Malik held up a hand for silence and immediately the raised voices fell quiet. He was developing a headache and he felt like they’d been cooped up in the mediation room all afternoon. As Sheikh it was his job to rule on all land disputes and intertribal quarrels in Huria. The kingdom was not huge, but the people were largely nomadic and had differing views of possession and ownership, which made disputes such as these very difficult.
The head of the Banjeree people opened his mouth to speak again, but Malik silenced him with a stern look. He’d heard enough. It was the age-old argument that the land belonged to nature and therefore the tribe should be allowed to wander anywhere to pitch their sturdy tents and take what they needed from the roaming livestock.
‘Talid,’ Malik said, addressing the head of the Banjeree people, ‘you are right that this land of ours is a gift from nature. We need to nurture it and give back exactly what we take, otherwise we will be left with nothing.’
He turned to the other supplicant, a successful farmer who didn’t like having his goats eaten by the Banjeree people, quite understandably.
‘I also agree with your opinion, Yusuf,’ Malik said in a conciliatory tone. ‘You work hard to build a successful business and feel it is unfair when your land is used and your livestock taken.’
‘They are not his livestock,’ Talid said.
Malik frowned at him and the nomad fell silent.
‘This is what will happen. Yusuf, you will allow the Banjeree to pitch their tents on your land, but only in places you are not currently using to grow crops or rear livestock. Talid, you will not allow your people to take anything from Yusuf’s land. There is plenty of countryside and wildlife that belongs only to the population of Huria as a whole, there is no need to destroy this man’s hard-built business.’
Both men looked as if they were about to argue, but Malik dismissed them before anything further could be said. It had been a long afternoon.
When the two men had left Malik stretched out on his adorned chair and glanced out of the window. He could hear giggles of pleasure coming from the kitchen where Miss Talbot had taken his children for an afternoon out of the classroom. He remembered her invitation and for a second he was tempted to go and join them, but something made him hesitate.
She was a little minx, his children’s new governess. She was clever and quick with her words and far too attractive to make Malik feel comfortable. When she had pulled him into the alcove earlier to discuss Ameera and how they would deal with her she had been spitting fire. He liked how protective of his children she had become in two weeks and, although he had been annoyed, too, he had been able to admire the self-confident way she had dealt with him. Many people could not even look him in the eye when they spoke, but Miss Talbot always fixed him with a look that told him he would listen or there would be hell to pay.
She’d been right about Ameera, too—he had blundered in and made things worse, given her bad behaviour attention when it just needed to be ignored. Malik wasn’t used to admitting he was wrong, he hardly ever had to do it, but he could see Miss Talbot’s methods would work with Ameera, at least better than any of the previous tutors’ had.
He almost stood, almost strode from the room and went to join his children in the kitchen for whatever lesson their governess had in store, but something made him hesitate. Of course he didn’t approve of her taking them out of the classroom all the time, but he did have to admit Hakim was becoming a little more confident and Aahil a little less serious under her care. The problem wasn’t with the location of the lesson, or the content, but with Miss Talbot herself.
When they’d stood in the alcove, so close he could have reached out and pulled her towards him, he’d wanted to do exactly that. He’d wanted to wrap his arms around her, pull her close and see what those lips that were always smiling tasted like. It had been a momentary urge, but momentary was long enough for Malik to know it was unwise on so many levels.
Malik hadn’t felt desire like that for years. All the time he had been married to Aliyyah he had, of course, visited her bedroom, but for them both it had been a matter of duty, the need to produce children and heirs. There had been no desire involved. Before Aliyyah, whilst Malik had been studying in Europe, there had been a couple of women he’d been intimate with, but he struggled to remember such fire and passion even with them. And since Aliyyah’s death Malik knew he had been a little numb, not from grief—his wife had been so distant throughout their entire marriage her death was like losing a stranger—but from guilt. He could have saved her; if he’d just been more perceptive he could have saved her. Standing in that alcove with Miss Talbot, Malik had felt as though he’d woken up from a year-long slumber.
Telling himself it had just been a one-off, an anomaly, Malik stood. He would not be kept from doing what he wanted by a trifling emotion like desire. He would admire Miss Talbot’s talents as a governess and her knack for making his children come alive again, but he would not desire her. It was all a matter of self-control.
Quickly Malik walked across the courtyard and stepped into the kitchen. It was chaos. For a moment he thought about quietly backing out and leaving them to it, but then Hakim spotted him and Malik was rewarded with a shy smile. He steeled himself and stepped into the disorder.
‘Your Majesty,’ Miss Talbot said as she spotted him, ‘I’m so glad you could join us.’
Both of his sons spared him a quick glance and then plunged back into the mess on the counter.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We’re making biscuits,’ Aahil said, kneading caramel-coloured dough on the surface.
Malik just stared for a second. He’d become so used to his eldest son acting like a man he’d nearly forgotten he was still a child. Standing in front of him, covered in flour with a stray bit of dough on his chin, Aahil looked like the boy he was.
‘Biscuits?’
‘Today I’m teaching the children to make English biscuits, and next week, if Cook kindly lets us take over his kitchen again, we will make something Hurian.’
Malik leant against one of the counters as he watched Miss Talbot instruct his two sons on how to roll out the dough and then cut the biscuits into the shapes they wanted.
‘When I was at school in England I often used to beg our cook to let me take over a small corner of the kitchen so I could make a cake or a tray of biscuits,’ Miss Talbot chatted easily to the children as they worked. It was a surprisingly comforting domestic scene, his two sons covered in flour and busy rolling out dough whilst Miss Talbot oversaw them.
‘Where is Ameera?’ Malik asked.
‘In her room. You told her she could not come out until she apologised and, as of yet, she hasn’t apologised.’
Malik felt a sudden warmth towards the young woman in front of him. Earlier that morning he had undermined her and tried to discipline his daughter himself. Now he realised he had gone about it all the wrong way, but Miss Talbot had not acted against him and allowed Ameera to get away with not apologising. She had let his method go ahead, even if she did not agree with it in principle.
Whilst the two boys were busy cutting out different shapes the governess moved over to where he was standing. In the kitchen full of the smells of baking Malik thought he could still detect Miss Talbot’s own scent, a mixture of rose and lavender, a very feminine and English smell.
‘Once the biscuits are in the oven and the smell of baking is wafting out into the courtyard I thought I might go and see Ameera,’ she said softly. ‘Let her know she only needs to apologise and she can come and sample the biscuits with us.’
Malik nodded his approval. He wished he knew how to deal with his children the way Miss Talbot did. It seemed to come naturally to her, like running the kingdom did to him. He thought back to his father and