Sheikh's Honor

The guarded look slowly left his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It is true.”

Clio turned back to the water ahead of her, her mind buzzing with speculation. What on earth was that about? Did it mean he wasn’t really here to learn English at all? That it was some kind of blind? But for what? What other reason could Prince Jalal possibly have for coming here to the middle of nowhere?

Three

Jalal stood and moved towards the stern, gazing around him as they passed into yet another lake. He lifted both arms, stretching out his hands in powerful adoration. “It is magnificent! So much water!” He breathed deeply. “Smell the freshness of the water! This water is not salt! Is it?”

A loud horn startled her, and Clio whirled to discover that she had turned onto a collision course with another boat. She waved an apology to the indignant pilot as she hastily and not very gracefully adjusted her course. Jalal half lost his balance and recovered.

“Dammit, don’t distract me when I’m driving!” she cried. She had been staring over her shoulder at him. He had a huge physical charisma, but she would get over that. “No, of course it’s not salt,” she said when the danger was past. “All Canada’s lakes are freshwater.”

“Barakallah! It is a miracle. And you drink this water!” He spoke it as a fact, but still he looked for confirmation from her.

“Yes, we drink it.” She smiled, and then, realizing how much she had already let her guard down with him, steeled her heart against the tug she felt. “For now. It may end up polluted in the future, like everything else.”

But his joy would admit no contaminants. “It must be protected from pollution,” he said, as though he himself might fix this by princely decree. “This must not be allowed, to destroy such rich bounty.”

“Yes, really,” Clio agreed dryly.

“Why do they pollute such beauty?”

“Because it is cheaper to dump than to treat waste.”

Prince Jalal nodded, taking it in. Was it his grandmother’s blood in him that so called to this place?

“My mother’s mother was raised in a country of lakes and forests.” He spoke almost absently, as if to himself, and he blinked when she responded.

“Really? How did she happen to marry a desert bandit, then?”

“On a journey across the desert, she was abducted by my grandfather, Selim. She spent the rest of her life in the desert, but she never forgot her beloved land of lakes.”

The result of that union had been only one daughter, his mother. Desert-born Nusaybah had heard many longing tales of her mother’s homeland as a child, and later she had passed them on to her son. She had also passed on the information that his grandmother was a princess in her own country.

That had seemed unlikely, until the DNA tests showed that he was more closely related to Prince Rafi than to Rafi’s two half brothers. Then a search of the family tree showed that Rafi’s mother, the Princess Nargis, was the daughter of a prince whose sister had been abducted and never spoken of again.

For centuries the family had spent every summer in the highlands, just as Jalal’s grandmother had always said. So it was deep in his blood, the longing for lake and forest, though he had not felt its force until he saw these sights.

Clio frowned. “She spent the rest of her life in the desert? She was never rescued?”

He shook his head. “In those days no one would have troubled. She had no choice but to marry her abductor.”

“You mean her family knew where she was but left her there?”

“I cannot say what they knew, only what was the tradition. A woman captured by a man in this way…her family would have ignored her existence from that moment.”

She threw a look over her shoulder at him. “And you accept that?” she demanded incredulously.

“There is nothing for me to reject, Clio. It was finished, many years ago. I am here because of it. My mother Nusaybah was the child of that union. What shall I say? Maktoub. It is written.”

“So that’s in your blood too, is it—abducting women? I suppose that makes it all right! Were you expecting my family and Prince Rafi to leave my sister Zara to her fate?”

He shook his head impatiently, but did not reply.

“But no,” she supplied for him. “That wouldn’t have served your purpose! You knew Rafi had to get her back—world opinion would dictate that. You probably thought he’d refuse to marry her, but that wouldn’t have bothered you. If you spoiled their love, it would be just their bad luck, wouldn’t it? So long as you got what you wanted.”

“I did not reason in this way,” he said levelly. “I believed that he would want her back and would make her his wife when I released her unharmed.”

She had succeeded in talking herself into deep anger. She could not trust herself to make an answer.

So he was a chip off the old block. Did her parents know this about Jalal’s genes? But she didn’t suppose it would have made any difference. If they weren’t concerned about what he had done to Zara, they’d hardly worry about what his grandfather had done to a nameless princess fifty years ago.

