Buch lesen: «The Desert King's Captive Bride»

CHAPTER ONE

THE STEWARDESS STOOD ASIDE, inviting her to leave the plane. Ghizlan stood, smoothing her moss-green tailored skirt and jacket with a hand that barely trembled.

She’d had days to prepare herself. Days to learn to mask the shock and, yes, grief. She’d never been close to her father, a distant man, more interested in his country than his daughters, yet his sudden death at fifty-three from a brain aneurism had rocked the foundations of her world.

Ghizlan drew herself up, donning the polite smile her father had deemed appropriate for a princess, and, with a murmur of thanks to the staff, stepped out of the aircraft.

A cool evening wind whipped down off the mountains, eddying around her stockinged legs. Briefly she pondered how nice it must be to travel in comfortable, casual clothes, before letting the idle thought tear free on a gust of air. She was the daughter of a royal sheikh. She didn’t have that freedom.

Setting her shoulders, she gripped the rail and descended the stairs to the tarmac, aware that her legs were unsteady.

Falling flat on her face wasn’t an option. Clumsiness had never been allowed and now, more than ever, it was imperative she look calm. Until her father’s heir was named she was the country’s figurehead, a face the people knew. They would rely on her, eldest daughter of their revered Sheikh, to ensure the smooth running of matters while his successor was confirmed.

Who that would be, Ghizlan didn’t know. Her father had been negotiating a new marriage when he died, still hoping to get that all-important male heir.

She reached the tarmac and paused. On three sides rose the mountains, purple in the late afternoon, surrounding the capital on its plateau. Behind her on the fourth side the mountain dropped abruptly to the Great Sand Desert.

Ghizlan breathed deeply. Despite the grave circumstances of her arrival in Jeirut, her heart leapt at the familiar scents of clear mountain air and spices that even airline fuel couldn’t quite eradicate.

‘My lady.’ Azim, her father’s chamberlain, hurried towards her, face drawn and hands twisting.

Ghizlan quickly crossed to the old man. If anyone could claim intimacy with her father it was Azim, his right-hand man for years.

‘Welcome, my lady. It’s a relief to have you back.’

‘It’s good to see you, Azim.’ Ignoring custom, Ghizlan reached for his hands, holding them in hers. Neither of them would ever admit it but she had been closer to Azim than to her father.

‘Highness!’ He darted a worried look to one side where soldiers guarded the perimeter of the airstrip.

Ghizlan ignored them. ‘Azim? How are you?’ She knew her father’s death must have been a terrible blow to him. Together they’d made it their lives’ work to bring Jeirut into the new millennium by a combination of savvy negotiation, insightful reform and sheer iron will.

‘I’m well, my lady. But it’s I who should be asking...’ He paused, gathering himself. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Your father wasn’t merely a visionary leader, he was the mainstay of our democracy and a protector to you and your sister.’

Ghizlan nodded, releasing Azim’s hands and moving towards the terminal. Her father had been all those things, but her country’s democratic constitution would continue after his death. As for her and Mina, they’d learned long ago not to expect personal support from their father. Instead they were used to being paraded as role models for education, the rights of women and other causes. He might have been a visionary who’d be remembered as a great man, but the sad truth was neither she nor her younger sister could be heartbroken at his passing.

She shivered, knowing she should feel more.

As they approached the terminal Azim spoke again. ‘My lady, I have to tell you...’ He paused as some soldiers marched forward.

‘Wait. My lady.’ His voice was barely above a whisper and Ghizlan stopped, attuned to the urgency radiating from him. ‘I need to warn you—’

‘My lady.’ A uniformed officer bowed before her. ‘I’m here to escort you to the Palace of the Winds.’

Ghizlan didn’t recognise him, a tough-looking man in his thirties, though he wore the uniform of the Palace Guard. But then she’d been away more than a month and military transfers happened all the time.

‘Thank you, but my own bodyguard is sufficient.’ She turned but to her surprise couldn’t see her close personal protection officers.

