Читать книгу Forbidden in Regency Society: The Governess and the Sheikh - Marguerite Kaye - Страница 12

Cassie woke every morning looking forward to the coming day. Gone was her homesickness, banished were her doubts. Linah flourished under the combined regime of physical and mental exercise, her natural intelligence and surprisingly wry sense of humour were beginning to emerge. While she still shied away from any physical signs of affection, she had twice now allowed herself to be cuddled when waking from a nightmare, and once slipped her little hand into Cassie’s on the journey to the stables. The tantrums had abated dramatically. The sulks were not gone, but had become rare. Her behaviour was improving, definitely improving with every passing day.

Though she was not aware of it, for she rarely bothered these days with her looking glass, Cassie, too, was improving every day. Her skin glowed with vitality, tinged with the sun, rosy with health. Her eyes sparkled, the azure of a summer sea with the sun glinting upon it. She walked with a lighter step. She hummed to herself when sitting sewing in the shade of the lemon tree. She was happy.

She was happy because she was making a difference to Linah. She was happy because she was doing something positive. She was happy because Jamil was pleased with her efforts. She was happy because in Jamil, the man she had come to know, if not yet fully understand, she felt she had found that rare thing—a true friend. The thought made her smile, for Jamil would have scorned it—had he not said that he did not want or need friends? But that made her smile all the more. Of course they were friends. What else could it be, this empathy that had grown up between them, the ease with which they talked, disputed, laughed, the way sometimes they did not even need to do that, content merely to be in each other’s company?

‘Friends.’ She said the word aloud, as if tasting it, and again, this time more assertively. They could not be anything else. She did not wish it. He did not think of it. At least …

Sometimes, when they were alone in the desert, she caught him looking at her. Sometimes, she looked at him just like that, she suspected. Hungrily. Imagining. Trying not to imagine. Remembering. Trying not to remember. When their hands met accidentally, something akin to a shock surged through her, making her awkward, aware of something not right, something too right. She thought about that kiss in those moments. His lips on hers. His arms around her. She thought about it, then she banished it.

She banished it now, forcing her mind to focus on her one other concern. Though she and Jamil might be friends, Jamil and Linah were not. Though his attitude towards his daughter had softened, and he showed a real interest in her progress, Jamil seemed to be incapable of showing her any sign of affection. He spoke to his daughter as to an adult. He was a perfectionist, and there was nothing at all wrong with that, save that he praised so rarely and criticised so frequently. Could he not see that the child worshipped the ground he walked on? That one sign of affection would make an enormous difference to her confidence? Tough as his own upbringing must have been, from the very little he had let fall about it, surely there must have been some tender moments for him to recall?

Casting aside her sewing, a sampler she had been making for Linah, Cassie got to her feet. It was mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day, when everyone took respite in the cool of their rooms, but she was restless. The Scheherazade courtyard was eerily quiet. Looking for a distraction, she remembered that Linah had once mentioned gardens on the eastern side of the palace, old gardens gone to ruin. The idea of a secret wilderness, a neglected and forgotten hideaway, appealed strongly to the romantic side of Cassie’s nature. Opening the huge door that led to the corridor, nodding in a friendly way to the guards, she set off in search of it.

***

Jamil could not concentrate on the papers before him. The complicated series of commercial transactions began with the trading of Daar-el-Abbah’s diamonds upon the lucrative Dutch market and ended with the import of some of the new spinning equipment from the British cotton mills. Bills of lading, interest calculations, net costs, gross costs, profit and conversions from one currency to another danced before his eyes. The end result was positive. It always was.

Jamil rolled his shoulders in an attempt to ease the tension there. This morning he and Cassie had ridden out to a nearby oasis with Linah, his daughter permitted for the first time to handle her pony without the leading string. She’d done well, sitting straight-backed and riding light-handed, in an excellent imitation of her teacher. He’d been proud of her, but though he formed the words of praise, he could not speak them. Cassie had been unable to hide her disappointment; he saw it in the downturn of her mouth, in the tiny frown instantly smoothed between her fair brows.

Jamil cursed softly under his breath. He would not let this woman’s disapproval dictate his actions. He had learned the hard way just how important it was not to let anyone know what he was feeling—that he even had feelings—for feelings could be exploited. They were a weakness. For her own good, Linah should be taught the same lesson.

