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Sheikh's Castaway
ALEXANDRA SELLERS


After learning she'd been betrayed by her fiance, Princess Noor skipped out on her own wedding and wound up stranded on a remote island with none other than the man she was trying to avoid.But her intended was nothing if not determined, and Noor soon discovered that, try as she might, ignoring her feelings for sexy Sheikh Bari al Khalid was something even a royal couldn't do. As their time on the island stretched from hours into days, Noor could no longer resist her passion for Bari, regardless of the consequences it would have on their future.






He Was Caught In His Own Trap. He Had Wanted To Make Her Love Him, And Instead…


A woman like Noor, vital, beautiful, with a heart now revealed as good and true—how had he left his own heart out of his calculations? What arrogance had blinded him to his vulnerability?

Bari loved her. Fire seemed to burn where his heart had once been.

How could he have imagined himself immune to her?

He shook his head. He had had to learn that he, too, had a heart. And that his heart was a better judge of truth than his intellect.

Could she love him now, when he had imposed such unnecessary suffering on her? When he had ranted at her, blamed her and told her the great lie—that he did not love her?

Such blind foolishness was over now. If only it were not too late….


Dear Reader,

As expected, Silhouette Desire has loads of passionate, powerful and provocative love stories for you this month. Our DYNASTIES: THE DANFORTHS continuity is winding to a close with the penultimate title, Terms of Surrender, by Shirley Rogers. A long-lost Danforth heir may just have been found—and heavens, is this prominent family in for a big surprise! And talk about steamy secrets, Peggy Moreland is back with Sins of a Tanner, a stellar finale to her series THE TANNERS OF TEXAS.

If it’s scandalous behavior you’re looking for, look no farther than For Services Rendered by Anne Marie Winston. This MANTALK book—the series that offers stories strictly from the hero’s point of view—has a fabulous hero who does the heroine a very special favor. Hmmmm. And Alexandra Sellers is back in Desire with a fresh installment of her SONS OF THE DESERT series. Sheikh’s Castaway will give you plenty of sweet (and naughty) dreams.

Even more shocking situations pop up in Linda Conrad’s sensual Between Strangers. Imagine if you were stuck on the side of the road during a blizzard and a sexy cowboy offered you shelter from the storm…. (Hello, are you still with me?) Rounding out the month is Margaret Allison’s Principles and Pleasures, a daring romp between a workaholic heroine and a man she doesn’t know is actually her archenemy.

So settle in for some sensual, scandalous love stories…and enjoy every moment!






Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire




Sheikh’s Castaway

Alexandra Sellers










ALEXANDRA SELLERS


is the author of over twenty-five novels and a feline language text published in 1997 and still selling.

Born and raised in Canada, Alexandra first came to London, England, as a drama student. Now she lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, who jumped through the window one day and announced, as cats do, that he was moving in.


I would like to thank the following

for their generously given expert advice and help

Pete Godwin, aviator

Mark Hofton, designer

Jennifer Nauss, friend and editor

Geoff Tetley, life raft specialist

Jo and Dennis Wallace, world sailors

and AVON LIFE RAFTS

I couldn’t have done it without you




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue




One


Princess Noor pushed the fold of her bridal veil away from her face with an impatient hand and blinked out the cockpit window, her mouth opening on a soundless breath.

Cloud. A thick, grey-white mass blanketing the distant mainland as far as she could see.

But she had no instrument rating. She couldn’t fly in cloud.

“It can’t be!” she whispered, aghast. Sunlight still glinted merrily from the rich turquoise of the Gulf of Barakat beneath her, but that offered no solution when she had had zero practice putting the little amphibian plane down on water.

Why hadn’t she noticed the cloud building up? She should have taken evasive action long ago. Had the yards of billowing tulle on her head confused her vision? Or had the humiliation gnawing at her stomach distracted her?

As if waking out of a dream now, Noor shook her head and looked around.

What was she doing here?

She hadn’t even stopped to remove her veil before taking off into the unknown. Hadn’t checked the weather. Didn’t have a destination. Her only thought had been to put as much distance as she could between herself and marriage to Sheikh Bari al Khalid.

She gazed out at the cloud again, her heart beating fast. She might have put a very permanent distance between them. If that cloud caught up with her, she wouldn’t be marrying anyone. Ever.



It had begun—when had it begun? When her parents’ families fled their beautiful country in the aftermath of Ghasib’s coup thirty-odd years before and both chose Australia? When the two young expatriate Bagestanis who became her parents had fallen in love and married?

