Читать книгу The Sheikh's Guarded Heart - Liz Fielding - Страница 8

LUCY FORRESTER wasn’t fooled for a minute. The insubstantial shimmer of green was a mirage.

She’d read everything she could about Ramal Hamrah, the desert. Mirages, she’d learned, were not the illusions of thirst-maddened travellers, but occurred when refracted light mirrored distant images—oil tankers, cities, trees—making them appear where they had no business to be, only for them to evaporate as the earth revolved and the angle of the sun changed.

It happened now, the momentary vision of eye-soothing green vanishing before her eyes. But even a mirage was enough to distract her from her unthinking rush to confront the man who’d betrayed her. Just because there was no traffic—no road—didn’t mean that there were no hazards.

She checked the satellite navigation system, adjusted her direction slightly, then forced herself to relax her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel a little. Look around, take her bearings.

Not that there was much to see apart from the mountains—clearer, sharper now that she was on higher ground away from the coast. There was nothing green here, only the occasional scrubby, dust-covered bush in an otherwise dry and empty landscape.

Her eyes, seared and aching from a sun that mocked her delicately tinted sunglasses, felt as if they were filled with sand and she would have welcomed another glimpse of the cooling green. Even an illusion would do.

Dehydrated, hungry, she should have realized that she’d need more than rage to sustain her, but her bottle of water had long been empty. And, shaken to bits by her charge across the corrugated surface of the open desert, her entire body felt as if it had been beaten black and blue.

She didn’t understand it. According to the map, it was no more than a hundred and fifty miles to Steve’s campsite. Three hours, four at the most. She should have been there long before now.

She closed her eyes momentarily, in an attempt to relieve them. It was a mistake. Without warning the 4x4 tipped forward, throwing her against the seat-belt as the ground fell sharply away in front of her, wrenching the wheel from her hands. Before she could react, regain control, the front offside wheel hit something hard, riding up so that the vehicle slewed sideways, tipped drunkenly, and after a seemingly endless moment when it might, just, have fallen back four-square on the ground, the rear wheel clipped the same unseen rock and the world tipped upside down.

Only the bruising jolt of the seat-belt against her breast-bone, shoulder, hip, stopped her from being tumbled around the interior like washing in a drier as the vehicle began to roll.

It didn’t stop her arms from flailing uncontrollably, bouncing against the wheel, the roof, the gear stick. Didn’t stop her legs from being pounded against the angles of a vehicle built for function, rather than comfort. Didn’t stop everything loose from flying around, battering her head and neck.

It seemed an eternity before the world finally stopped turning and everything came to a halt.

For a while that was enough.

When, finally, she managed to focus on her surroundings, the world was at an odd angle, but the silence, the lack of any kind of movement, was deeply restful and Lucy, glad enough to rest quietly in the safety cage of her seat-belt, felt no urgent need to move.

At least the green was back, she thought. Closer now. She tried to make sense of it through the crazing of the safety glass.

Trees of some kind, she decided, after a while. It was the fact that they were upside down that had confused her. That they were below, rather than above a high wall.

Had she stumbled across the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

No, that couldn’t be right. Babylon wasn’t in Ramal Hamrah. It was… Somewhere else.

Maybe she was dead, she thought dispassionately.

Heaven would be green. And quiet. Although the gate she could see set into the wall was not of the pearly variety promised in the fire-and-brimstone sermons preached at the church her grandmother had attended, but were carved from wood.

But then wood was, no doubt, more precious than pearls in a place where few trees grew.

Wall and door were both the same dull ochre as the desert. Covered with centuries of wind-blown dust, they were all but invisible unless you were looking directly at them or, as now, intense shadows cast by the lowering sun were throwing the carvings into relief.

The angel looked real enough, though, as he flew down to her on wings of gold.

Gradually tiny sounds began to impinge on her consciousness. The ticking of the engine as it cooled. Papers fluttering. It was her diary, she saw, lying amongst the jumble of stuff thrown from her bag, the pages riffling in the wind, blowing her life away. She closed her eyes.