A few minutes later they arrived at a large, rambling brick house. It was on the shore of a very pretty lake, smaller than those they had crossed to get here. There were tree-covered hills rising high around one end of the lake, as if some spirit brooded protectively over the water. Fewer houses dotted the shore.

As they approached their destination, he saw a marina clustered with boats on one side, and a pretty painted sign high on one wall of the house that advertised homemade ice cream, a crafts shop and an art gallery.

Clio guided the powerboat in, cut the engine and expertly brought it up beside the dock. Meanwhile, the door of the house exploded outward, and at least half a dozen children of all ages, four dogs and a couple of cats erupted into the morning to cries of “Is he here? Did the prince come? What does he look like?” and loud excited barks.

Everybody raced down to the dock, except for the cats, who dashed up the trunk of a large, leafy tree that over-hung the water so picturesquely he felt he was in some dream, and clung there indignantly, staring at the scene.

“Calm down, yes, he’s here and he doesn’t want to be deafened on day one! Here, Jonah, grab this,” Clio commanded lazily, tossing the mooring rope as a tall boy ran to the bow. The dock beside the boat was stuffed with children and canines, all gaping at him and all more or less panting with excitement.

“Is that him? Is that the prince?” In the babble he could pick out some sentences, but most of what they were saying was lost, as always when too many people talked at once in English.

“He isn’t weawing a cwown!” one tiny creature cried piercingly, her woebegone eyes locking onto Jalal’s with heartfelt grief.

Clio and Jalal exchanged glances. She resisted the impulse to laugh with him.

“The natives are restless,” he observed.

Then she did laugh; she couldn’t help it.

“I should have realized what the result of an hour’s wait would be. They were excited enough about you when I left. Out of the way, everybody! Prince Jalal wants to get onto the dock. He isn’t ready to go swimming yet!”

One of the dogs was, however, and leapt off into the water with a loud splash.

Meanwhile, Jalal braved the natives to step onto the dock.

“Are you Prince Jalal?” “Are you a real prince?” “Where’s—”

“Cool it!” Clio cried beside him. “What did I tell you?” Getting a general reduction in the babel, she reeled off their names. “Rosalie, Benjamin, Sandor, Alissa, Jonah, Jeremiah, Arwen and Donnelly. Everybody, this is Prince Jalal.”

“Welcome to Canada, Your Highness,” said several voices in ragged unison, and the welcome was echoed as the laggards caught up. And then Jalal watched transfixed as, to his utter astonishment, they all bowed. From the waist.

He couldn’t restrain the bursting laughter that rose up in him. Their heads tilted at him in surprise. “Thank you!” he exclaimed, when he could speak. “I am very glad to be here. But I am not used to such bowing, or this name, Your High-ness!”

“But Clio said people have to bow to princes.”

“Clio said we had to call you Your Highness.”

He flicked her a glance, as if to an awkward child. She returned the look impassively, then bent to the task of tying the stern rope.

“Clio did not know. She thought I was a tall man,” he said, his lips twitching, and she thought, He thinks I’m not a worthy enemy, but he’ll find out.

“You are tall. You’re as tall as Daddy.”

“What will we call you, then?”

“Why not call me—Jalal? That is my name, and it will make me feel very welcome if you use it. Then I will think we are friends. Shall we be friends?”

“Oh, yeah!” “Cool.” “Sure.”

“I’m your fwiend, Jalal,” said Donnelly confidingly, reaching up to put her hand in his. She had clearly taken one of her instant likes to him.

His smile down at the child would have melted Clio on the spot, if she hadn’t steeled herself.

“Don’t people bow to princes?” Arwen asked, her head cocked on one side.

“Yes, people bow to princes, unless,” he said, raising a forefinger, “unless they are given special dispensation. And since we are going to be friends, I give you all special dispensation.”

“But you are a real pwince, aren’t you?” It was the little curly-haired darling again. Jalal squatted down to face her.

“My father was the son of a king. My mother’s mother was a princess. Am I a prince?”

