The Desert Bride Read online

  A tiny window onto the outside world for the harem? Bethany froze and turned white, a terrible pain uncoiling inside her. The thesis which had earned her both her doctorate and her current junior lectureship at a northern university had been on the suppression of women’s rights in the Third World. This was not the Third World but, even so, the dreadful irony of her almost uncontrollable attraction to Razul had boiled her principles alive two years ago. Her colleagues had laughed their socks off when he’d come after her...an Arab prince with two hundred concubines stashed in his harem back home!

  ‘Dr Morgan!’ Mustapha called pleadingly.

  Numbed by the onslaught of that recollection, Bethany moved on again. At the far end of the hall two fierce tribesmen stood outside a fantastically carved set of double doors. They wore ceremonial swords but carried guns. At a signal from Mustapha they threw back the doors on a magnificent audience room. The older man stepped back, making it plain that he was not to accompany her further.

  At the far end of the room sunlight was flooding in from doors spread back on an inner courtyard. It made the interior seem dim yet accentuated the richness of its splendour. Her sturdy leather sandals squeaked on the highly polished floor. She hesitated, her heartbeat hammering madly against her ribcage as she stared at the shallow dais, heaped with silk cushions and empty. But a terrible excitement licked at her every sense and she felt it even before she saw him—that frightening mix of craving and anticipation which for the space of several weeks two years earlier had made her calm, well-ordered life a hell of unfamiliar chaos.

  ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’

  She jerked around, that honey-soft accented drawl sending a quiver down her taut backbone. Her breath shortened in her throat. Thirty feet away on the threshold of the courtyard stood the living, breathing embodiment of a twentieth-century medieval male—Razul al Rashidai Harun, the Crown Prince of Datar, as uncivilised a specimen of primitive manhood as any prehistoric cave would have been proud to produce.

  ‘All that outfit lacks is a bush hat. Did you think you were coming to darkest Africa?’ Razul derided lazily, and her serviceable clothing suddenly felt like foolish fancy dress.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he walked with cat-like fluidity towards her. Breathtakingly goodlooking... terrifyingly exotic. With those hard-boned, hawkish features, savagely high cheek-bones and that tawny skin he might have sprung live from some ancient Berber tapestry. He was very tall for one of his race. Sheathed in fine cream linen robes, his headdress bound by a double royal golden iqual, Razul gazed down at her with night-dark eyes that were as hard as jet.

  It took enormous will-power to stand her ground. Her mouth went dry. Razul strolled calmly around her, for all the world like a predator circling his kill. It was not an image which did anything to release her tension.

  ‘So very quiet,’ Razul purred as he stilled two feet away. ‘You are in shock...the barbarian has at last learnt to speak proper English...’

  Bethany lost every drop of her hectic colour and flinched as though he had plunged a stiletto between her ribs. ‘Please—’

  ‘And even how to use your dainty Western cutlery,’ Razul imparted with merciless bite.

  Bethany dropped her head, anguish flooding her. Did he really think that such trivia had mattered? Her heart had gone out to him as he’d struggled, with all that savage pride of his, to fit into a world which his suspicious old father had denied him all knowledge of until he’d reached an age when the adaptation was naturally all the more difficult to make.

  ‘But the barbarian did not learn one lesson you sought to teach,’ Razul murmured very quietly. ‘I had no need of it for I know women. I have always known women. I did not pursue you because I was prompted by my primitive, chauvinistic arrogance to believe myself irresistible. I pursued you because in your eyes I read blatant invitation—’

  ‘No!’ Bethany gasped, galvanised into ungluing her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth.

  ‘Longing...hunger...need,’ Razul spelt out so softly that the hairs prickled at the nape of her neck. “Those ripe pink lips said no but those emerald eyes begged that I persist. Did I flatter your ego, Dr Morgan? Did playing the tease excite you?’