Moments, or maybe it was hours, later she opened them to a pounding beat that sounded oddly familiar but which she couldn’t quite place. And the slow drip, drip, drip of something leaking.

Coolant or brake fluid, she thought.

She ought to do something about that. Find the hole, plug it somehow or she’d really be in trouble…

Stirred from her dazed torpor, she began to tug feebly at the seat belt but was brought to an instant halt by a searing pain in her scalp. Confused, in pain as a hundred smarts, bruises and worse were jolted into life, she kept still, tried to focus her energy, find the strength to reach the release catch, free herself, without tearing her hair out by the roots.

Then the smell of petrol reached her.

Petrol dripping on to hot metal…

It was a wake-up call to the danger she was in; forget heaven, she was at the gates of hell and raw, naked fear overrode pain as she struggled to twist herself around to hit the seat belt release.

Her sweaty fingers slipped as she tried to make contact and, as the smell of petrol grew stronger, she panicked, throwing herself against the restraints—

‘Hold still, I’ve got you.’

She heard the words, but they didn’t penetrate the thinking part of her brain as she fought to break free.

‘Don’t move!’

It wasn’t the harsh order that shocked her into motionless silence, or the fierce, hawk-like features of the man who gave it. It was the gleaming knife blade, so close to her face that she could almost taste the metal at the back of her throat.

It was one shock too many.

Hanif al-Khatib cursed as the woman fainted dead away, then braced himself to catch her as he cut her free from the seat belt, trusting to luck as to whether he did more damage as he hauled her dead weight up through the open window of the 4x4 and on to his saddle. The smell of petrol filled the hot air and there was no time to waste doing the thing gently as, holding her limp body tight against him with one arm, he urged his horse to safety.

When the vehicle burst into flames he was still close enough to feel a flare of heat that made the desert air seem momentarily icy.

Time passed in a blur of pain. Lucy heard voices but could not understand what they said. The only comfort was in the dusty cloth beneath her face, the steady beat of a human heart, soft reassuring words. Someone was holding her close, not letting go. With the part of her brain that was still functioning, she knew that as long as he held her she would be safe.

Nothing short of an emergency would have induced Hanif al-Khatib to set foot in a hospital. He hated everything about them—the smell, the hushed careful voices of the staff, the high-tech sound of machines measuring out lives in bleeps rather than heartbeats. Announcing death in a high-pitched whine that drilled through the brain.

The overwhelming sense of guilt…

His aide had done his best to keep him away from the emergency room, to persuade him to remain in the desert, assuring him that he could manage.

He didn’t doubt it; Zahir was more than capable, but he came anyway, needing to assure himself that everything necessary was done for the woman. And because a lone foreign woman driving across the desert as if the hounds of hell were after her had left him with the uneasy suspicion that there was more to it than a simple accident.

Since he hadn’t delayed to change his clothes and they, and the keffiyeh wound about his face, bore the dust of a day’s hunting, no one had realised who he was and that suited him well enough. The last thing he wanted was to attract the attention of local media; he valued his own privacy and the young woman he’d rescued was unlikely to welcome the attention, speculation, that being brought into casualty by the son of the Emir was likely to arouse.

He’d left all direct contact with the hospital staff to Zahir, staying in background, content to be thought nothing more than muscle brought along to carry the woman pulled from the wreck of her vehicle.

Nevertheless, the arrival at the hospital of a helicopter bearing the Emiri insignia would have raised more than passing interest and he was eager to be away. Just as soon as he satisfied himself that the woman was not seriously injured, would be properly cared for.

He turned from the window as Zahir joined him in the visitors’ room. ‘How is she?’

‘Lucky. They’ve done a scan but the head injuries are no more than surface bruising. At worst, mild concussion.’

‘That’s it?’ He’d feared much worse. ‘She was fainting, incoherent with pain in the helicopter,’ he pressed.

‘She’s torn a ligament in her ankle, that’s a world of pain, and she took quite a battering when the vehicle rolled.’

‘That’s lucky?’

Zahir pulled a face. ‘But for you, Excellency, it would have been a lot worse.’

