‘Saud… Saud…’ she cried weakly, but there was only silence, and the memory of burning hot sands and clear cloudless skies from which a relentless sun burned down.
* * *
Claire opened her eyes. She felt as though she had been asleep for a very long time. Her body felt unfamiliar, heavy and tender, her eyes gritty.
‘Lord Raoul, the Sitt is awake.’
Zenaide. Claire recognised her voice, and yes, this was her room in the palace. Had it all just been a dream, then, that searing heat, that sense of fear, that walk with Saud… Saud… She struggled to sit up and was instantly restrained by Raoul’s arm.
‘Saud,’ she protested weakly.
‘He is fine.’ She heard Raoul bite off an expletive and then turn to Zenaide. ‘He is perfectly well, Claire, Zenaide will bring him to you. There is someone else waiting to see you, too.’ He was watching her closely, and Claire wished she could remember properly. Something eluded her, tugging at the edges of her memory, but she could not summon it up. ‘It’s Teddy,’ Raoul pressed. ‘Your brother. Remember, you were to meet him at the airport.’
The airport. Nadia! She must have said her name out loud because Raoul’s face tightened.
‘That is enough for now, Raoul.’ Another voice spoke close by her, and a man moved from the shadows. ‘She is still tired and must be allowed to recover. Without you beside her, my friend,’ the unfamiliar voice continued, although it seemed to Claire that it held compassion. ‘There is nothing more you can do. Punishing yourself will achieve nothing.’
Punishing himself? Why should Raoul do that? Because of Nadia? Because the woman he loved had helped to try to murder Saud? Did he know about that? Thoughts too exhausting to be sustained flooded through her tired mind, and then something else surfaced.
‘Raoul.’ She clutched at his arm. ‘My baby…’ A look of bitter sadness filled his eyes, and her own clouded with tears. ‘Raoul, my baby…’
‘Your baby is quite safe.’ It was the other man who spoke, smiling down at her, his fingers feeling for the pulse in her wrist with a professionalism that put her fears to rest. ‘But that is more than can be said for you. You must sleep now if you are to recover your full strength. Later you can talk.’
‘Saud,’ she pleaded, ‘I must see Saud…’ She saw Zenaide coming into the room, Saud in her arms, and she expelled her breath on a thankful sigh, gladly submitting to the sleep stealing slowly through her veins.
When she woke again Teddy was sitting on the end of her bed, watching her. ‘Good. Dr Naud said you would soon be awake. I would have to miss all the excitement,’ Teddy continued, obviously aggrieved. ‘Boy, when I tell them about it at school. It must have been really ace… to be kidnapped and then…’
‘I am sure your sister found her experience anything but “ace”, Teddy,’ Raoul’s voice said drily from the door. Teddy scrambled off the bed as Raoul approached.
‘But it was ace how the Badu found her and looked after her, wasn’t it?’ he probed. ‘Boy just imagine being able to track like that… and recognising her too when Nadia drove her past the oasis. “Lady of the golden hair” they call you,’ he told a bemused Claire, grinning a little. ‘Just think if they hadn’t seen you and sent word to Raoul…’
‘That’s enough, Teddy.’ Raoul’s calm firm voice cut through Teddy’s excitement. ‘Ali has prepared your dinner.’
‘But what about you?’
‘I will eat up here with your sister.’ Teddy looked ready to protest, but something in Raoul’s expression must have changed his mind because he went off without another word. ‘Oh for the recuperative powers of the young,’ Raoul said lightly when he had gone. ‘When we first learned that you were missing he was inconsolable.’
‘You know everything?’ Claire whispered. ‘By ‘everything’ she meant Nadia’s treachery, and Raoul nodded.
‘Yes, and I cannot see how we could have been so blind. In so many ways it was obvious, but because Hasim remained out of the country for long periods we never thought to connect him with the left-wing faction in the country, even though he is the Sheikh’s heir after Saud.’
‘What happened?’ Claire pressed. ‘I…’
‘Let me tell you from the beginning.’ Raoul perched himself on the end of her bed, and Claire looked away from him, wishing he would come closer, take her in his arms perhaps.