Or had it begun only months ago, when the royal family’s long struggle to regain the throne had at last been successful, culminating in Sultan Ashraf’s now-legendary ride to the gates of the Old Palace through streets crammed with cheering, delirious multitudes?

“We loff heem!” the populace had cried, dancing, singing, laughing and crying, and even a jaded television reporter had unashamedly wiped a tear from her cheek.

Yes, perhaps that was the real beginning. For that was when Noor Ashkani’s comfortable, predictable life had been tumbled into a disorder so shocking and startling she seemed to herself to have become a different person.

That was when her father had made his world-shattering announcement. When the family, like so many other exiled Bagestanis around the world, were watching events unfold on television, weeping and hugging each other in a powerful combination of hope, fear and joy, her father had pointed at the image of the stern, noble face of Sultan Ashraf al Jawadi on the screen, and said, “Now it can be told. You are not what you think. He is your cousin.”

Cousin! That man on the white horse soon to be crowned Sultan of Bagestan! And not a distant cousin, either. Noor’s mother was the daughter of the deposed Sultan Hafzuddin and his second wife, the French-woman named Sonia. Her father was descended from the old Sultan’s sister. They owned palaces and property, seized by Ghasib, which would now be returned to them. They were titled.

So no longer was she Noor Ashkani, daughter of a wealthy Bagestani exile who had made good in his adopted country. She was Sheikha Noor Yasmin al Jawadi Durrani, granddaughter of the deposed Sultan of Bagestan, cousin to the present Sultan-to-be, and related to the royal family of the neighbouring kingdom of Parvan, too.

And to prove it, not long after, the new Sultan’s invitation to attend the coronation in Bagestan arrived, printed on heavy white paper, with the royal seal that hadn’t been seen on official documents for over thirty years.

“More of a command than an invitation,” her father had said in satisfaction.

Noor had never in her life seen a sight so moving as that of the royal couple, tall and severely beautiful, glittering with gold, pearls and diamonds, as they slowly paced the red carpet through the halls of the ancient palace past the hundreds of breathlessly silent guests to the throne room.

Sheikh Bari al Khalid had been one of the newly appointed Cup Companions who followed behind the Sultan. Later she learned that he was the grandson of her own grandfather’s friend, both of whom, in a time long gone, had been Cup Companions to the old Sultan.

But then he was just one of the twelve most gorgeous men she had ever set eyes on.



Noor keyed the radio mike.

“Matar Filkoh, this is India Sierra Quebec two six.”

“Indi…not reading…say again.” The radio crackled and spat, giving more static than speech. She must be nearly out of range.

“This is India Sierra Quebec two six,” she carefully recited. “Request your current weather, repeat weather.”

“Runway in…two, surface wind one eight zero deg…teen gusting thirty-five knots. Bro…at five hundred, heavy…with nimbo…rain…”

The signal broke up completely. Her heart beating hard, Noor signed off and sat for a moment taking stock. If the airport had been clear, there might have been a case for running the risk of trying to get to it through the cloud. But the airport was in the mountains. And with cloud, rain and wind gusting to thirty-five when she got there—if she got there—!

The sky had been clear when she took off. The cloud must have been building in the mountains. Or maybe it had just suddenly formed while she wasn’t looking. Cloud could do that, given the right conditions.

Nimbostratus, she was pretty sure he’d said. The really treacherous clouds were cumulonimbus, which carried turbulence, but any cloud was deadly when she had no instrument rating. She didn’t even have minimal experience of flying on instruments. There hadn’t seemed much point when she flew only recreationally.

Cloud was terrifying because in cloud a pilot could so easily become disorientated. She could simply spiral down out of the sky.

The best alternative was an immediate landing on water. But she had never landed on water.

She had watched an expert do it. That counted for something, Noor reminded herself.

Bari. Involuntarily she glanced down at the pearl-encrusted white silk and lace that covered her breasts. Oh, yes, Bari al Khalid was an expert pilot. An expert at many things, including seduction.

Also an expert liar. But thank God she had found that out in time. Her eyes searched the instrument panel and found the clock. An hour! Was that all it was? If she hadn’t heard what she’d heard, hadn’t run, Sheikh Bari al Khalid would now be her husband.



At the grand reception after the coronation, powerfully masculine and fierce in a maroon silk jacket, with a glittering jewelled sword at his hip and a thick rope of pearls draped across his chest, of course Bari al Khalid made his presence felt. You couldn’t be in the vicinity of so much arrogant masculinity and not notice.

