The Widow And The Sheikh (Hot Arabian Nights, Book 1) Read online

  He was right. She hated that he was right. She was not armed, while he was armed to teeth. She couldn’t outrun him, she couldn’t overpower him. She had no option but to somehow brazen it out. What she must not do was show her fear. Clasping her shaking hands tightly together, Julia glared at the man. ‘I have no intentions of running away. I am not the trespasser. This is my tent, my property. You have no right to be here. I demand that you leave. Immediately.’

  He stared at her in astonishment.

  ‘I asked you to leave,’ Julia repeated, this time in Italian.

  Still, he made no move. ‘I heard you,’ he replied in the same language, before reverting to English. ‘This tent may be yours but this kingdom is not. You do not belong here. I repeat: what are you doing here?’

  Julia bristled. ‘That, with respect, is none of your business.’

  A flash of anger illuminated his countenance. ‘Do you have official papers? Who gave you permission to travel here?’

  Though he spoke curtly, he had tucked his dagger back into his belt. Julia’s fear began to recede, allowing indignation to take hold. The arrogance of him! She crossed her arms. ‘Naturally I have papers, and they are in perfect order.’

  ‘Show them to me.’

  He held out a peremptory hand. She was on the brink of informing him that he had no right at all to make such demands when it occurred to her that he could well be some sort of official, and it would not be prudent to antagonise him any further, especially if she wished to ask for his help. ‘If you will give me a moment, I’ll look for them.’

  Thanking the stars that she had had the foresight not to keep her papers with the rest of her valuables in her dressing case, which had of course also been taken, Julia slid her fingers anxiously into the tiny slit cut into the lining of her clothes trunk. To her immense relief, the very slim packet of papers were still there, along with the equally slim stash of bank notes, which she decided to leave in the hiding place for the moment. Smoothing out the creases of her papers, she handed them over. ‘All present and correct and, as I think you’ll agree, in perfect order.’

  The man frowned. ‘These relate to the kingdom of Petrisa.’

  ‘Exactly. Signed by the appropriate authorities,’ Julia agreed, ‘including the British Consul in Damascus.’ Who had recounted, as had Colonel Missett, the Consul-General in Cairo, several hair-raising incidents of robbery and murder designed to deter her from undertaking this journey. As it turned out, their dire warnings had proven to be all too accurate, but they had failed to dissuade her because they had underestimated her overwhelming motivation for accepting the risks—principally because she had chosen not to apprise either of the august gentlemen of the precise nature of her quest. It was her business, not theirs. Her life, not theirs. ‘Well?’ Julia demanded. ‘Satisfied?’

  But the stranger was still frowning. ‘As you said, your papers are in perfect order. There is only one problem, and I’m afraid it’s rather significant. This is not Petrisa. This is the Zazim Oasis, in the kingdom of Qaryma.’

  Julia’s jaw dropped. He was mistaken. Or he was lying, for some reason. Punishing her for being rude, perhaps. ‘Nonsense,’ she said stoutly, ‘I’ve never heard of Ka—Kareem...’

  ‘Qaryma.’

  If he was right, then she was in deep water. She had no valid papers for this place, no permissions, which made her the trespasser, not him. She must not panic. Trespass was only a crime if it was committed deliberately, wasn’t it? Julia cleared her throat. ‘They told me—my dragoman said—are you certain this is not Petrisa?’

  ‘I could not be more certain.’

  His tone was implacable. He was just a touch intimidating, but her instincts told her he was telling the truth. She had no choice but to believe him. She was quite alone, and, through no fault of her own, quite in the wrong. ‘It seems,’ Julia said carefully, ‘that I owe you an apology. I appear to have strayed over the border quite unintentionally.’

  ‘You must have had a guide, a translator, men to pitch your camp. Where are they?’

  His tone riled her. Julia wrapped her arms tightly around herself. ‘I have travelled halfway across the world relying on my own initiative. I am not some helpless and witless female.’ Though she was, for the moment, almost completely without resources. ‘I have no idea where my guide and his men are,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘They left abruptly in the night.’

