As if the thought had given rise to the devil—or the devil to the thought?—the man himself appeared before her on the balcony a few yards away. He was wearing the magnificent ceremonial costume of a Cup Companion, but she shivered as if at the approach of menace and dodged behind one of the columns of worn, sand-coloured brick.
But she had been mesmerized a second too long, and he struck fast, like the falcon he was named for. The next moment he was before her, blocking her path.
“Where has your cousin gone?” demanded Latif Abd al Razzaq Shahin, Cup Companion to the new Sultan, in a commanding voice.
Jalia’s skin twitched all the way to her scalp. She shrank against the pillar in instinctive animal alarm, then forced herself to stand straight. Her face was totally covered. How could he know who she was, behind the veil? He was only guessing.
“I dant now vot you are tawkeen abowt,” she said in a deep, breathy voice. “You are made a meestek.”
He shook his head with the unconscious, bone-deep arrogance she so hated. Whatever Latif Abd al Razzaq decided to own was his, whatever he decided to do was right, and everyone else—life itself—had to submit. That was the message.
Anger sang through her blood and nerves. How she detested the man! He was everything she most disliked about the East.
“The game is over, Jalia,” he said through his teeth. “Where did she go?”
She wanted to walk away, but her path was blocked by his body. She would have to push past him, and she discovered that she was deeply reluctant to do so.
“I am not who you sink. Lit me pess,” she commanded, with icy disdain.
He raised a hand, his teeth flashing as she instinctively flinched. Slowly and deliberately he caught a corner of the scarf that covered her to draw it back over her head.
Her thick, ash-coloured hair lay over one side of her face, a heavy wave curving in against the high, delicate cheek, half masking one slate-green eye as she lifted her chin with a cool, haughty look.
His hand remained tangled in the scarf, the pale hair brushing his knuckles as Latif and the Princess gazed at each other. Deep mutual hostility seemed to warp the air between them.
After a curious, frozen moment, his fingers released the supple silk and his hand withdrew. With the breaking of the connection the air could move again.
“Where has your cousin gone?” he asked in a harsh, low voice.
Her chin went up another notch, and her jade eyes flashed cool fire. She showed no embarrassment at having been caught in a lie.
“Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice, Excellency.”
“Where?”
“I have no idea where Noor is. Perhaps in a bathroom somewhere, being sick. I am looking for her. You waste time by keeping me here. Let me pass, please.”
“If you are looking for her in the house, it is you who waste time. She has fled.”
Jalia’s heart dropped like a diving seabird. “Fled? I don’t believe you! Fled where?”
“That is the question Bari sent me to ask you. Where has the Princess gone?”
“Are you telling me she’s left the house?”
“Don’t you know it?”
Involuntarily she glanced down at her own closed fist. “No! How would I know? I was waiting with the other bridesmaids….”
His eyes followed hers. Her fist was clenched tight on something. In a move that was almost possessive, his hand closed on her wrist. Calmly he forced her hand over, so that the fingertips were uppermost.
“What is it?” His eyes flicked from her hand to her face and rested there, with a grimly determined look.
“None of your bloody business! Let go of me!”
“Open your hand, Princess Jalia.”
She struggled, but his strength was firmly turned against her now, and she could not get free. After a moment in which they stared at each other, she had the humiliation of feeling the pressure of his finger between her knuckles, forcing her hand open.
On her open palm a diamond solitaire glittered with painful brilliance.
Again his green eyes moved to her face, and the expression she saw in them made her stiffen.
“What is this?” he demanded as, with long, strong fingers, he ignored her struggles and plucked the ring from her palm. He let her wrist go so suddenly she staggered.
He held it up in a shaft of sunlight that found its way into the shadows of the balcony through some chink in the ancient arched roof. It glowed and flashed, but even the fabulous al Khalid Diamond couldn’t match Latif Abd al Razzaq’s eyes for glitter.
“What is this?” he repeated accusingly.
“A cheap imitation?” Jalia drawled with exaggerated irony, because Noor’s engagement diamond was unmistakable. The al Khalid Diamond was probably worth about a thousand times what had been paid for the modest engagement band of opals encircling Jalia’s own finger.
The ring’s value, as much as its stark, flashing beauty, had delighted Noor, but it didn’t tempt Jalia one bit. She knew too well what came with a ring like that—a man like Bari al Khalid…or Latif Abd al Razzaq.
“Tell me where your cousin has gone.”
“What makes you so damned sure I know? Back to the palace, I suppose! Where else would she go?”
Her scarf was slipping forward over her face again. Jalia began irritably tearing at the pins that held it. What a stupid bloody custom it was, the bride having to be chosen from among a group of bridesmaids, all with scarves draped over their heads, to test the groom’s perspicacity! Everyone knew the groom was always tipped off as to exactly what his bride would be wearing, and today anyway Noor had infuriated all the diehards by wearing Western white. Bari would have had to be blind and ignorant to miss her, even under the yards of enveloping tulle.
But everyone had insisted on playing the ancient ritual out, nevertheless. It was just one of many reasons why Jalia was grateful that her parents had fled Bagestan years before she was born, and why she was not happy about their plans for coming back.
Latif Abd al Razzaq was another.
He gazed at her, incredulous. Jalia knew he would never believe that, as opposed as she had been to Noor’s hasty, ill-conceived wedding, Jalia had had absolutely nothing to do with this last-minute sabotage.
But what did she care? What Latif Abd al Razzaq thought of her mattered precisely nothing to her.
She flung the beautifully embroidered scarf away from her, not caring that it caught on a rosebush bristling with thorns.
“You have her ring.”
“Yes,” Jalia admitted coolly.
“How did you get it?”
“What makes it your business to ask me that question, Excellency? And in that particular tone of voice?”
His voice shifted to a deep growl. “What tone of voice do you want from me, Princess?” he asked abruptly.
Jalia’s skin twitched, but she brushed aside her nervous discomfort.
“I would be quite happy never to hear your voice at all.”
Jalia was glad of Latif Abd al Razzaq’s dislike, of the fierce disapproval that he didn’t bother to hide. A man like him could only be an enemy—she knew that much—and it was safer to have the enmity in the open. Then no one was fooled.
Looking up at him now, in the deep green silk