The Sheikh's Jewel (7 page)

‘Do you even think either of them knows we’re gone?’ she asked, hating the piteous note in her voice, pleading for reassurance.

Harun sighed. ‘I don’t know. Alim’s got so much on his mind at the moment. We walked out saying we weren’t staying. I think he’ll assume we left, possibly to talk out our troubles, patch up our marriage.’

I wish we had. Why didn’t you want that?
she almost blurted, but there were far greater necessities to talk about right now. She looked down again, frowning. ‘Why are our hands tied, but not our feet? Why aren’t we gagged?’

He moved his hands, and she felt a finger caress the back of hers. ‘Maybe someone wants us to talk?’ he suggested, his eyes glimmering.

Her mouth opened and closed. The surprise of his making a joke was too complete for her to quite believe in it. ‘Oh, I wish,’ she retorted at last, rolling her eyes. ‘Perhaps they could make you talk to me if they repeatedly used an electric prod—you know, those things that shock animals?’

He grinned at her, and it relaxed his austere handsomeness, making her catch her breath. ‘Do you think it’s worth a try?’

Choking back a giggle, she fixed a stern expression in her eyes. ‘Can you please be serious? How can we get out of here?’ She bit her lip.

His eyes sobered. ‘I don’t think they need to gag us, Amber. We’re at least five storeys up. The walls are thick, and the nearest buildings are a hundred metres or more away. There are guards posted outside the doors and at every building through the windows, and they’ll be very hard of hearing. I doubt that any amount of screaming will bring help.’

Absurd to feel such warmth from the motion of one of his fingers when they’d been abducted and could be dead by nightfall, but right now she’d take whatever comfort she could get. ‘You’ve already looked?’

He nodded, his face tight. ‘There’s no way out of here until they let us out. This abduction’s been perfectly planned.’

‘Do you think anyone’s looking for us yet?’ she asked almost piteously, hating to hear the word.
Abduction.
It made her feel so powerless.

He gave that tiny shrug she’d always hated, but this time she sensed it was less a brush-off than an attempt to reassure her. ‘That depends on how clever our abductors have been, and what they heard us saying beforehand.’

She frowned. ‘What could they have heard us say?’

He just looked at her, waiting for her to remember—and after a few moments, it struck her. In her need to push Harun into action of some kind, she’d stated her intention to divorce him, where a dozen servants or any palace or government servant could have heard. She’d shown her contempt for the existing laws and traditions. Any traditional man would have been shocked.

She closed her eyes. By coming to her room to discuss their problems instead of punishing her in front of Alim, Harun had treated her with the utmost respect. But she’d given him none. She’d ploughed ahead with her shocking announcement, thinking only of humiliating Harun in a public place to spur him into some kind of action. She’d thought only of herself, her needs—and now they both had to endure the consequences.

‘I’m sorry, Harun,’ she whispered. ‘This is all my fault.’

‘Let’s not waste time pushing blame at each other or on ourselves, when we don’t know what’s going on.’ Softly, almost hypnotically, his fingers caressed hers. ‘Playing that kind of game won’t help either of us now. We need to keep our minds clear, and work together.’

Her head was on his shoulder before she knew she’d moved. Or maybe he had, too. Either way she rested her head halfway between his shoulder and chest, hearing him breathe, drinking it in. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

She smiled up at him. ‘A more insecure man would have wasted an hour lecturing me on my unfeminine behaviour, on my presumption in challenging you in the first place, where others could hear. A less intelligent man would blame our situation totally on me. A man who felt his masculinity challenged might have beaten me into submission.’

He smiled—no, he grinned back. ‘I never even thought of it. Whatever made you think I wanted a wishy-washy kind of wife?’

In all this time, I’ve never seen him smile like that.

Had she seen him smile at all, apart from the practised one for the cameras?

Maybe he knew she needed distraction from this intense situation, as weird as it was terrifying; but Harun was providing distraction and reassurance in a way she never would have expected—at least from him.