‘I was simply the nearest. The first to reach her.’

‘No one else would have risked riding straight down the jebel as you did.’

The boy did not add that no one else had had so little regard for his own safety, although he was clearly thinking it. Not true. With a broken neck he would have been no use to her.

‘The woman owes you her life.’

He dismissed the idea with an impatient gesture. ‘Is she being kept in the hospital?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Zahir said. ‘She just needs to rest for a few days.’ Then, ‘I’ve informed the pilot that we’re ready to leave.’

Hanif had done his duty and now that he knew the woman would make a full recovery there was nothing to keep him. Except that she had looked so fragile as she’d struggled to free herself.

‘You’ve spoken to someone at Bouheira Tours?’ he asked, pushing the image away. ‘They have contacted her family? Someone is making arrangements to look after her, get her home?’

Zahir cleared his throat. ‘You need not concern yourself, Excellency,’ he said. Then, forgetting himself in his anxiety to leave, ‘We need to go, Han, already rumours are flying around the hospital—’

He didn’t ask what kind of rumours. A foreign woman had been brought to the hospital in a helicopter used by the son of the Emir. What they didn’t know, they’d make up.

‘Put a stop to them, Zahir. The girl was found by a hunting party, my staff offered humanitarian aid. I was not involved.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘So?’ he persisted. ‘Who is she? Does she work for this company? Or is she just another sand-surfer, tearing up the desert as if it’s her personal playground?’

He hoped so. If he could write her off as some shallow thrill-seeker, he could forget about her.

‘The tourist industry is becoming an important part of our economy, Excellency—’

‘And, if so, why was she travelling alone, in the wrong direction to anywhere?’ Hanif continued, ignoring Zahir’s attempt to divert his attention.

Too inexperienced, too young to hide what he was thinking, his young cousin hesitated a moment too long as he decided just how much to tell him. Just how much he dared leave out.

Hanif moved to the nearest chair, turned, sat down with a flourish that no one could have mistaken for anything but regal and, with a gesture so slight as to be almost imperceptible, so imperious that not even a favoured cousin would dare ignore it, invited the boy to make up his mind.

‘Sir—’ Zahir swallowed, saw there was no help for it and finally admitted the truth. ‘Bouheira Tours say they have no idea who this woman might be. She does not work for them and they were adamant that she could not be a client. They have no women in any of the parties booked this week.’

‘Yet she was driving one of their vehicles.’ He waited. ‘Their logo was emblazoned on its side. Desert safaris, dune-surfing,’ he prompted.

‘I made that point.’

‘Who did you speak to?’

‘The office manager. A woman called Sanderson. The man who actually owns the company, Steve Mason, is in the east of the country, guiding a party of archaeologists who have come to look at the ancient irrigation systems.’

‘She was heading too far north to have been joining them.’

‘She may have been lost.’

‘Surely their vehicles are fitted with satellite navigation equipment?’ Zahir made no comment. ‘So, what explanation did this Sanderson woman have for the fact that a woman she’d didn’t know was driving one of their vehicles?’

‘She didn’t. She said we must be mistaken. That none of their vehicles is missing. She pointed out that there are other companies running desert trips. That, since the vehicle was burned out, we may have been mistaken.’

‘You were there, Zahir. Do you believe we were mistaken?’

Zahir swallowed. ‘No, sir.’

‘No. So, when you assure me that our casualty is to be looked after, what exactly did you mean? That the hospital will contact her embassy where some official will draw up a document requiring her to repay them the cost of medical treatment and repatriation before they’ll do a damn thing to help her?’

‘I assumed you would wish to have her treatment to be charged to your office, sir. Other than that—’

‘Always assuming that she can prove her identity,’ Hanif continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Her nationality. It might take some time, since everything she was carrying with her was incinerated. Who will care for her in the meantime?’

‘You saved her life, Han. You have done everything required.’

‘On the contrary, Zahir. Having saved her, I am now responsible for her.’ A situation he would have otherwise, but to wish that he hadn’t become involved would be to wish her dead and that he could not do. ‘Who is she?’ he demanded, as keen as anyone to see an end to this. ‘What’s her name?’

