The Ice Maiden's Sheikh

The fact that the air-conditioning hadn’t kicked in and the car was like an oven didn’t help her mood.

“Princess! Your Highness!” someone called, and she turned in dismay as another flash went off right in her face. How did they know? She had been so careful!

“Can you tell us why Noor ran?”

“Where did she go?”

“Was she escaping a forced marriage, Princess?”

Forced? Noor had been laughing all the way to the altar. Jalia couldn’t prevent a slight outraged shake of her head. Instantly someone leaped on this sign.

“The marriage was her own free choice? Are you surprised by the turn of events?”

But she had learned her lesson, and stared straight ahead. “Damn, damn, damn!” she muttered.

Latif put his foot down on both brake and gas, spinning the tires on the unpaved road. Immediately the car was enveloped in a cloud of dust that blinded the cameras.

Coughing, frantically waving their hands in front of their noses, the journalists backed away. Latif lifted his foot off the brake and, belching dust, the car spurted away.

For a moment they laughed together, like children who have escaped tyranny. Jalia flicked Latif a look of half-grudging admiration. She would have congratulated anyone else, but with Latif there was an ever-present constraint.

“I’ve been so careful to avoid being identified!” she wailed. “How did they know who I was?”

Unlike Noor, who had reacted with delight, Jalia had greeted the news that she was a princess of Bagestan with reticence, and was determined to avoid any public discovery of the fact. She hadn’t told even her close friends back home.

Who could have given her away, and why?

Latif’s dark gaze flicked her and she twitched in a kind of animal alarm. It was just the effect he had on her; there was no reason for it. But it annoyed her, every time.

“They just took an educated guess, probably. Your reaction gave you away.”

The truth of that was instantly obvious.

“Oh, damn it!” cried Jalia. “Why did I ever take off my veil?”

Three

Laughter burst from his throat, a roar of amusement that made the windows ring. But it wasn’t friendly amusement, she knew. He was laughing at her.

“Does it matter so much—a photo in a few papers?”

Jalia shrugged irritably. “You’re a Cup Companion—the press attention is part of your job. And anyway, you’re one of twelve. I’m a university lecturer in a small city in Scotland, where princesses are not numbered in the dozens. I don’t want anyone at home to know.”

He slowed at the approach to the paved road and turned the car towards the city. Two journalists’ cars were now following them.

“Aren’t you exaggerating? You aren’t a member of the British royal family, after all. Just a small Middle Eastern state.”

“I hope you’re right.” She chewed her lip. “But the media in Europe have had an ongoing obsession with the royal family of the Barakat Emirates for the past five years—and it jumped to Bagestan like wildfire over a ditch the moment Ghasib’s dictatorship fell and Ashraf al Jawadi was crowned. If I’m outed as a princess of Bagestan, my privacy is—” Blowing a small raspberry she made a sign of cutting her throat.

“Only if you continue to live abroad,” he pointed out. “Why not come home?”

Jalia stiffened. “Because Bagestan is not ‘home’ to me,” she said coldly. “I am English, as you well know.”

The black gaze flicked her again, unreadable. “That can be overcome,” he offered, as if her Englishness were some kind of disability, and Jalia clenched her teeth. “You would soon fit in. There are many posts available in the universities here. Ash is working hard to—”

“I teach classical Arabic to English speakers, Latif,” Jalia reminded him dryly. “I don’t even speak Bagestani Arabic.”

She felt a sudden longing for the cool of an English autumn, rain against the windows, the smell of books and cheap carpet and coffee in her tiny university office, the easy, unemotional chatter of her colleagues.

“I am sure you know that educated Bagestani Arabic is close to the classical Quranic language. You would soon pick it up.” He showed his white teeth in a smile, and her stomach tightened. “The bazaar might take you a little longer.”

The big souk in Medinat al Bostan was a clamour on a busy day, and the clash between country and city dialects had over the years spontaneously produced the bazaar’s very own dialect, called by everyone shaerashouk—“bazaar poetry.”

Jalia looked at him steadily, refusing to share the joke. She had heard the argument from her mother too often to laugh now. And his motives were certainly suspect.

