The Sheik Retold(36)

And the nights… Allah be praised! The nights! There were many times we sat together outside gazing at the stars. He loved them, and when the mood was on him, he watched them untiringly. He told me countless Arab legends connected with the various constellations while sitting under the awning far into the night, and then we would retire to spend hours in lovemaking. With his new attitude, I had begun thinking of our sexual relations in those terms, despite myself.

In bed Ahmed was magnificent, a lover par excellence. He was both insatiable and capricious—brutal in his passion one moment and indescribably tender the next. Although I had been inexperienced, his attention to me, his prowess, his sheer virility, took my breath away. I knew his skills had to be superior to those of other men, or no woman would ever wish to leave her bed! There were many times that I lazed away half the day in mine. Wrapped in this idyllic erotic cocoon, my days went by quickly, until the morning my lover told me he was going away.

"I won't ride with you tomorrow, ma belle," my sheik said with a yawn and a stretch after a bout of lazy and languorous lovemaking.

"Why not?" I asked.

"A courier arrived from a friend I have not seen for two years."

"A friend?" I asked stupidly. The advent of a stranger was a shock to me.

"Yes, by Allah!" he exclaimed. "The best friend a man ever had. He has already arrived at Algiers. I shall go to meet him." He looked positively joyful, and this filled me with inexplicable envy.

"In Algiers? That must be two hundred miles." It was a wild guess on my part, but I hoped to gain some knowledge of my location with the question.

"Almost three hundred, ma belle," he corrected. "But I do not ride all the way to Algiers. Raoul is already traveling south to the place where we have appointed to meet."

"Raoul?" I repeated. I recalled the name at once from the books in his bookcase. "Raoul de Saint Hubert? The man who wrote the books?"

"Yes. He has written many books, has my friend Raoul. He is a wide and enthusiastic traveler. Much as you once were."

Were. That one word struck me. Hard. It was a brutal reminder that I was his captive, something I had all too frequently let myself forget— until a word or a gesture vividly brought back the fact. "He is coming here?" I asked.

"Yes, of course he comes here." He looked mildly annoyed at my question. "It is my home, after all."

"Where will you be meeting him?" I inquired.

I tried to sound casual, but my pulse was already racing with the idea of escape. If they were meeting at Biskrah, perhaps I could contrive somehow to send a message. I had many acquaintances there. But then my heart sank. I didn't know anyone among his men that I could entrust with a message and had nothing to offer by way of a bribe.

His ability to read my thoughts was uncanny. He smiled his old, mocking smile. "No, ma belle. I do not return to Biskrah, and there is no one among my men who would risk death by betraying me."

I plucked idly at the coverlet. "How long will you be gone?"

"Maybe several days," he replied, purposely vague.

"Several days?" I bit my lip. Surely this was the opportunity I had sought. Was I bold enough to attempt a lone escape? "Might I still ride?" I asked. Until now, he had not allowed me to ride with anyone except himself.

He looked like he would refuse.

"Please, Ahmed," I cajoled. "Couldn't Gaston ride out with me? It makes my head ache to stay in all day. Please, Monseigneur," I pleaded again with downcast eyes.

"Do you intend to run away?" he asked bluntly.

I avoided his gaze. "No, I am not going to run away." Of course I lied, for that was precisely what I intended.

"Very well," he capitulated with an indulgent smile. "He will be delighted, le bon Gaston. He is your very willing slave, you know. He has a beautiful nature, le pauvre diable. He is not a savage Arab like me, eh, little Diane?" The mocking look was still there but also a hint of residual passion. He turned my face up to his and then kissed me hard. Bruisingly. It took little more than a look to reignite the fire he kept constantly smoldering inside me, but I ignored both his taunt and the heat in my belly.

"When do you leave?"

"At first light. Will you miss me, my dove? Will our bed be cold without me?"

Yes. I could not stand it when he was away, but I refused to stroke his inflated ego so I did not give him the satisfaction of an answer.

Then another thought, a horrifying one, suddenly descended on me. Raoul de Saint Hubert was a man who moved about in the world— in my world. Although we had never before crossed paths, it was nearly impossible to think he and I would not have mutual acquaintances. Our class of people was too small not to. The idea of meeting him here in these circumstances and the thought of anyone I knew discovering it filled me with panic and a profound mortification. I could already hear the tittering whispers.

The full implications of his arrival rushed over me. How could I bear to meet anyone of my own order in these circumstances—the haughty heiress Diana Mayo a mistress to a savage desert sheik? Yet it was all true. He had indeed reduced me to playing his whore.

"I don't want to meet him, Ahmed. I do not wish him to see me here. Not like this."

"You will meet him," my sheik said. "And I expect you to be the perfect hostess." He added with a sardonic twist of his mouth, "It is a role for which all you fine English ladies are bred, after all."