Chapter 27

Jasim

Taking care to hold Janna steady, I swing my legs off the horse I’ve been riding then, realising she probably doesn’t want to be left in charge of the beast, lift her off and setting her down behind me as I take a step toward Fadi.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He shakes his head, but one corner of his mouth turns up, “She’s stubborn. Look, come and see for yourself.” He looks and sounds as though he’s unwillingly impressed.

Suspecting a trick, I’m reluctant to follow him into the rudimentary castle. And I’m still not going to risk Janna anywhere near him. Not when his plan had been to take her for himself.

“I’ll go and check it out.” Rais puts himself between us.

“You’ve no reason to trust me, but I need the girl,” he points behind me and then corrects himself, “The Sheikha, to come with us.”

Now I’m extremely suspicious. “Why?”

His eyes roll up as though in frustration. “Your wife might be able to talk some sense into Miss Cartwell.”

“What’s going on?” I glance down at Janna, and pull her so she’s beside me, “What have you done to her?”

“I’ve done nothing to her.” Fadi says, his phrasing strange. Then he looks down at his feet, and scuffs them on the ground like a little boy. “Look, please, come and talk to her. What would I know about the innermost workings of the female mind?”

I look at Janna, and then at my brother and Rais. To me, Fadi sounds all at once both strange and sincere, but then I don’t know him in the same way they do. I’ve been gone from the country too long. And he’d wanted to steal my woman away, the woman who is, for all current intents and purposes, my wife.

I’m still expecting a trick, but Rais is nodding. “Fadi, I know you well. That you wanted to take the Sheikha for your own must have been some sort of temporary aberration, it’s not the normal considered way you act. Though, in the circumstances, I believe you to have some justification.” Rais indicates the woman by my side, “In the heat of the desert, the chase across the sands. We have the blood of our ancestors running through our veins, the old ways were to take what they wanted for themselves.”

Fadi nods slowly, “Sheikh Jasim, you have a beautiful wife by your side. Had I appreciated the depth of your attraction, and your intention toward her, I never would have made my play. I offer my sincere regrets.”

Do I accept his apology?

I raise my eyebrow at Nijad, who’s yet to speak his mind. My brother’s looking at Fadi carefully, and again I bow to his superior knowledge of this region. What would have been considered unthinkable in London, here doesn’t seem so out of place.

“You accept Kadar will want you punished?”

Fadi dips his head, “Sheikh Nijad, I am well aware of my crime.”

Nijad touches my arm, “I believe he’s being honest, Jas. Let’s go inside, and find out what all this is about.” Rais nods his agreement.

Remembering I’ve now got responsibility for someone else, I glance down at Janna. She’s staring up at me, defiance in her eyes, “Well, if you’re not going in, I will. I want to see Sally and find out what’s going on. And if you’ve hurt her…” She doesn’t finish her threat, but spoken as fiercely as any desert warrior. Fadi would be a fool not to heed her warning. I bend down to kiss the top of her head, partly to hide my smile.

Realising we’re going to accompany him, Fadi turns and gestures for us to follow him. His men, still on horseback, disappear through the cleft in the rock from which they had come. We go a different way, entering under an ancient arch and into a sparsely furnished room with walls hewn from rock.

“Can I offer you refreshment?” Fadi becomes host as he steps inside.

We all decline, too impatient to meet the person we’ve come to rescue. “Are you going to bring her to us?”

Fadi shrugs ruefully, “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

His words don’t make sense and a growl comes to my throat. “What have you done with her? You said you hadn’t touched her.”

“No, no. I said that and it’s true.” His hands flutter as he rushes to refute the only explanation that I can think of. “Her current predicament is down to her and no one else. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

Feeling bemused, I take Janna’s hand and follow Fadi down ancient corridors carved out of the rock. We come to a room, Fadi stops outside, seeming reluctant to open the roughly hewn wooden door. “This is my bedroom.”

Now it’s Rais’s turn to scowl, “You had her in your bed while lusting after another?”

Fadi looks like a man defeated, “No, it wasn’t like that at all.”

As if realising there’s nothing else for it, he pushes open the door. And there’s Sally, lying on a low divan. She looks up eagerly as we enter, but her expression turns to a scowl when her eyes land on the woman by my side.