Was this why his men had followed him into battle with such blind ferocity? Had he made them feel they could survive anything, too?

Whether it was real or a trick, she had no desire to argue with him. Right now, he was all she had, just as she was all he had—and the thought of losing this smiling man, teasing and caressing her hand, was unbearable. ‘Well, maybe if you’d talked to me about what kind of wife you did want, I could answer that,’ she replied, but in a light, fun tone, ‘but right now I’m rather clueless.’

At that, he chuckled. ‘Yes, you’re not the only one who’s told me that I keep a little too much to myself.’

Fascinated, she stared at his mouth. ‘In all this time, I’ve never heard you laugh.’

She half expected him to make a cool retort—but instead one end of his mouth quirked higher. ‘You think it took being abducted for me to show my true colours? Maybe, if you like it, you can arrange for it to happen on a regular basis.’

She was in the middle of laughter before she realised it. The look, the self-deprecating humour, set off a strange feeling low in her belly, a cross between muted terror and an inexplicable, badly timed hunger. ‘How can you be so serious all the time when everything is safe and normal, and be this…this
charming
man now, when we might—?’ To her horror, she couldn’t go on, as a lump burned its way up her throat and tears prickled behind her eyes.

‘Well, you see, I’m trying to distract myself from a horrendous itch on my back that I can’t scratch.’ He lifted up his bound hands.

Even though it was delivered deadpan, it made her laugh again. If he’d spent all those years before being too serious, now it seemed she couldn’t make him become so. And she knew he’d done it to distract her. His thoughtfulness in this terrifying situation touched her. ‘I could do it for you,’ she offered, gulping away the painful lump in her throat. ‘Roll over.’

He did, and her breath caught in her throat as she realised anew that he was naked from the waist up. She looked at the wealth of revealed man, unseen in three years. He didn’t have time for extensive workouts, but he was toned and a natural deep brown, with broad shoulders and a muscular chest and back.

‘Where?’ she asked, fighting to keep the huskiness out of her voice. It was the first time she’d touch his body, and it was for a stupid itch.

‘Beneath my left shoulder blade.’ He sounded odd, as if his throat was constricted, but when she scratched the area for him, using both hands at once since they were both there, he moved so her fingers covered a wider amount of skin. ‘I don’t remember anything ever feeling so good,’ he groaned. ‘You have magic hands, Amber. How about you? Is there anywhere you can’t reach that needs scratching?’

Yes, my curiosity as to why you never talked to me before now, why you never wanted anything but to hurt and humiliate me until now—when we could die at any moment.
‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?’ she murmured, aiming for the light tone of moments before, but she was too busy fighting her fingers, aching to turn the scratch into a caress, to feel his body.

‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, and now he was the one that sounded husky. ‘I’ll scratch any itch you need me to. You only need to ask, Amber.’

Her breath snagged in her chest. Her rebel eyes lifted to his face as he rolled back to her, and his awkward, tied movements brought him far closer to her than he’d ever been. His thighs were against hers, and his eyes were nearly black as his gaze slowly roamed her silk-clad form, and lifted to her mouth. She’d never seen a man’s desire before, and it felt like sunlight touching her after a long, black Arctic winter. ‘Harun,’ she whispered, but no sound emerged from her. Her body moved towards him, and her face lifted as his lowered…

Then Harun rolled away from her, hard and fast, and she felt sick with anger and disappointment.

CHAPTER SIX

A
T
LEAST
Amber felt sick until she realised Harun was shielding her with his body. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded in a hard tone. ‘I heard the door open. Show yourself!’ He’d blocked her effectively from seeing the door, and whoever stood there couldn’t see her, either.

She tugged fast at the peignoir, but realised that trying to cover herself with this thin bit of nothing was a useless exercise.