Her eyes were wide. “Ye-es,” she said, half asking, half telling. She looked around her, then up at that fount of wisdom, seventeen-year-old Benjamin.

“Of course he’s a prince, Donnelly, that’s how you get to be a prince—your father was one,” Ben said knowledgeably.

“But you don’t have a cwown,” she reminded Jalal. “You don’t look like the picture.”

“Do you have a picture of a prince?” he asked.

Donnelly nodded mutely. Jalal lifted his arm, and she snuggled in against him as confidingly as a kitten. “Well, I have a crown, my father’s crown, but princes don’t go swimming in crowns, do they?”

“They don’t?” Donnelly sounded disappointed, as if she had been hoping to see just that sight.

“No.” Jalal, smiling, shook his head firmly. All the children had fallen silent, listening to him, almost entranced. “Do you wear your swimsuit to school?”

Donnelly, who did not go to school, gazed at him wide-eyed, and shook her head with mute solemnity.

“Princes only wear crowns in their palaces. There is no palace here. So I left my crown at home.”

“Ohhhh.”

“But one day, I hope you’ll come and visit me in my home, and then I’ll show you my crown.”

“Oh, neat! Can I come, too?” “Do you have a palace?” “Can I come, can I come?” “Is your home in the desert?” “Is it an Arab’s tent or is it a real palace?” “Do you have camels, Jalal?” “What’s it like in the desert?” “Were you a bandit before you were a prince, Jalal?”

And then somehow, in a circle of fascinated children, the two oldest boys carrying his cases, Jalal was being led up to the house, into the kitchen. Clio stood on the dock watching the progress of the little party.

No doubt she should have realized that a man capable of drawing as many followers to his cause as Jalal was said to have had would have powerful charisma. She didn’t like the way they were all falling all over him, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

Not right now, anyway.

Four

“Uncle Brandon dropped the guys back and went out again. He said not to save lunch for him,” Rosalie reported, when Clio entered the kitchen.

That wasn’t unusual in the run-up to the season. He had probably had to go for more creosote or something, and would grab a hamburger in the plaza. But Clio would rather her father had been here to meet Jalal.

“You’ve got lunch going already?” she asked, sniffing the air. “That’s terrific, Rosalie.”

Whenever her mother was absent on one of her buying trips among the First Nation artists she represented in the gallery, as she was this week, Clio was in charge. This year Rosalie, who had arrived in tears shortly after Christmas declaring that she hated her new stepmother, was proving to be a big help in filling the gap left by Romany. Romany was on a visit to Zara and Rafi.

“What’s cooking?”

Rosalie told her, and the two cousins began to organize the meal.

Jalal was at the table, surrounded by kids. Everyone had something to show him, a question to ask….

“You have to choose a plaque.” Sandor was informing him gravely about one of the house rituals. Sandor himself had moved in only a month ago, so he knew all about it. “It’s for the duty roster.”

They had spread the available plaques out in front of him, and Jalal was considering his choice, though she doubted if he was making sense of the garbled explanation he heard, from several sources.

“Okay, everybody, the table needs to be set!” Clio announced, not sorry to break up the group. “Sorry, your fan club has work to do,” she added dryly to Jalal.

Jalal nodded impassively, recognizing the jealousy in that.

“He has to choose a plaque first!” someone exclaimed indignantly, and of course Clio had to give in.

“What is Clio’s plaque?” Jalal asked, as he browsed among the little squares of plastic, each with a different image on it, that were reserved for the use of visitors. For the length of his stay, this plaque would represent him.

“Clio’s the pussycat,” Donnelly articulated carefully. She pointed to the duty roster on the wall. “The black-and-white one. I’m the butterfly.”

“All right. I will take this one,” Jalal said, choosing a plaque with his finger and drawing it out of the spread.

“The tiger!” they chorused. “He’s a very wild tiger!” Donnelly informed him impressively.

Clio tried, but she could not keep her eyes away.

He was watching her gravely, and something unspoken passed between them. Something that made her deeply nervous.

“Right, then! He’s chosen a plaque! Let’s clear the table!” she cried, and the children all moved to their usual mealtime tasks.

