Читать книгу Crowned At The Desert King's Command - Jackie Ashenden - Страница 12

CHARLOTTE WAS HAVING a lovely dream about swimming in cool water. It flowed silkily over her skin, making her want to stretch like a cat in the sun. It moved over her body, sliding over her face, pressing softly against her lips...

There was a harsh sound from somewhere and abruptly she opened her eyes, the dream fragmenting and then crashing down around her ears.

She was not swimming in cool water.

She was lying on a narrow, hard bed in a tiny room, empty except for a bucket in the corner. A single naked bulb hung from the ceiling. The floor was cracked concrete, the walls bare stone.

It looked like a...a jail cell.

Her heartbeat began to accelerate, fear coiling inside her. What had happened? Why was she here?

Her father had wandered away from the dig site and she’d gone to find him, only to get lost in the desert. Then those men on horseback had turned up, with her father slung over the back of a horse, and there had been that other man in black robes. That powerful man with the golden eyes, watching her. Tall and broad as a mountain. He’d had a sword at his hip and his gaze had been merciless, brutal...

A shudder moved down her spine.

He must have rescued her after she’d fainted—though this wasn’t exactly what she’d call a rescue. He might have saved her life, but he’d delivered her to a cell.

Slowly she let out a breath, trying to calm her racing heartbeat, and pushed herself up.

This had to be an Ashkaraz jail cell. And that man had to have been one of the feared border guards. And—oh, heavens—did they have her father here too? Had they both joined the ranks of people who’d crossed into Ashkaraz, a closed country?

And you know what happens to those people. They’re never heard from again.

Charlotte moistened her suddenly dry mouth, trying to get a grip on her flailing emotions. No, she mustn’t panic. Plenty of people had been heard from again—otherwise how would anyone know that the country was a tyranny run by a terrible dictator? That its people lived in poverty and ignorance and were terrorised?

Anyway, that line of thought wasn’t helping. What she should be concentrating on was what she should do now.

Pushing aside thoughts of dictators and terror, she swung her legs over the side of the horrible bed and stood up. A wave of dizziness hit her, along with some nausea, but the feeling passed after a couple of moments of stillness. Her face stung, but since there was no mirror she couldn’t see what the problem was. Sunburn, probably.

Slowly she moved over to the door and tried to open it, but it remained shut. Locked, obviously. Frowning, she took another look around the room. Up high near the ceiling was a small window, bright sunlight shining through it.

Maybe she could have a look and see what was out there? Get a feel for where she was? Certainly that was better than sitting around feeling afraid.

Charlotte stood there for a moment, biting her lip and thinking, then she shoved the bed underneath the window and climbed on top of it. Her fingers just scraped the ledge, not giving her nearly enough leverage to pull herself up. Annoyed, she took another look around before her gaze settled on the bucket in the corner.

Ah, that might work.

Jumping down off the bed, she went over to the bucket, picked it up and took it back to the bed. She upended it, set it down on the mattress, then climbed back onto the bed and onto the bucket. Given more height, she was able to pull herself up enough to look out of the window.

The glass was dusty and cracked, but she could see through it. However, the view was nothing but the stone wall of another building. She frowned again, trying to peer around to see if she could see anything, but couldn’t.

Perhaps she could break the glass?

Yes, she could do that, and then...

A sudden thought gripped her. Carefully, she examined the window again. She was a small woman, which had proved useful on many occasions, such as in hiding from her parents when the shouting had got too bad, and maybe it could be useful now?

Or maybe you should just sit and wait to see what happens?

She could—but this wasn’t just about her, was it? She had her father to consider. He might be in another jail cell somewhere or he could even be dead. Dead and she would never know.

You really will be alone then.

Cold crept through her, despite the sun outside.

No, she couldn’t sit there, helpless and not knowing. She had to do something.

Decisive now, she stripped off the white shirt she was wearing—her scarf seemed to have disappeared somewhere along the line—and wrapped it around her hand. Then she hammered with her fist on the glass. After a couple of strikes against the crack already running through it, the pane shattered beautifully.

Pleased with herself, she made sure that there were no sharp shards there, waiting to cut her, and then before she could think better of it she wriggled through the window.

A large man wouldn’t have made it. Even a medium-sized man would have had difficulty.

