‘Please, Kaliq, let’s stop for a moment, it’s so perfect.’
Kaliq didn’t answer, but suddenly through the half-light she saw that they were making their way downwards to a small gap in the mountainside, his horse Amir now slowing to a walk.
Hesitantly, Kaliq dismounted and raised his arms to lift her from his stallion. He looked, she thought, rather as if he were considering waging war against himself.
He moved away from her, looking out towards the rising sun. ‘We should really get back to the palace. It is late.’
‘Or perhaps we are just up early; it depends how you look at it.’
‘You should be asleep.’ His face was solemn.
Tamara frowned. Usually he delighted in the habit she had of turning everything he said on its head. She followed his serious gaze, to the tip of gold shimmering on the horizon, and then back to his face. ‘You think I would rather be asleep than here, with you?’
‘No, Tamara.’ He shook his head, his expression taut. ‘I think your father trusted me to show you my country. He did not ask that I find myself alone in the desert with you in the early hours of morning. It is not right.’
Right? Nothing had ever felt more right in her entire life. What was he saying—that she was nothing more to him than a puppy he had been given to walk, but this was past his agreed hours?
‘I am not a child, Kaliq. In a month I may be travelling through Europe, next year university, who knows? Do you suppose I will never find myself alone with anyone then?’
A muscle tensed at his jaw.
Tamara continued. ‘If I am taking up too much of your precious time then I will quite gladly continue to show myself around. I did not know it had been such a chore.’
‘You think I say it is not right because being with you is a chore?’ His voice seemed to echo off the sand dunes. He reached out his hand for hers, his thumb slowly beginning to draw hypnotic circles in her palm, shaking her to the core. ‘It is not right because…because when I am with you I wish to kiss you. When we are in public, propriety prevents me, but when we are alone—’
She looked up at him, her eyes growing wide, her stomach doing somersaults.
‘When we are alone, kalilah, I have to rely on my own self-control.’
He made it sound like a curse, but something in Tamara was soaring obliviously, her arms reaching playfully around his neck, one corner of her mouth lifting into a daring smile. ‘I thought self control was your forte.’
‘I thought so too—’ his voice was almost a groan that sounded like defeat as he guided her body closer ‘—until I met you.’
Unable to tear her eyes away from him, Tamara watched as his liquid brown gaze dropped to her lips and then, suddenly, decisively, his mouth followed. But the moment it did she was unable to focus on anything. Because if she thought Qwasir had surpassed her wildest expectations it was nothing compared to the long-awaited sensation of his mouth on hers. Gently exploring, testing, the tip of his tongue finding hers and flicking over it, teaching her the true meaning of anticipation. A feeling so new and so longed for that she wasn’t sure she ever wanted it to end.
Until something brought her back to where they were. The sound of hooves. On sand. Approaching. Suddenly Kaliq let go of her and stepped back as if he had just discovered she was infected with some contagious disease. Tamara spun round to see his aide on horseback, squinting through the sliver of sunlight from a distance.
‘Forgive me, Your Highness,’ he called, stilling at the point they must have come into view, ‘I missed you leaving and then…when I saw Amir I thought perhaps you were in trouble.’
‘No trouble, Jalaal, thank you.’ His voice was husky but level.
Jalaal nodded and turned without question.
Tamara frowned as Kaliq moved towards Amir. So he had not instructed his aide to leave them alone on purpose, and he certainly hadn’t dismissed him on her account now. No, he fully intended to leave. Tamara drew in a ragged breath. Was Jalaal discovering that the crown prince had human desires like anyone else so terrible? Was desiring her so regrettable full stop?
‘Don’t tell me, Kaliq, it is right that we should be getting back.’ Her voice was sarcastic. ‘After all, tomorrow I’ll be gone.’
Kaliq looked at her blankly. Down at the sand beneath his feet. Then out at the round sun shimmering on the horizon.
Like a gem.
Then suddenly a look came over his face unlike any she had ever seen before. As if he had just been handed a key to a door without a keyhole, and he wasn’t entirely sure whether to leave it be or barge the door right down.
‘Well?’ she asked, her hands on her hips, looking at him and then at Amir.
And then he turned back to her quickly, as though her impatience had made up his mind.
‘Tamara, will you marry me?’
Tamara stared in disbelief at the doubtful expression on his face and half-laughed, wondering if she had missed the joke.
‘Marry you? Why? Because your aide just caught us alone together?’
Kaliq’s mouth hardened. ‘No.’
‘Then why?’ she asked softly, her voice barely more than a whisper.
‘You wish me to list the reasons why? Is it not obvious?’ He flexed his hand, then closed it again. ‘Because you are exceptionally beautiful, and a virgin. Because you are the daughter of the ambassador, and you have shown great respect for my country in your own right. And because—as you know—I must marry in order to inherit the kingdom.’ He paused as if to be sure there was no reason he had omitted and, to her consternation, she realised it was the first time in the last ten minutes she had seen him look utterly certain—there was not. ‘Is that clear enough?’
‘Perfectly.’ Tamara felt as if her heart were a hologram and with the rising of the sun the light had made it cease to exist completely. For in one succinct sentence he had just listed all the reasons why she might be a suitable future queen, but none of the reasons why he might want her to become his wife.
Suddenly she knew that they had been worlds apart all along.
The truth was that this week had been a test of her suitability. It had nothing to do with encouraging her to pursue her dreams or to defy expectations—it had been a double bluff. He had cared about nothing but his precious duty all along.
And though she had fallen for him, though to say no would be to lose the one thing that had ever made her feel truly alive, to say yes would be to sacrifice the life she had only just begun to live. For how could she spend the rest of it trapped in a marriage to a man who didn’t love her? That could only ever end the way her parents’ marriage had—with a painful and bitter divorce splashed across the newspapers.
‘Well?’ he said, mocking her earlier impatience. ‘What do you say to wearing the sapphires, Tamara?’
Tamara took a deep breath. ‘I can’t marry you Kaliq.’
Kaliq straightened indignantly as the sun rose high above their heads, the mystical glow of half light beginning to fade away.
‘May I ask why?’
Is it not obvious? She wanted to retort in kind, but her pride forbade her. For how could she reply that it was because he did not love her, when to admit she loved him—when she had only known him for one week—was crazy. As ridiculous as saying yes to a man who had only proposed because she was the virgin daughter of an ambassador,