Zanaide helped her to bathe and dress in one of the caftans the Sheikha had ordered for her, and although the younger girl’s eyes widened fractionally as she saw the faint purpling bruises on Danielle’s fair skin, where Jourdan’s passion had made her forget pain, she said nothing.
After breakfast and with Zanaide as interpreter Danielle was shown over the castle by a tall bearded Arab who Zanaide told her was Jourdan’s comptroller.
The castle was enormous; one entire wing, although furnished, appeared unused, but Zanaide told her that it was set aside for the use of the desert nomads who were allowed to water their herds at the castle’s oasis twice a year and for that time remained under the castle roof.
‘The Sheikh has done much for our people,’ Zanaide told Danielle seriously as they explored a beautiful inner courtyard, which the comptroller had told Danielle was to be her own special province. ‘Our young men learn of the new technology at foreign universities, our girls are permitted to go to school.’
Permitted! Danielle’s lip curled faintly. She and Zanaide were worlds apart in their outlook. What Zanaide looked upon as a privilege given by an indulgent male Danielle considered to be hers without question. She shivered suddenly despite the heat, as she dwelt on what her future life could be if she didn’t escape from Qu‘Har. He owned her, Jourdan had told her calmly last night, and her heart still burned with the resentment his arrogant words had aroused.
Zanaide drew her attention to the beauty of the mosaic-tiled floor of the courtyard, but Danielle merely gave it a desultory glance. A cage was a cage no matter how prettily it was painted. An unbearable longing to be free of the castle and all that it represented overwhelmed her. Shielding her eyes from the fierce glare of the sun, she looked around her. A tower, soaring above the tiled roofs of the castle, caught her eye and she stared up at it.
‘That is the Sheikh’s private place,’ Zanaide told her eagerly, patently relieved that something had caught Danielle’s attention. ‘It was built by an ancestor of the Sheikh’s who used it to watch the heavens and make predictions from what he read there.’
‘Can we go up and see it?’ Danielle asked slowly, something deep down inside her reaching out towards the tower. Zanaide looked upset and shocked.
‘It is the private apartment of the Sheikh,’ she told Danielle apologetically, ‘and none may go there but him.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘But now that you are married perhaps he will invite you to share its solitude with him. He spends many hours there…’
Doing what? Danielle wondered acidly, trying not to admit to the feeling of disappointment growing inside her as she realised that the tower—like her freedom—was withheld from her, and by the same man.
* * *
Danielle had been at the castle in the desert for nearly a week. Jourdan had not been near her since their wedding night. She had spent the second night of their marriage lying in the vast bed in a state of rigid hatred, admitting only with the first pearly fingers of dawn that her efforts had all been in vain and that Jourdan was not going to give her the opportunity to prove his arrogant claims wrong and repulse him with the icy disdain with which she had intended to greet him. She was asleep when the bedroom door opened and the morning sun threw the tall shadow of a man across her bed, a frown in his eyes as he surveyed the tumbled disorder of her hair and the mauve shadows beneath her eyes.
It was Zanaide who told her of the small child who had been lost by one of the tribes who still wandered the desert, and how Jourdan and his men had spent the night searching for the little boy.
‘The little one was fortunate that the Sheikh was here to organise the search,’ Zanaide had told her. ‘Otherwise he would probably never have been found. Just as the heat of our sun during the day can kill, so can the chill of it by night.’
There had been celebrations at the nomad camp by the oasis following the safe return of the little boy, or so Zanaide had informed Danielle. The servants seemed to know everything, and Danielle’s cheeks burned to think that they must also know how unwillingly she had been made the bride of the man whose word they took as law, and how ruthlessly he had overridden that unwillingness. Her one hope was that her parents would telephone her from America, and on being unable to get in touch with her would realise that something was wrong and come straight out to Qu‘Har. Danielle didn’t for one moment doubt that her stepfather would leave no stone unturned to have her marriage set aside once he knew how it had been accomplished and how much she hated it, firmly ignoring the small voice which told her tauntingly that there had been a good deal of truth in what Jourdan had said about her stepfather accepting the marriage.