But, increasingly, he found it hard not to show just the sort of weakness his father had been so keen to eradicate. It had been easier, when Linah was not so often in his company. Now, with his daughter’s endearing personality imprinting itself upon him every day, thanks to Cassie, it was proving difficult to maintain the barriers that had been so hard built. Sometimes he felt as if Cassie was determined to remove them brick by brick. To expose him. Sometimes he appalled himself by wanting to help her.

Abandoning his papers, Jamil got to his feet and wandered out into the courtyard. The heat was stifling. Even the ever-industrious Halim had retired for the afternoon. In search of distraction, he found himself wandering in the direction of the schoolroom, only to be informed by the guards that Cassie had left, half an hour before. It was not like her to go off unchaperoned like that. Slightly concerned, Jamil set off in search, tracing her meandering path through the endless corridors of the palace by way of the various sets of guards she had passed.

The trail went cold at the entrance to the east wing, where he paused, his frown deepening. The large oak door with its heavy iron grille was closed. There was no reason to think she would have opened it, save the fact that he knew there was no other way for her to have gone without being noticed. No guard stood at this door. No one, to Jamil’s knowledge, had passed beyond the door for years. Eight years. Eight years, six months and three days to be precise. Since the day Jamil had come to the throne of Daar-el-Abbah, exactly one week after his father had died.

Just looking at the implacable door made Jamil’s heart pound as if his blood were thick and heavy. There was no reason for Cassie to have entered the courtyard. No reason for him to have expressly forbidden it, either. He had locked the memories away long since. But now, looking through the grille to the dusty ante-room beyond, he knew that was exactly what she had done.

He didn’t want to go in there. He really, really didn’t want to. But he didn’t want Cassie there, either. His palms sweating, his fingers shaking, Jamil opened the door and stepped in, back, over the threshold of his adulthood into the dark recesses of his childhood.

She’d found the door after following many false trails and dead ends. She’d known it must be the one, from the rusty look of the key. That there had been a key in the lock at all surprised her. That it turned, gratingly and reluctantly, had excited her, but then she stepped inside and the overpowering air of melancholy descended like a thick black cloak.

It was a beautiful place, a completely circular courtyard with a dried-up fountain, the marble cracked and stained, the ubiquitous lemon trees grown huge and wild, jasmine and something that looked very like clematis, but could not be, flowering with wild abandon around the courtyard’s colonnaded terrace. Dried leaves covered the mosaic floor. She heard the unmistakable scuttling of small creatures as she crossed it slowly. The fountain’s centrepiece, which she had at first thought to be a lion cub, she now realised must be a baby panther. She had not seen the panther fountain in Jamil’s private courtyard, but he had once described it to her, mockingly. This must be its counterpart, which meant that this must be the rooms of the young Crown Prince Jamil, shut up and left to crumble into ruin, as if he had turned his back not only on his childhood, but his past.

Cassie shuddered. The stark contrast of the dull tiles, the weeds that grew between the cracks in the floor, the general air of sullen neglect, with the rest of the pristinely cared for palace, was unbearable. Sensitive as she was to ambiance, she could almost taste the ache of unhappiness in the air. Wandering over to another solid-looking door, she peered through the grille and caught a glimpse of the secret garden. Far from the pretty wilderness she had imagined, this one was barren, arid, with skeletal trees, the bark shed in layers like skin, with thickets of some barbarous thorny shrub covering the entire ground area, like a spiky, mottled carpet.

She should not be here. It was too private a place, too redolent with intimate memories. Instinctively, she knew that Jamil would be mortified by her presence. Yet instinctively, too, she felt that here lay the key to his relationship—or lack of it—with his daughter. If she could find it—if she could understand—then surely …

Holding the hem of her gown clear of the detritus that covered the courtyard floor, Cassie picked her way carefully to the doorway of the apartments. Like all the palace suites, they followed the shape of the courtyard, a series of rooms opening out, one on to the other. The divans had been abandoned, their rich coverings simply left to rot. Lace, velvet, silk and organdie lay in tatters. The mirrored tiles of the bathing room were blistered, the huge white bath, sunk into the floor, yellowed and cracked. She found a silver samovar with a handle in the shape of an asp, tarnished and bent. A notebook, the pages filled with a neat, tiny hand in Arabic, which stopped abruptly half-way down one page. When she picked it up, the spine cracked, the cover page separated.