“Sally!” Janna exclaims, running across to her friend, seemingly oblivious to the distinct lack of welcome. “We’ve come to rescue you and take you home.” Her arms reach out as if to cuddle her friend, and then waver in mid-air as she comes to an abrupt halt. As she swings back around her eyes are open wide, and her mouth twists, “You bastard! I thought you said you’d hadn’t taken advantage of her?”

“I haven’t!” Fadi repudiates once again, this time sounding distraught. His hands push at his headdress. At Rais’s snarled prompt he starts to explain, “Look, when I brought her here she was struggling, so I used handcuffs. Once we arrived and she knew she would be unable to escape, I took them off as it was impossible for her to escape.” He pauses and rakes his hand over his headdress. “Next morning after I’d risen I came back to find her in my bed, and saw she’d handcuffed herself to that old iron pipe.”

“Well, unlock her.” I eye up the rudimentary plumbing which had been installed at some point.

“I can’t!” His voice is almost a wail, “She threw the key out of the window. It’s a sheer drop from there. We’ve searched, but we can’t find it.”

By Allah! A laugh escapes me. Fuck, she’d turned the tables on him. Nijad and Rais find it hilarious too, both crossing to the window and looking out. Rais turns back shaking his head as his body is wracked with chuckles. “No wonder you couldn’t. It must be a hundred feet down.”

Janna looks at the woman handcuffed to the bed, “Why on earth did you do that, Sal?”

But Sally glares and looks away, her free hand coming up to wipe away a tear. I try to analyse her reaction. Why would she have done something so senseless in the first place? And why she doesn’t seem particularly happy to see the person I thought was her friend? As I watch another none too friendly fleeting glance directed at Janna, the incredible answer comes to me. She’s jealous. Fadi had his heart set on my woman, now Sally resents the object of his desires. That she’d chosen his bed to chain herself to couldn’t be accidental. And from those deductions it’s fairly easy to sum it all up. She wants him.

The realisation brings a fresh burst of laughter, but I sober fast. Fadi has to realise. It’s time to find out. While Rais and Nijad are studying the ironwork, trying to work out if there’s any way to get her free, I beckon Fadi out of the room. At last having realised Sally isn’t in any mood to talk to her, Janna follows us out.

I move a little way along the corridor, and then ask, “Fadi, you must know the reason why she cuffed herself to your bed.”

He rolls his eyes, “Well it’s fucking obvious, isn’t it?”

“What’s obvious?” Janna hasn’t put it together as quickly as I have. She must have missed or misinterpreted the looks sent her way.

“Habiti, she wants Fadi. And she’s jealous that he wanted you.”

“It’s a bloody mess.” Fadi, for once, has gotten something right.

Janna’s hand goes to her mouth, “You can’t be serious?” A smile appears as she comprehends why we were laughing.

“How else do you explain it? She hardly jumped for joy at her rescue, and chaining herself like that? She doesn’t want to leave.”

Janna’s eyes widen, “She loved the fantasy of Arabia. She must have gotten carried away.”

“Yes,” I can’t resist, pointing at Fadi, “By him.”

Now she’s laughing too. “Oh Jasim, don’t.” After her reprimand, she turns sharply to Fadi, “What about you? What are your feelings toward Sally?”

“Apart from her being a royal pain in the arse?” he queries, and then shrugs, “She’s okay, I suppose. Pretty enough. If the circumstances were different I wouldn’t kick her out of my bed.” But under these conditions, it’s clear he’s wishing that he could. I chuckle again.

As Janna glares at him, a seed of an idea forms in my mind. A fitting punishment, perhaps, for a man who wanted to steal a woman to be his own. To be stolen himself. I point my finger toward him, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

Another shrug as he acknowledges the saying, but it obviously doesn’t click why I’m using it now.

“You were going to take Janna and make her your own.” I wait for him to admit it, and when he gives a cautious nod, obviously not having an inkling where I’m going with this, I continue, “If Sally wants you, then you will be hers.”

His dark skin pales as my words sink in, and his eyes widen in horror, “What? No. She’s strong-willed and annoying. Just look what she’s done!”

“You’re not going to force her?” Janna’s worried on Sally’s behalf.

“No,” I quickly reassure her, “But if that’s what Sally wants, her own desert sheikh, then I’m happy to facilitate it. And you,” I point my finger toward Fadi, “You’ll spend the rest of your life making her happy and fulfilling her every fantasy.”