A man walked around the curtain, his bare feet swishing on the old woven rug. He was dressed in anonymous Arabic clothing the colour of sand, most of his face swathed in a scarf. Without a word he bowed to them both, an incongruous gesture, and ridiculous in their current setting. Then, covering Amber’s scantily clad body with the sheet first, his eyes trained away, he used a thin knife to untie her, and then Harun. When Harun was free the man waved to the small dining table by the window, which had two trays filled with food and drink, and bowed again.

Harun leaped to his feet the second he was untied, but the man lifted a strong hand, in clear warning against trying anything. He clapped, and two guards came around the curtains, armed with machine guns. Both guards had the weapons aiming directly at Harun.

Amber balled her hands into fists at her sides, instead of holding them to her mouth. If they knew she wanted to be sick at the sight of the weapons trained on Harun, they’d know their power over her.

If Harun felt any fear he wasn’t showing it. ‘What is this?’ he demanded, and his voice was hard with command. ‘Where are we, and what do you want with us?’

The man only kept his hand up. His eyes were blank.

‘So you’re a minion, paid to look anonymous,’ Harun taunted. ‘You can stay silent so I don’t know your dialect, but the money you’re hoping for will never be of use to you or your families.’

In answer, the man moved around the room. He pointed to one possible escape route after another, opening doors, lifting curtains to show them what lay beyond.

Armed guards stood at the door, and at each flat building roof facing a window, holding assault weapons trained on them.

Amber scrambled to her feet and, clutching the sheet, shrank behind Harun, who suddenly seemed far bigger than before, far more solid and welcoming. ‘Those men are snipers, Harun,’ she whispered. Allah help them, they were surrounded by snipers.

‘Don’t think about it. They’re probably not even loaded,’ Harun whispered in her ear. He kept his gaze on the guard, hard and unforgiving as he said aloud, ‘I promise you, Amber, we’ll get out of this safely.’ He flicked the man a glance. ‘These men know who we are. They won’t take any risks with us, because we mean money. The cowards hiding behind them are obviously too scared to risk dealing with us themselves.’

The guard’s eyes seemed to smile, but they held something akin to real respect. He bowed one final time, and left the room. A deep, hollow
boom
sound followed moments later.

The door wasn’t simply locked. They’d put a bar across it.

Amber shivered. ‘That was—unnerving.’ Hardly knowing it, she reached out to him with a hand that shook slightly. Right now she was too terrified to remember it was weak to need anyone else’s reassurance.

His hand found hers, and the warm clasp was filled with strength. ‘It was meant to paralyse us into instant obedience,’ he said, in equal quiet, but anger vibrating through each syllable. ‘Remember, we’re their bankroll. This is all a game to them. They won’t hurt us, Amber. They need us alive.’

‘So why surround us with snipers?’ She shivered, drawing closer. ‘Why put us in the middle of nowhere like this? How can we be such a threat?’

After a short hesitation, he took her in his arms. ‘The Shabbat war,’ he said quietly.

He said no more, made no reference to his heroic acts three years ago—he never had spoken about it, or referred to his title,
the beloved tiger.
But his acts were the stuff of legend now, and the stories had grown to Alexander-like proportions during the past few years. The people of Abbas al-Din felt safe with Harun as their sheikh. ‘You mean they’re afraid of what you’ll do?’

‘Thus far it seems there’s nothing
to
do.’ He made a sound of disgust. ‘They want us to believe they’re prepared for every contingency, but even the guard’s silence tells me something. They don’t want us to know where we are. They know if he’d spoken, I might have known his nationality and sub-tribe through the local dialect.’

She frowned, looking up at him, glad of the distraction. ‘Why would you know his nationality or tribe or dialect?’

His voice darkened still further. ‘Whoever took us knows that I have a background in linguistics, and that I know almost every Arabic sub-dialect.’

‘Oh.’ Another cold slither ran down her back, even as she wondered what he’d studied at university, and why she’d never thought to ask. ‘I think I’d like to eat now.’

‘Amber, wait.’ He held her back by trapping her in his arms.

More unnerved by the events of the last hour than she wanted to admit, she glared at him. ‘Why should I? I’m hungry.’