Careless now of her gown, overcome with the melancholy of the place, Cassie wandered into the last room. A sleeping divan, the curtains collapsed on the bed. An intricately carved chest. On the wall above it, hanging on a hook, what looked like an ornamental riding crop. She took it down, admiring the chased-silver handle decorated with what looked like emeralds. Obviously ceremonial. How had it come to be left here?

‘What in the name of all the gods do you think you’re doing? Put that down immediately.’

Cassie jumped. The riding crop fell to the ground with a clatter. Jamil kicked it under the carved chest. His face looked thunderous, brows drawn in a straight line, meeting across his nose, his mouth thinned, the planes of his cheekbones standing out sharply, like the rugged contours of the desert mountains.

‘Well?’

‘I thought—I heard about a secret garden. I wanted to see it.’

‘Well, now you have, so you can leave.’

His eyes blazed with anger, though his tone was icy cold. She was afraid. Not of him, but of the pain she could see etched into his handsome countenance. ‘Jamil.’

‘You should not have come here.’

His tone was bleak, his eyes echoing his mood. She could see the tension in the set of his shoulders, in the tightness of his voice. ‘They were yours, these rooms, weren’t they?’ Cassie asked softly.

‘These are the traditional apartments of the crown prince. Mine. Before me, my father’s. And before him, my grandfather’s.’

‘So this is one tradition you definitely intend to break with?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You obviously don’t intend any son of yours to stay here, or else you would not have allowed the place to fall into such decline,’ Cassie said, with a sweeping gesture towards the derelict courtyard.

‘If—when—I have a son, he will have—he will be given …’ Jamil faltered, swallowing hard. ‘No.’ He shook his head, shading his eyes with his hands. ‘No. As you say, this is one tradition that ends with me.’

‘I’m glad.’ Cassie laid a hand tentatively upon his arm. ‘This is not a happy place, I can tell.’

‘No,’ Jamil replied with a grim look, ‘happiness was a commodity in short supply here.’ The hand he used to run his fingers through his auburn hair was trembling. ‘Discipline, honour, strength—they are what matter.’

‘Infallibility.’

‘Invincibility. My motto. My fate.’ His shoulders slumped. He sank down on to the lid of the chest suddenly, as if his legs would no longer support him. ‘Here is where I was taught it. A hard lesson, but one I have not forgotten.’ He dropped his head into his hands.

Jamil was a man who had until now appeared as invulnerable as a citadel, with all the power of an invincible army. Seeing him so raw, so exposed, all Cassie yearned to do was to comfort and to heal. Careless of all else, she crouched down and cradled his head, smoothing the ruffled peaks of his hair back into a sleek cap, stroking the cords of tension in his neck, the knotted sinews of his shoulders, his spine. Jamil stilled, but did not move. She drew him closer, wrapping her arms around him, oblivious of the awkwardness of her own cramping limbs, thinking only somehow to ease the hurt, the deep-buried hurt that clung to him now like a dark aura.

She whispered soothing nothings and she held him close, closer, pressing tiny fluttering kisses of comfort on to the top of his head, enveloping his hard, tense lines with her softness. They stayed thus for a long time, until gradually she felt him relax, until he moved his head, and she realised, almost at the same time as he did, that it was nestled against her breasts. She became conscious of his body not as something to be comforted, but as something to be desired. Her own body responded alarmingly, heating, her nipples hardening. He stirred in her arms and she released him, blushing, looking away, concentrating on standing up, shaking out the leaves and twigs and dirt from her skirts.

‘I must apologise,’ Jamil said, rising slowly to his feet.

‘There is no need,’ Cassie said quickly.

‘A moment of weakness. I would be obliged if you would forget you witnessed it.’

Cassie chewed on her lip, knowing that further probing might well anger him. ‘Jamil, it is not weakness to admit to having been unhappy—rather the opposite.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Something horrible happened here, I can sense it.’ She shuddered, clasping her arms around herself. ‘Don’t you see that by refusing to acknowledge it, you are granting whatever it is the victory of silence?’ She clutched at his sleeve to prevent him from turning away.

‘You exaggerate. As usual.’

