The Sheik Retold(15)

Yes! I understood him, plainly enough. He was telling me to remove the boyish garb that had lent me courage. My masculine clothes had always given me a sense of strength, and in them I had felt more able to face what lay before me. Out of them I would be exposed. Lost. Diana the girl was a stranger, a cowardly quivering creature that I despised.

"The decision is yours, my dove," he continued, "but know that if you persist in this pretense, I will only be more compelled to use you as a boy." He shrugged. "Of course, it is no great difference to me. I will have you either way—and in any way that I choose."

Comprehension came upon me in a sick and nauseating wave.

"I see you do understand," he remarked with a faint smile. "Do not make me wait too long," he whispered and left.

Desperate for any means of escape, I took stock. Within this tent, I was trapped like a snared animal, and outside, the place swarmed with his followers. I was powerless, my life bartered to a savage Arab who intended to enslave me! How had I suddenly become the thing I most loathed in all the world?

Aubrey's words came back to me with a terrible irony.

"Oh God!" Shaking all over, I tore at my hair and clenched my hands, sobbing tears that scorched my cheeks. "Curse him! Curse him!"

In the midst of my fit of hysteria, a young Arab girl appeared with fearful brown eyes. She held a silk wrap that I recognized as one of my own. "I am Zilah, to wait on madam," she said in stilting French. The notion that I would be expected to adopt a similar attitude of subservience to him gripped me with rage and humiliation.

I noticed my suitcases behind her, lying open and partially unpacked. The familiarity of my belongings gave me a tiny measure of calm. I began firing a volley of questions at the girl, who shook her head at me uncomprehendingly. She drew back from me like a scared child, although my queries had only concerned the whereabouts of the camp and of the fate of my caravan. Of the man himself, I could not bring myself to speak.

Ignoring the girl, I explored the rest of the tent, pulling aside another curtain leading into a bathroom that was far better equipped than the one I had known in India, which had seemed the last word in comfort and luxury. Soon an entire parade of servants appeared with eyes respectfully downcast as they filled the large tub with steamy water.

"What is this?" I demanded.

"Your bath, madam," Zilah answered. "He ordered it for you."

At first I was resentful that he had ordered anything regarding me but then shook off the absurd sentiment, knowing the hot bath would not only remove the grit that covered me head to toe, but would also help restore my strength and confidence. I undressed with Zilah's assistance, striving to rid myself of the feeling of contamination that saturated my being, although the robes which had surrounded me were spotless and the hands that had held me were fastidiously clean.

I basked in the bath, concentrating on regaining the strength that had abandoned me. When I finally stepped out, I snatched the towel from Zilah, rubbing my body dry with fierce vigor. Upon my return to the bedroom, Zilah was on her knees poring over my scanty, but diverse, wardrobe, fingering the European-styled clothing with a look of bewilderment. She selected my green silk gown, submitting it tentatively, clearly not understanding which was the front and which was the back of it.

I waved it aside, pointing to a clean set of riding clothes instead. The girl bit her lip and shook her head, but her diffident manner served to restore my self-possession. I knew I would soon have to contend with him again and was bound to do so on my own terms—not his.

I waved the girl away to dress myself, shrugging into the button-up blouse and throwing my legs into the form-fitting breeches. I pulled on my tall boots and gave a satisfied stomp. Zilah had disappeared as quietly as she had come, vanishing through the bathroom instead of passing into the adjoining chamber. I froze for an instant, starting at every soft sound that came from behind the curtain. Was he waiting for me there?

Good. Let the bastard wait. He could damned well cool his heels.

Although I hated to admit even a passing interest in him, I was always possessed of an aberrant curiosity. Now, with the girl gone, I had the freedom to explore. It was a lavish bedchamber that I already knew was his, but his personal effects, everything on which my eyes rested, drove home the hideous fact. On a low, brass-topped table by the bed was even a half-smoked cigarette. The chamber itself was a curious mixture of Oriental luxury and European comfort that conveyed a certain voluptuousness, an unrestrained indulgence, that made me instinctively shrink.

There were several leather-bound books on a bedside table. What did a Francophile-Arab read? I examined the spines. There were two volumes on sport and travel and another on veterinary surgery. They were all in French. I leafed through the pages of the last, noting it had been frequently handled. There were also numerous notes penciled in Arabic in the margins. I wished, with a feeling I could not fathom, that the books had been anything else. The proof of his education and refined tastes somehow troubled me even more.

I threw down the book and went to the dressing table to stare with growing resentment at the pale color and haggard eyes that confronted me in the mirror—the face of a stranger. I glowered at my reflection, at the new shadows that filled my eyes, and my old obstinacy emerged, mixed with self-contempt. Must I endure his mocking glance with chalk-like cheeks and eyes like a beaten hound? Had I not even courage enough left to hide the fear that filled me? I hated him; I hated myself. I hated my beauty that had brought this horror upon me.