As if reading her mind the captain spoke again. ‘I believe your men are still busy at the plane. There are new regulations regarding baggage checks. But that needn’t delay you.’ He bowed again. ‘My men can escort you. No doubt you are eager to see the Princess Mina.’

Ghizlan blinked. No palace employee would dream of commenting on the intentions of a member of the royal family. This man was new. But he was right. She’d fretted over how long it had taken to get back to Jeirut. She hated the idea of Mina all alone.

Again she turned but couldn’t see her staff. It went against every instinct to leave them, but now, finally in Jeirut, her worry over Mina had grown to something like panic. Ghizlan hadn’t been able to reach her by phone since yesterday. Her sister was only seventeen, just finished school. How had she coped with their father’s death?

Only men attended Jeiruti funerals, even state funerals, but Ghizlan had wanted to be here to take the burden of the other formalities, receiving the respects of provincial sheikhs and the royal court. But tradition had prevailed and her father had been interred within the requisite three days while Ghizlan had been stuck on another continent.

‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’ She turned to Azim. ‘Would you mind explaining that I’ve gone on to the palace and that I’m in safe hands?’

‘But, my lady...’ Azim darted a glance towards the guards surrounding them. ‘I need to speak with you in private. It’s crucial.’

‘Of course. There are urgent matters to discuss.’ Her father’s death was a constitutional nightmare. With no clear heir to the sheikhdom, it could take weeks to decide his successor. Ghizlan felt the weight of responsibility crush down on her shoulders. She, as a woman, couldn’t succeed, but she’d have a key role in maintaining stability until the succession was finalised. ‘Give me two hours then we’ll meet.’

She nodded to the captain of the guards to proceed.

‘But, my lady—’ Azim fell silent as the captain stepped towards him, deliberately invading the old man’s space, expression stern and body language belligerent.

Ghizlan fixed the officer with a stare she’d learned from her father. ‘If you’re going to work for the palace you need to learn the difference between attentiveness and intimidation.’ The guard’s eyes met hers, widening in surprise. ‘This man is a valued aide. I expect him, and everyone else approaching me, to be treated with respect. Is that understood?’

The officer nodded and stepped away. ‘Of course, my lady.’

Ghizlan wanted to take Azim’s hands once more. He looked old and frail. But she desperately needed to see Mina. Instead she smiled gently. ‘I’ll see you soon and we can discuss everything.’

* * *

‘Thank you for your escort.’ Ghizlan stopped in the vast palace atrium. ‘However, in future, there’s no need for you or your men to come within the palace itself.’ The security arrangements didn’t include armed men in the corridors.

The captain bowed, the slightest of inclines. ‘I’m afraid I have orders to the contrary, my lady. If you’ll come with me?’

‘Orders?’ Ghizlan stared. The man might be new but he overstepped the mark. ‘Until my father’s successor is announced I give the orders in the palace.’

The man’s expression didn’t alter.

Ghizlan was used to soldiers. Protecting the royal family was a prestigious rung on the military career ladder, but never had she met one like this. He looked back, fixed on a point near her ear, his expression wooden.

‘What’s going on here?’ Ghizlan kept her tone calm, despite the unease trickling, ice cold, down her spine. She hadn’t paid attention before, had been too lost in her thoughts to notice, but a quick glance revealed all the guards were unfamiliar. One new face, maybe two, was possible. But this...

‘My orders are to take you to the Sheikh’s office.’

‘My father’s office?’ Despite a lifetime’s training in poise, Ghizlan couldn’t prevent the hammer of her heart against her ribs, or the way her hand fluttered up as if to stop it. An instant later she’d controlled the gesture, forcing her hand down. ‘Who gave this order?’

The captain didn’t speak, but gestured for her to precede him.

From confusion and shock, anger rose. Whatever was going on, she deserved answers and she intended to get them! She strode forward, only to slam to a halt as the whole squad of guards moved with her.

Slowly she spoke, articulating each word precisely. She didn’t bother to turn her head. ‘Dismiss your men, Captain. They are neither required nor welcome in this place.’ For the beat of her pulse, then another she waited. ‘Unless you feel unable to guard a solitary woman?’