‘As Teddy has just said, you were recognised as Nadia drove you through the Badu encampment—that was her main mistake. Nadia and her family are well known for their contempt of the Badu, and Ali ben Durai’s curiosity was aroused enough for him to send some of his men out after you. He knew, in the way that the Badu always seem to know what is going on, that your brother was due to arrive and that you were to meet his plane. He also knew that I was away, but when his suspicions were confirmed, he sent messages both to me and to the Sheikh telling us that he feared you had been taken captive. One of the men on the Sheikh’s staff here at the palace was a spy—the same one who placed the snake in Saud’s cot, I suspect—and he managed to send Hasim a warning that we were on our way.’
‘So that was why he broke camp.’ Claire shivered. ‘They were going to kill us, but because I was carrying your child…’
‘I know it all.’ Raoul looked grim, and Claire wondered if he was thinking about Nadia. ‘Hasim was most impressed with your courage, Claire. You risked your own life for Saud, choosing almost certain death rather than safety. If you had opted to remain at the oasis you would at least have had water and would have been found in due time, even if we had not known where to look, but instead you braved the desert.’
‘They meant to shoot Saud,’ Claire said unsteadily. ‘I knew that we probably wouldn’t survive the desert, but I couldn’t… couldn’t…’ Tears started to burn her eyes and she turned away, too soon to see the movement Raoul made towards her. As she turned from him as though in rejection his arm dropped to his side, his expression suddenly grave.
‘You are tired and the doctor has ordered that you must rest. When the tribesmen found you they feared it was already too late. They sent word to me and took you back with them to their camp.’
‘And you brought me back here,’ Claire finished for him. Now that Saud was safe, would he still want her to stay? Would he still want them to live together as a family, or had he changed his mind? There was something different about him, she knew that.
‘My father sends his love,’ Raoul told her as he stood up, watching her eyes widen as he spoke the words. ‘When he worked here—before he met my mother—he made a survey of the desert. I telephoned him to check that the oasis was where the Badu tribesmen had described. We couldn’t afford to waste any time.’ He sighed, pushing his fingers into the thick darkness of his hair, and suddenly looked tired and defeated. ‘When I was a child, my grandfather constantly told me how my father had deserted my mother, how he had taken her money and left her, insisting that I was to be brought up as a Christian, and I hated and resented him. But the story he told me differs from that of my grandfather. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between, I don’t know, but suddenly it no longer seems so important. What is past is past, and I too now know what it is to feel bitter corroding regret for my own actions.’
He turned, leaving her, and Claire’s heart ached. Was he talking about Nadia? Wishing he had not been too proud to change his religion; thinking that if he had, his love might have saved her from becoming involved in Hasim’s machinations?
* * *
By the end of the week the doctor was pleased enough with her progress to allow her to get up and spend the pleasant hours of the morning in the main courtyard, Teddy and Saud keeping her company. When she mentioned to Zenaide one day that more than anything else she would like to go down to the beach, Raoul appeared as though by magic and insisted on carrying her down to the soft fine sand. He swam in the azure sea with Teddy. She watched him coming out of the water, his body sleek and bronzed, her memory replaying disturbing scenes inside her head as she stared helplessly at him, sick and aching for the touch of his skin against hers.
Raoul mistook the reason for her pallor and cursed himself for allowing her to get overtired. There was no point in her objecting when he insisted on taking her back to the palace. He was treating her as though she were made of Dresden china, and sometimes she thought she couldn’t bear it. What had happened to the man who had told her so arrogantly that he wanted her, that they would build a good life together? The strangeness she had sensed in him grew, and towards the end of Teddy’s holiday she learned why.
He sought her out in the courtyard one morning when she was playing with Saud. Pregnancy had brought a soft glow to her skin, a warm ripeness of which she was unaware as she laughed at Saud’s attempts to walk.
‘I have booked Teddy’s return flight,’ Raoul told her, bending dexterously to catch Saud as he fell. His face was turned away from her, his voice perfectly even as he said, ‘If you wish, you can be on that flight, Claire. No, say nothing now,’ he urged when she wanted to protest. ‘Think about it and then tell me what you wish to do. I think perhaps it would be for the best if you were to go.’