“And I,” Jalal said. “What shall I do to assist?”

She had been hoping that he would expect to be served. She had been anticipating telling him that in this kitchen, everyone did their share, male and female, bandit and nouveau prince alike. She flicked him a glance, and saw that he was watching her face as if he could read her thoughts there. He gave her an ironically amused look, and she blushed.

“You can help me, Jalal,” an adoring voice said. “I have to fold the serviettes.”

One of the boys snorted. “Princes don’t fold serviettes, Donnelly!” he began, but Jalal held up a hand.

“No job worth doing is beneath any man.” And it infuriated Clio even more to see Ben nodding in respectful agreement, as if he had just learned something profound.

Jalal smiled down at Donnelly. “I would like very much to help you,” he said. “Will you teach me to fold them just right?”

It wasn’t often that Donnelly got to pass on her wisdom to anyone; she was usually on the receiving end. At Jalal’s words, her chest expanded with a delighted intake of air.

“It’s very important to match the edges!” she informed him.

A few minutes later they all sat down, amid the usual mealtime babble. When their parents were at the table, a certain amount of order was imposed, keeping it, as their father Brandon said, to a dull roar. But when Clio was in charge, she didn’t usually bother. It didn’t hurt anyone if once in a while bedlam reigned.

But the first time someone said, “Is that true, Jalal?” and the prince replied quietly, “I am sorry, I didn’t understand. When everyone talks at the same time, I can’t follow,” a respectful hush fell on them.

After that, it was, “Shhh! Jalal can’t follow!” when anyone tried to interrupt the current speaker.

Then lunch was over, and there was the usual competition to be first to get their plates into the dishwasher. Donnelly explained the task to Jalal, and again he performed it without apparently feeling that it was any assault on his masculinity or his princely status.

Clio was almost certain that he was doing all this just to spike her guns, because he had guessed that she was waiting to tell him how unimportant his princely status was here in the democratic confines of the Blake family, or to explain that male superiority had been superseded in the West. She was even more convinced of it when, straightening from having set his utensils in just the right place under Donnelly’s tutelage, he threw her another of those glances.

“Round one to you,” she bit out, feeling driven.

“Only round one? I have counted three,” he observed mildly. “How many before we stop the match, Clio?”

The match went on, under cover of surface friendliness, for several days. Brandon showed Jalal the ropes at the marina for a couple of days, and on the following day Jalal and Ben started creosoting the marina dock while Jeremiah went with Brandon to work on one of the cottages, taking their lunch with them. Teaching at the high school had stopped, and the next three weeks was exams, but the younger children were still at school full-time.

It was a beautiful day, and when they broke at lunch the first coat was done.

“That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen the first coat go on,” Ben said. “You really know how to swing a brush.”

The youthful admiration in his tone made Clio grit her teeth.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Jalal said.

“Paint the palace a lot, do you?” Clio interjected.

Jalal gazed at her for a long moment, as if he was bored with her childish taunts.

“We’ve got another hour till the second coat can go on,” Ben said. “Want to take a boat out? I could show you around.”

“Thank you, Ben, another day. Just now, I would like to talk alone with your sister Clio.”

The hair stood up on the back of her neck, but there was nothing she could say. Within a couple of minutes, she found herself alone with him in the big friendly kitchen. Tense, and angry because she was, Clio determinedly started her usual tasks.

“You dislike me very much, Clio,” Jalal said. “Tell me why.”

Taken aback by his directness, she shook her head and bent to scoop some dishwashing powder into the dishwasher.

He caught her arm, forcing her to straighten, and the touch shivered all through her. She did not want this. She was not at all prepared to start defending her attitude to him. And he had no right to demand it.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to touch a woman not related to you,” she said coldly, staring down at where his hand clasped her bare arm, just above the elbow. She felt under threat. She did not want to have this conversation.

He ignored her comment. “Tell me,” he said. “I want to know why you alone are unwilling to be my friend.”

She wrenched her arm out of his grasp, using far more effort than was necessary for such a light hold, and staggered.

“I told you at the wedding. We will never be friends.”

“Why not?”

She was silent.