Ghizlan didn’t deign to wait for his response, but strode away, her high heels smacking the marble floor, fire fizzing in her veins. It should have been a relief to hear the men moving away in the opposite direction, except she knew their officer followed right behind her.

Something was very, very wrong. The knowledge twisted her insides and raised the hair at the nape of her neck.

Ignoring a lifetime’s training, Ghizlan didn’t bother knocking on the door to the royal office, but thrust it open, barely pausing in her stride.

Her breath escaped in a rush of frustration as she surveyed the room. It was empty. The person who’d allegedly given such outrageous orders to the palace guard, if it was the palace guard, was nowhere to be seen.

She swayed to a halt before the vast desk and her heart spasmed as she inhaled the faint, familiar scents of papers and sandalwood, as well as spearmint from the chews her father kept in a box on his desk.

Time wound back and she could almost believe it all a nightmare. That her father would enter from the rear door to his private quarters, intent on some report or new scheme to help his people.

Ghizlan planted her palms on the satiny wood of the desk and drew in a deep breath. She had to get a grip.

Whatever was going on, and instinct belatedly warned her something was, her father was gone.

A shudder racked her so hard she had to grit her teeth so they didn’t chatter. She’d known all her life that her father’s love was for his country not his children. Yet he’d been vigorous enough to contemplate a third marriage. It still seemed impossible—

Ghizlan straightened. She didn’t have time to wallow in sentiment. She needed to discover what was happening. For it had seemed as if the guards kept her prisoner rather than protected her. Unease stirred again.

She smoothed her palms down her skirt, twitched her jacket in place and pushed her shoulders back, ready to face whatever unpalatable situation awaited.

She was halfway to the study’s rear door when a voice stopped her. It wasn’t loud but the deep, bass rumble cut through her jumbled thoughts like the echo of mountain thunder.

‘Princess Ghizlan.’

She swung around, twisting on a stiletto heel. Her pulse tripped unevenly as she took in the great bear of a man standing before the closed door through which she’d entered.

He towered over her even though she wore heels and was often described as statuesque. The disparity in their heights surprised her. He wasn’t just tall, he was wide across the shoulders, his chest deep and his legs long and heavily muscled.

He wore a horseman’s clothes—a pale shirt and trousers tucked into long leather boots. A cloak was pushed back off his shoulders so she glimpsed the knife at his waist. Not a decorated, ceremonial dagger as her father had worn from time to time, but a plain weapon, its handle gleaming with the patina of use.

‘Weapons aren’t permitted in the palace,’ she snapped out. It was easier to concentrate on that than the strangely heavy thud of her pulse as she met his gaze. It worried her almost as much as the inexplicable behaviour of the palace guards.

The man’s eyes were blue-grey. Light-coloured eyes weren’t uncommon in Jeirut’s provinces, crossed by ancient trade routes between Europe, Asia and Africa. Yet Ghizlan had never seen eyes like this. Even as she watched the hint of blue was erased and his eyes under straight black eyebrows turned cool as mountain mist.

He had a wide forehead, a strong nose a little askew from an old break and a mouth that flattened disapprovingly.

Ghizlan arched her eyebrows. Whoever he was, he knew nothing about common courtesy, much less court etiquette. It was not for him to approve or disapprove.

Especially when he looked like he’d stalked in from the stables with his shaggy black hair curling around his collar and his jaw dark with several days’ growth. It wasn’t carefully sculpted designer stubble on that squared-off jaw but the beard of a man who simply hadn’t bothered to shave for a week.

He stepped closer and she caught a whiff of horse and tangy male sweat. It was a strangely appealing smell, not sour but altogether intriguing.

‘That’s hardly a friendly greeting, Your Highness.’ His words were soft but so resonant they eddied through her insides in the most unsettling way.

‘It wasn’t meant as a greeting. And I prefer not to be addressed as Highness.’ She might be of royal blood but she’d never be ruler. Despite the modernisation of Jeirut, of which her father had been so proud, there was no question of equality of the sexes extending that far.

