‘I am glad to hear it.’
Azhar’s smile made her belly clench. His mouth distracted her. It reminded her of the kisses they had exchanged in the garden. It made her want more of them. She shouldn’t be thinking about kisses. ‘We are supposed to be talking about your past, not mine,’ Julia said.
She dragged her eyes away from the beguiling man to the almost-as-beguiling surroundings. It was cool in the shade of the tall trees. At the centre of the pentagon, on either side of their path, were a pair of matching fountains, their bases formed in a star shape, patterned with gold mosaic, the inside tiled in the traditional turquoise. In the centre of each, water spouted from a huge urn. Julia sat down on the edge of the nearest fountain, trailing her hand in the water. ‘It is very quiet here. I would have thought a court like this would be full of people coming and going—for it is a sort of waiting room, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Azhar said, with one of his fleeting smiles, ‘a waiting room. An empty one.’ He sat down beside her, leaning back on the edge of the fountain to gaze up at the inner wall, visible above the cypress trees. ‘My father was always very wary of foreign traders,’ he said. ‘He believed that Qaryma should be self-sufficient, that the wealth we had should be protected. He knew this desert like the back of his hand, but he rarely ventured beyond the boundaries of his domain, save on official visits.’
‘My own father never leaves Cornwall. He says that everything he needs is there, and in a way it is,’ Julia said. ‘He has his home, and he has his gardens, and he has his society meetings—men of science like Papa, who meet once a month to discuss the latest discoveries.’ She made a face. ‘Actually, what they mostly do is regurgitate their own work.’
Azhar laughed. ‘You make it sound as if they chew over their papers and spit them out.’
‘That is more or less exactly what they do,’ Julia replied. ‘In Cornwall, Papa is respected and admired, an established expert. Celebrated, in a way. Botanists travel from all over England to see his gardens, you know.’ She chewed her lip. ‘His fame in his field is well deserved, but it is a small field. He disapproved of Daniel’s book. He said it was far too wide in scope—that the best works concentrated on a narrow field of study.’
Azhar caught a small darting fish in his hand, its tiny scales flashing gold and green. ‘Then I assume he disapproves of your finishing it?’
‘Actually, he doesn’t know that’s what I’m doing,’ Julia confessed.
Azhar placed the wildly flapping fish gently back in the water. ‘Then what does he think you’re doing here in Arabia?’
‘He doesn’t know that either. He thinks I’m on a Hebridean island—that is in Scotland, the most remote part of Britain I could think of. I told him that I needed solitude to recover from Daniel’s death.’ Azhar looked so astonished that Julia laughed. ‘I wanted to surprise him with with the book when I had finished.’
‘I think you will do rather more than that.’
‘You think he’ll be angry?’
Azhar shook his hand dry. ‘In my experience men like your father do not like to be upstaged, especially by their own children.’
‘Do you think your father was afraid that you’d make a better king than he?’
Azhar snorted with derision. ‘My father thought no one would make a better king than he. What he was afraid of was that I wouldn’t make any sort of king, which is why he refused to allow me any sort of freedom.’
‘That is a recipe for disaster. He must have known a child with such an adventurous spirit as I imagine you would have been, would grow into a man who wanted to explore the wider world. If only he had permitted you to travel when you were younger, to satisfy your natural wanderlust...’
‘It was not so simple,’ Azhar said with a sigh. ‘It was not only my desire to experience a world beyond Qaryma, Julia, it was the fact that for me, Qaryma was...’
‘...a gilded cage,’ she finished for him with a smile. ‘A very beautiful one, and one that no longer contains your father.’
‘If I remained here, it would contain me though, for the rest of my life.’
‘Surely you exaggerate?’
Shaking his head, Azhar got to his feet, taking her hand to help her up. ‘Come, we can continue our tour later. I have ordered refreshments to be brought to us.’
* * *
‘This is the reception room for the Divan next door,’ Azhar said, stepping aside to let Julia enter in front of him. ‘The Divan is the room used for meetings of the Council, where foreign visitors are received, and for ceremonies such as weddings and coronations.’
‘So it’s a throne room?’
‘That is one use. I will show it to you after we have eaten.’
He sank on to one of the velvet cushions scattered beside the low marble table, but Julia continued to examine the room. As one of the first chambers which visitors encountered, it was opulent, designed to both intimidate and impress, but Julia, Azhar noticed with amusement, was rather entranced than awed, running her fingers along the ornate mosaic patterning on the walls, gazing for almost a full minute, her neck craned, at the stained glass of the domed ceiling, circling around the twelve pillars which formed the portico to the Divan itself, trailing her fingers through the fountain in the centre of the of the room before finally joining him at the table, occupying the cushion beside him and eyeing the fruit and pastries with undisguised relish.
‘I’m ravenous,’ she said. ‘I have never eaten such delicious food in my life as has been served to me here. I shall go back to Cornwall with a huge tummy.’
She patted her patently concave belly, and bit into a pastry. ‘Almonds, of course, there are always almonds. And raisins. And—chicken?’
‘Guinea fowl.’ There was a stray flake of pastry on the corner of her mouth. Azhar watched, fascinated, as she licked it before popping the remainder of the pastry into her mouth, closing her eyes so as to savour it.
He shifted uncomfortably on the cushion. Did she know what she did to him? She plucked another sweetmeat from the platter, a pastry tube coated in sugar and cinnamon. Azhar’s shaft stiffened. She could have no possible idea of the visions she was conjuring, he doubted she had ever even caressed a male member. He poured himself a cooling glass of sherbet and took a long drink.
‘Delicious!’ Julia said, quite oblivious of the effect she was having. ‘May I have some sherbet? I’m hot.’
And he was on fire. ‘Let me cool you down,’ Azhar said, taking a small lump of ice from the silver chafing dish and sliding it into her mouth. Her lips formed into a perfect ‘oh’ of surprise, and Azhar surrendered to the impulse to cover them with his own.
Cold ice, the warmth of her lips, the softness of her tongue, the heat from his body, made him shiver with delight. Though he longed to devour her, he savoured her, holding himself rigid, restricting the contact to their lips and their tongues. She smelled of jasmine. The ice melted, and he reached blindly for another piece. Julia opened her mouth, her eyes slumberous, her cheeks flushed, and when he covered her lips with his, kissed him back with a fierceness that threatened to overpower the fragile grip he had on his self-control.
The next lump of ice, he trailed down the column of her throat, easing her back on the cushions, unfastening her tunic buttons to push the garment aside. Her skin was milky white. Her nipples were pale-pink peaks. He let the ice melt on them, watching her