“And I’d be even more in the public eye, wouldn’t I?” she observed with a wide-eyed, you-don’t-fool-me-for-a-minute look.

“Here you would be one of many, and your activities would rarely come under the spotlight unless you wished it. The palace machine would protect you.”

“It would also dictate to me,” she said coolly. “No, thank you! I prefer independence and anonymity.”

He didn’t answer, but she saw his jaw clench with suppressed annoyance. For a moment she was on the brink of asking him why it should mean anything to him, but Jalia, too, suppressed the instinct. With Latif Abd al Razzaq, it was better to avoid the personal.

Silence fell between them. Latif concentrated on his driving. One of the press cars passed, a camera trained on them, and then roared off in a cloud of exhaust.

She couldn’t stop irritably turning the conversation over in her head. Why was he pushing her? What business was it of Latif Abd al Razzaq’s where she lived?

“Why are you carrying my mother’s banner?” she demanded after a short struggle. “From her it’s just about understandable. What’s your angle? Why do you care what I do with my life?”

In the silence that fell, Jalia watched a muscle leap in his jaw. She had the impression that he was struggling for words.

“Do you not care about this country?” he demanded at last, his voice harsh and grating on her. “Bagestan has suffered serious loss to its professional and academic class over the past thirty years—too many educated people fled abroad. If its citizens who were born abroad do not return… You are an al Jawadi by birth, granddaughter of the deposed Sultan. Do you not feel that the al Jawadi should show the way?”

Jalia felt a curious, indefinable sense of letdown.

“You’ve already convinced my parents to return,” she said coolly, for Latif’s efforts on their behalf, tracking down titles to her family’s expropriated property and tracing lost art treasures grabbed by Ghasib’s favourites, had been largely successful, paving the way for them to make the shift.

“And my younger sister is considering it. Why can’t you be satisfied with that?”

“Your parents are retirement age. Your sister is a schoolgirl.”

Jalia was now feeling the pressure. “Nice to have a captive audience!” she snapped. “Is this why you decided I should come with you on this wild-goose chase? You wanted to deliver a lecture? Do you enjoy preaching duty to people? You should have been a mullah, Latif! Maybe it’s not too late even now!”

He flashed her a look. “My opinion would not anger you if you did not, in your heart, accept what I say. It is yourself you are angry with—the part that tells you you have a duty that is larger than your personal life.”

She was, oddly, lost for an answer to this ridiculous charge. It simply wasn’t true. Neither in her heart nor her head did she feel any obligation to return to Bagestan to nurture its recovery from thirty years of misrule. Until a few weeks ago she hadn’t spent one day in the country of her parents’ birth—why should she now be expected to treat it as her own homeland?

In spite of her parents’ best efforts to prevent it, England was home to her.

“Look—I’ve got a life to live, and I’ve paid a price for the choices I’ve made. Why should I now throw away the sense of belonging I’ve struggled for all my life, and reach for another to put in its place? I don’t belong here, however deeply my parents do. I never will.”

He didn’t answer, and another long silence fell, during which he watched the road and she gazed out at the vast stretch of desert, thinking.

Her parents had tried to keep her from feeling she belonged in England, the land of her birth, and she was resentfully aware that to some extent they had succeeded. Her sense of place was less rooted than her friends’—she had always known that.

Maybe that was why she clung so firmly to what she did feel. She knew how difficult it was to find a sense of belonging. Such things didn’t come at will.

At the time of the coup some three decades ago, her parents had been newly married. Her mother, one of the daughters of the Sultan’s French wife, Sonia, and her father, scion of a tribal chief allied by blood and marriage to the al Jawadi for generations past, had both been in grave danger from Ghasib’s squad of assassins. They had fled to Parvan and taken new identities, and the then King of Parvan, Kavad Panj, had put the couple on the staff of the Parvan Embassy in London.

Jalia had passed her childhood in a country that was not “her own,” raised on dreams of the land that was. As she grew older, she began to fear the power of those dreams that gripped her parents so inescapably, and to resent that distant homeland from which she was forever banished. From a child who had thrived on the tales of another landscape, another people, another way of being, she had grown into a sceptical, wary teenager determined to avoid the trap her parents had set for her.