‘No. No, I don’t. Jamil, listen to me, please.’ She gazed desperately up into his face, but the shutters were firmly back in place. ‘Why can you not tell Linah how you feel about her?’

The directness of the question took him by surprise. Jamil raised a haughty eyebrow.

‘I know you care for her,’ Cassie continued recklessly. ‘I know that you’re proud of her, but you can’t bring yourself to tell her. Why not?’

Jamil pulled himself free. ‘Show thine enemy a heart, and you hand them the key to your kingdom. My father taught me that lesson here in this very room with the aid of a very persuasive assistant,’ he said fiercely, stooping to retrieve the riding crop from under the chest.

‘He beat you! My God! I thought that thing was ceremonial.’

Jamil’s laughter was like a crack from the whip he held. ‘In that you are correct. The ceremony of beating the weaknesses out of the crown prince was one that took place on a regular basis.’

Cassie’s face was ashen. ‘But why?’

‘To teach me to conquer pain. To ensure that I understood extreme emotions well enough to abandon them. To make me what Daar-el-Abbah requires, an invincible leader who relies upon no-one else.’

‘There is no such thing,’ Cassie said passionately. ‘You are a man, not a god, no matter what your father thought, no matter what your people think. Everyone needs someone. For heaven’s sake, Jamil, that is absolutely ridiculous. You are a man, and you have feelings, you can’t pretend they don’t exist.’ Even as she spoke the words, Cassie realised that that was exactly what Jamil did. The appalling nature of his upbringing struck her afresh. Her fury at Jamil’s father knew no bounds. ‘What about your mother? Where was she when this was happening?’

‘I was not permitted to see her, save on ceremonial occasions, once I was established here.’

‘That’s what you meant about losing her at an early age?’

Jamil nodded.

‘What age, precisely?’

‘Five.’

Cassie’s mouth fell open. ‘That’s barbaric!’

‘Unfamiliar customs often seem barbaric. We are an ancient civilisation, much older than yours.’ Cassie’s utter horror was written plain on her face, making Jamil deeply uncomfortable. Having locked up these rooms, he had persuaded himself he had also locked away what had happened here. Only in moments of weakness, in the dark of night, did the memories intrude, scurrying out from the crevices of his mind, like scorpions in the desert after dark, to sting him. He dealt with them as his father had taught him to deal with any weakness, by ruthlessly suppressing them. Now, seeing his childhood experiences through Cassie’s eyes, he felt cornered. He had endured, but never questioned. What he had been taught here formed the foundations of his entire life. He did not want to have to scrutinise them. He did not want to even think about whether they were wrong. ‘It is the way of things here,’ he said, annoyed to find that his voice contained just a hint of defensiveness, even more annoyed to find himself wondering whether Cassie might have a point.

‘Well, if the result of your traditions is a long line of cold, unfeeling, invincible rulers like you,’ Cassie responded heatedly, ‘then I’m glad I’m not part of it. And I’ll tell you something, Jamil, I think deep in your heart, you don’t want to be part of it either.’

‘You know nothing about—’

‘You’ve already admitted you won’t be treating your son in the same way,’ Cassie interrupted ruthlessly, desperate to find a way to get through to the man she now realised was barricaded up inside a coat of armour forged from pain and suffering. ‘You told me that you wanted things to be different for Linah, too. You want a different life for your children, you’re even prepared to face the wrath of your Council to provide it, but can’t you see the place you need to start is with yourself? Jamil, your father was so wrong.’ Her eyes were wide with unshed tears. ‘To care is not a weakness, it’s a strength. To stand alone, to say you don’t need anyone, that’s simply a lie. Everyone needs someone to love, everyone needs someone to love them, don’t you see that?’

‘Your love for your poet—did that strengthen you or weaken you?’ Jamil asked coldly. It was a cruel remark, he knew that, but he was hurting.

Cassie flinched. ‘I did not love Augustus.’ Not at all, she realised suddenly. She had been in love with the idea of love only.

‘You told me yourself, the first time that we met, that what you felt was humiliation as a result of this so-called love.’