The intruder didn’t make a move, either to remove his weapon or himself. Instead he angled his head to one side as if taking her measure. His eyes never left hers and heat sparked at the intensity of that look.

Who was this man who entered without a knock and didn’t bother to introduce himself?

‘Please remove your weapon while you’re here.’

One dark eyebrow rose as if he’d never heard such a request. Silently he crossed his arms over his chest.

Make me.

He might as well have said it out loud. The challenge sizzled in the air between them.

Bizarrely, instead of being scared by this big, bold, armed brute, Ghizlan’s blood fizzed as if trading glares with him had finally woken her from the curious, dormant feeling that had encompassed her since the news of her father’s death.

She kept her hands relaxed at her sides but allowed her mouth to quirk up in the tiniest show of superiority. ‘Your manners as much as your appearance make it clear you’re a stranger to the palace and the niceties of polite society.’

His eyes narrowed and Ghizlan felt that stare as if it penetrated her silk-lined suit to graze her flesh.

Then in one swift movement he hauled his dagger from his belt and threw it.

Ghizlan’s breath stopped in her throat and she knew her eyes widened but she didn’t flinch when the unsheathed blade skidded across the desk an arm’s length away.

Slowly she turned her head, seeing the jagged cut in the polished wood. Her father had prized that desk, not for its monetary value, but for the fact it had belonged to an ancestor who had introduced Jeirut’s first constitution. A visionary, her father had called him. His role model.

Ghizlan stared at the deep, haphazard scratch on the beautiful wood and anger welled, raw and potent. An anger born of shock and loss. She knew the stranger’s aim was deliberate. If he’d planned to attack her he wouldn’t have missed.

Why inflict such wanton damage except to make a point of his rudeness? And, of course, to frighten her. Yet it wasn’t fear bubbling up inside her. It was wrath.

Her father had devoted his life, and hers, to the betterment of their people. He may not have been a loving father but he deserved greater respect in death.

She made no move to grab the weapon. She was fit but no match for the sheer bulk of the man filling her father’s study with his presence. He could probably snap her wrist with a single hand and no doubt he’d enjoy demonstrating his greater physical strength like a typical bully. But she refused to be cowed. She swung to face him.

‘Barbarian.’

He didn’t even blink. ‘And you’re a pampered waste of space. But let’s not allow name-calling to get in the way of a sensible conversation.’

Ghizlan almost wished she had lunged for the knife. She wasn’t accustomed to such rudeness and for the first time ever her blood surged with the desire to hurt someone. Slapping him would probably only bruise her palm when it came into contact with that high, sharp cheekbone. But with a knife...

She dragged in a fortifying breath and squashed the errant bloodlust. She blamed it on the creeping certainty that something terrible had happened here. Something that brought unfamiliar faces and armed guards to the royal palace that had epitomised the peace her father had worked so hard to win.

Mina! Where was her sister? Was she safe?

Fear skittered through her but Ghizlan wouldn’t let it show. She wouldn’t reveal it to the man looking so predatory. His eyes never wavered from her face as if he searched for weakness.

Ignoring the tremor in her knees, Ghizlan crossed the fine silk carpet and pulled out her father’s chair from the desk. Deliberately she sank onto the padded leather and planted her arms on the chair, for all the world as if she belonged in her father’s place.

If she was going to face this lout she’d do it from the position of power.

Too late she realised that while he stood, dominating the space with his size and raw energy, she was forced to tilt her neck to view him.

‘Who are you?’ She was relieved to hear her voice revealed none of the emotions roiling inside.

An instant longer that clear, cold gaze rested on her, then he bowed, surprisingly gracefully. It made her wonder what he did when he wasn’t trespassing and threatening unarmed women. There was a magnetism about him that would make him unforgettable even if he hadn’t barged, uninvited into this inner sanctum.

‘I am Huseyn al Rasheed. I come from Jumeah.’

Huseyn al Rasheed. Ghizlan’s stomach plunged and her brow puckered before she smoothed it into an expression of calm.

Trouble. That was who he was. Trouble with a capital T.