  Appalled that he appeared to recall every word that she had flung at him, Bethany was paralysed. He had known. He had known that on some dark, secret level she’d wanted him, in spite of all her protestations to the contrary! She was shattered by the revelation, had been convinced that her defensive shell had protected her from such insight. Now she felt stripped naked. Even worse, Razul had naturally interpreted her ambivalent behaviour in the most offensive way of all. A tease...? Sexless, cold and frigid were epithets far more familiar to her ears.

  ‘If you believe that I misled you, it was not intentional, I assure you,’ Bethany responded tightly, studying her feet, not looking at him, absolutely forbidding herself to look at him again, not even caring how he might translate such craven behaviour. Maybe she owed Razul this hearing. He was finally having his say. Two years ago his fierce anger had not assisted his efforts to express himself in her language.

  The silence smouldered. She sensed his frustration. He wanted her to fight back. Funny how she knew that, somehow understood exactly what was going through that innately devious and clever brain of his. But fighting back would prolong the agony...and she was in agony, with the evocative scent of sandalwood filling her nostrils and the soft hiss of his breathing interfering with her concentration. It took her back—back to a terrifying time when her safe, secure world had very nearly tumbled about her ears.

  ‘May I go now?’ She practically whispered the words, so great was her rigid tension.

  ‘Look at me—’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Look at me!’ Razul raked at her fiercely.

  Bethany’s gaze collided with vibrant tiger-gold eyes and she stopped breathing. The extraordinary strength of will there mesmerised her. Her heartbeat thudded heavily in her eardrums. All of a sudden she was dizzy and disorientated. With a sense of complete helplessness and intense shame, she felt her breasts stir and swell and push wantonly against the cotton cups of her bra as her nipples pinched into tight little buds. Hot pink invaded her pallor but there was nothing she could do to control her own body. The electrifying sexual charge in the atmosphere overwhelmed her every defence.

  Razul dealt her an irredeemably wolfish smile, his slumbrous golden eyes wandering over her, lingering on every tiny hint of the generous curves concealed by her loose clothing. Then, without warning, he stepped back and clapped his hands. The sound was like a pistol shot in the thrumming silence.

  ‘Now we will have tea and we will talk,’ Razul announced with an exquisite simplicity of utter command that made Bethany recall exactly who he was, what that status meant and where she was. This rogue male was one step off divinity in Datar.

  Bethany tensed and jerkily folded her arms. ‘I don’t think—’

  Three servants surged out of nowhere, one with a tray bearing cups, one with a teapot, one with a low, ebonised, brass-topped table.

  ‘Early Grey...especially for you,’ Razul informed her, stepping up on the dais and dropping down onto the cushions with innate animal grace.

  ‘Early Grey’? She didn’t correct him. The oddest little dart of tenderness pierced her, making her swallow hard. She remembered him surreptitiously shuffling that ‘dainty Western cutlery’ he had referred to at a college dinner. Then she locked the recollection out, furious with herself. Miserably she sank down onto the beautiful carpet, settling her behind onto another heap of cushions, but her disturbing thoughts marched on.

  She had been infatuated with him—hopelessly infatuated. Every tiny thing about Razul had fascinated her. She had been twenty-five years old but more naive in many ways than the average teenager. He had been her first love, a crush, whatever you wanted to call it, but it had hit her all the harder because she hadn’t been sweet sixteen with a fast recovery rate. And she had
been arrogant in her belief that superior brainpower was sufficient to ensure that she didn’t succumb to unwelcome hormonal promptings and immature emotional responses. But he had smashed her every assumption about herself to smithereens.

  ‘There was a bit of a mix-up over my visa at the airport...I wouldn’t have mentioned your name otherwise,’ she heard herself say impulsively, and even that disconcerted her. She was not impulsive, but around Razul she was not herself. The china cup trembled betrayingly on the saucer as she snatched it up to occupy her hands and sipped at the hot, fragrant tea.

  ‘Your visa was invalid.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Bethany glanced up in astonishment, not having expected to hear that nonsensical claim again.

