Desert Nights: Falcon's Prey / The Sheikh's Virgin Bride / One Night With the Sheikh

‘What is the matter, Miss Gordon?’ he asked urbanely as he ushered her into the room.

‘N-nothing,’ Felicia stammered, but her eyes remained glued to the undeniably impressive figure he made, outlined against the starkness of the white walls.

‘When dealing with my compatriots I find it better to wear the traditional garb of our country. In point of fact the dishdasha is more comfortable by far than Western-style suits.’

‘And far more impressive.’ She could have bitten her tongue out, when he turned and stared coolly at her. A frisson of awareness tingled across her skin, and she shivered slightly, despite the warmth of the night.

‘And what, I wonder, does that remark imply? That you think me a posturing fool, practising for a part in The Desert Song?’

Anger underwrote the cold words. Horrified, Felicia stammered a denial. No European could ever have worn the flowing garment with the grace of his Arab counterpart, and her surprise had sprung merely from the fact that this was the first time she had seen Raschid dressed in the traditional manner. Although she would not have admitted it to a soul, when he opened the door to her, for a moment he had embodied every single one of her romantic teenage dreams.

And now to crown all her other follies she had offended Raschid’s pride, touching the most sensitive spot of his personality. She bit her lip, wishing they were on good enough terms for her to explain that he had misunderstood.

‘What? Nothing to say for yourself?’ he asked harshly, surprising her with the raw anger she sensed beneath the words. He moved with the stealth of the desert fox and the sureness of an Arab stallion, coming to stand at her side and spinning her round to face him.

Felicia moistened her lips, wetting them with a nervous tongue, the movement instantly stilled as Raschid’s gaze pounced on the betraying gesture.

‘Why did you send for me?’

He released her, and she could feel her nerve ends quivering with relief as the tension eased.

‘Merely to give you this,’ he replied, handing her an envelope bearing an airmail stamp.

Her heart lurched. It was from Faisal; it must be! With eager fingers she reached for the envelope, and her hand brushed against Raschid’s as she did so. It was like receiving an electric shock. She shrank back, recoiling from the contact, her face pale as she gripped her letter.

‘You may cease the charade, Miss Gordon,’ Raschid mocked. ‘The ordeal is over. You have your letter, which you can take to your lonely bed to read and perhaps remember the nights you have spent in my nephew’s arms. Faisal is no stranger to the delights of the flesh, but then I have no need to remind you of that, have I?’

‘No, you have not,’ Felicia agreed, suppressing her instinctive denial of his accusations. For some reason allowing Raschid to believe that she and Faisal were lovers made her feel safer, although why she could not have said.

She saw his face darken, tightening with anger and contempt. No doubt she had just confirmed his initial impression of her, but she no longer cared. Secretly in the hidden recesses of her heart she was beginning to doubt her own ability to make Faisal happy, but her pride would not allow her to admit her discovery to Raschid. Time enough to know that he had been right when she was safely back in England, away from those mocking grey eyes.

By the time she reached her room she was trembling with a mixture of anger and pain. Feverishly she ripped open Faisal’s envelope, withdrawing the letter with a fast-beating heart. Surely here she would find the reassurance that she so badly needed? Surely the written words of Faisal’s love for her would banish all her doubts?

The letter was depressingly short, barely more than a few scrawled lines, with none of the tender reassurances she had hoped for. Indeed, it struck Felicia, as she read the letter for a second time, that Faisal too might be having second thoughts. He had written more as though to a friend than a lover; the phrases stilted and cautious; one betraying sentence almost leaping off the paper.

‘…. New York is much more fun than I had imagined….’

With a sinking heart Felicia remembered what Raschid had told her about Faisal’s propensity for falling in and out of love. At the time she had thought he was merely trying to upset her, but now she was not so sure. Faisal’s letter was not that of a man deeply in love and committed to that love. Now, when it was too late, Felicia wished passionately that she had not allowed him to persuade her to come to Kuwait, and worse still, to spend her hard-earned savings. With a feeling of sick despair she acknowledged that had it been possible she would have gone straight to the airport first thing in the morning and booked her flight home.

She even toyed with the idea of contacting her aunt and requesting her help with the fare, but she knew she could not. It seemed ironical that the one person who would have been more than glad to finance her return to England was the one man in the world she would never ask.

No, distasteful though it was, she would have to write to Faisal and sort things out. Once he knew that she was no longer expecting to become his wife, he would probably be delighted to pay for her ticket, she thought wryly.