But a small woman? Easy.

She fell rather ignominiously to the ground, winding herself, and had to lie there for a couple of moments to get her breath back. The sun was incredibly hot, the air like a furnace. Definitely she was somewhere in Ashkaraz, that was for sure.

But then she was conscious of a sound. A familiar sound. Traffic. Cars and trucks on a road...horns sounding. People talking...the first few bars of a very popular pop song currently hitting the charts rising.

Puzzled, she pushed herself to her feet and found herself standing in a narrow alley between two tall stone buildings. At the mouth of the alley there appeared to be a street, with people walking past.

Despite her fear and uncertainty, an unexpected thrill of excitement caught at her.

She was in a closed country. A country no foreigner had seen for over twenty years. No one except her.

As her father’s assistant she’d become interested in archaeology and history, but it had always been society and people that had fascinated her the most. Ashkaraz was reportedly a throwback to medieval times, a society where time had stood still.

And you might be the first person to see the truth of it.

Nothing was going to stop her from seeing that truth, and she eagerly started towards the mouth of the alleyway.

Nothing could have prepared her for the shock of seeing an Ashkaraz street.

Part of her had been expecting horses and carts, a medieval fantasy of a middle eastern city, with ancient souks and camels and snake charmers. But that was not what she saw.

Bright, shiny and very new cars moved in the street, beneath tall, architecturally designed buildings made of glass and steel. People bustled along on the footpaths, some robed, some in the kind of clothes she would have seen on the streets in London. In amongst the glass and steel were historic buildings, beautifully preserved, and shops and cafés lined the streets. People were sitting at tables outside, talking, laughing, working, looking at their smartphones.

There was an energy to the place, which was clearly a bustling, successful, prosperous city.

Definitely not the poverty-stricken nation with a beaten-down populace crushed under the thumb of a dictator that the rest of the world thought it to be.

What on earth was going on?

Amazed, Charlotte stepped out onto the footpath, joining the stream of people walking along it, oblivious to the glances she was receiving.

There was a beautiful park up ahead, with a fountain and lush gardens, lots of benches to sit on and a playground for children. Already there seemed to be a number of kids there, screaming and laughing while their indulgent parents looked on.

This was...incredible. Amazing. How was this even possible? Was this the truth that Ashkaraz had been hiding all along?

She was so busy staring that she didn’t notice the uniformed man coming up behind her until his fingers wrapped around her arm. And then a long black car pulled up to the kerb and Charlotte found herself bundled into the back of it.

She opened her mouth to protest, but there wasn’t even time for her to scream. Something black and suffocating was put over her head and the car started moving.

The fingers around her arm were firm—not hurting, but definitely ensuring that she couldn’t get away. Fear, coming a little late to the party, suddenly rose up inside her, choking.

Did you really think you could escape from that jail cell and start wandering around like nothing was wrong?

She hadn’t been thinking—that was the problem. She’d got out of that cell and then been caught up in the wonder of the city outside it.

Charlotte slumped back in the seat, trying not to panic. Now, not only was her chance to escape gone but so was her father’s.

And it was all her fault.

The car drove for what seemed like ages and then slowed to a stop. She was pulled out of it and then taken up some steps. Sun and heat surrounded her for a second, and then she must have been taken inside because the sun had disappeared, to be replaced by blessedly cool air. Her footsteps echoed on a tiled floor, and there was the scent of water and flowers in the air.

She couldn’t see a thing through the black fabric around her head, and her sense of direction was soon gone as she was pulled down more corridors, around corners, and up yet more stairs.

Were they taking her back to that cell? Or were there worse things in store for her? Would they perhaps murder her? Make her disappear? Hold her prisoner for ever?

She was just starting to be very, very afraid when she was pulled to a stop and the fabric covering her head was abruptly tugged off.

Charlotte blinked in the bright light.

She appeared to be standing in a large room lined with shelves, containing lots of books and folders and filing boxes. The exquisite tiled floor was covered in thick, brightly coloured silk rugs, the walls also tiled, in silvery, slightly iridescent tiles. There was a window in front of her that gave a view onto a beautiful garden, where a fountain played amongst palms and other shrubs, as well as many different kinds of flowers.

