him, nor to respond to him like that. She hadn’t been expecting to want him to touch her in a way she’d never been touched before—yet now he was looking at her as if she’d done something unspeakable.
Filled with shame, she had turned on her heel and fled—her eyes so blurred with tears that she could barely see. And it wasn’t until the next day that she heard indulgent tales of the princess weeping with joy for her newly crowned brother.
The memory cleared and Sara found herself in the uncomfortable present, looking into Suleiman’s mocking eyes and realising that he was waiting for some sort of answer to his question. Struggling to remember what he’d asked, she shrugged—as if she could shrug off those feelings of humiliation and rejection she had suffered at his hands.
‘I hardly describe being a “creative” in an advertising agency as being an executive,’ she said.
‘You are creative in many fields,’ he observed. ‘Particularly with your choice of clothes. Such revealing, western clothes, I cannot help but notice.’
Sara felt herself stiffen as he began to study her. Don’t look at me that way, she wanted to scream. Because it was making her body ache as his gaze swept over the sweater dress which came halfway down her thighs, and the high boots whose soft leather curved over her knees.
‘I’m glad you like them,’ she said flippantly.
‘I didn’t say I liked them,’ he growled. ‘In fact, I wholeheartedly disapprove of them, as no doubt would the Sultan. Your dress is ridiculously short, though I suppose that is deliberate.’
‘But everyone wears short skirts round here, Suleiman. It’s the fashion. And the thick tights and boots almost cancel out the length of the dress, don’t you think?’
His eyes were implacable as they met hers. ‘I have not come here to discuss the length of your clothes and the way you seem to flaunt your body like the whore we both know you are!’
‘No? Then why are you here?’
There was a pause and now his eyes were deadly as they iced into her.
‘I think you know the answer to that. But since you seem to have trouble facing up to your responsibilities, maybe I’d better spell it out for you so that there can be no more confusion. You can no longer ignore your destiny, for the time has come.’
‘It’s not my destiny!’ she flared.
‘I have come to take you to Qurhah to be married,’ he said coldly. ‘To fulfil the promise which was made many moons ago by your father. You were sold to the Sultan and the Sultan wants you. And what is more, he is beginning to grow impatient—for this long-awaited alliance between your two countries to go ahead and bring lasting peace in the region.’
Sara froze. The hands which were still concealed in her lap now clenched into two tight fists. She felt beads of sweat break out on her brow and for a moment she thought she might pass out. Because hadn’t she thought that if she just ignored the dark cloud which hung over her future for long enough, one day it might just fade away?
‘You can’t mean that,’ she said, hating her voice for sounding so croaky. So get some strength back. Find the resources within you to stand up to this ridiculous regime which buys women as if they were simply objects of desire lined up on a market stall. She drew in a deep breath. ‘But even if you do mean it, I’m not coming back with you, Suleiman. No way. I live in England now and I regard myself as an English citizen, with all the corresponding freedom that brings. And nothing in the world you can do or say will induce me to go to Qurhah. I don’t want to marry the Sultan, and I won’t do it. And what is more, you can’t make me.’
‘I am hoping to do this without a fight, Sara.’
His voice was smooth. As smooth as treacle—and just as dark. But nobody could have mistaken the steely intent which ran through his words. She looked into the flatness of his eyes. She looked at the hard, compromising lines of his lips and she felt another whisper of foreboding shivering its way down her spine. ‘You think I’m just going to docilely agree to your plans? That I’m going to nod my head and accompany you to Qurhah?’
‘I’m hoping you will, since that would be the most sensible outcome for all concerned.’
‘In your dreams, Suleiman.’
There was silence for a moment as Suleiman met the belligerent glitter of her eyes, and the slow rage which had been simmering all day now threatened to boil over. Had he thought that this would be easy?
No, of course he hadn’t.
Inside he had known that this would be the most difficult assignment of his life—even though he had experienced battle and torture and real hardship. He had tried to turn the job down—for all kinds of reasons. He’d told the Sultan that he was busy with his new life—and that much was true. But loyalty and affection for his erstwhile employer had proved too persuasive. And who else possessed the right amount of determination to bring the feisty Sara Williams back to marry the royal ruler? His mouth hardened and he felt the twist of something like regret. Who else knew her the way that he did?
‘You speak with such insolence that I can only assume you have been influenced by the louche values of the West,’ he snapped.
‘Embracing freedom, you mean?’
‘Embracing disrespect would be a more accurate description.’ He drew in a deep breath and forced his lips into something resembling a smile. ‘Look, Sara—I understand that you needed to...what is it that you women say? Ah yes, to find yourself.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Fortunately, the male of the species rarely loses himself in the first place and so such recovery is seldom deemed necessary.’
‘Why, you arrogant piece of—’
‘Now we can do this one of two ways.’ His words cut through her insult like a honed Qurhahian knife. ‘The easy way, or the hard way.’
‘You mean we do it your way, rather than mine?’
‘Bravo—that is exactly what I mean. If you behave reasonably—like a woman who wishes to bring no shame onto her own royal house, or the one you will embrace after your marriage to the Sultan—then everyone is happy.’
‘Happy?’ she echoed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘There is no need for hysteria,’ he said repressively. ‘Our journey to Qurhah may not be an expedition which either of us would choose, but I don’t see why we can’t conduct ourselves in a relatively civilised manner if we put our minds to it.’
‘Civilised?’ Sara stood up and pushed herself away from the desk so violently that a whole pile of coloured felt-tips fell clattering to the ground. But she barely registered the noise or the mess. She certainly didn’t bend down to pick them up and not just because her skirt was so short. She felt a flare of rage and impotence—that Suleiman could just march in here as if he owned the place. Start flexing his muscles and telling her—telling her—that she must go back and marry a man she barely knew, didn’t particularly like and certainly didn’t love.
‘You think it’s civilised to hold a woman to a promise of marriage made when she was little more than a child? A forced marriage in which she had no say?’
‘Your father himself agreed to this marriage,’ said Suleiman implacably. ‘You know that.’
‘My father had no choice!’ she flared. ‘He was almost bankrupt by that point!’
‘I’m afraid that your father’s weakness and profligacy put him in that position. And let us not forget that it was the Sultan’s father who saved him from certain bankruptcy!’
‘By demanding my hand for his only son, in return?’ she demanded. ‘What kind of a man could do that, Suleiman?’
She saw that her heartfelt appeal had momentarily stilled him. That his flat black eyes had narrowed and were now partially obscured by the thick ebony lashes