With a start I find I’ve slipped back into the psyche of my land, where arranged marriages are still not uncommon and are condoned instead of criticised, to imagine for one moment that such an arrangement could be acceptable.

Particularly when Janna gasps, “You can’t do that! You can’t force him into a loveless marriage.”

“He saw nothing wrong in forcing you.” I give it to her straight.

“But Sally doesn’t deserve it.”

But Sally might be getting exactly what she wants. Fadi’s a sheikh of the desert, but much of his time he’ll spend in the capital, particularly when he’s part of Kadar’s government. He’s a wealthy man, and well educated. And sentenced to the woman must be better than losing his liberty. My mouth quirks as I think how the bargain might appeal to my older brother.

I set out the details, “You spend a month together. Never apart. Take her to your desert encampment and woo her under the stars. You take her to Al Qur’ah, and show her the sights. If, at the end of the month, she doesn’t want you anymore, then you are released from the agreement. If, however, she wants to become yours, you marry her. And,” remembering Muslim laws which, while not nowadays commonly observed in Amahad, could allow him to take more than one spouse, “She will be the only wife you have.”

“She’d be too much of a handful by herself, for me to take another as well,” he grumbles. But there’s a light in his eyes, whether it’s the reprieve from a prison sentence, or a genuine interest in the woman, it’s hard to tell.

“It’s down to her Fadi. It’s her choice. That’s the punishment for wanting something that wasn’t yours to take.”

It’s only then I realise Nijad and Rais are behind me. And they’ve heard every word by the grins on their faces. “A fitting solution, brother,” Nijad says as he slaps his hand on my back, “We’ll make a desert sheikh of you yet.” And that, from my brother, is probably meant as a compliment.

Rais nods his appreciation, and then jerks his chin over his shoulder, “Good pair of handcuffs there. And a fucking strong iron drainage pipe. No chance of removing them without a hacksaw. I’ve tried to call Nasir, but there’s no signal in here. I’ll go outside and get him to send for one.”

“While you’re gone, we’ll have a talk with Sally. You wait here, Fadi.” At his distracted nod, I take Janna’s arm, and lead her back into the bedroom. Sally’s sitting with one arm across her chest, looking about as fed up as I’ve ever seen anyone. While it might have seemed an excellent idea at the time, she’s probably regretting her impulsive action now.

“We’re having to get some tools,” I tell her.

“Sheikh Rais told me that.”

As Janna approaches her, she turns her head away. “Sally,” Janna starts tentatively, “I’ve got something to tell you.” Her eyes flit to mine, I agree with a nod. Although our marriage isn’t real, I can understand knowing about it might comfort her friend if she believes it is. “Jasim and I got married yesterday.”

Sally looks at her sharply, “Married?”

“Yes.” Janna shows her the ring, and gestures toward my hand. I flash mine toward the bed, feeling a strange glimmer of pride.

“He’s the only man for me,” I think she’s laying it on a bit thick, but it will do for now. “And Fadi had an infatuation, though heaven knows why. He only saw me for a moment, and I wouldn’t say that was at my best.” I have to disagree, she’d looked fantastic running over the sand, casting frightened glimpses back over her shoulder. Her palpable fear stirring my loins. Maybe Fadi has similar appetites? No, fuck, I’m not going there. I’ve no similarities with that man.

“Sally, you like him, don’t you?”

Sally shrugs.

“Oh come on,” Janna teases, “You chained yourself to his bed. What else are we to think?”

She humphs, then admits it. “Oh alright, yes. I like him. But he likes you, so nothing can come of it.”

“It might do.” I butt in, then go on to explain the deal I’d just made with him. “He’s yours if you want him.”

Her eyes open wider than I would have thought they could, and her fingers cover her mouth. “Oh my. He’s mine?”

“If, after a month, you want him to be. Yes.”

And now she’s flushing red, and her free hand reaches out to grasp Janna’s. “Oh my God. A month with a sheikh?” Her excitement is tangible.

“I’ll send a man with you. He’ll make sure you’re treated right. And at any time, if you want to leave, he’ll arrange to get you back to England.”

Even though I’ll do it whether she wants the protection or not, my practical proposition seems to pass her by. Whatever she thinks she feels for Fadi, or whether it’s the fantasy or the man, it certainly runs deep.