Sheikh's Mail-Order Bride (24 page)

‘I could,' Kadar said, sending Constance's heart plummeting. ‘If you did not want me, if I will not make you happy, I would live without you because your happiness matters to me more than anything. But I don't want to live without you, Constance. I love you.'

Now her heart was performing somersaults. She felt as if something inside her was unfolding, opening out, blazing with dazzling light. ‘You do?' she whispered.

‘I do,' Kadar said with such simple honesty that she could no longer doubt. ‘I love you with all my heart, and if you think...'

She threw her arms around him. ‘I don't think, I know. I love you so much. I love you, I love you, I have loved you for days and weeks and—and—and...'

Whatever she was going to say would be lost for ever, because his lips claimed hers. It was a kiss like no other, a kiss so full of heartfelt relief and tenderness and joy, that it sent her senses spinning. She kissed him back with utter abandon, allowing her mouth and her hands to say all the things she had been concealing, and he kissed her even more fervently in return, saying those most precious of words over and over.

Finally they stopped to breathe, staring into each other's eyes, dazzled and dazed. ‘I love you, Constance,' Kadar said. ‘From the moment you walked into this room, I wanted you. You fascinated me. You made me angry and you made me laugh. You saw through my words to my innermost thoughts, and when those thoughts were ill judged, you had the temerity, the boldness, the compassion and the persistence to correct them. You turned my world upside down, and then you set it the right way around again. You made me want to climb to the stars with you. You make me happier than I ever thought possible.'

‘Oh, Kadar.' She could barely speak for happiness. She needed new words to tell him how much she loved him, but there were no new words, and when she told him with just the three, she saw from his eyes that it was enough. ‘I love you,' she said again, wondering if she would ever tire of telling him.

‘And I love you too. So much.' His expression became serious. ‘But I want you to be happy, my darling Constance. I won't make you a prisoner of my love,' he said urgently. ‘I have thought about it, I promise you. You can continue in your role as court astronomer. You can create your magical map merging the skies with mythology. You can succeed Abdul-Majid as chief adviser if you so wish. Anything that makes you happy, I will make it so.'

‘Kadar!' She was laughing through her tears. ‘Kadar, all I need to make me happy is you. Not if you love me as I love you.'

‘I promise you, you will never have cause to doubt that.'

Love, naked blazing love was writ across his face. Constance pulled him to her. ‘Never,' she said, ‘I will never doubt it when you look at me like that.'

Kadar swept her into his arms. He pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I love you. I will always love you, as the stars are my witness. Will you marry me? Become my Princess and rule by my side?'

‘You want me to become a real princess? Rule an entire Arabian kingdom with you?

‘There is no one on the planet better qualified for the role, no one else I could contemplate sharing my kingdom, my life and my bed with. Say you will, Constance.'

She gazed up at the celestial dome he had created especially for her. She gazed into his eyes, dark with love for her. ‘Yes,' she said, with utter certainty, ‘I will marry you.'

When his lips met hers, their kiss was no longer tender. Passion flamed between them, blazing like the stars in the domed sky suspended above them. He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her neck, her throat. She pressed herself so tightly against him she could feel every ridge of bone, every contour of muscle, every inch of his arousal. Her skin tingled, her pulse raced, her breath was ragged. His touch was setting her on fire.

‘We can't,' she said, though her voice implied the contrary. ‘Not here.'

Panting, he tore his mouth from hers. Then he scooped her up and began to stride towards the door.

‘What are you doing?' Constance clung to him, torn between laughter and passion. ‘Where are we going?'

Kadar's smile was sinful. ‘To climb a ladder to the stars,' he said.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this story, make sure you don't miss the first book in Marguerite Kaye's
HOT ARABIAN NIGHTS
miniseries,

THE WIDOW AND THE SHEIKH
.

And watch out for two more books in
this sizzling series, coming soon!

Historical Note

M
y Twitter tag when writing this book was #geeksheikh, so for those of you so inclined here are some geeky historical facts.

HMS
Kent
, the ‘East Indiaman' ship on which Constance sailed, was a real vessel. She was built for the East India Company and launched in 1820, five years after I rather cruelly sent her to the bottom of the Arabian Sea. In my defence, the voyage to India was extremely precarious, and a great many of the Company's ships perished after two or three voyages.

The real
Kent
was on her third voyage, sailing to Bengal, when she went down in the Bay of Biscay, with roughly the same proportion of crew, soldiers and civilians on board as I've depicted, under the guidance of the same Captain Cobb, though sadly, with substantially greater loss of life.

Caroline and her brother William Herschel between them ‘mapped' considerable expanses of the northern skies, in the process discovering many new comets, stars and nebulae as well as, famously, the planet we now know as Uranus. The process required minute documentation of angles and timings, and in reality I'd imagine was pretty uncomfortable and a bit tedious.

I've kept Constance's scientific method for star-mapping deliberately vague, and doubtless made it completely unrealistic in the process. But she's avoided a bad back, her eyes aren't strained, causing her constant migraines, and she's not too exhausted to do anything other than sleep the day away. In other words this is a
romance
, and sometimes you just can't let reality intrude too much.

