Daughter of Hassan & Heart of the Desert(13)

‘Saud!’

He blushed a little but took her hands and held them firmly, his eyes alight with pleasure.

‘What are you doing here?’ Danielle asked him. She had never met him before he escorted her to Qu‘Har, but now he seemed like an old friend.

‘The Sheikh wishes to ride and I am come to instruct the men to saddle his stallion,’ he replied, indicating the glossy black Arab stallion which was being led into the courtyard. The animal’s coat gleamed like silk, the small ears twitching a little intimidatingly as he minced delicately over the stones.

‘He comes from a long line of stallions bred only for our Royal Family. Only they are allowed to mount such animals, and in days gone by it used to be considered a test of a young sheikh’s manhood to see if he could mount and ride one of these animals. Although the test is no longer applied, there is still much honour to the man who can ride and control such an animal.’

Danielle could well believe it. It was taking two grooms to hold the stallion, who was pawing the ground and snorting resentfully as they held grimly on to the reins.

‘You are enjoying your stay in our country?’ Saud asked Danielle. ‘I hear from my sister that you have this morning been shopping.’

‘Your sister?’

‘Zoe,’ he explained with a smile, suddenly biting his lip and glancing cautiously over his shoulder. ‘Forgive me, Miss Danielle, but you should not be here, nor talking to me like this. I tell you for your own sake, not mine,’ he added earnestly, his eyes suddenly warm as they rested on Danielle’s soft mouth. ‘For myself there is nothing I would rather do than be here with you, unless it were perhaps to walk in the velvet darkness of the oasis with you, just the two of us beneath a new moon…’

‘But, Saud, you are betrothed,’ Danielle reminded him, suddenly feeing that the conversation had got out of hand.

Before he could reply a deeply authoritative voice called abruptly.

‘Saud, where is my mount?’ and Danielle’s heart dropped as she saw coming towards her, dressed in riding breeches, a falcon resting on one leather-gauntleted hand, the man whose image had pursued her in her nightmares, and whose presence now made the blood drain from her face, and a weak desire to turn and run engulfed her.

Saud, for his part, looked as guilty as a small child caught out in some forbidden misdemeanour, the look he gave Danielle at once apologetic and full of fear.

Jourdan, on the other hand, looked completely relaxed and in control. One hand held the reins of the prancing stallion, the other transferred the hooded falcon to a waiting servant before turning to coolly survey Danielle and Saud, for all the world as though they were a pair of miscreants caught out in some dreadful crime, Danielle thought wrathfully, deliberately closing her mind to the tiny voice telling her that Jourdan’s expression held undertones of an anger kept strictly in check, but still dangerously close to the surface.

‘Saud, I shall speak to you later,’ Jourdan announced crisply, watching the younger man crimson at his tone, without a hint of compassion. There was something cruel about the way his lips curled faintly, Danielle thought, her heart beating hurriedly as he turned from Saud, suddenly crestfallen and very, very young, to study her flushed cheeks and defiant eyes.

‘It is my fault, not Saud’s,’ Danielle told him imperiously, her words ringing out across the yard, and causing a couple of the grooms to glance curiously in her direction.

‘I came here by mistake, and he was just telling me so.’

‘You seem to have a habit of doing things “by mistake”, daughter of Hassan,’ Jourdan said with heavy irony, ‘You leap to my young cousin’s defence like the lioness defending her cub… why?’

The word cut into her like a lash, but Danielle still stood her ground.

‘Primarily because I hate to see anyone bullied,’ she retorted promptly, ‘and secondly because I happen to be very fond of Saud.’

An electric silence followed her uncompromising statement. Saud’s face lit up as though illuminated from within, and Danielle immediately regretted her words, seeing that Saud had read into them a meaning she had never meant to convey—and Jourdan? She glanced sideways at the impassively handsome face. There was nothing to be read there, only a certain dangerous glint in the eyes which were studying her, faintly narrowed against the harsh glare of the sun, the mouth pulled down at the corners.