He was just lashing out, she knew that. This place held such awful memories for him, it would be a miracle if he did not. And what he said was true, after all, even if it was said to divert her. To divert him. Cassie laced her fingers together, then unlaced them. Then laced them again, frowning hard. ‘You’re right, I did feel humiliated,’ she admitted, ‘but not by being in love, by being so mistaken. I was humiliated and ashamed of my stupidity, my wilfulness.’

She stared at him hopelessly. An immense pity for the lonely boy he had been, for the solitary man he had been forced to become, washed over her. How to get through to him, she had no idea, especially since he seemed intent on preventing her. This was a pivotal moment, she felt it. If she did not make him see now, he never would. ‘You are missing out on so much by denying yourself.’

‘You cannot miss what you have never had,’ Jamil replied curtly. ‘In any case, I am not denying myself. I am protecting myself. And my kingdom.’

‘By refusing to allow yourself to feel! To love! Do you deny your people such things?’

‘Love! Why must you always bring that up? It doesn’t exist, save in those pathetic poems you are forever reading.’

Seeing his determinedly set face, Cassie almost despaired. His knuckles were white around the horse whip. A horse whip, for God’s sake. His father had trained him in the same way as he trained his thoroughbreds. A flash of rage gave her a surge of strength. She grabbed the riding crop from Jamil and, bending it over her knee, snapped it in two. ‘There! That is what I think of your father’s methods, and that is what I think of your stupid traditions,’ she declared, panting with the exertion. ‘Do you really want this thing to dictate your entire life?’ She threw it with all her might out into the desolate garden. ‘What he did to you was cruel. Disgustingly, horribly cruel, but he is dead now. You are your own man, not your father’s. He was wrong, Jamil, wrong. Allow yourself to feel, allow yourself to love, and you will see for yourself how happy it can make you.’

‘It did not make you happy,’ Jamil retorted pointedly.

‘Oh, why must you keep bringing Augustus into everything?’ Cassie exclaimed. ‘I’m beginning to feel as if I’ll never be rid of him.’ But at least Jamil was looking at her properly now. He was listening. Cassie took a deep breath. ‘When you love someone, really love someone, you can feel it here …’ she pressed a hand to her bosom ‘… or here.’ She touched her stomach. ‘I’ve never felt that, I admit it. Few people do, but when they do, they just know. That is the kind of love that makes you strong.’

‘That kind of love is a myth.’

‘No. No, it’s not. It’s just rare,’ Cassie said, surprising herself now, for it turned out she did believe in love after all. ‘But when you find it, as my sister Celia has, it is the greatest source of strength in the world. Far, far greater than the sword, or scimitar or whatever. It’s not that you depend upon someone, it’s that you have someone else to depend on. Oh, why can’t you see that?’

‘Perhaps I would give your little flights of fancy more credence if you spoke from a position of experience,’ Jamil replied. ‘But since you have already admitted that you do not.’ He shrugged.

Cassie gave a rather undignified squeal of frustration. ‘You don’t have to have experienced something to know it exists, believe it exists! In here!’ she exclaimed, pressing her hand to her breast.

Her face was flushed. Her bosom heaved with indignation. A long tress of fiery gold hair had come undone and lay over the white skin of her shoulder, where her dress had slipped. Her eyes sparkled a blue that put turquoises to shame. The maelstrom she had stirred up was suddenly too much for Jamil to cope with. Resorting to one of the few ways he knew of to express himself, he pulled her roughly into his arms, and silenced her in the age-old way, with a passionate, angry, famished kiss.

Cassie struggled only briefly, her hands flailing against his chest in an ineffectual attempt to free herself. It was a kiss meant to punish, she knew that, knew, too, that she had pushed him to his limit. It meant nothing, she told herself, nothing more than a show of strength, but still, the touch of his lips on hers, the lean length of his body held close, but not close enough to the soft yieldingness of hers, was beginning to work its magic. Cassie stopped struggling. Her body seemed to melt into his. Her lips parted. Her skin heated. Her heart began to pound.

It was over too quickly. With a hoarse cry, Jamil pushed her away, glaring at her as if it were her fault. As it was, Cassie could see quite clearly why he would think so. For long moments they simply stared at each other, breathing, lost in a tangled jungle of emotions, unsure about which path to take to regain solid ground. It was Jamil who broke the silence, his voice harsh, edged with something less certain that gave Cassie a tiny cause to hope.

‘I will not apologise for that, it was your own fault.