  ‘And your camels, your mules?’

  ‘They took everything.’ Saying it aloud made her feel like an absolute fool. Mortified, she glowered defiantly at the intruder. ‘There was nothing I could do to stop them, I think they put some potion in my tea last night.’

  His hand, Julia noticed, went to the hilt of his sword, and he said something vicious under his breath in what she assumed was Arabic. ‘Did they harm you in any way?’

  Her cheeks flamed. ‘No. I—no, they did not. Not in any way, if I understand your question correctly.’

  ‘For that, I give thanks. I am deeply sorry, madam, that you have had to endure such barbaric treatment. I assure you no citizen of Qaryma would behave so abominably towards a foreigner. Those scoundrels may not have violated you, but they have violated the sovereign borders of Qaryma with impunity.’

  He looked both furious and puzzled by this fact. As he consulted her papers again his frown deepened further. ‘You really are travelling alone, without any companion?’

  ‘All the way from England,’ Julia said, with a small smile.

  The man did not seem to share her pride in her achievement, but rather looked aghast. ‘You are married,’ he said, pointing at her wedding band. ‘Your husband, where is he? Surely not even an Englishman would expose a woman to the dangers of travelling without protection? If I were married, which I am not, I would most certainly not be so cavalier with my wife’s safety. It is a matter of honour, to say nothing of...’

  ‘...the fact that we are the weaker sex?’ Julia finished for him. ‘Fortunately, my husband did not share your views.’ Which wasn’t strictly true. Daniel’s quiet assumption that he was in every regard her superior had been one of the things about him which had irritated her. Though when it suited his purposes, which invariably meant something which would be beneficial to his research, he was amenable to acknowledging talents and abilities he had hitherto denied her possessing.

  ‘Actually, I was about to say that it was a matter of upholding the promise your husband made on his wedding day, to protect you.’

  ‘I am more than capable of protecting myself,’ Julia declared. A raised eyebrow, a sceptical look around the ransacked tent, made her flush.

  ‘You said your husband did not share my view.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘You spoke of him in the past tense.’

  ‘That is because I am a widow,’ Julia replied. ‘Daniel died of a fever contracted in South America over a year ago.’

  ‘My sincere condolences.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Back in Cornwall, she had grieved for the loss of the man she had known all her life, as a friend, a botanist colleague of her father, and for the last seven years, as her husband. She still missed the friend, the botanist, the companion, but the husband? Distance and time, six months of solo travel, had given her a very different perspective of her marriage.

  However, the fact that Daniel had been, just as this man suggested, cavalier with her safety, was none of his business, just as the surprising fact that such a striking man was unencumbered was none of hers. What she needed from him was his help, not his history. In fact, she couldn’t believe she had wasted so much precious time before seeking it.

  Julia smiled in what she hoped was a conciliatory manner. ‘Now that you are apprised of my situation, you will understand why I must crave your assistance in pursuing the men who betrayed my trust. They cannot have travelled too far, and—and you see, they have something of mine that I must—I simply must retrieve.’

  But he was already shaking his head. ‘Oh, plea
se,’ Julia interrupted when he made to speak, the anguish she felt evident in her voice. ‘I beg of you. I don’t care about the mules or the camels. I don’t even care about the money or jewellery they stole, other than Daniel’s fob watch, which is of enormous sentimental value to me. But there is one other precious item that matters more than all my other possessions put together. They took my gold, but I still have access to other funds. I can reward you amply, if you will only...’

  ‘I am not a dragoman, madam, and I most certainly neither want nor need your money.’

  The look he gave her made her flinch. ‘I beg your pardon, it was not my intention to insult you, only I am desperate. I cannot tell you how—how vital it is that I...’

  ‘No.’ He unpicked her fingers from his sleeve. ‘It would be a fool’s errand, mark my words. Whatever they have taken will already have been sold off in a market somewhere. Stolen goods are always moved on quickly, and there is always an unscrupulous buyer willing to ask no questions in return for a bargain.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘I myself am a trader—a reputable one I might add, but I know how these vagabonds operate. I am sorry. I wish it were otherwise, especially in relation to the watch, but I’m afraid you must give your possessions up for lost.’

