Desert Fantasies: Duty and the Beast / Cinderella and the Sheikh / Marrying the Scarred Sheikh

Maybe she was not such a spoilt princess after all.

And the thought was so foreign when it came that he almost rejected it out of hand. Almost. But the proof was right there in front of him. Maybe there was more to her after all.

‘Thank you,’ she said after the family had gone and they walked companionably along the shoreline under a sliver of crescent moon. It had seemed the most obvious thing in the world to do. The night was balmy and inviting, and he knew that she was not yet ready to fall into his bed, but he was in no hurry to return to his study of the centuries-old texts.

‘What are you thanking me for?’

‘Lots of things,’ she said. ‘For sending Ahab to look at their children, for one. For arranging the necessary transport to hospital for the operation Katif needs, if not the operation itself. And for not minding that the family shared our meal.’

‘Be careful, Princess,’ he warned, holding up one hand. ‘Or one might almost forget that you hate me.’

She blinked, though whether she was trying to gauge how serious he was, or whether she had been struck with the same revelation, he could not be sure. ‘So you have some redeeming features. I wouldn’t go reading too much into it.’ But he noticed her words lacked the conviction and fire of her earlier diatribes. He especially noticed that she didn’t insist that she did hate him. He liked that she didn’t feel the compunction to tell him. He sighed into the night breeze. It had been right to get out of the palace where everything was so formal and rigid, where every move was governed by protocol.

In the palace there was always someone watching, even if it was only someone on hand and waiting to find out if there was anything one needed. For all its space, in the palace it was impossible to move without being seen. He curled his fingers around hers as they walked: in the palace it would have been impossible to do this without his three friends betting amongst themselves whether it meant that he would score tonight.

‘You were good with that child,’ he said, noticing—liking—that she didn’t pull her hand away. ‘I suspect you found a fan.’

‘Cala is very likeable.’

‘You were equally good with her family, making them feel special. If you can be like that with everyone, you will make a great sheikha. You will be a queen who will be well-loved.’

She stopped and pulled her hand free, rubbing her hands on her arms so he could not reclaim it. ‘If I’d imagined this walk was going to provide you with yet another opportunity to remind me of the nature of this marriage, and of my upcoming duty in your bed, I never would have agreed to come along.’

He cursed his clumsy efforts to praise her. ‘I am sorry, Princess. I did not mean …’

She blinked up at him, her aggravation temporarily overwhelmed by surprise. He was sorry? He was actually sorry and he was telling her so? Was this Zoltan the barbarian sheikh before her?

But then, he wasn’t all barbarian, she had to concede. Otherwise why would he have sent anyone to look at a sick child? Why would he have approved his uplift in a helicopter, no less, and the required operation if he was a monster?

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said, holding up her hands as she shook her head. ‘There was no need for me to respond that way. I overreacted.’ Because I’m the one who can’t stop thinking about doing my duty …

The night was softly romantic, it was late, soon it would be time for bed and she was here on this beach with a man who came charged with electricity.

‘What did you do before?’ she asked, changing the subject before he too realised why she was so jumpy, resuming her walk along the beach under the stars. ‘Before all this happened. Were you always in Al-Jirad? I attended a few functions at the Blue Palace, but I don’t remember seeing you at any of them.’

‘No, you wouldn’t have,’ he said, falling into step beside her as the low waves swooshed in, their foam bright even in the low moonlight. ‘I left when it was clear there was no place for me here.’

‘Because of Mustafa?’

‘Partly. My father always took his side. I was twelve when my mother died and there seemed no reason to stay. Mustafa and I hated each other and everyone knew it. For the peace of the family, my father sent me to boarding school in England.’

She looked up at his troubled profile and wondered what it must have been like to be cast adrift from your family because you didn’t fit in, when you were possibly the only sane member in it.

She slipped her hand back in his and resumed walking along the shore, hoping he wouldn’t make too much of it. She was merely offering her understanding, that was all. ‘Is that where you met your three friends?’

‘That was later. We met at university.’

‘And you clicked right away?’

‘No. We hated each other on sight.’

She looked at him and frowned. He shrugged. ‘Nothing breeds hatred faster than someone else telling you who should be friends.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

‘It’s a long story. Basically we’d all come from different places and somehow all ended up in the university rowing club, all of us loners up till then and intending to row alone, as we had always done to keep fit. Until someone decided to stick us in a crew together, expecting we “foreigners” should all get along. For a joke they called our four the Sheikh Caique.’ He paused a while, reflecting, and then said, ‘They did not laugh long.’

‘And over time you did become good friends with them.’

He shrugged and looked out to sea, and she wondered what parts of the story he was not telling her. ‘That was not automatic, but yes. And I could not wish for better brothers.’

They walked in silence for a while, the whoosh of the waves and the call of birds settling down to sleep in the swaying palm trees the music of the night.

And then he surprised her by stopping and catching her other hand in his. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he started.

‘No, I explained—’

He let go of one hand and put a finger to her lips. ‘I need to say this, Princess, and I am not good at apologies, so you must not stop me.’

She nodded, her lips brushing the pad of his finger, and she drank in the intoxicating scent of him. It was all she could do not to reach out her tongue so she might once again taste his flesh.

‘I was wrong about you, Princess. I know I messed up trying to tell you before, but you are not who I thought you were. I underestimated you. I assumed you were lightweight and frothy, spoilt and two-dimensional. I assumed that because you called what you did with children your “work”, that it must be no kind of work. But after seeing you forge a bond with that little girl today, the way you knelt down and listened to her and treated her like an equal, I realised this is a gift you have.

‘And I apologise unreservedly for my misjudgement, because I was wrong on every single count. I had no concept of the person you really are.’

She waited for reality to return—for this moment to pass, this dream sequence to pass, for the real Zoltan to return—but instead she saw only this Zoltan waiting for her answer.

‘You’re wrong, you know.’

‘About you?’

‘About being no good at apologies. That was one of the best I think I’ve ever heard.’

It was true. His confession had reached out to her, warming her in places she would never have suspected him reaching. His previous assessment of her was no surprise. She had known he had resented her from the start, assuming she was some shallow party-girl princess who cared nothing for duty. But what was a surprise was the way his words touched her. And, even though he had not realised yet in how many ways he had misjudged her, his words touched her in places deep inside, places she thought immune to the likes of anything Zoltan could say or do.

He smiled. ‘I am so sorry, Aisha,’ he said and she blinked up open-mouthed at him.

‘You called me by my name. You have never called me that before.’

He nodded, his eyes contrite. ‘And it is to my eternal shame that I did not do so from the very beginning. You deserved to be called by your name rather than your title. A name that spoke of the goddess you were surely named for, the goddess who must be so jealous right now of your perfection that she is hiding away up there behind the blinds.’

And, even though he’d gone too far, she could not help but smile. ‘You should not suggest such things of the gods,’ she said, still battling to find balance in a world suddenly shifted off its axis. ‘Lest they grow jealous and seek their revenge against the mortal.’

‘A goddess could be jealous of you,’ he said, curling his hand around her neck. ‘Except that you are bound in marriage to me, and no goddess could possibly ever envy you that. They would figure you are already paying the price for your beauty.’

She swallowed, wondering where the other Zoltan was hiding, the one who would come out at any moment breathing hell-fire and damnation and demanding that she do her duty by him, if not willingly, at least for the good of their respective countries.

Yet she didn’t want that other Zoltan to appear, because this Zoltan made her feel so good—not only because he awakened all her senses, but because he spoke to her needs and desires and touched her in dark, secret places she had never known existed.