A huge, heavy desk made of time-blackened wood stood before the window. The polished surface was clean of everything except a sleek-looking computer monitor and keyboard, and a small, elegant silver vase with a spray of fresh jasmine in it.

This was certainly not a jail cell. In fact, it looked like someone’s office...

She blinked again and turned around to see two men stationed on either side of the double doors. They were dressed in black robes with swords on their hips, their faces absolutely impassive.

She would have thought the robes and swords only ceremonial, except they didn’t have the clean and pressed look she would have expected. The fabric of their robes was dusty and stained around the hems, as were the boots the men wore. And although the edges of the swords were bright, was that...blood she could see on the steel? Surely it couldn’t be.

Charlotte stared, her heartbeat getting faster and faster, and then suddenly from behind her came the sound of a door opening and closing.

She turned back sharply to see that a man had come into the room from a door off to her left, and he was now standing beside the desk, staring at her.

He was very, very tall and very, very broad, built more like an ancient warrior than a businessman. The muscles of his chest and arms were straining the white cotton of his business shirt, and the dark wool of his suit trousers pulled tight around his powerful thighs.

His face was a harsh composition of planes and angles that nevertheless managed to be utterly compelling, with high cheekbones and an aquiline nose, straight black brows and a beautifully carved mouth.

‘Handsome’ was far too bland a word for him...especially as he radiated the kind of arrogant charisma reserved only for the very powerful and very important.

But that wasn’t what held Charlotte absolutely rooted to the spot.

It was his eyes. Burning gold, with the same relentless, brutal heat as the desert sun.

It was the man who’d approached her in the desert. She was sure of it. She’d never forget those eyes.

He said nothing for a long moment and neither did Charlotte, since she couldn’t seem to find her voice. Then his gaze shifted to the men behind her and he gave a slight tilt of his head. A couple of seconds later she heard the door shut behind her, the men clearly having obeyed some unspoken order and left.

The room abruptly felt tiny and cramped, the space too small to accommodate both her and the man in front of her. Or maybe he seemed to get larger and more intimidating, taking up all the air and leaving none for her.

She lifted her chin, trying to get her heartbeat under control at the same time as trying to hold his relentless gaze, but she couldn’t seem to manage both—especially not when he moved suddenly, coming over to the desk and standing in front of it, folding his arms across his massive chest.

Bringing him quite a bit closer.

She resisted the urge to take a step back, hating how small and insignificant his sheer size made her feel. It was exactly the same feeling that had filled her when her parents had argued and she’d hidden under the dining room table. They’d never noticed that she’d left her seat—which was ironic, since more often than not they had been shouting about her.

Clasping her hands in front of her to prevent them from shaking, Charlotte took a small, silent breath. ‘Um...do you speak English?’ Her voice sounded thin and reedy in the silence of the room.

The man said nothing, continuing to stare at her.

It was extremely unnerving.

Her mouth had dried and she wished her Arabic was better. Because maybe he didn’t understand English. She wanted to ask him where her father was and also to thank him for saving her.

He put you in a cell, remember?

Sure, but maybe that hadn’t been him. He might look like a medieval warrior, but the suit he was wearing was thoroughly modern. Perhaps he was an accountant? Or the chief of the jail she’d been put in? Or a government functionary?

Yet none of those things seemed to fit. He was too magnetic, too charismatic to be anyone’s mere functionary. No, this man had an aura about him that spoke of command, as if he expected everyone to fall to their knees around him.

Sadly for him, she wouldn’t be falling anywhere in front of him.

Except you already have. In the desert.

That, alas, was true.

‘I’m s-sorry,’ she stuttered, casting around for something to say. ‘I should have thanked you for saving my life. But can you tell me where my father is? We got lost, you see. And I... I...’ She faltered, all her words crushed by the weight of his stare.

This was silly. Her father could be dead or in a jail cell and she was letting this man get to her. She couldn’t get pathetic now.

Perhaps introducing herself would help. After all, she’d had no identification on her when she’d collapsed, so maybe they had no idea who she or her father were. Maybe that was why she had been put in the cell? Maybe they thought she was some kind of insurgent, hoping to...?

But, no. Best not get carried away. Keep thinking in the here and now.

‘So,’ Charlotte said, pulling herself together. ‘My name is—’

‘Charlotte Devereaux,’ the man interrupted in a deep, slightly rough voice. ‘You are an assistant attached to an archaeological dig that your father, Professor Martin Devereaux is managing in conjunction with the University of Siddq.’