He said softly, ‘You’ve been unconscious for hours, and you haven’t eaten in a day. You came around the bed in fear, but your legs might not support you any further.’

So have you,
she wanted to say but didn’t.
I can stand alone,
her pride wanted her to state, but, again, she couldn’t make herself say it, because more unexpected depths of the man she’d married were being revealed with every passing moment. And, to her chagrin, she found her legs weren’t as steady as she’d believed; she swayed, and he lifted her in his arms.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. It was another first for them, and the poignant irony of why he held her this way slammed into her with full force.

‘Come, you should eat, and probably drink.’ He seated her on one of the chairs. ‘But let me go first.’ This time she merely frowned at the impolite assertion. With a weary smile, he again spoke very softly. ‘I don’t think your body can take any more drugging, Amber. You slept hours longer than I did, and you’re still shaking. Let me see if the food is all right.’

Touched again by this new display of caring for her, Amber tried to smile at him, but no words came. Right now, she didn’t know if the non-stop quivering of her body was because of the drugging, or because he was being so considerate…and so close to her, smiling at her at last. Or because—because—

‘I’ve been abducted,’ she said. She meant it to come out hard, but it was a shaky whisper. But at least she’d said it. The reality had been slammed into her with the guards’ entrance. There was no point in any form of denial.

‘Don’t think about it.’ His voice was gentle but strong. ‘You need time to adjust.’

Grateful for his understanding, she nodded.

After making a small wince she didn’t understand, he tried the water, swilling it around in his mouth. ‘No odd taste, no reaction in my gums or stinging in the bite-cut I just made in my inner cheek. I think it’s safe to drink.’ He poured her a glass. ‘Sip it slowly, Amber, in case it makes you nauseous.’

She stared at him, touched anew. He’d cut himself to protect her. He’d shielded her from the guard. He’d carried her to the table. The Habib Numara she’d heard so much of but had never seen was here with her, for her.

‘How do you know about the effects of being drugged?’ she asked after a sip, and her stomach churned. She put down the glass with a trembling hand. ‘Were you a kidnapper before you were a sheikh?’

Her would-be teasing tone fell flat, but he didn’t seem to care. He kept smiling and replied, ‘Well, I know about dehydration, and you’ve been a long time without fluids. When I did a stint in the desert, it affected me far more than it should for a boy of nineteen. The next time, during the Shabbat war, I knew better.’

Curiosity overcame the nausea. She tilted her head. ‘What were you doing in the desert at nineteen? Was it for the Armed Forces?’

‘No.’ He lifted the darker fluid out of the ice bucket and poured it in his glass. When he’d sipped at it, swilling it as he had the water before swallowing, he poured her a glass. ‘I was in Yemen, at a dig for a month. There was a fantastic
tell
there that seemed as if it might hold another palace that might have dated back to the time of the Queen of Sheba. Sip the water again now, Amber. Taking a sip every thirty seconds or so will accustom your stomach to the fluid and raise your blood pressure slowly, and hopefully stop the feeling of disorientation. I’ll give you some iced tea as soon as I know you can tolerate it.’

‘Why were you at a dig?’ she asked before she sipped at the water, just to show her determination and strength to him. She didn’t want him to think she was weak because she needed his help now.

He looked surprised. ‘You didn’t know? I assumed your father would have told you. I studied Middle Eastern history with an emphasis on archaeology. That’s why I minored in linguistics, especially ancient dialects—I wanted to be able to translate any cuneiform tablets I found, scrolls with intimate family details, or even the daily accounts.’

She blinked, taken aback. Her lips fell open as eager questions burst from her mouth. ‘You can read cuneiform tablets? In what languages? Have you read any of the Gilgamesh epic in its original form, or any of the accounts of the Trojan wars?’

‘Yes, I can.’ His brows lifted. ‘What do you know about the Gilgamesh epic?’

She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. ‘I learned a little from my tutors during my school years, and I read about it whenever it comes up in the
Gods and Graves
journal.’

