Protecting the Desert Princess(35)

                ‘Did you always want to study law?’

                ‘No.’

                ‘Why did you?’

                Mikael shook his head. His guard wasn’t that low. ‘It’s just as well you don’t read and write,’ he said, pulling her into the crook of his arm. ‘You’d be running for prime minister.’

                ‘But I can read and write,’ Layla said. ‘Just not English. But I am going to learn—it will be good for my work.’

                ‘You work?’ This he had to hear!

                ‘Of course—though I don’t get paid for it. My father was concerned because although the girls in Ishla were receiving an education their grades were far lower than the boys. We had a discussion and decided that I would speak with them once a month and encourage them. Now I speak to all the classes. Every day I have students, but I cannot know all their names. Their grades are improving,’ Layla said. ‘I’m very good at it and they love me.’

                ‘You’re modest too.’

                She shrugged. ‘I loathe false modesty. I tell my girls to be proud of themselves and their achievements.’

                They drank more champagne in silence.

                Sometimes she felt his mouth on her hair; sometimes she felt his fingers stroke her forearm. It was the most peaceful Layla had ever felt. He dozed, and she liked the thump-thump of his heart in her ear, liked the rise and fall of his chest, and she liked the view too—because she could see the outline of what had been pressing into her last night.

                ‘What are you doing?’ Mikael asked as her fingers moved to undo the bottom part of his shirt.

                ‘I want to see the hairy bit beneath your navel again,’ she said, but his hand moved hers away and held it and she watched with a smile as the outline widened and stretched.

                ‘What made you want to study law?’ she asked again.

                ‘You’re persistent, aren’t you?’

                ‘Very, very persistent.’ Layla nodded. ‘I always get my own way in the end, so it would be much easier on you to just give in now.’

                It was tell her or let her hand go.

                Speak or find her mouth.

                Mikael knew what he would prefer, but she had invited him to her bed ‘not for sex’, and it had been the nicest hiding place he had ever had.

                He couldn’t even be bothered to put the news on and find out what was being said.

                Okay, he’d tell her why he had studied law.

                Some of it.

                ‘When I grew up I had no family. I just remember a flat and lots of people, but there was no one there that I called a parent. There were other children and lot of fights, drinking. One night everyone was moved on and I started to live on the streets.’

                ‘As a beggar?’

                ‘And a thief,’ Mikael said. ‘When I was around twelve, maybe thirteen—I don’t know exactly how old I was—a government worker helped me. His wife was dead and he took me in. I shared his home with him and his son, I got an identity, an assumed date of birth, and I went to school. I was always Mikael, but I took his surname.’