  His tone was firm and quite unequivocal. Forced to accept the truth of what he said, Julia felt sick with disappointment. She pictured Daniel’s trunk being haggled over in a souk. The specimens, so valuable to her, would most likely have been deemed worthless by the thieves, cast out of the drawers to wither in the heat of the desert sun. Her paints, her little trowel would be sold, but her notebooks, her drawings—no, they would mean nothing to those men. They would have no idea of their enormous significance.

  Anger made her absolutely determined not to be defeated. If she could not recover her precious work, she would simply have to find a way of starting again. There was no way on earth she was returning to Cornwall without having completed her task. She had come so far, had triumphed over so many hurdles on the way, she would not—she absolutely would not!—allow a treacherous band of Bedouins to best her.

  ‘Very well,’ Julia said briskly, ‘if you will not assist me in pursuing these thieves, perhaps you will help me to employ a more reliable dragoman? All I ask is that you escort me back over the border to Petrisa, assist me in exchanging some bank notes for local coin, and then I can purchase new camels, mules...’

  She trailed to a halt, for he was once again shaking his head firmly. ‘I am afraid there is no prospect of my doing any such thing. There is no question of my going back. I have critically important business of my own to attend to here in the capital city, Al-Qaryma.’

  Julia stared at him in dismay. ‘You mean you will leave me stranded here, without valid papers, without the means to make my way back to Petrisa? What on earth am I expected to do?’

  * * *

  It was an excellent and very pertinent question Azhar thought, eyeing the Englishwoman with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. She was older than he had thought at first, perhaps twenty-six or seven. Not in the first bloom of youth, but too young to be widowed, and certainly far too young to be wandering about alone in a foreign country, no matter how competent she thought herself.

  Though he had to concede that she must be more intrepid than confident, if her claim to have travelled all the way from England alone was to be believed, and he had no reason to doubt her—there was honesty as well as intelligence in those wide-set eyes the colour of palm fronds. She might lack judgement, but she had courage, and she had resilience. In spite of his annoyance at this most unwanted distraction, Azhar couldn’t help but find her—in her own unique way—appealing.

  She was not beautiful exactly, her face was too long for that, her brow too high, but she was memorable, with that thick mass of dark-red hair and those big green eyes. Her body, under the hideous nightgown she wore, would be deemed too thin and too tall here in the East, but Azhar found her lean suppleness alluring. The colour of her hair spoke of a fiery temper, a tempestuous nature. And that mouth, when it was not set in a firm line, had a hint of sensuality about it.

  Appalled at the carnal direction his thoughts had taken, he dragged his eyes away. As if he did not have enough to concern himself with, now he must take responsibility for a complete stranger. For he had no option but to do so. He most certainly could not abandon her to her fate. His anger flared again at the thought of the miscreants who had robbed and abandoned her. That the reprobates she had employed had had the temerity to breach Qaryma’s borders with impunity astounded and infuriated him. The situation must have changed radically since he was last here. Ten years ago, no one would have dared treat the kingdom with such disrespect.

  Azhar sighed heavily. One problem at a time. He turned his attention back to his most pressing dilemma. ‘I cannot in all conscience abandon you here, but neither can I escort you back across the border. I therefore have no option but to take you with me to Al-Qaryma.’

  She looked dismayed rather than delighted. ‘But I don’t have the correct papers. I’ll be thrown into gaol.’

  A fact Azhar himself had pointed out. He should have held his tongue. ‘Fear not, I will have your papers validated when we reach the city.’

  ‘How can you promise such a thing? I thought you said you were a trader?’

  Why couldn’t she simply say thank you! ‘I am, and a successful one. As such I have many high-ranking contacts. Do not fear, I am not without influence, Madam...?’

  ‘Trevelyan.’

  ‘Trevelyan,’ Azhar repeated slowly. ‘It does not sound typically English.’