  ‘Young women are only granted visas under strict guidelines—if they are coming here to stay with a Datari family, can produce a legitimate employment contract or are travelling with a relative or male colleague,’ Razul enumerated levelly. ‘Your visa stated that you would be accompanied. You arrived alone. It was that fact which invalidated your documentation.’

  Bethany lifted her chin, her emerald-green eyes flashing. ‘So you discriminate against foreign women by making lists of ridiculous rules—’

  ‘Discrimination may sometimes be a positive act—’

  ‘Never!’ Bethany asserted with raw conviction.

  ‘You force me to be candid.’ Brilliant dark eyes rested on her with impatience, his wide mouth hardening. ‘An influx of hookers can scarcely be considered beneficial to our society.’

  ‘Hookers?’ Bethany repeated in a flat tone, taken aback.

  ‘Our women must be virgin when they marry. If not, the woman is unmarriageable, her family dishonoured. In such a society the oldest profession may thrive, but we did not have a problem in that field until we granted visas with too great a freedom.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that I was mistaken for some sort of tart at the airport?’ Bethany gritted in a shaking voice.

  ‘The other category of female we seek to exclude I shall call “the working adventuress” for want of a more acceptable label.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow,’ Bethany said thinly.

  ‘Young women come here ostensibly to work. They flock to the nightclubs that have sprung up in the city. There they dress, drink and conduct themselves in a manner which may be perfectly acceptable in their own countries but which is seen in quite another light by Datari men,’ Razul explained with a sardonic edge to his rich vowel sounds. ‘A sizeable percentage of these women do not return home again. They stay on illegally and become mistresses in return for a lifestyle of luxury.’

  ‘Really, I hardly look the type!’ Bethany retorted witheringly, but her fair skin was burning hotly. ‘And, fascinating as all this is, it’s time that I headed for my hotel.’

  ‘Lone women in your age group are not currently accepted into our hotels as guests.’

  Bethany thrust a not quite steady hand through her tumbling hair. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘No hotel will offer you accommodation when you arrive alone.’ His strong dark face utterly impassive, Razul surveyed her intently. ‘Had I not brought you to the palace you would now be on a flight back to the UK.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Bethany suddenly snapped, her nervous tension splintering up through the cracks in her composure. ‘It’s hardly my fault that my assistant broke an ankle before we boarded!’

  ‘Most unfortunate.’ But he said it with a faint smile on his beautifully moulded mouth, and his tone more than suggested that he was not remotely interested in the obvious fact that her planned stay in Datar had now run into petty bureaucratic difficulties, which she was quite sure he could brush aside...should he want to.

  Bethany pushed her cup away with a very forced smile, behind which her teeth were gritted. ‘Look...this is an important research trip for me—’

  ‘But then you take all your work so seriously,’ Razul pointed out smoothly.

  Her facial muscles clenched taut. ‘I am here in Datar to research the nomadic culture,’ she informed him impressively.

  ‘How tame...’

  ‘Tame?’ Bethany echoed in shrill disconcertion, having assumed that his own cultural background would necessarily prompt him to treat the subject with appropriate respect.

  ‘I have read your paper on the suppression of women’s rights,’ Razul murmured very softly.

  ‘You’ve read my paper?’ Bethany found herself gawping at him.

  ‘And, having done so, intend to generously offer you research in a field which could make you famous in the academic world when you return to the West.’ Burnished golden eyes suddenly struck hers with ferocious force.

  ‘What field?’ Bethany queried, a frown-line dividing her brows as she shifted uneasily on the cushions, instinctively reacting to the humming tension in the air.

  Razul unleashed a predatory smile upon her. ‘A way of life never before freely opened to the scrutiny of a Western anthropologist. I feel remarkably like Santa Claus.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ The atmosphere was suffocatingly tense. Bethany scrambled upright and involuntarily backed away from the controlled menace that emanated from Razul in vibrating waves.