‘She gave her name as Lucy Forrester.’

‘Did she say where she was going?’

‘No. It was because she seemed so confused that they ordered a scan.’

‘And the doctor says she can be discharged?’ Then, on his feet and at the door before Zahir could open his mouth, he said, ‘Never mind. I’ll speak to him myself.’

‘Sir!’

Hanif strode down the corridor, ignoring the boy’s anguished plea.

‘Excellency, it is my duty to insist—’

As he turned on him the boy flinched, stuttered to a halt. But he bravely stood his ground.

‘You’ve done everything that is required,’ he repeated. ‘There can be no doubt that she’s British. Her embassy will take care of the rest.’

‘I will be the judge of when I have done everything required, Zahir.’ Then, irritably, ‘Where is he? The doctor?’

‘He was called to another emergency. I’ll have him paged for you.’

‘No.’ It wasn’t the doctor who held him where he least wanted to be, but his patient. ‘Where is she?’

There was another, almost imperceptible, pause before, apparently accepting the inevitable, Zahir said, ‘She’s in the treatment room. The last door on the left.’

Lucy Forrester was looking worse, rather than better than when he’d carried her into the A and E department.

In his head, he was still seeing her in that moment before she’d fainted, with long hair spread about her shoulders, fair skin, huge grey eyes. Since then the bruising had developed like a picture in a developing tank; her arms were a mess of ugly bruises, grazes, small cuts held together with paper sutures and there was dried blood, like rust, in her hair.

The hospital had treated her injuries—her right leg was encased below the knee in a lightweight plastic support—but the emergency team hadn’t had time to do more than the minimum, cleaning up her wounds, but nothing else. Presumably that was the job of the ward staff.

For now, she was lying propped up, her skin clinging to fine bones, waiting for someone to decide where she was going. She looked, he thought, exhausted.

Her eyes, in that split second before she’d lost consciousness, had been wide with terror. Her first reaction now, starting, as if waking from a bad dream, was still fear and, without thinking, he reached for her hand. Held it.

‘It’s all right, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You’re safe.’

Fear was replaced by uncertainty, then some other, more complex, emotion that seemed to find an echo deep within him.

‘You saved me,’ she mumbled, the words scarcely distinguishable through her bruised, puffy lips.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Lie back. Take your time.’

‘I thought… I thought…’

It was all too clear what Lucy Forrester had thought, but he did not blame her. She’d been hysterical and there had been no time for explanations, only action.

He released her hand, bowed slightly, a courtesy that would not normally be afforded to any woman other than his mother, his grandmother, and said, ‘I am Hanif al-Khatib. You have friends in Ramal Hamrah?’ he asked. Why would a woman travel here alone except to be with someone? ‘Someone I can call?’

‘I—’ She hesitated, as if unsure what to say. She settled on, ‘No. No one.’ Not the truth, he thought. Not the whole truth, anyway. It did not matter.

‘Then my home is at your disposal until you are strong enough to continue your journey.’

One of her eyes was too swollen to keep open. The other suggested doubt. ‘But why—?’

‘A traveller in distress will always find help, refuge in my country,’ he said, cutting off her objection. He was not entirely sure ‘why’ himself, beyond the fact that he had not rescued her from death to abandon her to the uncertain mercy of her embassy. At least with him, she would be comfortable. And safe. Turning to Zahir, he said, ‘It is settled. Make it happen.’

‘But, Excellency—’

Hanif silenced him with a look.

‘Go and find something warm for Miss Forrester to travel in. And send a nurse to clean her up. How could they leave her like this?’

‘It may be a while,’ his cousin said, disapproval practically vibrating from him. ‘They’re rushed off their feet in A and E.’

Lucy watched as her Samaritan impatiently waved the other man away before turning to the cupboards where dressings were stored, searching, with growing irritation until he finally emerged with a stainless steel dish and a pack of cotton wool. He ran water into the bowl, tearing off chunks of cotton and tossing them in to soak.