Once again, you dare to intrude on matters that do not concern you. You should not have entered here. I wish that you had not. This place.’

‘You should reclaim it. Banish the ghosts, take it back. Until you do, it’s like a dark secret, brooding away.’

‘This place,’ Jamil continued, ignoring her interruption, ‘is none of your business. I don’t want you coming here again and I certainly don’t want you bringing Linah here.’

‘Of course not. Jamil, you could make Linah so happy if you showed her just a little bit of affection. Loving her could make you happy.’

Jamil sighed heavily. ‘You just don’t give up, do you?’

Cassie took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. ‘It takes courage to change the habits of a lifetime, but courage is something you have in abundance.’

Jamil’s smile was twisted. ‘I’m not the only one. You have the courage of your convictions.’ He kissed her knuckles. ‘I’ll think about your suggestion.’

‘That’s all I ask.’

‘For the moment, at least,’ he said wryly. ‘Come, let us leave this place.’

Turning the key in the lock of the outer door, Jamil removed it and secreted it in his robes. Cassie watched him stride down the corridor, his tunic rippling in the slight breeze caused by his rapid gait. Poor, tortured Jamil. If he could but make a start by loving Linah, then maybe some day he would be capable of real love.

Why was that thought making her uncomfortable?

She had an absurd urge to run after him, missing him more with every step he took away from her, a premonition of a time when he would be gone from her for ever. She hadn’t thought about that until now. Until today. She didn’t want to think about it now.

It would have been naïve to expect that Jamil would be transformed overnight, but from that day on, Cassie did detect a marked difference in him. Awkwardly at first, but with increasing confidence as Linah responded, he began to allow his feelings for his daughter to show. Cassie looked on with a pride she took care to disguise. Knowing that she had been instrumental in effecting this change was enough; she did not want his gratitude, and she most certainly did not want Linah to guess the part she had played. Besides, it was a painful enough process for Jamil to override the years of pain that had beaten his reserve into him. She did not want him worrying about her witnessing his metamorphosis.

She was watching him with Linah one day. Jamil was standing in the middle of a bathing pool, teaching his daughter to swim. He had abandoned his cloak and igal, but retained his tunic. The water came up to his waist. Linah, lying supported in his arms, was giggling at something he had said. He looked over at Cassie and smiled. Their eyes met and her heart did a little flip flop. His tunic, damp from Linah’s splashing, clung to his body like a second skin, showing off his muscles, the width of his shoulders, the dip of his stomach. His hair was sticking up in endearing spikes. His eyes sparkled with good humour.

Father and daughter together. It was exactly the tableau Cassie had dreamt of creating, but though it was of her making, she felt excluded. Father and daughter. The obvious gap opened up before her like an abyss. They had been playing happy families, the three of them, but she was not really part of it. And yet she wanted to be, she realised. She wanted to be a lot. Because she loved Linah now, too. But mostly because she was in danger, in very real danger, of feeling something she should not feel for Linah’s father. And that would be a mistake.

Cassie turned away from Jamil’s beckoning smile, busying herself with packing away the lunch things. It was not too late. She had caught herself just in time. It was not too late.

‘The Council await you, Highness.’

Jamil looked up from the document he’d been perusing and gazed blankly at his man of business, who was hovering in the open doorway.

‘The betrothal contract,’ Halim prompted anxiously. ‘You rearranged the signing for today. It must be witnessed by the Council, so I took the liberty of organising the gathering. They are ready.’

‘The betrothal contract.’

‘Yes, Highness. You said—’

‘I know what I said. This alliance is advantageous to us, it is to be welcomed.’ But Jamil did not want to be married. He did not want to even have to think about marriage, about siring an heir with a female he had absolutely no interest in whatsoever. The idea of it filled him with repugnance. He was sick and tired of having to think about the endless matters of state that obtruded on his day, and sick and tired of having to spend his time resolving them, one problem after another. Sometimes it felt as if he was the only person in the whole kingdom of Daar-el-Abbah capable of making decisions. Jamil rubbed the bridge of his nose with long, elegant fingers. It had always been thus—why was it bothering him so much now?

