But before she could ask him to elucidate, he picked up the lantern and guided her out of the well house, through the ruined garden to the front of the house, where a fire had been set but not lit. ‘We’ve done enough work for tonight. I can continue in the morning, provided I am careful.’
‘But what if you are discovered!’
‘I won’t be. Trust me,’ he said firmly. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
And he would do it, regardless of the risk. A dangerous man. A reckless man. Suddenly, she didn’t care why she was here with him, only that she was. ‘Very well, I shall place myself in your hands, whatever it is you have in mind,’ Tahira said.
His eyes blazed heat at her unwittingly suggestive words. The look he gave her made her blood heat, and made her wonder if the words had been so unwitting after all.
Then he gave himself a little shake, her a lopsided grin. ‘What I have in mind is rather mundane, to begin with. Food. Do you know how to light a fire? No, of course you don’t. One look at your hands tells me you are not of peasant stock.’
Tahira froze. ‘My family have a certain status,’ she said carefully.
‘Then let me show you.’ Hunkering down, indicating that she join him, Christopher handed her a long spill. ‘You can kindle this from the lantern. Light the straw and rushes first, then the—er—the fuel will catch.’
‘Fuel?’ She peered at it, wrinkling her nose. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s a reason why the Bedouins say that they would rather lose their wife than their camel,’ Christopher replied. ‘The ships of the desert aren’t just a means of getting from one place to the other, you know. They are most generous in their other offerings.’
Tahira eyed the smouldering fire. She took a tentative sniff and got a nose full of smoke for her trouble, but nothing more noxious. ‘You are teasing me?’
‘I think you must be teasing me. You surely can’t be so cloistered?’
She could feel herself colouring, and turned away. ‘It appears that I can. You must think me a fool.’
He forced her to turn around, pressing a kiss to her forehead. ‘I think you are extraordinary. And I think this fire is ready for cooking. Are you hungry?’
When she nodded, he smiled, reaching behind him for the rush basket which he had brought from the well house. ‘Desert hare,’ he said, skewering the jointed meat with practised ease, and rubbing it with a handful of delicately scented herbs, before setting it carefully over the fire. ‘There’s a surprising amount of them in this part of the desert.’
In the desert, men hunted with a hawk and a dog, she knew, but Christopher had neither. Had he a gun? She decided she didn’t want to know. The scent of roasting meat was making her mouth water. He placed some flatbreads made from flour, water and salt on a griddle to cook. They puffed up in a matter of seconds. A simple repast, the likes of which she had never eaten, the likes of which would most likely appal her fastidious sister-in-law. Which certainly added to its appeal. Tahira smiled to herself as she watched Christopher tend to their dinner, and settled down to enjoy the ritual of a fire, a meal, and the forbidden company of an extremely attractive man.
* * *
‘That was delicious,’ Tahira said some time later as they drank their refreshing mint tea. ‘Thank you so much for taking such trouble.’
‘It was no trouble,’ Christopher replied, which was not entirely a lie. Hunting for his dinner had become a way of life here in Arabia. Hunting something fit for Tahira to consume—yes, that had been a challenge, but one he’d enjoyed. ‘There’s no shortage of good hunting out there, if you know where to look,’ he said, making a sweeping gesture towards the desert.
‘I know. Sayeed, my pet sand cat, has brought me back many examples, though nothing so big as a hare.’
‘Sayeed, meaning hunter? He is well named then. I thought sand cats were feral creatures, hardly suitable as pets.’
‘Oh, they are, but I found Sayeed abandoned and half-dead when he was just a new-born kitten. I hand-reared him and nursed him back to health, and so he deigns to tolerate me.’ Tahira chuckled. ‘And only me. My sisters have learnt from bitter experience to give him a wide berth. He has a penchant for the vulnerable flesh of bare feet. One of his favourite games is to hide behind a divan and pounce on unsuspecting passers-by. Another is to clamber up on to my shoulder and to perch there imperiously. His claws are sharper than scimitar blades, they make short work of my clothing, let me tell you.’
‘But you let him out at night? I’m surprised he comes back in the morning.’
Tahira grimaced. ‘As I said, usually with a small and bloody sacrificial offering.’
‘You should be flattered.’
‘Oh, no, I think he merely chooses not to bite the hand that feeds him,’ Tahira said. ‘And the lure of a nice soft cushion to sleep off his night’s exertions.’
Or the lure of a delightful mistress, Christopher thought. Now that they were done with cooking, he had stoked the fire. The flames danced, casting light and shadows on to Tahira’s face. She was smiling softly to herself. Having discarded her riding boots, she sat cross-legged. Her feet were high-arched. Her toes were painted with a scarlet lacquer. He had never seen painted toe nails before. He had never before found toes arousing.
‘This Midas touch you have,’ Tahira said, interrupting his bemused study of her feet, ‘is that why you took up surveying?’
‘No, it was my interest in ancient sites which came first. I was raised near the city of Bath, which the Romans knew as Aquae Sulis for the hot springs which fed the ancient baths there. Though there is no trace of the original baths now, when I was a boy, we were surveying the River Avon for signs of ancient sewers, and I found a Roman coin there.’
‘Your first find! How wonderful. Mine was a mere shard of pottery, most likely from a cooking pot. Were you very young? Did you know what it was? Who did you imagine it belonged to? Do you have it still?’
Tahira’s eyes were alight with interest. Christopher smiled, taking the coin from the pouch where he kept it with the amulet, his smile broadening when she handled it reverently. ‘I was just a boy, five or six years old,’ he said, ‘so naturally I imagined it had belonged to a Roman centurion. Some brave, battle-hardened noble fellow in glittering armour, who saved all his emperor’s coins to send home to his family. The truth,’ he added ruefully, knowing as he did now, that baths and brothels were almost always built together, ‘was likely to have been rather different.’
‘And so you became a surveyor, because you wished to become an archaeologist?’
Christopher’s smile faded. ‘I became a surveyor because I had to earn a living, and because it happened to be the profession of the man who passed his love of the past on to me.’
‘The same man who was with you when you discovered the coin?’ Tahira asked brightly, handing it back to him. ‘You said we were surveying.’
‘Yes. Andrew Fordyce. The same one.’
‘A family friend?’
‘You could say that.’
A faint frown marred her forehead. His curt tone clearly confused her, but he couldn’t do anything about that as he stared down at the Roman coin and the memory of that long-ago, never-forgotten day assaulted him. They were both soaked through from paddling in the shallows of the river, their boots and stockings caked in mud. He recalled the excitement as his chubby fingers closed around the metal disc. ‘Mind now, it might be nothing,’ he’d been cautioned as he stooped to rinse the mud and grime away, whooping with glee as the ancient markings appeared. And then the proud smile, the pat on the back he’d