But what drew Noor’s attention was the way he kept staring at her, an expression on his face that seemed half passion, half rage. And as if they were attached by an invisible thread that he could not break, he seemed to circle her, so that whenever she looked up, he was always there, at a distance.

Noor was a pretty young woman whose soft, rounded face only hinted at the beauty that would be hers in a few more years, but that day she was stunning. Her parents had called the sky the limit, and Princess Noor was wearing a fabulously expensive Arabian Nights dress in pastel green silk from Princess Zara’s own favourite designer.

A semitransparent bodice with a high halter neck, glittering with pearls and emeralds, clung to her full breasts and neat waist. Beneath, a cloud of multitoned layers of green silk swathed her legs, half skirt, half harem pants. And in a seductive mockery of the traditional veil, transparent tulle cascaded from the back of her head to her feet, caught in as if haphazardly at her waist to cloak her bare arms.

Noor’s makeup was flawless, her dark auburn hair burnished, waving back from her temples and forehead to show small, perfect ears and emphasize the softly rounded chin and smooth, slender neck.

And all around, people were calling her “Your Highness.”

But still, she was a little overwhelmed to think that an oak of a man like Bari al Khalid had taken one look and come crashing to earth.



The shadow of the little plane danced over the bright waves below as Noor grappled with her dilemma. She had put this plane down on land, albeit with Bari in the copilot’s seat. She knew how it handled. If she had to, she would give a liquid landing her best shot.

But if there was another way… She pulled out the chart and tried to estimate her position. With the cloud obliterating all landmarks except the tips of the mountains, it wasn’t easy.

Should she try an immediate landing? It would mean a lot of empty sea for someone to search when she needed rescue afterwards. Should she risk flying closer to land—closer to the cloud bank—before landing? What if the cloud suddenly swept out and grabbed her while she was putting down?

There was another problem: Noor was used to landing only where she had good visual conditions. She would become disoriented with nothing but the altimeter to tell her how close the surface was.

The sea was so deceptive. She might hit the water when she thought she was a hundred feet up. Or the reverse—what she thought was a ripple on the surface might be a ten-foot swell.

Like Bari al Khalid, she thought. I thought I was close to him, but all the time he was miles away.



The Cup Companion was introduced to his lord’s cousin as a matter of protocol. He bowed formally, one hand a fist at his breast, but his expression was anything but formal. The arrogant sexual confidence in his black eyes melted her where she stood.

“Come,” Sheikh al Khalid had ordered, in fine autocratic command, as if she could have no wishes different from his own. “I will show you the gardens. You will admire the fountains.”

Noor had never been swept off her feet before. And she knew it could never happen again with such thrilling panache, such heady excitement. During the weeks she stayed in Bagestan, discovering the homeland of her parents, Bari monopolized her time, and never before in her largely fun-filled life had she had so much fun.

Bari was expert at everything. He played demon tennis, his dark body so lithe and muscled she was watching him when she should have kept her eyes on the ball, took her sailing on the most beautiful and perfectly seaworthy little yacht she’d ever seen, allowed her to pilot his private plane, escorted her to fabulous parties with the rich and famous that until now had been out of her reach, kept her constantly laughing….

And made intoxicating love to her for the first time in that small sailing yacht at the height of a storm. Noor had been a virgin, but that moment had answered all her dreams. Oh, it had been worth waiting for!

“Of course you will marry me,” he told Noor, his voice harsh with passion. “We will make our life and raise our children in Bagestan.”

It was far too soon; of course it was. Her cousin Jalia said it, and Jalia was right. But Noor’s head was whirling. Everything on her personal horizon seemed to have changed in one heartbeat. In the sea of confusion that had surrounded her since her father’s announcement, she had one spar—that Bari wanted her. That Bari was sure, and knew what he was doing.

She had flown home only to make her arrangements and return to Bagestan for the huge wedding, organized with breathtaking speed, that practically all of Barakati and Bagestani society would be attending.

And then, with the ceremony only minutes away, her one spar had been torn from her. She had learned what a fool she was, what a fool he was making of her.

Bari knew what he was doing, all right, but he didn’t love her. He wasn’t marrying her for love. He didn’t even want to marry her.



The islands! her brain suddenly shouted at her. There are islands out here! How could she have forgotten that? She had flown over the scattered group of islands with Bari. Al Jeza’ir al Khaleej, he had called them. The Gulf Islands.