With some caution, Halim approached the desk behind which his master sat. The prince had been behaving strangely of late, spending much time with his daughter and that English governess of hers. ‘You must be heartened by the improvement in your daughter’s behaviour,’ he said carefully, ‘the whole palace is talking about the change in her.’ And the change in Prince Jamil! ‘You will be able to hand over Princess Linah with confidence now.’

‘Hand her over?’ Jamil looked confused.

Halim laughed nervously. ‘Well, you will hardly require the services of the English governess when you are married, Highness. Your daughter will be in the care of your new wife, as is right and proper.’

‘Eventually, perhaps, when I am actually married.’

‘But with the betrothal papers signed, there will be no reason to delay.’

No reason, save his own reluctance. ‘I’ve only met Princess Adira once, remember.’

Halim beamed. ‘And the next time you meet her will be on your wedding night, as is the tradition.’

Jamil thumped his fist down on the desk. ‘No!’ He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. ‘It is time both you and the Council recognised this is the nineteenth century, not the thirteenth. I won’t have my wife brought to me painted and veiled like some offering. I am not a prize stud camel, I don’t perform to order. And she—Princess Adira—she’s barely exchanged two words with me.’

‘You are hardly marrying her for her conversational skills,’ Halim said with a smirk, ‘she will be first wife, not first minister.’

‘First and only wife. Therefore it is, even you will admit, preferable that at the very least we do not hold one another in dislike.’

‘Indeed, but the Princess Adira—’

‘I am sure she has many excellent qualities, but that’s not what I’m talking about.’

‘What are you talking about, Prince Jamil?’

A beautiful face, a pair of turquoise eyes, a coral mouth curved into a welcoming smile.

‘Master?’

Someone to depend upon. Someone who would share and not just take. Cassie! The beautiful creature who had created a sanctuary in Linah’s apartments where he could be free from the cares of the world. Who saw him not as Prince Jamil, ruler of Daar-el-Abbah, nor as a provider, nor as a peace maker, neither as an enemy nor an ally. Who called him Jamil in that soft husky voice of hers with the quaint English accent. Who saw him as a man, not a prince. Who talked to him as a friend. Whose delicious body and delightful scent and coral-pink mouth haunted his dreams.

It would be pleasant there in the courtyard as dusk began to fall. An oasis of calm and peace, of seclusion from the world, even if it was just an illusion. He would go to her once he had, yet again, done his duty by signing away the little he had left of himself. He would go to her, and she would soothe him just by talking about the mundane details of her day. He would let her voice wash over him, and he would forget about everything else for a few precious moments.

The thought was enough of an incentive to force him into action. ‘Very well, let’s get this over with.’ Jamil grabbed the ceremonial gold-and-emerald cloak that lay waiting on the divan under the window and fastened it around his neck with the ornate emerald pin. The sabre next, then the ring and the head dress and the golden band. He straightened his shoulders and tugged at the heavy belt holding the sabre in place. Then he nodded at Halim, who flung open the door to the prince’s private apartments, and clicked his fingers to summon the honorary guard.

Six men, dressed in pristine white, formed up in the corridor behind their ruler. Halim himself picked up the trailing edge of Prince Jamil’s cloak, and the party set off for the throne room at a swift pace.

The double doors of the magnificent room were already open in readiness. Two rows of Royal Guards formed a pathway to the dais, their scimitars raised, points touching. Rays from the sinking sun slanted through the high windows and glinted on the polished steel. The waiting Council of Elders made obeisance as Jamil strode by, remaining on their knees, heads bowed, eyes averted, until he ascended the steps to the throne and bowed solemnly in greeting. The contract lay before him on a low table along with a selection of quills and a bottle of ink. Jamil picked up a pen, dipped it in the ink and signed his name, waiting impatiently for Halim to heat the wax before imprinting the seal from his ring.

It was done. His duty was done. He would not think of it now. He would not allow himself to dwell on the consequences. Jamil scattered sand over the wet ink and pushed the document aside. He got to his feet so quickly that he was already halfway back down the length of the throne room before Halim and the Council realised he was going.

‘Highness, the celebrations,’ Halim shouted after him.

‘I am sure you will enjoy them all the more for my absence,’ Jamil called over his shoulder. In other circumstances, the startled look on Halim’s face would have amused him. Right now, he could not have cared less. Without bothering to change out of his formal robes, Jamil took the now very familiar route to the schoolroom.