  ‘That is because it’s not English, it’s Cornish. Both my husband and I are natives of Cornwall, which is quite the most beautiful county in England, Mister—Sayed...?’

  Sayed, the common formal form of address to which he had answered for many years. It was how he had defined himself, a nameless and rootless sir. ‘You may call me Azhar.’

  ‘Azhar,’ she repeated carefully.

  ‘It means shining, or bright.’

  ‘My name is Julia. I’m afraid it doesn’t mean anything in particular, though I expect you think I should be called Burden or Encumbrance.’

  She crossed her arms, inadvertently lifting her breasts higher under her cotton shift. To his annoyance, Azhar felt his blood stirring. Desire, which had departed entirely with the arrival of that fateful summons which had brought him here, returned now at this most inopportune time. He could not afford to be distracted. He most certainly had no time to be intrigued, far less beguiled by this English widow, especially since she was actually the complete antithesis of everything those words implied.

  ‘What you are, Madam Julia Trevelyan, is an enormous inconvenience,’ Azhar said. ‘The day marches on. I am going to hunt for some food and then prepare a meal. You are welcome to join me. I will not drug you, though I may inadvertently poison you, since my culinary skills are somewhat rudimentary. I shall, however, endeavour not to. A dead English woman is the last thing I wish to have on my hands.’

  * * *

  ‘Cornish,’ Julia threw at him as he left the tent, but Azhar chose not to hear her. ‘So I’m an enormous inconvenience, am I?’ she muttered. ‘How inconvenient do you think it was for me, Mr You-Can-Call-Me-Azhar, to be robbed blind and left for dead?’

  Receiving no answer from the tent flap, Julia sighed. She was being most ungrateful. At least he was not abandoning her. She considered spurning his invitation to share his food, but then her stomach reminded her that she had not eaten since yesterday. She could sit here, sweltering and ravenous, with only her pride to keep her company, or she could get dressed, grovel, and get some badly needed sustenance.

  Deciding to eschew martyrdom, Julia began to pick up the clothes she had been wearing the day before from the heap they formed on the sand floor beside her bedroll.

  With no shocked and disapproving husband to witness her uncorseted body, after the first few days
of travel in the desert she had abandoned the daily contortions required to lace herself into her stays. There was nothing in the world, she had discovered, as uncomfortable as sand trapped against delicate skin by stiff whalebone. The heat which the combination of corsets and desert sun produced transformed discomfort into torture.

  In fact, her entire wardrobe was quite unsuited to the climate. As she pulled on a rough woollen skirt and cambric blouse over her nightgown before adding a jacket, perspiration blossomed all over her back. Not for the first time, Julia wished she had had the courage and sense to outfit herself with some of the loose tunics and cloaks more appropriate for the conditions. She had been on the brink of purchasing some in a souk in Damascus, but imagining Daniel’s disapproving face looking over her shoulder, she had changed her mind. She deeply regretted that now, as much irked by her instinctive loyalty to her dead husband’s opinions as she was by her very British wardrobe. He himself had never been less than impeccably turned out, whether in a mangrove swamp or halfway up an Alpine mountain. While Julia considered herself Cornish before all else, Daniel had been the living embodiment of the quintessential Englishman abroad.

  No, that was not true. Above all else, Daniel was a man of science. He’d called her his woman of science. Back in the early days, she’d been inordinately proud of that. Now—oh, now was not a time for looking back. Now, it was time to turn her mind to making good on her vow. She had been so close, after all this time able to see the light of true freedom at the end of the tunnel. Her duty to the past discharged, she might finally look forward to a future of her own making. For an instant, dejection threatened to overpower her, but very quickly she rallied. In this city to which she was now destined to travel, she would hire a new and reliable guide. In this strange kingdom, she might find undiscovered and rare plant specimens. Even this dark cloud might have a silver lining.

  She pulled on her stockings and laced up her boots. Daniel had always derided the notion of fate, but Julia was no longer obliged to agree with Daniel’s opinions. She had opinions of her own now. Fate had set her path on a collision course with this mysterious man of the desert. It was up to her to make sure she made the best of the situation.