupid kiss—that single lapse which should never have happened—then surely there still existed in his heart some of that same fondness. Surely he wasn’t happy for her to enter into such a barbaric union.

‘These dynastic marriages have always taken place,’ he said slowly. ‘It will not be as bad as you envisage, Sara—’

‘Really? How do you work that out?’

‘It is a great honour to marry such a man as the Sultan,’ he said, but he seemed to be having to force some kind of conviction into his words. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Do you have any idea of the number of women who would long to become his Sultana—’

‘A sultana is something I put on my muesli every morning!’ she spat back.

‘You will be prized above all women,’ he continued. ‘And given the honour of bearing His Imperial Majesty’s sons and heirs. What woman could ask for more?’

For a moment Sara didn’t speak, she was so angry. The idea of such a marriage sounded completely abhorrent to her now, but, as Suleiman had just said, she had grown up in a world where such a barter was considered normal. She had been living in England for so long that it was easy to forget that she was herself a royal princess. That her English mother had married a desert king and produced a son and a much younger daughter.

If her mother had been alive she would have stopped this ludicrous marriage from happening, Sara was sure of that. But her mother had been dead for a long time—her father, too. And now the Sultan wanted to claim what was rightfully his.

She thought of the man who awaited her and she shivered. She knew that a lot of women thought of him as a swarthy sex-god, but she wasn’t among them. During their three, heavily chaperoned meetings—she had felt nothing for him. Nada.

But mightn’t that have had something to do with the fact that Suleiman had been present all those times? Suleiman with his glittering black eyes and his hard, honed body who had distracted her so badly that she couldn’t think straight.

She glared at him. ‘Doesn’t it strike at your conscience to take a woman back to Qurhah against her will? Do you always do whatever the Sultan asks you, without questioning it? His tame puppet!’

A nerve flickered at his temple. ‘I no longer work for the Sultan.’

For a moment she stared at him in disbelief. ‘What...what are you talking about? The Sultan values you above all other men. Everyone knows that. You are his prized emissary and the man on whom he relies.’

He shook his head. ‘Not any longer. I have returned to my own land, where I have built a different kind of life for myself.’

She wanted to ask him what kind of life that was, but she reminded herself that what Suleiman did was none of her business. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t even seem to like you any more. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘As a favour to Murat. He thought that you might prove too much of a challenge for most of his staff.’

‘But not for you, I suppose?’

‘Not for me,’ he agreed.

She wanted to tell him to wipe that smug smile off his face and get out of her office and if he didn’t, then she would call security and get them to remove him. But was that such a good idea? Her eyes flickered doubtfully over his powerful body and immovable stance. Was she seriously suggesting that anyone could budge him if he didn’t want to go?

She thought about her boss. Wouldn’t Gabe Steel have Suleiman evicted from the building if she asked him? Though when she stopped to think about it—did she really want to go bleating to her boss for help? She had no desire to blight her perfect working record by bringing her private life into the workplace. Because wouldn’t Gabe—and all her colleagues—be amazed to discover that she wasn’t just someone called Sara Williams, but a half-blood desert princess from the desert country of Dhi’ban? That she had capitalised on her mother’s English looks and used her mother’s English surname to blend in since she’d been working here in London. And blend in, she had—adopting the fashions and the attitudes of other English women her age.

No, this was not a time for opposition—or at least, not a time for open opposition. She didn’t want Suleiman’s suspicions alerted. She needed to lull him. To let him think that he had won. That she would go with him—not too meekly or he would suspect that something was amiss, but that she would go with him.

She shrugged her shoulders as if she were reluctantly conceding victory and backed it up with a resigned sigh. ‘I suppose there’s no point in me trying to change your mind?’

His smile was cold. ‘Do you really think you could?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, as if his indifference didn’t matter. As if she didn’t care what he thought of her.

But she felt as if somebody had just taken her dreams and trampled on them. He was the only man she had ever wanted. The only man she’d ever loved. Yet Suleiman thought so little of her that he could just hand her over to another man, as if she were a parcel he was delivering.

‘Don’t look like that, Sara.’ His black eyes narrowed and she saw that little muscle flicker at his temple once more. ‘If you open your mind a little—you might find that you can actually enjoy your new life. That you can be a good wife. You will have strong sons and beautiful daughters and this will make the people of Qurhah very happy.’

For a moment, Sara thought she heard the hint of uncertainty in his voice. As if he was trotting out the official line without really believing it. Was he? Or was it true what they said—that something in his own upbringing had hardened his heart so that it was made of stone? So that he didn’t care about other people’s feelings—because he didn’t have any of his own.