When she turned sixteen they had told her the great secret of their lives—they were not ordinary Bagestani exiles, but members of the royal family. Sultan Hafzuddin, the deposed monarch who had figured so largely in her bedtime stories, was her own grandfather.

Jalia had been sworn to secrecy, but the torch had to be passed to her hands: one day the monarchy would be restored, and if her parents did not live to see that day, Jalia must go to the new Sultan….

Her parents had lived to see the day. And now Jalia’s life was threatened with total disruption. Her parents, thrilled to join the great Return, were urgent that their elder daughter should do the same. But Jalia knew that in Bagestan something mysterious and powerful threatened her, the thing that had obsessed her parents from her earliest memories.

And she did not want to foster the empty dream that she “belonged” in an alien land that she neither knew nor understood. That way lay lifelong unhappiness.

Attending the Coronation had been an inescapable necessity, but it had been a brief visit, no more—until her foolish cousin Noor had undertaken to fall madly in lust with Bari al Khalid, one of the Sultan’s new Cup Companions, and promised to marry him.

“Showing the way for us all!” Jalia’s mother declared, wiping from her eye a tear which in no way clouded its beady gaze on her elder daughter.

Her mother had been convinced then that Jalia had only to flutter her lashes to similarly knock Latif Abd al Razzaq to his knees, and was almost desperate for her daughter to make the attempt.

Princess Muna had wasted no time in checking out the handsome Cup Companion’s marital status and background: not merely the Sultan’s Cup Companion, but since the death of his father two years ago, the leader of his tribe.

“He’s called the Shahin, Jalia. No one’s sure whether the word is an ancient word for king or really does mean falcon, as the myth says, but the holder of that title is traditionally one of the most respected voices on the Tribal Council. Not that Ghasib ever consulted the council, but the Sultan will.”

Although Jalia hadn’t believed for a minute that the fierce-eyed sheikh was attracted to her, the mere thought of what complications would ensue if he or any Bagestani should declare himself had terrified her. She had gone home as soon as politeness allowed.

Of course she couldn’t refuse to return to Bagestan for the wedding, but this time she had come with insurance—Michael’s engagement ring on her finger. Now when she was asked whether she intended to make the Return, Jalia could dutifully murmur that she had her future husband to consider. No one could argue with that.

“Why do you say this is a wild-goose chase?”

The Cup Companion’s voice broke in on her thoughts. Jalia jolted back into the here and now and gazed at him for a moment.

“You think Noor ran of her own accord, do you?” she said at last.

“She was seen driving the car herself.”

“And if that’s so, it means she’s changed her mind about the wedding?”

“Do you doubt it?”

Jalia shrugged. That wasn’t her point. “That being the case, do you honestly imagine that, even assuming we find her, we’re just going to bring her meekly back to marry Bari?”

“Women do not always know their own minds,” Latif said with comfortable masculine arrogance.

It was the kind of thing that made her want to hit him. Jalia sat with her fists clenching in her lap.

“Is that so?”

“Your powers of persuasion may have undermined her. But she will return to her senses when she realizes what she has done. Then she will be glad to know that there is a way back.”

“Or perhaps she’s come to her senses!” Jalia countered sharply. “That’s why she ran. It’s a pity it took her so long, that’s all.”

“But of course—she did not come to her senses until she agreed with you!”

The sarcasm burned like acid.

“She was rushing into marriage with a complete stranger, which would entail a total transformation of her life, and on the basis of what? Nothing more than sex! Would you encourage someone to do what Noor was doing?”

He turned and gave her a look of such black emotion she almost quailed. “Why not?” he demanded grimly.

If Noor had simply bolted, it was going to cause hideous embarrassment all around, but surely anything was better than to marry in haste? Noor had been totally swept away by Bari’s looks and wealth and sex appeal, but that was no foundation for a marriage, still less for uprooting from everything she knew and transplanting to Bagestan.

“For a start, because she’s not in love with him! She’s blinded by—”

“If she does not love him yet, it will not be long coming. Bari will see to that, once they are married.”