The days seemed to grow hotter, the sun burning brassily down from a sky whose blueness seemed to hurt the eyes. Zanaide urged Danielle to try to rest during the hottest part of the day, but Danielle could not. A restless urgency seemed to possess her, her nerves constantly tightening under the constant threat of coming face to face with her unwanted husband. Her normal composure deserting her under the pressure of the tension enveloping her Danielle found it almost impossible to eat, and Zanaide frowned over the amount of weight she was losing.
One afternoon when the heat of the courtyard seemed to push down on her in oppressive waves Danielle found herself moving with the slow purposefulness of a sleepwalker towards the stairs which led to Jourdan’s tower.
She knew that he spent most evenings there alone—Zanaide had told her as much, flushing guiltily as though she were giving away some carefully guarded secret. What did the other girl think she would do? Danielle asked herself wearily. Surely she must realise that she had no more desire for Jourdan’s company than he had for hers. Marriage to her and the consummation of that marriage had accomplished his purpose and now he had no further need of her.
The stone steps curved upwards spiral fashion and Danielle followed them blindly, not pausing to glance through the narrow slits let into the thick stone walls at intervals. It was cool on the stairs, shielded from the brilliance of the sun by the thick stone which Zanaide had told her had been quarried during the days of the Crusades and used to build this vast complex by the sophisticated and learned Muslim who had travelled widely with the victorious armies of Saladin.
The stairs came to an abrupt end before a barred and studded wooden door similar to those guarding the main entrance to the castle. Danielle stared at them, focusing properly for the first time. What on earth was she doing up here? She looked back behind her, trying to remember what impulse had driven her to climb the stairs in the first place. She had been sitting in the courtyard, watching the carp in the fishpond, their freedom as curtailed as hers, when suddenly a yearning to see as far beyond her prison walls as she could had overcome her.
The door to the tower yielded beneath her touch and Danielle stepped inside, the door closing behind her unnoticed as her eyes widened.
Silky Persian rugs adorned the floor, shimmering silk gauzes veiled the walls shimmering iridescent with all the colours of a peacock’s tail—no soft pastel shades here but luxury and richness of an opulence that caught Danielle’s breath. The tower was circular with divans set in the window embrasures, covered in furs. A telescope—a curiously mundane article in such an exotic setting—caught Danielle’s eye, and she wandered over to it, touching the smooth wood absently, her eyes drawn to the distant horizon. If only she could find some way of leaving Qu‘Har! A tear slid down her cheek, quickly followed by another, and she brushed them away impatiently. How Jourdan would love to see her like this, defeated and in tears! Her fingers clenched, her chin lifting proudly. As she turned towards the door she saw the narrow bed she had not noticed before, was this where Jourdan slept? With an effort of will she dragged her eyes away, hating herself for the inner tremor which wracked at her, reminding her of all the things she had fought so hard to forget—like the rich satin feel of Jourdan’s skin beneath her shy fingertips. The overwhelming sense of weakness she had experienced before his superior strength, the trembling, burgeoning arousal of her own body, quickening through curiosity to mindless desire as he set it on fire with his hands and lips, and she…
‘No!’
The word was torn from her throat on an anguished cry. She had responded only because of the tea she had drunk—tea she knew had been drugged despite his denials. There could be no other possible explanation for the wild abandon of her final capitulation to his arrogant dominance. Could there?
All at once a terrible weariness overcame her, an aching pain in the region of her heart and throat, a burning sensation behind her heavy eyelids presaging tears. What was happening to her? Danielle wondered wretchedly. Where was her determination, her independence? She lay down on the narrow bed and closed her eyes merely intending to rest them for a moment.
The sound of someone moving intruded on Danielle’s dream. It had been such a happy one too. She had been back in London. Back with her parents. She sighed, her hand reaching up toward her stiff neck, her voice strained as she called Zanaide’s name.
‘The maid, unlike the mistress, does not dare to penetrate the eagle’s lair,’ a cool male voice drawled softly. ‘What are you doing here, petite? Or am I to draw my own conclusions from your presence here in this tower which is my preserve and mine alone?’