Not that he allowed that conflict to continue to rage in him anymore. He was wholly a man of the desert and did his best to prove it, hunting with the men the next day and playing a type of polo on camels the following. If he longed for the sweet yet tart taste of strawberry bursting in his mouth, no one, most especially the forbidden fruit in question, knew.
Until the next afternoon when she stunned him by calling, “Zafir!” and came running toward him across the camp.
His companion, the sheikh of this visiting Bedouin tribe, stopped beside him and swung a look of startled denunciation at Zafir. Who was this girl to act so familiar?
Zafir bristled, accosted by a sensation like his innermost desires, the things he kept most private to himself, had been turned out onto the sand. Like she was jerking back a curtain and crying “he’s English, he’s mine” exactly when he was needing to be seen at his most independent and Arabic.
And because of that instant sense of exposure and shame in his own weakness, he stopped her with a glare.
She halted and a startled, guarded look came into her eyes as she looked uncertainly between them.
“I mean, abu Tariq,” she said, using the more formal address as she took a few hurried steps toward him. Amineh had arranged for Fern to spend time with the Bedouin women, to observe their sewing and weaving, but it really was better if Fern was seldom seen and rarely heard while the nomads were here.
“Not now,” he stated flatly and started to turn his friend away, asserting that she was nothing to him.
“It can’t wait,” she insisted, circling into his line of vision.
He let her see his outrage. If she thought their touchy-feely little tryst entitled her to his attention on her whim, she was dead wrong.
Hurt flashed in her eyes, but even though her slim build seemed to pull tight and become even more narrow, and the little he could see of her face was pale enough to make her freckles stand out in dark spots, she kept her gaze locked with his.
“A girl is ill. Her mother isn’t taking it seriously and I can’t find your sister. I only have Bashira to interpret.”
The man beside him demanded to know what she was saying. Zafir translated, aware exactly how much Western interference was welcomed, especially when it involved women making demands. His friend urged him to let the girl’s mother be the judge. He dismissed Fern with a step toward her and a flick of his hand to shoo her away.
The action, not meant to actually strike her, still set Zafir’s control on edge. Bigotry was his fatal weakness and Fern was being advised firmly of her insignificant status.
She jerked back a step, trepidation fixing her eyes on the man as she excused, “I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t worried—”
The wounded throb in her voice told Zafir she realized how completely she was being disregarded. But where he would have called her meek at any other time, she showed inordinate boldness, straightening her spine, growing a fraction taller and speaking with insistence.
“But her mother doesn’t want to talk about it because she, well, the girl looks about thirteen. Her mother thinks she’s starting her time. I think it’s appendicitis.”
“Time...?” Comprehension dawned. “She probably is,” he averred. What did he know about these things?
“I’ve had both and you don’t get a fever from puberty,” she retorted hotly. “You can’t ignore this. I can’t. Come and see for yourself.”