“They have been uninhabited since the forced evacuation,” he had told her. “Except the biggest, which has a luxury hotel complex. The Gulf Eden was one of the ways Ghasib drew foreign currency into his coffers. Built by a huge international hotel chain to cater to very wealthy foreigners.”

His tone had been filled with contempt, and Noor had dropped her eyes and omitted to mention that she had almost gone there herself once. Only her father’s absolute diktat had stopped her.

This looks like my chance at last, she told herself dryly. But where were the islands? How far away? Her eyes dropped to the chart again, searching. Please, God, show me a way out of this.




Two


Sheikh Bari al Khalid lifted his head and watched his runaway bride over the back of the passenger seat separating the cockpit from the luggage space where he was hidden.

How dared she abandon their wedding in such a way? How dared she run away from him like this? Without a word—no announcement, no explanation, not even so much as a blink of apology!

What sort of man did she think he was, to put up with such insult?

The heady mix of fury, shock and disbelief—if that were all!—that had driven his actions was now, however, tinged with grim amusement. So the airport was clouded over. That was a dangerous situation: his bashful bride couldn’t fly in cloud, and she couldn’t land on water.

How richly she deserved this dilemma!

She was a fool to have chosen this method of escape. The weather had been volatile and unpredictable ever since the ending of the drought a few weeks ago, a fact she knew well. As an inexperienced pilot she should never have risked coming up alone.

A sardonic smile stretched his mouth, making him aware of how his jaw was clenched. He would like to leave her longer in this predicament, teach her a sharp lesson. Hell, he’d like to hide here till she was on her last gallon of fuel and begging fate for release. How he would enjoy seeing her desperate with regret and remorse!

But he couldn’t risk it. Her calm might give way to panic without warning. And a few seconds of that would be enough to kill them.

No, Noor clearly couldn’t be trusted to keep her head in the face of adversity.

Her head? She couldn’t even be trusted to keep her word!

Well, she would be made to keep it. Of that he was determined. She would not escape. She had promised herself to him, and she would keep her promise.

He stood up and moved forward between the rear seats. “Caught in your own trap,” he snarled when he was behind her. “What did you expect?”

“Bari?!” Noor’s gasp sounded like tearing silk against the hum of the engine. Her head snapped up and she blankly took in the glaring black eyes, the darkly handsome face, the imposing figure magnificently sheathed in purple silk and draped with pearls. His dress sword hung from his hip.

She frowned. “Damn! I’m hallucinating!”

“I wish you were!” he said between his teeth. “I wish we were both hallucinating! Insanity would be preferable to learning what kind of woman you are!”

He lifted the bundle of her veil that nestled in the right-hand seat and tossed it onto the floor behind her with fierce contempt, as if this symbol of their wedding made his stomach heave. Noor felt its drag against the headdress of fresh white roses still pinned to her hair.

Then, expertly manoeuvring the jewel-encrusted scabbard, he edged into the space and sat. With a deliberation that somehow infuriated her, he buckled himself into the harness.

“I have control,” he announced formally and, with unhurried grace, his actions completely distanced from his vengeful mood, he engaged the secondary controls. The plane responded to its master’s touch with a purr.

“Are you real?” Noor asked, wondering, Am I totally crazy? She had resigned control to what might be only a phantom. Was this why planes fell from the sky without explanation? Because the man flying it existed only in someone’s desperate imagination?

“You will see how real I am,” Bari growled. She had never seen that generous, sensuous mouth so narrowed. He must be real. Why would her mind trouble to conjure up a vision that only terrified her further?

“I guess you’re the answer to my prayer!” she realized with a jerky laugh. “Some sense of humour God has!”

“Do you call this scenario God’s doing? You are fool enough to think that, in acting like a barbarian, you carry out God’s will?”

His tone was scathing, and her flesh shivered as the first delicate tendrils of shame reached through her blind panic to touch Noor’s soul.

Bari’s eyes moved to the instrument panel. Since she was in the pilot’s seat, he had to crane. She felt the plane alter course in a broad arc, out over the sparkling sea. There was no cloud in this direction, but even if it caught up with them, she knew Bari was fully rated on instruments.

“How did you get here? You just materialized?”

His voice whipped her. “Do you imagine it was difficult to trail a white limousine with a bridal veil streaming from the sunroof through the streets? Nor was it difficult to guess that you planned to take the plane.”

