Emma Darcy - Traded To The Sheikh

He hoped she did exist.

He hoped his men would find her on board the illicit yacht in the private harbour that served this private palace.

He hoped she actually measured up to the Frenchman’s selling spiel.

It would give him considerable satisfaction to demonstrate that regardless of how attractive her physical assets were, they were worth nothing to him.

Absolutely nothing!

‘I WILL get out of this! I will!’ Emily Ross kept reciting as she struggled through the mangrove swamp.

These mutterings of fierce determination were interspersed with bursts of self-castigation. ‘What a fool I’ve been! A gullible idiot to be taken in by Jacques. I should have just paid the money to fly here. No hassle about arriving in time. All safe and sound…’

Talking blocked out the fear of having made another wrong step, of putting her life in hopeless hazard this time. Yet reason insisted that the Frenchman could not have been trusted to keep his word about anything. The only sure way of staying in Zanzibar and getting to Stone Town to meet Hannah was to jump ship while Jacques was still off in his dinghy doing his drug-running.

So, okay…she’d done the swim from the yacht to shore, dragging all her essentials in a waterproof bag behind her. No shark or fish had attacked. Her feet had not been cut to ribbons by shells or coral or sharp rocks. Now she just had to find her way out of the mangrove swamp that seemed to cover the peninsula she’d swum to.

‘It’s not going to beat me. I will get out of it.’

And she did, finally emerging from the mud and tangled tree roots onto a wide mound of firmer ground which turned out to be an embankment above a small creek. More water! But beyond it was definitely proof of civilisation—what looked like the well kept grounds of some big property. No more swamp. The worst was over.

Emily’s legs shook from sheer exhaustion. Now, with the fear of being swallowed up by the swamp receding and much easier travelling in sight, she felt like collapsing on the bank and weeping with relief at having made it this far. Nevertheless, the need to cling to some self-control persisted. She might be out of the woods but this was still far from the end of her journey.

She sat herself down on the bank and did some deep breathing, hoping to lessen the load of stress—the huge mental, emotional and physical stress attached to her decision not to cling to the relative safety of Jacques Arnault’s yacht, not to remain captive to any further devious plan he might make.

Free…

The thought gathered its own momentum, finding a burst of positive achievement.

Free of him. Free of the swamp. Free to go where I want in my own time.

It helped calm her enough to get on with assessing her current position. A high stone wall ran back into distant darkness on the other side of the creek. It gave rise to the hope it might lead to a public road.

‘If nothing else, it should give me cover until I’m right away from Jacques and his dirty business,’ she muttered, trying to whip up the energy to move again.

Through sheer force of will, Emily drove her mind into forward planning as she heaved herself onto her feet and trudged along the bank of the creek until the stone wall was directly opposite her. Once across this last body of water, she could clean herself up and dress respectably in the skirt and T-shirt she’d placed at the top of the waterproof bag. Wearing a bikini at this time of night was hardly appropriate for meeting local people and sooner or later she had to confront someone in order to ask directions to Stone Town.

Waist-deep in water and hating every second of wading through it, Emily was concentrating on her footing when a commanding voice rang out.

‘Arretez!’

The French verb to stop certainly stopped her!

She almost tripped in sheer shock.

Her heart jerked into a fearful hammering as her gaze whipped up to fix on two men pointing highly menacing rifles at her. They wore white shirts and trousers with black gun-belts, giving them more the appearance of official policemen than drug-running gangsters, but Emily wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. If they’d caught Jacques and were connecting her to his criminal activities—which the use of French language suggested—she might end up in prison.

One of the men clapped a small mobile telephone to his ear and spoke at speed in what sounded like Arabic. The other motioned her to continue moving to their side of the creek bank. Having a rifle waved at her did not incline Emily towards disobedience. She could only hope these people were representatives of the law on this island and that the law would be reasonable in listening to her.

A giant fig tree on her left had obviously provided an effective hiding place for them to watch for her emergence from the mangroves. She wondered if other patrols were out looking for her. Certainly her appearance was being reported to someone. As she scrambled up their side of the creek bank, one of the men came forward and snatched the waterproof bag out of her grasp.

‘Now hold on a moment! I’ve got my life in there!’ Emily cried in panicky protest.

Having her passport, money and clothes taken from her was a very scary situation. Thinking the men might believe the bag contained contraband, she tried persuading them to check its contents.

‘Look for yourself.’ Her hands flew out in a gesture of open-palmed innocence. ‘It’s just personal stuff.’

No response. The men completely ignored her frantic attempt to communicate with them both in English and in her very limited tourist French. She was grabbed at the elbows and briskly marched across quite an expanse of mown grass to a path which eventually led to a massive three-storey white building.

At least it didn’t look like a prison, Emily thought, desperately trying to calm her wildly leaping apprehension. The many columned verandahs on each level, with their elaborate wrought-iron lace balustrades, gave the impression of British colonial architecture serving some important government purpose.

Maybe a courthouse?

But why on earth would Jacques do his drug-running right under the nose of legal officialdom?

Could it be terribly corrupt officialdom?

This thought frayed her strung-out nerves even further. She was a lone foreign woman, scantily dressed, and her only tool of protection was her passport which she no longer had in her possession. It took all her willpower not to give way to absolute panic when she was escorted up the steps to the front verandah and was faced with horribly intimidating entrance doors.

These were about four metres high, ominously black, intricately carved around the edges, and featuring rows of big pointed brass studs. They were definitely the kind of doors that would deter anyone from gate-crashing a party. As they were slowly swung open Emily instinctively decided that a bowed head and downcast eyes might get her into less trouble in this place.

The first sight she had of the huge foyer was of a gorgeous Tree of Life Persian rug dominating a dark wooden floor. As she was forced forward onto this carpet her side vision picked up the kind of splendid urns one might see in an art museum, which suggested this could be a safe environment.

A burst of hope prodded her into lifting her gaze to check out where she was being taken. Her mind absolutely boggled at the scene rolling out in vivid Technicolor right in front of her. She was being led straight towards a huge central atrium, richly and exotically furnished in the style of a palatial reception area.

A walkway to the rest of the rooms on the ground floor surrounded the two-steps-down sunken floor of this incredible area, which was also overlooked by the balconies which ran around the second and third floors. Above it was a domed roof and from the circumference of the dome hung fantastic chandeliers of multicoloured glass that cascaded down in wonderful shapes and sizes.