He came towards her, moving with the fluid, athletic grace of a hunter despite his height and build and the shifting sand under his feet. She couldn’t see his face, he was covered from head to foot, but as he came closer she saw his eyes.
They weren’t so much brown as a dense, smoky gold. Like a tiger.
And all at once she knew that her doubts had been correct. That this was definitely not a search party come to rescue her. A group of men draped in black with swords at their hips could only mean one thing: they were Ashkaraz border guards and they were not here to rescue her. They were here to take her prisoner because she had almost certainly strayed into the wrong country.
The man came closer, looming over her, his broad figure blocking out the hammer-blow of the sun.
But even the sun wasn’t as hot or as brilliant as the gold of his eyes. And they were just as relentless, just as harsh. There was no mercy in those eyes. There was no help at all.
You fool. You should have told someone where you were going. But you didn’t, did you?
No, she hadn’t. She’d just gone to find her father, thinking she’d only be a couple of minutes. It was true that she hadn’t been paying attention to where she’d been going, as she’d so often done as a child, lost in whatever daydream had grabbed her at the time, since that had been better than listening to the screaming arguments of her parents as they’d battled each other over her head.
Even now, as an adult, she found it difficult to concentrate sometimes, when she was stressed or things were chaotic, her mind spinning off into its own fantasies, escaping reality. Though those moments of inattention didn’t usually have such terrible repercussions as now, when she was left with the choice of either turning and running away from the terrible man striding towards her across the hot sand, or falling to her knees and begging for her life.
What did these guards do to people who strayed over the borders? No one knew. No one had ever escaped. She and her father were going to be taken prisoner and no one would ever hear from them again.
Running was out of the question. Not only was there nowhere to run, she couldn’t leave her father. Wouldn’t leave him. He’d had no one else but her since her mother had moved to the States nearly fifteen years ago—and, though he wouldn’t exactly win any father-of-the-year awards, his career and all the digs he’d taken her on had instilled in her a love of history and ancient peoples that the dreamer inside her found fascinating.
She had a lot to thank him for, so she’d follow him the way she’d always followed him.
Which meant that she was going to have to throw herself on this man’s mercy—if, indeed, he had any.
Fear gripped her tight, and darkness crawled at the edge of her vision. Her lips were cracked, dry as the desert sand drifting around her feet, but she fought to remain upright. She was an idiot for wandering away from the site, it was true, but she wasn’t going to compound her mistake by collapsing ignominiously at this man’s feet.
She would be polite and reasonable, apologise calmly, and tell him that she hadn’t meant to wander into his country by mistake. That her father was a professor and she only a lowly assistant, and they hadn’t meant any harm. Also, could he please not kill them, or throw them into a dungeon, or any of the rest of the things her over-active imagination kept providing for her?
A hot wind kicked at the black hem of the man’s robes, making them flow around his powerful thighs as he came to a stop in front of her. He stood there so still, as if he was a mountain that had stood for millennia, as enduring and unchanging as the desert itself.
Charlotte held tight to consciousness and something about his merciless golden gaze hardened her spine, making her square her shoulders and straighten up.
She tried to get some moisture into her mouth and failed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she forced out. ‘Do you speak English? Are you able to help me?’
The man was silent a long moment, and then he said something, his voice deep enough that she felt it in her chest, a subtle, sub-sonic vibration. But she didn’t understand him. Her Arabic was rough, and the liquid sounds bore no resemblance to the minimal words she knew.
She felt very weak all of a sudden, and quite sick.
The man’s golden eyes seemed to fill her entire vision, his stare hard, brutal, crushing utterly her hope of rescue and of mercy.
She would get neither from him and that was obvious.
‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ Charlotte whispered as the darkness gathered around her. ‘But I think the man you have on that horse is my father. We’re quite lost. Do you think you could possibly help us?’
Then she fainted dead away at his feet.
Tariq ibn Ishak Al Naziri, Sheikh of Ashkaraz, stared impassively at the small body of the Englishwoman collapsed on the sand in front of him.
Her father, she’d said. Well, that cleared up the question of who the man was.
They’d found him unconscious on one of the dunes. After finding him, Tariq and his border guards had then spotted the woman, and had been tracking her for a good twenty minutes. Her zigzag path and the way she’d blundered across the border straight into Ashkaraz made it clear she had no idea where she was going, though what she’d murmured just now clarified things somewhat. She’d obviously been looking for the man currently slung over Jaziri’s horse.
Tariq had been hoping she’d turn around and make her way back over the border again, ensuring that she wasn’t his problem any more, but she hadn’t. She’d spotted them instead and had just stood there, watching him approach her as if he was her own personal saviour.
Given that she was clearly suffering from heatstroke and advanced dehydration, she wasn’t far wrong.
He didn’t touch her just yet, though, because you could never be too suspicious of lost foreigners wandering over his borders—as the incident with the man who’d been armed and hoping to ‘free the people of Ashkaraz from tyranny’ had proved only the week before. One of his border guards had been severely injured and Tariq didn’t want that to happen again.
It was probably why Faisal—his father’s old advisor, who’d now become his—had been unhappy about Tariq approaching this woman himself rather than letting one of his guards do it. But protecting his subjects was his purpose, and he didn’t want another injury simply because one guard had been a little careless when dealing with an outsider.
Tariq knew how to deal with them; his guards generally did not.
Especially a woman. They could be the most dangerous of all.
Except this woman didn’t look very dangerous right now, crumpled as she was on the sand. She was dressed in a pair of stained, loose blue trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt, with a black and white scarf wrapped around her head, which was paltry protection from the desert sun.
She did actually seem to be unconscious, but since it could be difficult to tell, and Tariq was naturally suspicious, he nudged her experimentally with the toe of his boot. Her head rolled to the side, her scarf coming loose and revealing a lock of hair pale as moonlight.
Yes, very definitely unconscious.
He frowned, studying her face. Her features were fine and regular and, though he preferred women with stronger looks, she could be said to be pretty. Currently the fine grain of her skin was flushed bright red from the heat and burned from the sun, making the pale arches of her eyebrows stand out.
English, no doubt, given the sunburn. Certainly when she’d spoken he recognised that cut-glass accent, which meant the man they’d picked up was likely English too.
He gave her another