Jalia’s mouth fell open, angry irritation skittering along her spine. “Oh, a man can make a woman love him, just like that?”

“What kind of man cannot make his own wife love him?”

Her eyes popped with reaction to the arrogance; her mouth opened.

“And how exactly does a man go about it?”

At the look in his eyes now she gasped as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

“Who is your fiancé, that you do not understand a man’s power over a woman?” asked the Cup Companion.

Four

Jalia sat up with a jerk. A chasm seemed to be opening up before her, and without having any idea what it represented, she knew it was dangerous.

“What are you talking about?” she said mockingly.

The car stopped at a traffic light on the outskirts of Medinat al Bostan. Below them, in the magnificent tapestry that was the city, sunlight gleamed from the golden dome and minarets of the great Shah Jawad mosque and glittered on the sea. It was a heart-stopping sight, she couldn’t deny that. Talk about your dreaming spires!

Latif turned and gazed at her for an unnerving few seconds.

“You know what I am talking about,” he accused through his teeth.

She didn’t, if he meant from personal experience. No man had ever reduced her to adoration on sheer sexual expertise alone, and what he said was just so much masculine arrogance!

“So sex is a crucible in which to melt your wife’s independence?”

“Her independence? No. Her dissatisfaction.”

“And how many wives are you keeping happy?” she asked sweetly.

“You know that I am not married.”

“But when you are, your wife will love you? Oooh, I almost envy her!” she twittered, while a kind of nervous fear zinged up and down her back and she knew that the last woman in the world she’d envy would be Latif Abd al Razzaq’s wife. “I don’t think!”

His eyes burned her.

“So what is the secret of eternal wedded bliss?” Jalia pressed, against the small, wise voice that was advising her to back off.

His jaw tightened at her tone, and he turned with such a look she suddenly found herself breathing through her mouth.

“Do you wish me to show you such secrets in the open road?” he asked, and she was half convinced that if she said yes he would stop the car where it was and reach for her….

“Not me!” she denied hastily, and a smile, or some other emotion, twisted the corner of his mouth. “But if you look around—well, it can’t be well-known, or there’d be more happy marriages, wouldn’t there? I can’t help feeling you could make your fortune marketing this secret.”

She was getting under his skin, she could see that, and she pressed her lips together to keep from grinning her triumph at him.

He looked at her again, a narrow, dangerous look, and Jalia’s eyes seemed to stretch as she watched him. “In the West, perhaps. But I think even a How To book would not help your fiancé.”

“I—what—?” Jalia babbled furiously.

Latif moved his hand from the wheel to where her hand lay on the armrest between them, and with one long, square forefinger fiercely stroked the three opals of her ring.

Jalia snatched her hand away in violent overreaction.

“Do you intend to marry this man?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you would be a fool.”

The light changed and he let out the brake and turned his attention to the road. Fury swept over her like a wave. Though he spoke perfect truth, he could not know it. She laughed false, angry, deliberately mocking laughter.

“How kind of you to have my interests at heart! But you don’t know anything about Michael.”

“Yes.”

“What, exactly, do you profess to know? You’ve never even seen him!”

“I have seen you.”

“And you don’t know anything about me, either!”

“All I need to know for such a judgement.”

“And what have you learned about me that allows you to prescribe for my future?” she couldn’t stop herself asking, though a moment’s thought would have told her she would not come out of the encounter the winner.

He deliberately kept his eyes on the road.

“Your fiancé has never aroused real passion in you,” he said grimly.

Jalia jerked back as if he had slapped her. A rage of unfamiliar feeling burned in her abdomen, almost too deep to reach. She felt a primitive, uncharacteristic urge to leap at him, biting and clawing, and teach him a lesson in the power of woman.

“How dare you!” she snapped instead, her Western upbringing overruling her wild Eastern blood. She was half aware of her dissatisfaction that it should be so.

His laughter underlined the feebleness of her reply.

“This is what you say to your English boyfriend, I think! Do you expect it to affect such as me?”

“And what would it take to stop you? A juggernaut?”