His English was perfect, his accent almost imperceptible.

‘You both come from Cornwall, but you live in London and at present are employed by your father’s university as his assistant. You are twenty-three years old, have no dependents, and live in a flat with a couple of friends in Clapham.’

Charlotte could feel her mouth hanging open in shock. How did he know all this stuff? How had he found out?

‘I...’ she began.

But he hadn’t finished, because he was going on, ignoring her entirely, ‘Can you tell me, please, what you were doing out there in the desert? Neither you nor your father were anywhere near your dig site. In fact, that is the whole reason you are here. You crossed the border into Ashkaraz—you do understand that, do you not?’

She flushed at the note of condescension in his voice, but took heart from the fact that he was talking of her father in the present tense.

‘Are you saying that my father is alive?’ she asked, needing to be sure.

‘Yes,’ the man said flatly. ‘He is alive.’

Relief filled her, making her breath catch. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. He wandered away from the site, the way he sometimes does, and I went to try and find him. I walked up a dune and somehow—’

‘I am not interested in how you got lost, Miss Devereaux,’ the man interrupted, his voice like iron, his golden stare pitiless. ‘What I am interested in is how you somehow got out of a secure facility.’

Charlotte swallowed. Briefly she debated lying, but since she was in a lot of trouble already there was no point in making it any worse.

‘I...smashed the glass and crawled out of the window.’ She lifted her chin a little to show him that she wouldn’t be cowed. ‘It really wasn’t that difficult.’

‘You crawled out of the window?’ he repeated, his voice flat, the lines of his brutally handsome face set and hard. ‘And what made you think that was a good idea?’

‘I’ve heard the rumours,’ she said defensively. ‘About how people who stray over your borders disappear for ever, never to be seen again. How they’re beaten and terrorised. And I didn’t know what had happened to my father.’ She steeled herself. ‘I saw an opportunity to escape, to see if I could find him, and so I took it.’

The man said nothing, but that stare of his felt like a weight pressing her down and crushing her into dust.

You’re really for it now.

Charlotte gripped her hands together, lifted her chin another inch and stared back. ‘We’re British citizens, you know. You can’t just make us disappear like all the rest. My dad is a very well-respected academic. Once people realise we’re missing they’ll send others to find us. So you’d better tell whoever is in charge here that—’

‘No need. All the interested parties already know.’

‘Which interested parties?’

His face was impassive. ‘Me.’

‘You?’ Charlotte tried to look sceptical and failed. ‘And who exactly are you?’

‘I am the one in charge,’ he said, without any emphasis at all.

‘Oh? Are you the head of the police or something?’

It would explain his aura of command, after all.

‘No. I am not the head of the police.’

His eyes gleamed with something that made her breath catch.

‘I am the head of the country. I am the Sheikh of Ashkaraz.’

Charlotte Devereaux, all five foot nothing of her, blinked her large silver-blue eyes. Shock was written across her pretty, pink features.

She should be shocked.

She should be quaking in those little boots of hers.

He’d only just been notified of her escape and her jaunt down Kharan’s main street, and to say that he was angry was massively to understate the case.

He was furious. Absolutely, volcanically furious.

The fury boiled away inside him like lava, and only long years of iron control kept it locked down and not spilling everywhere, destroying everything in its path.

Because he had no one to blame for this incident but himself. He was the one who’d elected to bring her back to Kharan and not to follow Faisal’s advice to return her and her father to the dig site from which they’d come.

No, he’d decided to handle her himself, to make sure she was taken back to Kharan and had the medical treatment she required. Her father had needed more, and was still unconscious in a secure hospital ward. She had been transferred to the facility where they kept all illegal visitors to Ashkaraz.

Normally those visitors tended to be men. They were not usually little women who could wriggle through small windows. He hadn’t even known the cell she’d been put in had a window.

Not that it mattered now. What mattered was that this woman had escaped and had somehow stumbled unchecked into Kharan, and she had seen through the lies he and his people told the world.

Far from being a nation stuck in time, mired in poverty and war, it was prosperous and healthy, its population well-cared-for and happy.

And it was a wealthy nation. A very wealthy nation.