It was his turn to do a double take. ‘Where do you get the journals? Have you been in my room?’

She shrugged, feeling oddly shy about it. ‘I’m a subscriber. I have been for years.’ She hesitated before she added, ‘I can’t wait for it to arrive every month.’

‘You know you can get it online now?’ He looked oddly boyish as he asked it, his eyes alight with eagerness.

‘Oh, yes, but I like to
feel
it in my hands, see the things again and again by flipping the pages—you know? And the magazine is shinier than printing it up myself. The pages last longer, through more re-reads.’

‘Yes, that’s why I still subscribe, too.’

They smiled at each other, like a boy and girl meeting at a party for the first time. Feeling their way on unfamiliar yet exciting ground.

‘When do you find time to read them, with all you have to do?’

‘Late at night, before I sleep,’ he said, with the air of confession. ‘I have a small night light beside the bed.’

‘Me too—I don’t want the servants coming in, asking if they can serve me. I just want to read in peace.’

‘Exactly.’ He looked years younger now, and just looking into that eager blaze of joy in his eyes sent a thrill through her. ‘It’s my time to be myself.’

‘Me too,’ she said again, amazed and so happy to find this thing in common. ‘What’s your favourite period of study?’

He chuckled. ‘I’d love to know who the Amalekites were, where they lived, and why they disappeared.’

Mystified, she demanded, ‘Who? I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Few people have. They were a nomadic people, savage and yet leaving no records except through those they attacked.
Gods and Graves
did a series on them years ago—probably before you subscribed—and I used to try to find references to them in my years of university. I have notes in my room at home, and the series, if you’d like to read about them.’

‘You’d really share your notes with me? I’d
love
to,’ she added quickly, in case he changed his mind. ‘Did you always want to be an archaeologist?’

He shrugged and nodded. ‘I always loved learning about history, in any part of the world. Fadi planned for me to use it to help Abbas al-Din. He thought Alim and I could use our knowledge in different ways. Alim, the scientist and driver, would be the way of the future, bringing needed funds to the nation, and exploring environmentally friendly ways to use our resources rather than blindly handing contracts to oil companies. I would delve into our past and uncover its secrets. Abbas al-Din has had very little done in the way of archaeology because my great-great grandfather banned it after something was found that seemed to shame our ancestors.’ He grinned then. ‘When I told Fadi what I wanted to do, he gave me carte blanche on our country’s past. He thought it would be good for one of the royal family to be the one to make the discoveries, and not hide any, shall we say, inconvenient finds. After the dig at Yemen, I organised one in the Mumadi Desert to the west of Sar Abbas, since Fadi didn’t want me to leave the country again—but it turned out that I couldn’t go.’

As he bowed his head in brief thanks for the food, and picked up a knife and fork to try the salad, she watched him with unwilling fascination. She didn’t want to ruin the mood by asking why he hadn’t gone that time, or why he hadn’t taken it up as a career. She knew the answer: Alim’s public life had chained Harun to home, helping Fadi for years. Then Fadi’s death and Alim’s desertion had foisted upon him more than just an unwanted wife.

He nodded at the salad, and served her a small helping. ‘I think everything is okay to eat. The most likely source for drugging is in the fluids.’

After she’d given her own thanks, she couldn’t help asking, ‘So you keep up with it?’

‘Apart from subscribing to all the magazines, I have a collection of books in my room, which I read whenever I have time. I keep up with the latest finds posted on the Net. I fund what digs I can from my private account.’

‘It must be hard to love something so much, to fund all those digs you fund, and not be able to be there,’ she said softly.

His face closed off for long moments, and she thought he might give her that shrug she hated. Then, slowly, he did—but it didn’t feel like a brush-off. ‘There’s no point in wanting what you can’t have, is there?’

But he did. The look of self-denial in those amazing eyes was more poignant than any complaint. She ached for him, this stranger husband who’d had to live for others for so many years. Would he ever be able to find his own life, to have time to just
be?