‘I’m not a nurse,’ he said, turning to her, ‘but I will do my best to make you more comfortable.’

‘No,’ she said, scrambling back up against the raised head-board. ‘Really, there’s no need.’

‘There is every need,’ he said. ‘It will take Zahir a little while to organise the paperwork.’ He didn’t smile, but he was gentleness itself as he took one her hands, looking up in concern as she trembled. ‘Does that hurt?’

‘No,’ she managed.

He nodded, as if that was all he needed to know, and began to gently wipe the damp cotton pads over her fingers, her hands, discarding the pads as each one became dirty.

And it was, after all, just her hands.

It was nothing, she told herself. She wouldn’t object to a male nurse doing this and the man had saved her life. But his touch, as he carefully wiped each finger as if they were made of something fragile and fine, did something unsettling to her insides and a tiny sound escaped her. Not nothing…

He glanced up enquiringly and she managed to mouth, ‘It’s okay.’

Apparently reassured, he carefully washed away the dirt and dried blood from the bruised back of her hand before turning it over to clean the palm. He moved to her wrist, washed every bit of her arm with the same care.

Then he began again on the other hand. Time was, apparently, of no importance.

He emptied the bowl, refilled it. ‘Fresh water for your face,’ he said, and she swallowed. Hands, arms were one thing. Her face was so much more personal. He’d have to get closer. ‘I… Yes…’

‘That’s too hot?’ he enquired, as she jumped at the touch of a fresh pad to her cheek, let out an incoherent squeak.

‘No…’ The word seemed stuck in her throat but she swallowed it down and said, ‘No, it’s just…’ It was just that her grandmother’s brainwashing had gone deep. Bad girls let men touch them. In her head she knew that it wasn’t like that, that when people loved one another it was different, but even with Steve she’d found the slightest intimacy a challenge. Not that he’d pressed her.

He’d assured her that he found her innocence charming. That it made him feel like the first man in the world.

Innocent was right. No one but an innocent booby would have fallen for that line.

While she knew that this was different, that it had nothing to do with what her grandmother had been talking about, it didn’t make it any easier, but she managed a convincing, ‘It’s fine…’ refusing to let fall tears of rage, remorse, helplessness—a whole range of emotions piling up faster than she could think of words to describe them. After a long moment in which the man waited, apparently unconvinced, she said, ‘Truly.’

‘You must tell me if I hurt you,’ he said, gently lifting the hair back from her face.

All she wanted was for him to get on with it, get it over with, but as he gently stroked the cotton over her skin it was just as it had been with her hands, her arms. He was tenderness itself and her hot, dry skin, dehydrated and thirsty, seemed to soak up the moisture like a sponge.

‘I’m just going to clean up your scalp here,’ he warned. ‘I think you must have caught your hair when you were struggling with the seat belt.’ It stung a little. Maybe more than a little because he stopped, looked at her and said, ‘Shall I stop?’

‘No. Really. You’re not hurting me.’ Not much anyway.

Pride must abide.

Words chiselled on to her scalp.

He lifted her long tangled hair, holding it aside so that he could wash the nape of her neck, and she gave an involuntary sigh. If she could only wash her hair, she thought, she’d feel a hundred times better.

‘Later,’ he said. ‘I will wash your hair tomorrow.’

She was smiling into the soft wool keffiyeh coiled around his neck before she realized that he’d answered her unspoken thoughts. She considered asking him how he’d done that. Then waited. If he was a mind-reader she wouldn’t need to ask…

There was a tap on the door and someone called out.

He rapped out one word. He’d spoken in Arabic but the word was unmistakable. Wait. Then he laid her back against the headrest and she whispered, ‘Shukran.’ Thank you.

She’d bought a teach yourself Arabic course, planning to learn some of the language before joining Steve. She hadn’t just want to be a silent partner. She’d wanted to be useful. A bit of a joke, that. She’d served her usefulness the minute she’d so trustingly signed the papers he’d placed in front of her.

Hanif al-Khatib smiled at her—it was the first time, she thought. The man was so serious…Then he said, ‘Afwan, Lucy.’

