This affair, if it qualified to be called such a thing, would be very short-lived. She had absolutely no future with Zafir, she knew that. Still, she couldn’t resist stealing this chance to be intimate with him, not because she wanted to learn about sex, although that was definitely part of it. She also liked feeling desirable and prized. But more than all of that, she wanted to learn about him.
So she wouldn’t worry about the future. They had today, Fern assured herself as she pushed up from her bed, already wondering how he would find her and when.
Except the din from the camels that she had put down to one of their cranky periods seemed to be growing and the babble of voices speaking Arabic increased in volume.
Peeking out of her tent, she discovered they were being invaded.
* * *
Zafir’s father had loved all things Western, to the point that he’d pushed his new ideas too hard and fast on a culture still catching up to the twentieth century and far from ready to embrace the twenty-first. Ra’id’s father had been more conservative, which had bequeathed a host of different issues on Ra’id as a leader, but one thing they both needed without question was the support of the Bedouin clan that roamed their lands.
He and Ra’id had come to the oasis specifically to meet with the leader of this tribe and reaffirm their alliance with him. The tribe might stay as long as a week, but Zafir found himself wishing they would hurry themselves along.
Fern was waiting for him. Fern, with her shy touch and eagerness to please and her abandonment to passion. They were behaving like teenagers in the back of a car and it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life.
Yet he was back to barely acknowledging her when he glimpsed her walk past with his nieces. She wore her abaya and it had smudges of dust at the wrist, but she still managed to look prim and cute at the same time. Her glorious hair was hidden beneath a black scarf, the curled tip of the tail peeking from the hem on her back. She had pinned a veil across her face so only the freckled bridge of her nose was visible, along with her quiet gray eyes.
Her strawberry-blond lashes had dropped demurely when she’d caught his eye. He could only see that narrow band of her face, but he’d been sure she had blushed.
Because she was remembering.
The memories stoked heat through him, too, filling him with need, but there wouldn’t be so much as a conversation between them while the nomads filled the oasis. The servants kept to themselves and his guards might turn a blind eye to his stealing off with her, but he couldn’t afford to dent his reputation with people who already mistrusted him for his father’s bold antics.
So he kept his distance while discussing where decent range land could still be found and stayed up late, nodding his head to the music and admiring the skills of the sword dancers. When asked, he agreed that yes, he was considering remarrying. No, nothing was formalized, but yes, he would search for his match within his own borders.
He kept to himself that the prospect filled him with dread. He resented his father for seeking his own pleasure at the expense of not just his country, but his immediate family. Even the woman his father claimed to have loved beyond reason, Zafir’s mother, had suffered under his father’s selfish pursuit of his own happiness. Zafir refused to commit the same crime. His marriage had been difficult, but he had Tariq from the union and more stability in his country as a result. The sacrifice had been worth it. He would do it again.
But not yet. After he left the oasis.
Indulging himself with Fern didn’t make him like his father, he reasoned, throwing an arm over his eyes as he lay in bed fighting the urge to go to her. One small dalliance with an English woman on holiday was not the same as sentencing two children—two—to a lifetime of conflict in their identity.