‘Go back to the women’s quarters, daughter of Hassan,’ Jourdan ordered abruptly, ‘and try to remember that my cousin is a betrothed man. Besides,’ he added, casually turning to mount the stallion, and holding him in with iron control while he walked him to Danielle’s side, to stare down into her upturned face with cool scrutiny. ‘If you wish to experiment, mignonne, you would be wiser choosing a man if not older, then at least… wiser.’

Without a backward glance he was gone, the stallion’s hooves thudding in time to Danielle’s swiftly beating heart.

Quite why she remained where she was staring after the unyielding retreating back she could not have said, but at last she roused herself as though from a trance, and hurried back the way she had come to the tranquillity of the Sheikha’s garden.

It was later in the afternoon, when Danielle was resting in her room, and avoiding the full heat of the day, that she had a summons from the Sheikha to attend her to be measured for her new clothes.

‘The girl will measure you and then the caftans will be made up for you,’ the Sheikha told Danielle.

While the shy young girl was carefully sliding a tape round her slim hips Danielle heard the dressmaker say something to the Sheikha.

‘Naomi says that you are as slender as the young fig tree before it bears fruit,’ the Sheikha said to Danielle. ‘She is also to make Zoe’s wedding gown. It is the tradition for the women of my husband’s family to be married in crimson silk and the one hundred and one buttons closing the caftan to be of pearl. Zoe’s robe will be embroidered with the emblems of fertility and her husband-to-be will give her the silver girdle which after the ceremony only he will have the right to unfasten.’

Bondage in more ways than one, Danielle told herself. But for some reason, it was not Zoe’s pale face she saw rising from a mist of crimson silk, as lean, dark hands that reached arrogantly for the silver girdle, but her own, her eyes strained and nervous as she stared upwards at the man towering above.

‘You have been standing for too long,’ the Sheikha anounced, breaking Danielle’s reverie. ‘I have arranged that this afternoon you will be shown the coastline which stretches from the town east and west. The drive will do you good. Zanaide will accompany you.’

Thus dismissed, Danielle thanked the dressmaker and her assistants and hurried back to her own room, where she found Zanaide waiting for her, one of the pretty silk suits she had brought with her already lying carefully on her bed.

Danielle frowned a little when she saw it. The silk was pretty but creased easily, and she had planned to wear something a little more casual as they were simply going for a drive, but Zanaide was already hurrying into the bathroom, and rather than hurt the girl’s feelings by ignoring the clothes she had so painstakingly laid out, Danielle slipped off her skirt and blouse and padded over to the dressing room to fiind clean briefs and bra.

She hadn’t intended to do more than have a quick wash, but once again Zanaide has other ideas, and as Danielle stepped out of the dressing room, the scent of sandalwood enveloped her in its heavy sweetness.

‘I don’t want a bath, Zanaide,’ she protested, but the girl looked so perturbed and upset that Danielle was forced to relent and step into the warm perfumed water.

Had someone told her three days ago that she would be lying full length in a marble bath almost deep enough to swim in, actually enjoying having someone gently massage perfumed oils into her skin, and bathing her, she would have laughed outright, but there was something so soporific about being thus shamelessly indulged that it was too much of an effort to resist, never mind protest.

Dried and perfumed, Danielle stepped into brief silk underwear and the silk suit Zanaide had put out for her.

It was a rich golden yellow, the shade of mellow buttercups and Danielle knew that the colour emphasised the dark, living russet of her hair, and the pure unclouded green of her eyes. A touch of soft beige and green eyeshadow, the merest suggestion of lipstick, and the reflection staring back at her from the mirror was all at once that of a woman and not an adolescent. Caught off guard, Danielle stared at herself, as though at a stranger. Had her mouth always had that tremulous fullness? Had her eyes always been so mysteriously shadowed and secret? It must surely be a trick of the light?

The car was waiting for them—not the Rolls this time, but a discreetly opulent BMW. Zanaide slid quietly into the front next to the driver. A servant opened the rear door for Danielle to get into the back. She was in, the door closed, and the car gliding smoothly away before she realised that she wasn’t alone in the back of the car.

‘You look pale, daughter of Hassan,’ the smooth male voice mocked.

‘Jourdan!’ Danielle whispered the name through shocked lips. ‘What are you doing here?’