Welcome. It meant welcome, she thought. And she knew he meant it.

In all her life, no one had ever treated her with such care, such consideration, as this stranger and quite suddenly she was finding it very hard to hold back the dam of tears.

Obviously it was shock. Exhaustion. Reaction to the accident…

She sniffed, swallowed. She did not cry. Pain, betrayal, none of those had moved her to tears. She’d learned early that tears were pointless. But kindness had broken down the barriers and, embarrassed, she blinked them back.

‘You are in pain, Lucy?’

‘No.’

He touched a tear that lay on her cheek. ‘There is no need to suffer.’

‘No. They gave me an injection. I just feel sleepy.’

‘Then sleep. It will make the journey easier for you.’ Then, ‘I will return in a moment,’ he said.

She nodded, her mind drifting away on a cloud of sedative. She jerked awake when he returned.

‘I hope you will not mind wearing this,’ Hanif said, helping her to sit up, wrapping something soft and warm around her, feeding her arms into the sleeves.

She had no objection to anything this man did, she thought, but didn’t have the energy to say the words out loud.

‘How is she?’

Hanif had left Zahir in Rumaillah to make enquiries about his guest and now he roused himself to join him in the sitting room of the guest suite.

‘Miss Forrester is still sleeping.’

‘It’s the best thing.’

‘Perhaps.’ She’d been fighting it—disturbed, dreaming perhaps, crying out in her sleep. It was only the sedatives prescribed by the hospital keeping her under, he suspected. ‘What did you discover in Rumaillah? Was the embassy helpful?’

‘I thought it better to make my own enquiries, find out what I could about her movements before I went to the embassy. If you want my opinion, there’s something not quite right about all this.’

‘Which is, no doubt, why you tried to dissuade me from bringing her here,’ Hanif replied, without inviting it.

‘It is my duty—’

‘It is your duty to keep me from brooding, Zahir. To drag me out on hunting expeditions. Tell my father when I’m ready to resume public life.’

‘He worries about you.’

‘Which is why I allow you to stay. Now, tell me about Lucy Forrester.’

‘She arrived yesterday morning on the early flight from London. The immigration officer on duty remembered her vividly. Her hair attracted a good deal of notice.’

He didn’t doubt it. Pale as cream, hanging to her waist, any man would notice it.

Realising that Zahir was waiting, he said, ‘Yes, yes! Get on with it!’

‘Her entry form gave her address in England so I checked the telephone number and put through a call.’

‘Did I ask you to do that?’

‘No, sir, but I thought—’

He dismissed Zahir’s thoughts with an irritated gesture. ‘And?’ he demanded.

‘There was no reply.’ He waited for a moment, but when Hanif made no comment he continued. ‘She gave her address in Ramal Hamrah as the Gedimah Hotel but, although she had made a booking, she never checked in.’

‘Did someone pick her up from the airport, or did she take a taxi?’

‘I’m waiting for the airport security people to come back to me on that one.’

‘And what about the vehicle she was driving? Have you had a chance to look at it? Salvage anything that might be useful?’

‘No, sir. I sent out a tow truck from Rumaillah, but when it arrived at the scene, the 4x4 had gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘It wasn’t there.’

‘It can’t have vanished into thin air, Zahir.’

‘No, sir.’

Hanif frowned. ‘No one else knew about it, other than the woman at Bouheira Tours. What did you tell her?’

‘Only that one of their vehicles had been in an accident and was burnt out in the desert. She was clearly shaken, asked me to describe it, the exact location. Once I had done that she said that I must be mistaken. That the vehicle could not belong to them. Then I asked her if Miss Forrester was a staff member or a traveller booked with them and she replied that she’d never heard of her.’

‘She didn’t want to check her records?’

‘She was quite adamant.’

‘Did you tell her that Miss Forrester had been injured?’

‘She didn’t ask what had happened to her and I didn’t volunteer any information.’

‘Leave it that way. Meanwhile, find out more about this tour company and the people who run it. And Zahir, be discreet.’