On saying that, Kadar's telescope
is
based on the one through which William Herschel first observed Uranus, and in fact he did manufacture telescopes for other people at his workshop in Slough, so he might well have made the one Kadar commissioned. And the anecdote about a comet being perceived to be an omen for a plague of sneezing sickness in cats is, astonishingly, true.

While the vast majority of the star-based legends which Constance and Kadar discuss are well documented, the legend of the sea people and the island of Koros are entirely the product of my own imagination. There are sea people mentioned in
One Thousand and One Nights
who can, unlike other mythical mermaids, walk and breathe on land, but the sea-siren aspect of the story came from tales told to me when I was a child of the selkies of the Western Isles—seals who shed their coats and lured the handsomest of the fishermen into the sea to their graves—and the mermaids with seaweed hair and a siren call, who sat on the rocks luring ships to a watery grave.

Finally, more prosaically, a quick word on Kadar's coronation—which, as the sharp-eyed among you might have noticed, is an ‘edited version' of the coronation in the first book in this series,
The Widow and the Sheikh.
That itself was a very much adapted version of a real coronation: that of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

As ever, there's a great deal more geeky stuff I could mention, and no doubt some geeky stuff I've got wrong. I'm always happy to be corrected, and equally happy to answer questions, so do look me up on Twitter or Facebook if you'd like to chat about any aspect of this book, or indeed the
Hot Arabian Nights
series.

Harlequin Presents® brings you a twenty-first century tale of seduction in the sands from
USA TODAY
bestselling author Susan Stephens!

Sheikh Shazim Al Q'Aqabi must resist his instant attraction to mysterious dancer Isla Sinclair for duty is Shazim's only mistress. Until Isla is revealed as the prize winner who will travel to the desert to work with him...making their chemistry impossible to ignore...

Read on for a sneak preview of

IN THE SHEIKH'S SERVICE

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In the Sheikh's Service

by Susan Stephens

 

I
sla bringing up the past had really thrown Shazim, but work had always been his salvation. Thankfully, there was no shortage of work to do. They were still at the watering hole where he was separating the pregnant ibexes from the rest of the herd, when Isla joined him. She acted as if nothing unusual had happened between them. That suited him. They'd get more done.

They worked side by side until the sun went down, and they worked on by moonlight. When the moon finally went behind a cloud, he called it a day.

‘That's it. We'll start again tomorrow.'

They walked back together to the tent, but he stopped when he reached the supplies he'd decanted from his saddlebags.

‘What are you doing?' Isla asked him.

‘Preparing to sleep beneath the stars...'

‘There's no need for that,' she said awkwardly as he rolled out his sleeping mat.

‘I could sleep on the floor of the tent,' he suggested tongue in cheek, ‘but I prefer to sleep out here.'

‘Then, so do I,' she blurted.

‘You?' He stared at her in astonishment. Even though she'd opened her heart to him, after her last brush with intimacy he had imagined Isla would want to forget being close to him. ‘No.' He shook his head. ‘You sleep under cover. You're not used to sleeping rough.'

‘You'd be surprised what I'm used to—'

He cursed beneath his breath as she disappeared inside the tent, and then stared at the sky and asked for patience when she returned loaded down with blankets and cushions.

‘Let me,' she said, dumping them on the ground so she could dip down to help him clear some rocks away. ‘I'm sorry,' she whispered, glancing up.

‘What are you sorry for?'

‘For loading my troubles onto you—can we start again?'

She took his silence for refusal. ‘Please?'

She came right up to him, and looked so young and sexy. ‘Better not,' he said.

‘But our working relationship's still okay?'

Her tone was anxious. ‘Nothing's changed,' he assured her. Bed made, he stood up.

‘Are you sure you're okay with that?' she asked, flashing a dubious glance at his bedroll.

‘Why wouldn't I be?'

Taking hold of her shoulders, he brought her in front of him. The fire he'd made to combat the chill of a desert night crackled on, while the moon beamed down benevolently. Everything was as it should be, but he still got the feeling that everything in his rigidly controlled life was about to change.

‘I think you'd rather be with me, in the tent,' she whispered.

‘Have you learned nothing?' he demanded, putting her away from him. Impatiently, he toed the cushions into place.

As she reached for him it became clear that she had not. And this time he'd call her bluff.

Catching hold of her hand, he bit her palm gently, and when she gasped out loud he drew one of her fingertips into his mouth.

The air between them was electric as Shazim drew her deeper into his erotic net. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply and shakily as he dipped his head to lightly brush her lips with his. His kiss was like a question: did she want to carry on? Her answer was yes, most certainly. This time she reached up and laced her fingers through his hair to keep him close. Her senses were full of him. He intoxicated her. He tasted of all things good. He smelled of wood smoke and sandalwood, and the delicate balance between her fear of physical love and the growing sense that she was safe with him reached tipping point. Realistically, she was in the greatest danger of her life. Shazim's destiny called him to greater things than a girl by a campfire in the desert. But she had no intention of spending the rest of her life wondering what a night with Shazim would be like.

Don't miss

IN THE SHEIKH'S SERVICE
by Susan Stephens,

available August 2016 wherever

Harlequin® Presents books and ebooks are sold.

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Copyright © 2016 by Susan Stephens

Keep reading for an excerpt from
MISS MARIANNE'S DISGRACE
by Georgie Lee.

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