  ‘A prolonged stay in my harem will not only provide you with liberal scope for academic research, it will provide me with a long-awaited opportunity to teach you what being a woman is all about,’ Razul told her with silken self-satisfaction.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘YOUR harem?’ For the count of thirty seconds Bethany simply stared at Razul, her bright green eyes open to their fullest extent. Then she visibly bristled, her naturally sultry mouth compressing into a thin, unamused line. ‘Very funny,’ she said flatly, but there was an unevenness to her response as she fought against the giant tide of bitterness threatening to envelop her.

  ‘You walk in my world now.’ Razul issued the reminder with indolent cool. Veiled dark eyes slid over her in an all-encompassing look that was as physical as a caress. ‘When you walk from it again you will be a different woman.’

  Her aggressive stance—feet apart and arms taut—quivered as a tide of fury surged through her, leaving her light-headed. ‘If you look at me like that once more, so help me I will knock your teeth down your throat!’ Bethany blistered back at him.

  A scorching smile slashed his hard mouth, perfect white teeth flashing against his golden skin. He surveyed her with intense pleasure. ‘My father said... “Is this woman worth a diplomatic incident?” If he saw you now, truly he would not have asked such a question.’

  ‘What do you mean, “worth a diplomatic incident”?’ Bethany demanded, her voice half an octave higher.

  ‘Sooner or later you will be missed,’ Razul pointed out gently. ‘Questions will be asked, answers must be given. Our ambassador in London will be called to the Foreign Office. But I suspect it will be many weeks before we reach that stage—’

  ‘The Foreign Office?’ Bethany shook her head as though to clear it, a daze of utter disbelief beginning to enfold her.

  ‘You see, you have so few people in your life to notice that you are missing. You write to your mother only once a month. You communicate with your father not at all. Your sole close friend is currently enjoying an extended honeymoon in South America—her fall from grace in allowing a man into her life very probably loosened the ties of that friendship. As for your academic colleagues...?’ Razul enumerated these facts in the same calm, measured tone, as though he was well aware of her growing incredulity. ‘This is the long summer vacation. I doubt if they will be expecting to hear from you. I find your life of isolation a sad testimony to your wonderful Western civilisation.’

  The pink tip of Bethany’s tongue crept out to moisten her dry lower lip. Shock was reverberating through her in debilitating waves. ‘How...how do you know all these things about me?’ she whispered jerkily.

  ‘An investigation agency.’

  ‘You put a private investigator on me? But when?
You didn’t even know I was coming to Datar!’

  ‘Did I not? A liberal endowment to your university ensured your eventual arrival—’

  ‘I b-beg your pardon?’ Bethany stammered, a painful throb of tension beginning to pulse behind her brow-bone.

  ‘Why do you think your superiors insisted that you base your research on Datar?’

  ‘The nomadic tribes here have not suffered the same level of exposure to the modern world as in other countries,’ she informed him harshly, her hands clenching in on themselves.

  ‘True...but who suggested the subject of your research?’

  Bethany went rigid. The idea had come down from on high. It had not emerged from the anthropology department itself. Indeed there had been resentful mutters to the effect that she must have admirers in high places because such research opportunities abroad were, due to a shortage of finance, currently at an all-time low.

  ‘I’m building your university a brand-new library,’ Razul shared with her gently. ‘And my carefully chosen British representative, who stressed his special interest in Datar and also mentioned how very impressed he was by a series of lectures you gave last year, insisted on absolute and complete anonymity in return for the endowment.’

  Bethany was starting to tremble. Without a flicker of remorse he was telling her that she had been lured out to Datar on false pretences. ‘No...I don’t believe you...I refuse to believe you!’

  ‘I have known the date of your arrival since you applied for your visa. I was not, however, prepared for you to arrive alone at the airport,’ Razul conceded wryly. ‘Or for the subsequent furore over your visa, but your solitary state has worked to my advantage. You now have no companion to raise the alarm...and I have you in my possession that much sooner.’

  ‘You have not got me in your possession, you maniac!’ Bethany snatched up her duffel bag and stalked to the exit doors. ‘I’ve listened to this nonsense long enough as well!’