A nation that had to hide its wealth from the rest of the world or else be torn apart by those desperate to get their hands on it—as had occurred nearly twenty years earlier.

He couldn’t allow that to happen again.

He wouldn’t.

Catherine had been at the centre of it twenty years ago and now here was Charlotte Devereaux, another foreign woman causing another diplomatic incident.

This time, though, he would not be a party to it, the way he had been with Catherine. He’d learned his lesson and he’d learned it well, and he would not be giving this woman the benefit of the doubt.

‘Oh,’ she said faintly. ‘Oh. I... I see.’

Her voice had a pleasant husk to it. Somewhere along the line she’d lost her scarf, so her silvery blonde hair hung in a loose ponytail down her back, wisps of it stuck to her forehead. The angry red of the sunburn she’d got out in the desert had faded slightly, leaving her pale skin pink. It made the colour of her eyes stand out, glittering like stars. She wore the same pair of loose blue trousers she’d had on in the desert, though the white shirt had gone, leaving in its place a tight-fitting white tank top.

It did not escape his notice that, though she was small, she had a surprisingly lush figure.

‘I am sure that you do not see,’ he said, forcing those particular observations to one side. ‘Because your little excursion has put me in a very difficult position.’

She gave him a cool look that pricked against something inside him like a thorn, needling him. ‘Indeed? How so?’

It was not the response he’d hoped for. In fact, nothing of her behaviour was the response he’d hoped for. She should be afraid. As any woman—or any person, for that matter—who’d woken up to find herself in a jail cell would be. Especially given the rumours she must have heard about Ashkaraz.

She should be terrified for her life, not standing there giving him cool looks as if he was nothing more than a mere functionary and not the king of his own country.

‘Miss Devereaux,’ he said, his anger still raw. ‘You are not at all showing proper deference.’

She blinked those glittering silvery eyes again. ‘Oh, I’m not? I’m sorry. I don’t know the customs—’

‘You would curtsey before your queen, would you not?’ He cut her off coldly. ‘I am king here. My word is law.’

‘Oh,’ she repeated, lowering her gaze. ‘I didn’t mean to offend.’ Then she made an awkward curtsey, her hands fluttering at her sides.

He narrowed his gaze at her. Was she making fun of him? He didn’t think so, but you could never tell with foreigners.

It didn’t improve his temper.

Then again, he shouldn’t be taking his temper out on her, full stop. A king should be above such things, as his father had always told him. A ruler needed to be hard, cold. Detached from his emotions.

Except he could feel his anger straining at the leash he’d put on it. He wanted her on her knees, begging his forgiveness.

Are you sure that’s the only reason you want her on her knees?

Something shifted inside him—a strange pull.

She was...pretty. And, yes, there was a physical attraction there. Perhaps that accounted for the reason this particular woman tried his temper so badly. Not that an attraction would make the slightest difference. As he’d told Faisal out in the desert, he’d treat her exactly the same way he treated every other intruder.

‘It is too late for that,’ he said implacably. ‘You have offended already. You escaped your cell and found your way into the city.’

She was standing with her small hands clasped, but this time the expression on her face wasn’t so much cool as uncertain.

‘Yes, well...as I was going to explain, I didn’t mean to. I just wasn’t sure what you were going to do with me or my father.’

‘We would have done what we do with all illegal visitors to Ashkaraz. You would have both been sent back to your home country.’ He paused. ‘But we cannot do that now.’

Her pale brows drew together. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you have walked down the main street of Kharan and seen the truth.’

‘What? You mean all the nice buildings? The new cars and smartphones and things?’ Her mouth, full and prettily pink, curved. ‘It’s such a beautiful city. How is me seeing that a problem?’

‘Because you will tell other people, Miss Devereaux.’

What he had to tell her now wouldn’t be welcome, yet she had to understand the gravity of the situation.

‘And they will tell others, and so it will go on until the whole world learns the truth. And I cannot let that happen.’

She was still frowning. ‘I don’t understand...’

‘Of course you do not. But you will have plenty of time to work it out.’

Another ripple of uncertainty crossed her face. ‘That sounds ominous. What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that we cannot send you back to England. We cannot send either of you back to England. You will have to remain in Ashkaraz.’ He paused again, for emphasis. ‘Indefinitely.’