‘I could not be more certain.’
His tone was implacable. He was just a touch intimidating, but her instincts told her he was telling the truth. She had no choice but to believe him. She was quite alone, and, through no fault of her own, quite in the wrong. ‘It seems,’ Julia said carefully, ‘that I owe you an apology. I appear to have strayed over the border quite unintentionally.’
‘You must have had a guide, a translator, men to pitch your camp. Where are they?’
His tone riled her. Julia wrapped her arms tightly around herself. ‘I have travelled halfway across the world relying on my own initiative. I am not some helpless and witless female.’ Though she was, for the moment, almost completely without resources. ‘I have no idea where my guide and his men are,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘They left abruptly in the night.’
‘And your camels, your mules?’
‘They took everything.’ Saying it aloud made her feel like an absolute fool. Mortified, she glowered defiantly at the intruder. ‘There was nothing I could do to stop them, I think they put some potion in my tea last night.’
His hand, Julia noticed, went to the hilt of his sword, and he said something vicious under his breath in what she assumed was Arabic. ‘Did they harm you in any way?’
Her cheeks flamed. ‘No. I—no, they did not. Not in any way, if I understand your question correctly.’
‘For that, I give thanks. I am deeply sorry, madam, that you have had to endure such barbaric treatment. I assure you no citizen of Qaryma would behave so abominably towards a foreigner. Those scoundrels may not have violated you, but they have violated the sovereign borders of Qaryma with impunity.’
He looked both furious and puzzled by this fact. As he consulted her papers again his frown deepened further. ‘You really are travelling alone, without any companion?’
‘All the way from England,’ Julia said, with a small smile.
The man did not seem to share her pride in her achievement, but rather looked aghast. ‘You are married,’ he said, pointing at her wedding band. ‘Your husband, where is he? Surely not even an Englishman would expose a woman to the dangers of travelling without protection? If I were married, which I am not, I would most certainly not be so cavalier with my wife’s safety. It is a matter of honour, to say nothing of...’
‘...the fact that we are the weaker sex?’ Julia finished for him. ‘Fortunately, my husband did not share your views.’ Which wasn’t strictly true. Daniel’s quiet assumption that he was in every regard her superior had been one of the things about him which had irritated her. Though when it suited his purposes, which invariably meant something which would be beneficial to his research, he was amenable to acknowledging talents and abilities he had hitherto denied her possessing.
‘Actually, I was about to say that it was a matter of upholding the promise your husband made on his wedding day, to protect you.’
‘I am more than capable of protecting myself,’ Julia declared. A raised eyebrow, a sceptical look around the ransacked tent, made her flush.
‘You said your husband did not share my view.’
‘What of it?’
‘You spoke of him in the past tense.’
‘That is because I am a widow,’ Julia replied. ‘Daniel died of a fever contracted in South America over a year ago.’
‘My sincere condolences.’
‘Thank you.’ Back in Cornwall, she had grieved for the loss of the man she had known all her life, as a friend, a botanist colleague of her father, and for the last seven years, as her husband. She still missed the friend, the botanist, the companion, but the husband? Distance and time, six months of solo travel, had given her a very different perspective of her marriage.
However, the fact that Daniel had been, just as this man suggested, cavalier with her safety, was none of his business, just as the surprising fact that such a striking man was unencumbered was none of hers. What she needed from him was his help, not his history. In fact, she couldn’t believe she had wasted so much precious time before seeking it.
Julia smiled in what she hoped was a conciliatory manner. ‘Now that you are apprised of my situation, you will understand why I must crave your assistance in pursuing the men who betrayed my trust. They cannot have travelled too far, and—and you see, they have something of mine that I must—I simply must retrieve.’
But he was already shaking his head. ‘Oh, please,’ Julia interrupted when he made to speak, the anguish she felt evident in her voice. ‘I beg of you. I don’t care about the mules or the camels. I don’t even care about the money or jewellery they stole, other than Daniel’s fob watch, which is of enormous sentimental value to me. But there is one other precious item that matters more than all my other possessions put together. They took my gold, but I still have access to other funds. I can reward you amply, if you will only...’
‘I am not a dragoman, madam, and I most certainly neither want nor need your money.’
The look he gave her made her flinch. ‘I beg your pardon, it was not my intention to insult you, only I am desperate. I cannot tell you how—how vital it is that I...’
‘No.’ He unpicked her fingers from his sleeve. ‘It would be a fool’s errand, mark my words. Whatever they have taken will already have been sold off in a market somewhere. Stolen goods are always moved on quickly, and there is always an unscrupulous buyer willing to ask no questions in return for a bargain.’
‘But...’
‘I myself am a trader—a reputable one I might add, but I know how these vagabonds operate. I am sorry. I wish it were otherwise, especially in relation to the watch, but I’m afraid you must give your possessions up for lost.’
His tone was firm and quite unequivocal. Forced to accept the truth of what he said, Julia felt sick with disappointment. She pictured Daniel’s trunk being haggled over in a souk. The specimens, so valuable to her, would most likely have been deemed worthless by the thieves, cast out of the drawers to wither in the heat of the desert sun. Her paints, her little trowel would be sold, but her notebooks, her drawings—no, they would mean nothing to those men. They would have no idea of their enormous significance.
Anger made her absolutely determined not to be defeated. If she could not recover her precious work, she would simply have to find a way of starting again. There was no way on earth she was returning to Cornwall without having completed her task. She had come so far, had triumphed over so many hurdles on the way, she would not—she absolutely would not!—allow a treacherous band of Bedouins to best her.
‘Very well,’ Julia said briskly, ‘if you will not assist me in pursuing these thieves, perhaps you will help me to employ a more reliable dragoman? All I ask is that you escort me back over the border to Petrisa, assist me in exchanging some bank notes for local coin, and then I can purchase new camels, mules...’
She trailed to a halt, for he was once again shaking his head firmly. ‘I am afraid there is no prospect of my doing any such thing. There is no question of my going back. I have critically important business of my own to attend to here in the capital city, Al-Qaryma.’
Julia stared at him in dismay. ‘You mean you will leave me stranded here, without valid papers, without the means to make my way back to Petrisa? What on earth am I expected to do?’
* * *
It was an excellent and very pertinent question Azhar thought, eyeing the Englishwoman with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. She was older than he had thought at first, perhaps twenty-six or seven. Not in the first bloom of youth, but too young to be widowed, and certainly far