“Your sister has forgiven what I did. Your parents, too. Why cannot you?”

She turned her back on him deliberately, closed the dishwasher and set it going. He was silent, too, behind her, and her nerves didn’t seem up to the strain. Her skin shivered with awareness of him.

“Do you believe it impossible that your sister took no hurt while she was my hostage? Do you suspect me of hurting her, or allowing her to be hurt?” he asked, finally.

She was silent. Was that what she feared? She hardly knew. All she knew was that Jalal was a threat, and she wished he had never come.

“Look at me, Clio.”

His voice was seductive, almost hypnotic, though he did not seem to be doing that deliberately. Feeling driven, she turned to face him. He was too close. She thought dimly, Middle Eastern people have a smaller body territory or something—they always stand too close for Westerners’ comfort. Her heart kicked uncomfortably.

“Can you imagine that Princess Zara would have encouraged me to come here, into the home of her own family, if such a dreadful thing had happened?”

“If she was pretending to herself it hadn’t happened, she might,” she felt driven to point out. It wasn’t that she believed it, necessarily, but it was possible. He had to see that.

He stared at her, honestly startled. “Pretending to herself? How could a woman pretend such a thing? Why would she?”

Clio felt anxiety creeping up in her. “It does happen, you know! Women take the blame on themselves, or they don’t want to face what happened to them! Denial does happen!”

He was silent, watching her. Then he said softly, “Does it, Clio? Are you sure?”

“If you understood anything about psychology you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Do you deny something? Has someone hurt you, so that it is easier to imagine I hurt your sister than to accept what happened to yourself?” he asked, proving that he understood more than somewhat about psychology.

She gasped in indignant fury and clenched her fists. Never had she so wanted to hit someone. But she looked at Jalal and saw the warning in his eyes. Gentle as he was with the children, his look warned her that he would not be gentle with her if she attacked him.

“Nothing has ever happened to me!” she exploded, her rage escaping in words. “Let’s get one thing straight, Jalal—whatever did or did not happen in your camp, we’re enemies, and it’s because of what you yourself did.”

He shook his head in flat contradiction. “We are not enemies. That is not what is between us,” he said softly.

Five

Clio opened her mouth soundlessly as shivers like a flood ran over her body.

“You make your sister an excuse to avoid what frightens you. That is all, is it not?”

He stepped closer, and she backed up against the counter. In the pit of her stomach a hard ball of fire suddenly revealed itself.

“I am not afraid!” she protested hotly.

“Good,” he whispered, and when she lifted a hand in protest his hand wrapped her wrist. Every nerve leapt at the touch. Fury seemed to come from nowhere and whip against her like wild wind.

Slowly he bent closer. He was going to kiss her.

She couldn’t allow it. She wanted to hit him. Something like a scream was in her throat and she wanted desperately to beat him off. But she couldn’t seem to work her muscles.

“Do you always just do what you want without asking?” she demanded.

“I want to kiss you,” he murmured thoughtfully, his mouth only inches from her own. “In this country, do men ask permission for such a thing?”

She tried to swallow. “Yes,” she said defiantly. Her mouth felt as dry as the desert he came from, where the rules between men and women were so different. She wanted to push him away, to get to a place where the air was clear. But the unfamiliar lassitude would not let her go.

“Then they understand nothing.” He drew closer, and she felt the heat of his arm encircle her back, his firm hand at her waist. His breath touched her cheek as his eyes challenged hers. She felt the look deep inside her, stirring the depths of her self.

He stroked the skin that she had so foolishly left bare between her short top and low-cut shorts. Sensation skittered down her body to her toes. Under the thin top, her breasts shivered.

Suddenly she was angry with herself. This was the man she had sworn only days ago would be always her enemy!

“What do men do in the desert?” she demanded cynically. “Grab whatever they see? Well, of course they do!” she told herself brightly. “You proved—”

“In the desert we first make sure that a woman longs for the kiss, and then we kiss her without asking.”

The sheer male arrogance of such a statement caused angry fire to leap in her chest and abdomen. She clamped her teeth together, because she could hardly prevent herself from shouting at him that he was an arrogant barbarian. But he had warned her….