As she switched off the lamp and slid down between the cool sheets, she wondered morosely why the discovery that Faisal no longer loved her should affect her so little. Less than a week ago he had formed her entire world; now all she wanted was to return home. And yet she would miss this land, she admitted. Despite its alienness it had touched her heart, and she felt that she could have adapted had her love for Faisal been strong enough.

Her last thought before sleep claimed her was that at least she was having a small measure of revenge against Raschid. While she slept in the knowledge that she and Faisal would never marry, Raschid was probably lying awake thinking of ways to part them. Strangely enough the thought brought her precious little comfort.

ALTHOUGH SHE FELT no guilt at deceiving Raschid, it was far harder having to pretend with Zahra. She would have liked to have the younger girl as a sister-in-law, she acknowledged, as Zahra waylaid her on the way to breakfast, bouncing up and down in excitement.

‘Look what Raschid has given me as a pre-birthday present!’ she exclaimed, waving a cheque in front of Felicia’s bemused eyes, and gloating gleefully over its size, enlarging enthusiastically on how she intended to spend it.

‘There’s a shop in Kuwait that sells the most dreamy lingerie!’ She rolled her eyes dramatically. ‘How about coming with me this afternoon?’

Felicia hadn’t the heart to refuse her, and Zahra’s grateful hug when she nodded her head was more than reward enough.

Ali drove them into Kuwait, dropping them in the area of Fahd Salim Street, where Raschid had taken her the day before.

As Felicia had half expected, Zahra tended to linger over the glittering displays of jewellery.

‘Those pearls come from the gulf,’ she told an interested Felicia. ‘Until oil was discovered, pearls were Kuwait’s richest source of income.’

Ali hovered protectively behind them, reminding them that they had not come to window-gaze. As before, Felicia was impressed by the graceful boulevard with its trees and flowers.

‘Our government is spending a great deal of money on irrigation schemes and desalination plants,’ Zahra told her. ‘In the fruit markets you will find all manner of fruits and vegetables grown on specially developed farms. The sun, once our greatest enemy, is being harnessed to provide the energy to grow perpetual crops. Saud is studying agriculture at the university,’ she added by way of an explanation for all her knowledge. ‘His family own lands near to our own at the oasis and he and Raschid are hoping to develop a fruit farm there eventually.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘I’m not sure what he loves best—me, or his precious greenhouses.’ She touched Felicia’s arm, motioning towards one of the shops. ‘In here. Ali will wait outside for us.’

The shop was small—no more than a boutique really—the walls hung with pale green silk panels, tiny gilt chairs covered in the same fabric, standing on an off-white deep-pile carpet. No pretensions to Eastern origins here; the boutique was blatantly Bond Street, or Fifth Avenue.

A mouthwatering selection of satin and lace underwear was produced for Zahra’s inspection, and as she fingered a peach satin nightdress lavishly trimmed with coffee lace, Felicia reflected rather enviously on the advantages of possessing a wealthy and generous uncle. Not that she would want Raschid to pay for her trousseau. The thought made her go hot and cold, and the peach satin dropped from her fingers as though it had burned.

‘Something wrong?’

‘What? Oh no—nothing. I think you should have the peach, Zahra, and the pale blue nightdress and negligee set.’

‘What about this one?’

Felicia examined the nightdress she was holding up for her inspection. It was a filmy mist of sea-green shifting to jade, in a silken shimmer of the finest gossamer chiffon.

‘It’s lovely,’ Felicia admitted.

‘And most suitable for a bride,’ the sales assistant pressed.

‘Would you not like something like this for your own marriage?’ Zahra asked, much to Felicia’s embarrassment. She closed her mind to a vision of herself clad only in the whispering chiffon, held in the arms of. Not Faisal, that was for sure, she told herself, shaking her head and handing the nightgown back to Zahra.

Ali was still waiting patiently outside, and something about the set of his shoulders suggested that they had been gone rather a long time.

‘Anything else you want?’ she asked Zahra, and the other girl shook her head.

They were crossing the wide pavement when Felicia saw the familiar figure striding towards them, and her heart gave a double somersault before hammering urgently against her ribs.

‘Isn’t that Raschid?’ she asked Zahra, surprised when the younger girl compressed her lips and immediately turned in the opposite direction.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Didn’t you see that woman with him?’ Zahra hissed.

Felicia had. The woman was tall and dark, dressed with an understated elegance, wrapped in an aura of wealth. Felicia had guessed her age to be somewhere in her late twenties.

‘She must be his mistress,’ Zahra decided. ‘She cannot be a woman of good family, otherwise she would never walk openly in the street with him.’