‘Because I am not a poor and humble servant girl, Your Highness.’ Eleni sucked in a deep breath. ‘I am actually the daughter of your host, Gamal.’
His daughter? Kaliq’s jaw tightened with disbelief. ‘So what was that charade I have just witnessed in there with you waiting on me?’ he demanded, his eyes searing over her with scorn. ‘And did you dress dowdily to make yourself look like a servant?’
Eleni said nothing for she would rather die than admit these were her normal clothes.
‘Did you beg your father for the privilege of waiting on one such as your sheikh?’ he queried arrogantly. ‘Did you wish to feast your eyes on a true man for once?’
Never in all her days had Eleni heard such an outrageous example of self-love. And no matter what his position in society—he had no right to cast doubts on her integrity and her purity as a woman.
‘No, Highness, I did not,’ she replied, staring angrily at the ground. ‘For such behaviour would not be fitting.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because—’
‘Look at me!’ he demanded. ‘When you speak to me.’
Slowly, she lifted her eyes, feeling as if she were struggling to free herself from a heavy weight which had been pressing down on her—for how could you suddenly abandon a lifetime’s teaching in one instant? To abandon the demureness which was drummed into every female and to stare into the face of one of the mightiest and most daunting in the land. But what choice did she have? ‘As you wish, Your Highness,’ she said reluctantly.
Kaliq found himself sucking in a deep breath as she obeyed him. He would never normally have told a woman to look at him and particularly not a woman such as this, but wasn’t there some inexplicable and insistent yearning to grant himself one more look at those incredible eyes? Like a man who had been given a fleeting glimpse of paradise and wanted reassurance that he had not simply imagined it…
He expelled the breath from a throat which suddenly felt dry and scorched as the light from the lamp illuminated the glittering eyes. They were the most remarkable hue he had ever seen—pale green as the strange colour which streaked the arctic skies and which were called the Northern Lights.
‘Explain to me your motives for pretending to be Gamal’s servant instead of his daughter,’ he said, and for a moment his voice was almost kind.
There was a pause. Their lives were so different—would he understand, even if she attempted to explain? ‘We do not keep many servants,’ admitted Eleni shamefacedly—for was not a family’s worth assessed by the volume of staff they employed?
‘Oh? And why is that?’
Was he deliberately wishing to make her squirm? Couldn’t he work out the reason for himself without her having to draw the words on the sand for him? What a cruel and arrogant man he was. ‘It is a question of finance, Highness,’ she said proudly.
‘Is it now?’ Kaliq wondered softly as he looked around him. Although in need of work and renovation, the stables were a good size, as was the living accommodation. He suspected that there had once been money enough for servants, but that Gamal had drunk and gambled most of it away.
He moved a step closer towards her and Eleni was suddenly aware of the raw and potent aura of his masculinity and her heart began to thunder with fear, and with something else, too—something terrifying and unrecognisable.
‘So what are you doing here?’ he questioned. ‘Why did I find you with your arms around my horse, and looking so guilty?’
It almost broke Eleni’s heart to hear that drawled and possessive question. My horse, he had said—and he spoke nothing but the truth. For Nabat was his horse—given up as a prize in a common game of poker! And soon he would be gone to a life of luxury in one of the royal stables and she would never see him again. Couldn’t he—even if he had a lump of stone for a heart—guess how much she was hurting at the thought of having to say goodbye to the only thing in the world that she loved?
The words burst out of her mouth as if she had no control over them. ‘I could not bear the thought of being without my… your horse,’ she corrected painfully. ‘And so I concocted a plan to ensure that I wouldn’t need to be.’
At this, Kaliq’s lips curved into an indulgent smile. ‘Oh? And do you want to tell me what your plan is, little lizard?’
She hated his sardonic tone, the mocking expression in those dark and glittering eyes, and she hated the way he had looked her up and down, as if she were some invisible lump of rags.
‘I was going to hide myself away—so that when you came to take him away, you would have to take me, as well,’ she told him, her brittle words daring him to taunt her, but to her surprise he did not—merely narrowed his eyes in thought as if she had said something entirely unexpected.
‘You do not think that you would have been discovered? That one of the palace guards would not have found you out and driven a sword through your heart, thinking that you might be about to make an assassination attempt on my life?’
She remembered him making her taste his juice in case it was poisoned and once again Eleni thought that, for all his wealth and power and status, his must be a very lonely and frightening position to be in sometimes.
‘I was not thinking of myself,’ she answered.
‘No. I can see that.’ He raised his hand to rake his fingers through his thick black hair and once again the horse gave a nervous whinny.
‘He doesn’t like men,’ said Eleni helpfully.
‘He will soon learn to like them.’
Eleni thought that he meant to use the whip, as her father had threatened to do so often. ‘And he doesn’t respond well to harsh treatment, either!’ she defended.
For a moment, Kaliq almost smiled. Standing there in her plain and dowdy clothes—barely higher than his chest—she nonetheless made him admire her courage. Few would have spoken to him with such candour and such passion unless it concerned wealth or ambition.
‘Horses are like women,’ he said softly. ‘And neither respond well to harsh treatment.’
And to Eleni’s horror she began to blush—from where her veil touched her scalp, all the way down to the tips of her toes. Not that blushing was a crime and nor was there anything in the protocol books which suggested that it might be discourteous, but to blush as a result of such a statement made it look… look… as if she were imagining how she would respond to the sheikh as a woman! And wasn’t she? Wasn’t she?
Now Kaliq did smile. ‘Do not worry, little lizard,’ he drawled. ‘You will be perfectly safe with me.’
The meaning behind his words was abundantly clear—even to someone of Eleni’s inexperience of the ways of men. Of course she—a humble girl from the country—would be safe from the attentions of the powerful and experienced sheikh. She would not have expected anything else. Yet stupidly and unexpectedly, it hurt—that he should be so openly dismissive of her. As if he would sooner cavort with one of the desert ravens than entertain the thought of being with a scruffy servant girl.
But Eleni forced herself to put such idle musings out of her mind. She suspected that he was mulling something over in his mind—something to do with Nabat, and perhaps to do with her, too. And something which she had thought had died many years ago began to flicker into life.
Hope.
Instinct told her to remain silent—as if her words might shatter possibility as she waited for the sheikh to speak.
‘You have nurtured the horse,’ observed Kaliq slowly.