‘The Iron Hand of Jumeah.’ Fear prickled her nape.

‘Some call me that.’

Ghizlan sucked in a surreptitious breath between her teeth. This grew worse and worse.

‘Who can blame them? You have a reputation for destruction and brute force.’

She paused, marshalling her thoughts. Huseyn al Rasheed was son to the Sheikh of Jumeah, leader of the furthest province from the capital. Though part of Jeirut it was semi-autonomous and had a reputation for fearsome warriors.

Huseyn al Rasheed was notorious as his father’s enforcer in the continuous border skirmishes with their nation’s most difficult neighbour, Halarq. It had been her father’s dearest hope that the peace treaties he’d been negotiating with both Halarq and their other neighbouring nation, Zahrat, would end generations of unrest. Unrest Huseyn al Rasheed and his father only fed with their confrontational behaviour.

Ghizlan gripped the leather armrests tight, wishing her father were here to deal with this. ‘Did your father send you?’

‘No one sent me. My father, like his cousin, your father, is dead.’

Second cousin, Ghizlan almost blurted, wanting to deny the connection he claimed, but she was well trained in holding her tongue.

‘My condolences on your loss.’ Though she saw nothing in that tough, determined face remotely resembling grief.

‘And my condolences on yours.’

Ghizlan nodded, the movement jerky. She didn’t like the way he stared at her. Like a big cat who’d found some fascinating new prey to torment.

She curled her fingers until her nails dug into leather. This was no time for flights of fantasy.

‘And your reason for entering here, armed and uninvited?’

Was it imagination again or did something flicker in those grey eyes? Surely not because she’d called him on his deplorable behaviour? If the rumours surrounding this man were true she needed to tread very, very carefully.

‘I’m here to claim the crown of Jeirut.’

Ghizlan’s heart stopped then sprinted on frantically.

‘By force of arms?’ Vaguely Ghizlan wondered at her ability to sound calm when horror was turning her very bones cold. A man like the Iron Hand in control of her beloved country? They’d be at war in a week. All her father’s work, and her own, undone.

Pain lanced her chest and her lungs cramped. She blinked and forced herself to breathe.

‘I have no intention of starting a civil war.’

‘Which doesn’t answer my question.’

He shrugged and Ghizlan watched, mesmerised, as those impossibly broad shoulders lifted.

Terror, loathing, anger. That’s what she should feel. Yet that tingling sensation across her breasts and down to her belly didn’t seem like any of those.

She ignored it. She was stressed and anxious.

‘I have no intention of fighting my own people for the royal sheikhdom.’

The constriction banding her chest eased a little. Yet she didn’t trust this man. Everything about him set alarm bells ringing.

‘You think the elders will vote for a man like you as leader?’ She couldn’t sit still. She surged to her feet, her hands clenched in fists on the desk as she leaned forward. How dared he walk in here as if he owned the place?

‘I’m sure they’ll see the wisdom of choosing me.’ He paused, long enough for a flicker of heat to pass between them. Banked fury, Ghizlan decided. ‘Especially given the other happy circumstance.’

‘Happy circumstance?’ Ghizlan frowned.

‘My wedding.’

Ghizlan opened her mouth but realised she would only parrot what he had said. Instead she stood, tension racking her body as she watched his mouth curve up in a smile that was painfully smug. It transformed his face enough that she wondered how he’d look if something genuinely amused him. Heat drilled through her. She could almost see traces of a handsome man beneath that fierce beard and the threat he represented. Then she reminded herself this man didn’t do light-hearted. And even if he did she wasn’t interested in seeing it.

‘That’s my other reason for coming to the capital. To claim my bride.’

Ghizlan loathed his superior, über-confident air, the gloating note in his deep voice.

She pitied his bride, whoever she was, but clearly he wanted her to be impressed. What would it cost her to play along at least until she got to the bottom of this?

‘Who are you marrying? Do I know her?’

His smile widened and she saw the gleam of strong white teeth. Fear scudded down her spine as she read his expression.

‘That would be you, my dear Ghizlan. I’m taking you as my wife.’