Captured by the Sheikh

‘Aziz will send someone to fetch me. People will be looking.’

‘Tomorrow. By that time any tracks in the desert, any evidence of where you’ve gone, will have vanished.’ He glanced towards the tent flap, which rustled in the wind. ‘It sounds as if a storm is brewing.’

Elena shook her head slowly. ‘How did you manage it? To get a false message to him, convince the pilot to land somewhere else?’

‘Not everyone is loyal to Aziz. In fact, few are outside of Siyad. You know he has not been in the country for more than a few days at a time since he was a boy?’

‘I know he is very popular in the courts of Europe.’

‘You mean the country clubs. The gentleman playboy is not so popular here.’

Elena’s eyes flashed gold. ‘That’s a ridiculous nickname, given to him by the tabloids.’

Khalil shrugged. ‘And yet it stuck.’ Aziz, the playboy of Europe, who spent his time at parties and on polo fields. He ran a business too, Khalil knew; he’d started up some financial venture that was successful, if just an excuse for him to party his way through Europe and avoid the country of his birth.

Aziz didn’t even care about Kadar, Khalil thought with a familiar spike of bitterness. He didn’t deserve to rule, even if he hadn’t been a bastard son.

‘No matter what you think of Aziz, you can’t just kidnap a queen,’ Elena stated, her chin jutting out defiantly. ‘You’d be wise to cut your losses, Khalil, and free me now. I won’t press charges.’

Khalil suppressed a laugh of genuine amusement. ‘How generous of you.’

‘You don’t want to face a tribunal,’ she insisted. ‘How can you become Sheikh if you’ve committed a crime? Caused an international incident? You will be called to account.’

‘You’ll find that is not how things are done in my country.’

‘My country, then,’ she snapped. ‘Do you think my Council, my country, will allow its queen to be kidnapped?’

He shrugged. ‘You were merely detained, Your Highness, as a necessary measure. And, since Aziz is a pretender to the throne, you should be grateful that I am preventing a marriage you would undoubtedly regret.’

‘Grateful!’ Her eyes sparked with anger. ‘What if your plan fails?’

He smiled coldly. ‘I do not consider failure a possibility.’

She shook her head slowly, her eyes like two grey-gold pools, reminding him of a sunset reflected on water. ‘You can’t do this. People don’t— World leaders don’t do this!’

‘Things are different here.’

‘Not that different, surely?’ She shook her head again. ‘You’re mad.’

Fury surged again and he took a deep, even breath. ‘No, Your Highness, I am not mad. Just determined. Now, it is late and I think you should go to your quarters. You will have a private tent here and, as I said before, every comfort possible.’ He bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Enjoy your stay in Kadar.’

* * *

Elena paced the quarters of the elegant tent Assad had escorted her to an hour ago. Khalil had been right when he’d said he’d give her every possible comfort: the spacious tent had a wide double bed on its own wooden dais, the soft mattress piled high with silk and satin covers and pillows. There were also several teak chairs and a bureau for clothes she didn’t even have.

Had they brought her luggage from the jet? She doubted it. Not that she’d even brought much to Kadar. She’d only been intending to stay for three days: a quiet ceremony, a quick honeymoon and then a return to Thallia to introduce Aziz to her people.

And now none of it would happen. Unless someone rescued her or she managed to escape, prospects she deemed quite unlikely, her marriage to Aziz would not take place. If he did not marry within the six weeks, he would be forced to relinquish his claim to the throne. He wouldn’t need her then, but unfortunately she still needed him.

Still needed a husband, a Prince Consort, and before the convening of the Council next month.

Elena sank onto an embroidered chair and dropped her head into her hands. Even now she couldn’t believe she was here, that she’d actually been kidnapped.

Yet why shouldn’t she believe it? Hadn’t the worst in her life happened before? For a second she remembered the sound of the explosion ringing in her ears, the terrible weight of her father’s lifeless body on top of hers.

And, even after that awful day, from the moment she’d taken the throne she’d been dogged by disaster, teetering on the precipice of ruin. Led by Markos, the stuffy, sanctimonious men of the Thallian Council had sought to discredit and even disown her. They didn’t want a single young woman as ruler of Thallia. They didn’t want her.

She’d spent so much time trying to prove herself to the men of her Council who questioned her every action, doubted her every word. Who assumed she was flighty, silly and irresponsible, all because of one foolish mistake made when she’d been just nineteen and overwhelmed by grief and loneliness.

Nearly four years on, all the good she’d done for her country—all the appearances she’d made, the charities she’d supported and the bills she’d helped draft—counted for nothing. At least, not in Markos’s eyes. And the rest of the Council would be led by him, even in this day and age. Thallia was a traditional country. They wanted a man as their head of state.

Tears pricked under her lids and she blinked them back furiously. She wasn’t a little girl, to cry over a cut knee. She was a woman, a woman who’d had to prove she possessed the power and strength of a man for four endless, stormy years.

It couldn’t end now like this, just because some crazed rebel had decided he was the rightful heir to the throne.

Except, Elena had to acknowledge, Khalil hadn’t seemed crazed. He’d been coldly composed, utterly assured. Yet how could he be the rightful heir? And did he really think he could snatch the throne from under Aziz’s nose? When she didn’t show up in Siyad, when the Kadaran diplomat who had accompanied her sounded the alarm, Aziz would come looking. And he’d find her, because he was as desperate as she was.

Although, considering she was being held captive in the middle of the desert, perhaps she was now a little more desperate than Aziz.

He could, she realised with a terrible, sinking sensation, find another willing bride. Why shouldn’t he? They’d met only a handful of times. The marriage had been her idea. He could still find someone else, although he’d have to do it pretty quickly.

Had Khalil thought of that? What was preventing Aziz from just grabbing some random woman and marrying her to fulfil the terms of his father’s will?

Elena rose from the chair and once more restlessly paced the elegant confines of her tent. Outside the night was dark, the only sound the sweep of the sand and the low nickering of the tethered horses.

She had to talk to Khalil again and convince him to release her. That was her best chance.

Filled with grim determination, Elena whirled around and stalked to the opening of her tent, pulled the cloth aside and stepped out into the desert night, only to have two guards step quickly in front of her, their bodies as impenetrable as a brick wall. She gazed at their blank faces, at the rifles strapped to their chests, and lifted her chin.

‘I want to speak to Khalil.’

‘He is occupied, Your Highness.’ The guard’s voice was both bland and implacable; he didn’t move.

‘With something more important than securing the throne?’ she shot back. The wind blew her hair about her face and impatiently she shoved it back. ‘I have information he’ll want to hear,’ she stated firmly. ‘Information that will affect his—his intentions.’

The two guards stared at her impassively, utterly unmoved by her argument. ‘Please return to the tent, Your Highness,’ one of them said flatly. ‘The wind is rising.’

‘Tell Khalil he needs to speak to me,’ she tried again, and this time, to her own immense irritation, she heard a pleading note enter her voice. ‘Tell him there are things I know, things he hasn’t considered.’

One of the guards placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and Elena stiffened under it. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘For your own safety, Your Highness, you must return to the tent.’ And, pushing her around, he forced her back into the tent as if she were a small child being marched to her room.

* * *

Khalil sat at the teakwood table in his private tent and with one lean finger traced the route through the desert from the campsite to Siyad. Three hundred miles. Three hundred miles to victory.

Reluctantly, yet unable to keep himself from it, he let his gaze flick to a corner of the map, an inhospitable area of bleak desert populated by a single nomadic tribe: his mother’s people.