‘Your Excellency, there is news from the women’s quarters.’
Zane glanced up from the letter he was writing to find his major-domo standing at the arched entrance to his private office. Ravi’s face was drawn, and his hands clutched together.
Terrific, what the heck has Catherine Smith done now?
The woman was proving much more troublesome that he had anticipated.
No way was he arranging an interview with her before he was sure he could control the emotions that had fazed him when she had first arrived. But she’d proved surprisingly persistent and demanding, making repeated requests to see him even though he’d made it quite clear he was not available.
‘What is it, Ravi?’ he snapped, putting his pen down. ‘Please tell me this isn’t another request for an interview from Dr Smith,’ he said. ‘Because the answer is still no.’ And he’d already told his major-domo he did not want to be bothered with her requests from now on—because all that did was trigger more of the desires he was currently trying very hard to suppress.
‘No, Your Excellency.’ Ravi’s usually implacable expression became tight with concern. ‘I have just been informed Dr Smith is no longer in the palace.’
‘What?’ The punch of anxiety hit Zane square in the solar plexus. ‘Then where the hell is she?’
‘We do not know, but we believe she may have left to go to the spice market with her servant, Kasia.’
Zane jerked out of his chair, his heart starting to kick his ribs like his thoroughbred Arabian stallion, Pegasus.
‘How long have they been gone?’ he demanded as he charged across the room.
‘No one has seen them for several hours.’
Several hours.
His thundering heart crashed into his throat.
Anything could have happened in that time. Catherine was a stranger here—how well did she even speak the language? He should never have left her to her own devices. The panic tightened around his heart, reminding him of being a boy in LA and waking up in the middle of the night to find himself alone in his mother’s apartment. A gaping hole opened in the pit of his stomach, the very same one that had appeared every time he’d had to scramble out of bed and track down his mother in one of the neighbourhood bars.
Not the same thing, damn it.
Zelda had been fragile, mentally and physically, and a chronic alcoholic. Catherine Smith was none of those things.
But still the gaping hole refused to disappear as he marched down the walkway towards the palace’s stables.
He had to get her back before she got hurt, or worse.
‘Why wasn’t I told about this sooner?’ Zane demanded, channelling the old fear into anger at his major-domo.
‘I am sorry, Your Divine Majesty,’ Ravi panted, breathing heavily as he raced to keep up with Zane.
‘Get me a robe and have Pegasus saddled,’ he shouted at one of the stable boys as he arrived in the equine palace, the comforting scent of hay and manure doing nothing to stem the fear gripping his insides.
‘Your Excellency? There is no need for you to venture o-out...’ Ravi stammered. ‘I have the palace guard ready to search the marketplace on your orders.’
‘I’ll lead the search party,’ he said.
Ravi returned with his robe. Zane shrugged it on, then took the keffiyeh. Securing the traditional headscarf with an agal rope, he covered his mouth and nose. It was almost noon, so it would be a hot dusty ride in searing heat. But he’d be damned if he’d let the palace guard conduct the search without him.
Pegasus arrived, stamping his hooves, his nostrils flaring as he shook his head against the bridle. Taking the reins from the stable boy, Zane grabbed the pommel on the horse’s saddle, stuck his boot into the stirrup and leapt onto the highly strung stallion as the horse charged out of the yard.
The hooves of the guards’ horses clattered behind him as the palace gates were rolled open.
The sun blinded him as Pegasus flew out of the grounds, and past the palace’s walls. The horse took the unpaved road down towards Zahari. People scattered, many dropping to their knees as they recognised him and his guards.
As they approached the labyrinth of streets leading to the old town and the women’s spice market, the colourful silks on the clothing stalls waving like flags, anger rose up to cover the gaping hole.
When he found Catherine, she was going to feel the full force of his fury, for defying his orders. And putting herself in unnecessary danger.
If he found her.
‘She says Tariq was a cruel Sheikh.’ Kasia relayed the information in English as Cat nodded, scribbling on the notepad she’d brought with her.
They had been at the market for over two hours, she’d taken photos of the amazing sights and sounds, had absorbed the workings of the place and revelled in the chance to finally see a side of Narabian society without close supervision. But speaking to Nazarin, an elderly stallholder, was the first opportunity she’d had to talk to anyone specifically about Tariq Ali Nawari Khan’s forty-year reign.
Nazarin’s hands were gnarled and stained from years spent dying cloth to sell at the market. Her accent had been far too thick for Cat to decipher, but with Kasia’s translation help she had been a font of knowledge about the Nawari family thanks to her experiences going to the palace to deliver cloth.
‘She says he was very cruel to his son,’ Kasia added.
Cat’s head jerked up from her notes. ‘Are you talking about Zane?’ she said in Narabi to Nazarin.
The woman stared for a moment, obviously taken aback by the informal address. Then she nodded and rushed off a torrent of words, but the guttural inflections were impossible for Cat to understand.
She had to wait patiently for Kasia to finish listening to the woman’s words. Eventually her friend turned to Cat, her eyes round with shock. ‘She says, yes, the new Sheikh. The one from America. When the boy came to the palace, she says he tried many times to escape and he was punished harshly for this disobedience.’
‘Punished? How?’ Cat whispered, shocked. Why had Zane tried to escape? Had he been brought to Narabia against his will?
Cat had wondered about the circumstances of his mother’s decision to give up custody of her son. Zelda Mayhew Khan had fled Narabia not long after Zane’s birth and taken him with her—the fairy-tale romance with the Sheikh obviously not living up to the media hype. The actress had never spoken publicly about her marriage and it seemed once she had faded from the public eye, she’d struggled to find work and had a string of arrests for DUIs and disorderly conduct when Zane was in his teens. So it had made sense Zane’s father had assumed custody, but Cat had never been able to find a formal custody agreement—or a court order declaring Zelda an unfit mother—during her initial research. And she had wondered what it must have been like for a teenage boy, who had probably had minimal supervision while living with his mother, to suddenly find himself in a place like Narabia, where the customs and culture were a lot more constrained... But she hadn’t suspected anything like this.
She was trying to formulate a question, keen to discover more about Zane’s relationship with his father, when one of Nazarin’s teenage granddaughters rushed into the tiny room at the back of her shop where they were talking.
‘You must leave—the Sheikh, he comes on horseback with his men,’ she beseeched Kasia and Cat in the native language.
‘We