Liz Fielding: Her Desert Dream

‘Maybe that wasn’t the most appropriate word,’ he said quickly. ‘Did you never consider a career as an actress?’

‘No.’

One minute they were laughing, the next they weren’t.

‘No more,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this any more, Kal. I shouldn’t be here. Rose shouldn’t be hiding and I shouldn’t be living a pretend life.’

‘No.’ Then, ‘You’ve stopped shivering.’

‘Nothing like tea for shock,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

‘Only for about a millisecond. Then I knew it was you.’

‘I was angry,’ he said.

Lydia swallowed, nodded. Of course he was angry. He’d been charged with protecting her-protecting Rose-and she had sneaked off the minute his back was turned.

‘You had every right,’ she said. ‘But you stuck around to look out for me, even when you knew I wasn’t Rose.’

Long after her momentary fear had been forgotten, she’d still feel his strong, protective arm as he’d held her against him. She recalled the warm scent of his skin.

She wouldn’t need a shell or anything else to remember that. Remember him.

‘So,’ she said, sensing the weight of unspoken words between them and, recalling his earlier tension, she repeated the question she’d asked him then, ‘what’s your problem, Kal? What aren’t you telling me?’

‘Not just lovely, not just cool under pressure and a loyal friend, but smart, too,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘You’re right, of course. I have a confession to make.’

‘You got me at lovely,’ she said. Then, because when a man needed to confess, it was never going to be good news, she summoned up all the flippancy at her command and said, ‘Don’t tell me. You’re married.’

No one would have guessed that, in the time it took him to answer, her heart had skipped a beat. Two. Maybe he was right. She should take up acting.

‘No, Lydia, I’m not married.’

‘Engaged?’ This time the pause was longer, but he shook his head.

‘That wasn’t totally convincing,’ she said.

‘I am not in a relationship of any kind.’

Better, but there was something he wasn’t telling her. Maybe if she shut up and let him get on with his ‘confession’ in his own way it would all become clear.

It took another half a dozen heartbeats before he said, ‘I want you to understand that Lucy was truly concerned for Rose. Her grandfather tried to talk her into withdrawing the invitation, said there had been a threat of some kind.’

‘A threat? What kind of threat?’ she asked, alarmed.

‘Lucy was certain there was nothing, that it was just a ploy to keep her under his control, but she had to do something to pacify the Duke so she told him that the Emir’s nephew would be in charge of his granddaughter’s security.’

‘That would be you. And he was happy with that?’

‘No, but he couldn’t object without offending the Emir.’

‘And what about the Emir? Wasn’t Lucy afraid of offending her father-in-law?’

‘She saved Hanif. She can get away with things that no one else would dare to. Even be my friend. My grandfather is dying, Lydia. He lives only to return to Ramal Hamrah to die in the house where he was born.’

Her hand found his and she squeezed it, knowing how much he loved the old man.

‘Lucy knew that Princess Sabirah would want to pay her respects to Rose and she seized the chance to put me where I could make a personal appeal to her, beg her to intercede with her husband.’

‘And?’

‘That first. Above everything…’

‘But, once he has been allowed home, you hope the rest will follow. That you can become a Khatib again. With everything that entails.’ His name, his title…

‘It is as if I have been cut off from half my life. I have the language, I have property here, can study the culture, the history, but without my family…’

The metaphorical clock struck twelve. Time for the coach to turn back into a pumpkin, for Cinderella to go back to the checkout and check out the alternatives to getting a cat. Maybe a rabbit or a guinea pig, she thought. Or half a dozen white mice. Just in case the fairy godmother ever dropped in again.

‘Not just your name, your title, but you want the ultimate prize of an arranged marriage to one of the precious daughters of a powerful Ramal Hamrahn family.’

His silence was all the answer she needed.

‘That was why you stopped.’ She swallowed. ‘Would not make love with me.’

‘Honour would not allow it,’ he agreed.

Honour. What a rare word, but this man who’d been raised in the west was steeped in the culture that had excluded him.

‘Absolutely,’ she agreed. The kitchen telegraph would be humming to news of an affair before they disturbed the sheets. Princess Sabirah would suddenly find herself too busy to call and all Kal’s hopes and dreams would fly right out of the window. ‘Good call.’

Lydia stood up, pushed open one of the shutters, looked out over the garden, needing a little space to recover, put the smile back on.

‘I’m glad that we were able to be honest with one another, Kal.’

Honest.

This was honest?

This was honour?

Lydia was pretending to be someone she was not, while he was about to collude with her deception, not just of the world’s press but the Emir of Ramal Hamrah.

She turned to him.

‘Will you take me to the souk tomorrow? I’d like to buy a gift for my mother.’

The request was simple enough, but that wasn’t the question she was asking. They both knew it and when, after the briefest pause, he responded in the affirmative with a slight but formal bow, he was confirming that there would be a tomorrow for ‘Lady Rose’ at Bab el Sama.

What choice did he have?

He had been prepared to be patient, wait for those precious things he wanted for himself, no matter how long it took. But for his grandfather time was running out, leaving him with no choice but to seize the chance Lucy had given him.

She wasn’t sure that honour had much to do with it, but love was there in abundance.

‘You should believe in love, Kal,’ she said. ‘You are living proof of its existence. Your love of your family shines through when you talk of them. You yearn with all your heart for this country, for everything that you have lost here and yet you would risk it all on this chance to bring your grandfather home. That’s love at its finest. Unselfish, pure, the real thing.’

‘I am asking a great deal of you, Lydia. I would understand if you said you could not go through with it.’

‘We both have debts, Kal, and to pay them we need each other.’ Then, ‘You’ll excuse me if I ask you to leave now? I need to change.’

Kal watched her wrap herself in the figurative mantel of Lady Rose Napier. Stand a little taller, inject the crispness back into her voice as she distanced herself from him. And where he had been warmed by her smile, her presence, a touch as she’d reached out without thinking, there was now an icy chill.

‘Will you come to the stables in the morning?’ he asked.

He saw her neck move as she swallowed, glimpsed a momentary longing for the closeness that would give them as he lifted her to the saddle, fitted her feet in the stirrups, placed her hands just so on the reins.

Then she shook her head just once and said, ‘Lady Rose is afraid of horses.’

‘And Lydia?’

‘It’s safer to stick to Rose, don’t you think?’

He wasn’t thinking. That was the problem. He’d set out on a quest that he’d believed nothing in the world could distract him from. How wrong could one man be?

He leaned forward, kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll send Yatimah to you.’

When Yatimah arrived, Lydia was filling the huge sunken bath.