Sharon Kendrick - The Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl

‘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.

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘He knows you and responds well to you.’

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘And how do you think he’ll behave without you?’

She was tempted to embellish and paint a dramatic picture of how Nabat would play up without his mistress—but Eleni realised that she didn’t have to do anything except speak the truth.

‘He will hate it, Highness.’

‘He will go off his food, you mean? Pine?’

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘Like a lovesick fool?’ he scorned.

Briefly, her eyelids shuttered her eyes before she remembered his command and lifted her gaze to his face. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, Highness.’

‘You think perhaps that he will die without you, little lizard?’

She wished he wouldn’t call her that—just as she wished that she could make herself sound completely indispensable. But that would be a lie and she guessed he would see right through it.

‘No, Highness,’ she said softly. ‘I do not, for the desire to live overpowers everything—indeed, it is the strongest force in all the world.’ She wondered why his hard face had suddenly tightened into a harsh mask and she rushed on, afraid that she had somehow angered him but still determined to state her case. ‘The horse will not die but he will be miserable without me, and a miserable horse does not win races.’

He nodded. ‘So what do you suggest as a solution for this particular problem?’

It was strange how fear could give you courage. Or maybe not so strange at all when you considered that Nabat was her only friend in the world. ‘The only solution you have, Highness,’ she said boldly. ‘You take me with you.’

It would have been almost funny if it had not been so preposterous. ‘ You ? A tiny upstart of a girl? Why, your mother would never forgive me.’

There was a pause. Her gaze flew to a zig-zag of hay which lay on the stable floor and she stared at it with fierce concentration. ‘But I have no mother, Highness.’

At this, Kaliq stilled—for was there not a more brutal and defining bond than the loss of a mother? He had been just nine when his own mother had died giving birth to his brother Zafir, and that first and terrible loss had seemed to bring tragedy in its wake for Kaliq and his twin brother. His mouth hardened.

‘What happened?’ he questioned softly.

Eleni shrugged her shoulders as if she was trying to shrug away the intrusive question. It was funny—you could tell yourself that you had come to terms with something which had happened years ago, but still that rogue little edge of abandonment could make your heart catch with pain. ‘My mother died,’ she said woodenly.

Kaliq’s eyes narrowed. ‘Died of what—a desert fever?’

‘I don’t believe so, Highness.’

‘Then what?’

Eleni hesitated. He was very persistent—but when had anyone last shown this kind of interest in her? Come to think of it—when had anyone last bothered to mention her green-eyed mother who had found it so difficult to adapt to married life? Her father certainly never did—he had obliterated her from his memory, and, even if he hadn’t exactly banned the use of her name in the Gamal house, Eleni didn’t dare to speak it for fear of his reaction.

‘My father was displeased with his dinner,’ Eleni began, vaguely recalling the noise and the drunken shouts and the mess of lentils splattered all over the floor. ‘He sent my mother to market to buy a chicken and on the way back she stumbled, and fell.’ Eleni swallowed. ‘They think that she was bitten by a snake—but by the time they found her, she was dead and the vultures had long taken away the chicken.’

By the muscular shafts of his thighs, Kaliq’s hands clenched into two tight fists. He had been accused by women of having not a shred of compassion in his hard body but for once he found himself touched by this urchin’s plight. ‘And how old were you?’ he demanded.

‘I was…ten.’

Ten? Almost the same age as he had been when his mother died in childbirth. Kaliq turned away from her troubled and trembling face, unwilling to acknowledge another fierce spear of recognition which burned through him—because some things were better buried away, deep in the dark recesses of memory. Royal and commoner—united by a strange bond. Each and every one of them had their burdens, he recognised bitterly—it was just that some were darker than others. With an efficiency born out of years of practice, he pushed his thoughts away.

Logic told him to dismiss this motherless little stable girl with a curse in her ear for her presumptuousness. As if she would have any place in his stables!

And yet undoubtedly she spoke the truth about the horse. Would he not perform better if she were taken along, too? Would not it be infinitely more preferable to spare his stable staff the trouble of having to break in a highly strung horse who might still sulk and refuse to race properly?

He turned back—seeing that this time she had not dropped her gaze, but was meeting his with a steady question in her eyes. The little lizard grew brave for the love of her horse! ‘Your father will miss you,’ he commented.

‘Yes, Highness.’

He observed her involuntary wince at an observation he suspected was untrue, but noted that she did not blacken the man’s name. So she was loyal, too. That was good. In fact, it was a quality he required above all others. He guessed that her drunken oaf of a father was unkind and worthless, but he also suspected that there would be no real role for the girl now that his most precious asset had been gambled away. And what would she do in the horse’s absence? Continue to care and to wait on him and his useless friends until her youth had fled and she was a wizened old crone?