The Sheik Retold(53)

There was a longer pause, but still, I did not move or speak.

"Five years ago the old sheik died. Ahmed's devotion during his illness was wonderful. He never left him, and since he succeeded as chief, he has lived continuously amongst his people, absorbed in them and his horses, devoting his life to the tribe, and carrying on the traditions handed down to him by his predecessor. His people are like children, excitable, passionate, and headstrong, and he has never dared to risk leaving them alone too long, particularly with the menace of Ibraheim Omair always in the background. For five years he has rarely been able to seek any relaxation farther afield than Algiers or Oran—" Saint Hubert stopped abruptly with a flush that brought home to me the true significance of "relaxation."

Ahmed was a man of great passion and could not be expected to live as a eunuch. He had told me about his other women—callously, brutally, sparing me nothing, but I cared not what his life had been before, nor did I judge him. Somehow he seemed to stand outside the prescribed conventions that applied to ordinary men. He was his own law and followed only his own precedents, defiant of social essentials and scornful of criticism. The proud, fierce nature and passionate temper that he had inherited, the despotic leadership for which he had been reared, the adulation of his followers, and the savage life in the desert, free from all restraint, had combined to produce a man who would never submit to the ordinary rules of life. His faults and vices were as much a part of him as his mercurial moods, but I had never known him otherwise.

And I loved him for it.

I had felt it happening and had not wanted to own up to the fact that I could love a man who had done what he had done, but even before I saw him in the doorway of Ibraheim Omain's tent, I knew that I loved him. Fiercely. Passionately.

Raoul abruptly pushed his chair back and went to the doorway. I watched him go, and then my gaze slipped back to Ahmed's face. Even now, I could never think of him as an Englishman. His parentage seemed merely an accident that had no bearing on the man. He was and always would be my own sheik, my desert lover.

If he lived! He must live! My fingers crept lightly across his breast to rest over his heart. The slow and steady thrum gave me hope. He was so virile, so strong, so made to live. He had so much to live for. He was essential to his people. They needed him. He could not go out like this, with his magnificent strength and fearless courage extinguished by a treacherous blow from a coward who had not dared to meet him face to face.

His dark hair was hidden by the bandages that swathed his battered head. His eyes were closed with the thick, dark lashes curling on his cheek, hiding the usual fierce expression that gleamed in them. The hard lines of his mouth were relaxed, making him look singularly young. I wondered what Ahmed the boy had been like, the Ahmed the vicomte had known before he grew into the merciless man.

I thought of my own mother dying in the arms of a husband who adored her and then of the little Spanish girl slipping away from life, a stranger in a strange land, turning to the lover she had denied, and seeking comfort in his arms. A sudden jealousy of the two dead women shook me. They had been loved. Why could I not also be loved? How had I failed that he would not love me? Other men had loved me, and I had cared nothing for them, and now suddenly his love was all I longed for in the world, but that would always be impossible. To this man with his intractable will, I would always be English.

My thoughts strayed back to the earl. "Does Lord Glencaryll know that you see Ahmed?"

"Oh yes. He and my father became great friends. He often stays with us in Paris. We serve as a link between him and Ahmed. He still clings to the hope that one day his son will relent. They have almost met accidentally once or twice, and Glencaryll has once seen him.

"Oh?"

"Yes. It was at the opera in Paris. I went to his box to speak to him when Ahmed entered into our box opposite. He was in the front looking over the theater with a scowl. The likeness was unmistakable. Glencaryll gave a kind of groan and staggered back against me. 'Good God! Who is that?' he asked. I don't think he even knew he was speaking out loud.

"A man next to him laughed. 'That's the Saint Huberts' wild man of the desert. Looks fierce, doesn't he? The women call him le bel Arabe, but he is said to have a peculiar hatred of the English. You'd better give him a wide berth, Glencaryll, if you don't want to be bow-stringed or have your throat cut, or whatever fancy form of death the fellow cultivates in his native habitat.' Fortunately, the opera began and the lights went down, and I persuaded him to go away before the thing was over."

The entire scene played out in my mind, and I gave a little shiver of sympathy for the lonely, old man hoping against hope for the impossible. He, too, would wear his heart out against Ahmed's intractable will.

In listening to his story, I was struck again by a marked similarity between us. Hadn't I lived precisely as he? Governed by none? Until only a few months ago, I had flaunted every convention by denying my very womanhood. The only law I had ever abided was that of Aubrey, and even then it was only because he was my guardian. Once free of that sole legal constraint, I had done pretty much as I damned well pleased. I had the wealth to do so. Ironically, my wish for utter self-governance had brought me here, to a position of utter submission. But even with Ahmed, I had largely managed to get my way.

The knowledge of his boyhood, of his life, had softened me even more toward him. His life seemed everything to me. He must live because I loved him. If he only lived, I could bear anything, even to be put out of his life.