“Ah, if I taught you about love, you would not want me to stop,” he declared, a mocking smile lifting one corner of his mouth, and outrage thrilled through her. She knew the last thing on his mind was making love to her. He didn’t even like her!

“It’ll be a cold day in hell before you teach me about love!” Jalia snapped, as something like panic suddenly choked her. “Suppose we agree that you’ll mind your own business when it comes to the intimate details of my love life?”

He was silent. She looked up at his profile and saw that his face was closed, his jaw clamped tight. Disdain was in the very tilt of his jaw as he nodded formally.

“Tell me instead where your cousin will have gone.”

She didn’t know how she knew, but she did: the words were a struggle. They were not what he wanted to say.

“I have told you I don’t know.”

Although she had demanded it, Jalia was disconcerted by the abrupt change of subject. She had more to say, plenty more, but to go back now and start ranting would look childish.

They were approaching the city centre now: the golden dome appeared only in the gaps between other buildings as they passed.

“You must have some idea.”

“If you’re thinking I’m a mind reader, you overestimate me. If you imagine I had prior knowledge, go to hell.”

His eyelids drooped to veil his response to that.

“I am thinking that if your cousin had made friends in al Bostan you would know who they are. Or if she had found a favourite place—a garden or a restaurant—she might have shown it to you.”

My manner is biting off heads. The line of poetry sounded in her head, and he really did look like a roosting hawk now, with his cold green eyes, his beaked nose, his hands on the wheel like talons on a branch. A brilliantly feathered, glittering hawk, owner of his world.

And exerting, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, every atom of his self-control.

“She is wearing a white wedding dress and veil, you know. She’s not going to be able to just disappear. In a restaurant or any public place she’d attract comment.”

“Where would she go, then?”

Her imagination failed. Where could you hide wearing a staggeringly beautiful pearl-embroidered silk wedding dress with a skirt big enough to cover a football field and a tulle veil five yards long?

Latif put his foot on the brake and drew in to the side of the road, where, under a ragged striped umbrella, a child was selling pomegranates from a battered crate. At the Cup Companion’s summons the boy jumped up to thrust a half dozen pomegranates into a much-used plastic bag, and carried it to the car.

As Latif passed over the money he asked a question, which Jalia could just about follow. The urchin’s response she couldn’t understand at all, but from his excited hand signals she guessed that he had seen Noor pass.

Latif set the bag of fruit into the back seat beside his sword and put the car in motion.

“What did he say?”

“He saw a big white car go past with a woman at the wheel and a white flag streaming from the roof,” he reported with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “About half an hour ago. Another man in a car asked him the same question soon after. The white car hasn’t come back. He’s not sure about the other.”

“A white flag!” Jalia exclaimed. “Why would she be flying a white flag?”

“To signal her surrender?”

His dry voice made her want to laugh, but she suppressed the desire. She had no intention of getting pally with the man.

They were in the city centre now. Latif began cruising the streets, turning here and there at random. As best she could, Jalia monitored passing cars as well as those parked at the side of the road. She glanced down each side street as they passed.

Jalia sighed.

“Oh, if this isn’t just Noor all over!” she muttered. “Turn a deaf ear to everything until it suits her! If she’d listened to me when I was talking to her—if she’d actually sat down and considered what I was saying, she would have come to this conclusion long ago. Instead she waits until it’s almost too late and will cause the maximum chaos!”

Latif threw her a look. “Or you might say that if you hadn’t tried to force your views on her so unnecessarily, there would have been no fear suddenly erupting in her and taking over.”

“You say unnecessarily, I say necessarily…” Jalia sang in bright mockery, then glowered at him. “Why are you right and I’m wrong?”

“I?” he demanded sharply. “It is Bari and Noor’s judgement that you challenged, not mine! I have no opinion, except that when two people decide to get married they should be left to make their own fate!”

She whooped with outrage.

“And what were you saying to me not twenty minutes ago?” she shrieked. “Were you advising me not to marry Michael, or was I hallucinating? You would be a fool to marry this man!” she cited sharply. “Was that what you said, or do I misquote you?”