Sara stared into the spitting blackness of his eyes and some of her bravado wavered, until she told herself that she wasn’t going to be intimidated. She had worked too hard and too long to forge a new life to allow these powerful men to control her. These desert men who would crush your very spirit if you allowed them to do so. So she wouldn’t let them.
Even her own mother—who had married a desert king and had loved him—had felt imprisoned by ancient royal rules which hadn’t changed for centuries and probably never would. Sara had witnessed for herself that sometimes love just wasn’t enough. So what chance would a marriage have if there was no love at all?
Her mother’s unhappiness had been the cause of her father’s ruination—and had ultimately governed Sara’s own fate. She hadn’t known that Papa was so obsessed by his English wife that he hadn’t paid proper attention to governing his country. Sara remembered that all too vividly. The Queen had been his possession and nothing else had really existed for him, apart from that.
He had taken his eye off the ball. Poor investments and a border war which went on too long meant that his country was left bankrupt. The late Sultan of Qurhah had come up with a deal for a bail-out plan and the price had been Sara’s hand in marriage.
When Sara’s mother had died and she had been allowed to go off to boarding school—hadn’t she thought that her father’s debt would just be allowed to fade with time? Hadn’t she been naïve and hopeful enough to think that the Sultan might just forget all about marrying her, as his own father had decreed he should?
Blinking back the sudden threat of tears, Sara tried to ignore the fierce expression on Suleiman’s face. She was not going to be made to feel guilty—when all she was doing was trying to save her own skin. And ultimately she would be doing the Sultan a favour—for surely it would damage the ego of such a powerful man if she was forced kicking and screaming to the altar.
‘I am waiting,’ he said, with silky venom, ‘for you to enlighten me. What did you tell the journalist, Sara?’
She met the accusation in his eyes. ‘I told him everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Yes! I thought it would make a good story,’ she said. ‘At a time of year when newspapers are traditionally very light on news and—’
‘What did you tell him?’ he raged.
‘I told him the truth! That I was a half-blood princess—half English and half Dhi’banese. You know the papers—they just love any kind of royal connection!’ She forced a mocking smile, knowing that it would irritate him and wondering if irritating him was only a feeble attempt to suppress her desire for him. Because if it was, it wasn’t working. ‘I told him that my mother travelled as an artist to Dhi’ban, to paint the beautiful desert landscape—and that my father, the king, had fallen in love with her.’
‘Why did you feel it necessary to parade your private family history to a complete stranger?’
‘I’m just providing the backstory, Suleiman,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows you need a good backstory if you want an entertaining read. Anyway, it’s all there on record.’
‘You are severely testing my patience,’ he said. ‘You had no right to divulge these things!’
‘Surely the Sultan wouldn’t mind me discussing it?’ she questioned innocently. ‘This is a marriage we’re talking about, Suleiman—and marriages are supposed to be happy occasions. I say supposed to be, but that’s quite a difficult concept to pull off when the bride is being kidnapped! I have to say that the journalist seemed quite surprised when I told him that I had no say in this marriage. No, when I come to think of it—surprise is the wrong word. I’d say that astonished covered it better. And deeply shocked, of course.’
‘Shocked?’
‘Mmm. He seemed to find it odd—abhorrent, even—that the Sultan of Qurhah should want to marry a woman who had been bought for him by his own father!’
She saw his fists clench.
‘That is the way of the world you were brought into,’ he said unequivocably. ‘None of us can change the circumstances of our birth.’
‘No, we can’t. But that doesn’t mean we have to be made prisoners by it. We can use everything in our power to change our destinies! Can’t you see that, Suleiman?’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ she argued passionately. ‘Yes and a thousand times yes!’ Her heart began to race as she saw something written on his carved features which made her stomach turn to jelly. Was it anger? Was it?
But anger would not have made him shake his head, as if he was trying to shake off thoughts of madness. Nor to make that little nerve flicker so violently at his olive-skinned temple. He took a step towards her and, for one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was about to pull her into his arms, the way he’d done on the night of her brother’s coronation.
And didn’t she want that? Wasn’t she longing for him to do just that, only this time not stop? This time they were alone and he could lie her down in front of that log fire and loosen her clothes and...
But he didn’t touch her. He stood a tantalisingly close distance away while his eyes sparked dark fire at her. She could see him swallowing, as if he had something bitter lodged in his throat.
‘You must accept your destiny,’ he said. ‘As I have accepted mine.’
‘Have you? Did “accepting your destiny” include kissing me on the night my brother was crowned, even though you knew I was promised to another?’
‘Don’t say that!’
The strangled words sounded almost powerless and Sara realised she’d never heard Suleiman sound like that before. Not even after he’d returned from his undercover duties in the Qurhah army, when he’d been thirty pounds lighter with a scar zigzagging down his neck. People said he’d been tortured, but if he had he never spoke of it—well, never to her. She remembered being profoundly shocked by his appearance and she felt a similar kind of shock washing over her now.
For it was not like looking at Suleiman she knew of old. It was like looking at a stranger. A repressed and forbidding stranger. His features had closed up and his eyes were hooded. Had she really thought he was about to kiss her? Why, kissing looked like the furthest thing on his mind.
‘We will not speak of that night again,’ he said.
‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’ she questioned. ‘You weren’t so moralistic when you touched me like that.’
‘Because most men would have died rather than resist you that night,’ he admitted bitterly. ‘And I chose not to die. I hadn’t seen you for six long years and then I saw you, with your big painted eyes and your silver gown, shining like the moon.’
Briefly, Suleiman closed his eyes, because that kiss had been like no other, no matter how much he had tried to deny it. It hadn’t just been about sex or lust. It had been much more powerful than that, and infinitely more dangerous. It had been about feeding a hunger as fundamental as the need to eat or drink. It had felt as necessary as breathing. And yet it had angered him, because it had seemed outside his control. Up until that moment he had regarded the young princess with nothing more than indulgent friendship. What had happened that night had taken him completely by surprise. He swallowed. Perhaps that was why it had been the most unforgettable kiss of his life.
‘Didn’t you realise how much I wanted you that night, Sara, even though you were promised to the Sultan? Were you not aware of your own power?’
‘So it was all my fault?’
‘No.