He was wrong there. She hadn’t planned it. She had driven to the plane only when she realized that in her panicked flight she had taken nothing with her, neither her handbag nor a change of clothes. She had to have cash, but she didn’t dare go to the palace—it would be the first place they looked for her. And if they found her, they’d take her back to the wedding.

The thought of returning back among the wedding guests, having to explain herself when no explanation would be good enough, had appalled her. Then she had remembered that Bari kept emergency fuel money in a secret compartment in the plane. In the swamp into which she had cast herself, she had grabbed at that one frail straw.

She had discovered the plane fuelled and ready for their honeymoon journey. Only then had the thought of flying away from the impossible problems she’d created suddenly and crazily occurred to her.

“Only the why of such barbarian, uncivilized behaviour escaped me.” The words came at her in sharp, broken shards, as if he chewed up glass as he spoke. “Even a child raised in the streets would hesitate to act as you have done!”

His contempt came out through lips that had practically disappeared. Noor flinched. She had never seen such an expression on his face before. She had never seen anyone so angry, and she had to admit he had some cause. But she couldn’t accept such wholesale criticism, such overwhelming blame.

“You got to the plane ahead of me, and instead of talking to me you hid, and you’re calling me childish?” she snapped.

“No doubt you would have relished a public confrontation, Noor, but I did not. We will return to the house and you will marry me without comment, or any public airing of your unforgivable actions.”

“Return to the house?” Her voice climbed in startled objection as she suddenly realized he had been altering course to fly back to Bagestan. She straightened with a jerk. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“We will land at the dock and walk up to the house and apologize to our guests for the delay. Then we will take our vows,” he said with the clarity that only the coldest fury can impart. “A little late. But the bride is allowed that, I believe.”

She stared at him. What arrogance! Noor’s doubts about her behaviour were conveniently swamped in outrage. “Maybe you didn’t notice that the bride changed her mind, Bari! I’m not going to marry you!”

“You did not change your mind,” he informed her contemptuously. “You would not be acting like this if you had ever intended to marry me, of course. But you chose the wrong man. I do not play these Western games, Noor. You said you would marry me. You will do so.”

“It’s no game! Turn this plane around!” she screeched. How dare he brush her off when he must know her reasons for what she did? At the very least, he suspected! Who did he think he was?

“Who do you think—”

“It will not take long. You may pass the time by telling me what it is, if not a game. And I will have the truth.”

“The truth! Oh, that’s good, that is! I’m not the one who’s been lying from beginning to end of this whole affair! I’m not the one with zero conscience! Suppose you begin by telling—”

“Do you talk to me about conscience?” he shouted, as if suddenly losing his grip on a fierce control. Her heart gave a nervous kick; his temper was at white heat. “What has been your motive in pretending to agree to marry me and then playing such a terrible trick? Hundreds of people have come—”

“You must have a very good guess as to what motivated me! Your lies! You must have known I’d find out the truth soon—”

“—from all over the world to celebrate not just our wedding but their hopes for the rebirth of our country!”

“—er or later! I guess you were counting on later! Too bad!”

“Do you know you nearly ran into the Sultan’s motorcade as you drove out the gates? He and the Sultana—”

“The Bagestani flags on the fenders gave me a hint,” Noor admitted. “He hires good outriders, your boss. They nearly drove me off the road.”

He turned on her a gaze so black with threat she cowered. “Do not speak slightingly to me of a man of whose courage and strength you are ignorant.”

The plane had turned 130 degrees, and the expanse of cloud covering the mainland suddenly came into view again out the window behind her head.

Bari’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. How had he let his anger suck him into argument when he should have been watching the sky?

Noor turned to follow the direction of his gaze and let out a breath of stunned surprise. Bari had made his appearance not a minute too soon. The cloud had built fast and was rushing towards them.

If I were alone now, I’d be saying my last prayers.

“Cumulonimbus,” the dark-eyed Sheikh murmured softly. “I am a thousand fools.”

She gasped hoarsely, her hand lifting to press against the window in protest as she stared out at the sinister mass that approached.

But Bari was right.

“The airport said nimbostratus!” she cried.

He made no reply, except to the threat they faced. He was throttling back.

Cumulonimbus clouds were dangerous even to the most experienced instrument-trained pilot. They could carry severe turbulence. Turbulence might easily cause the plane to break up.

The plane began to lose height, and she felt it alter course again, away from the coastline. Of course he would try to get under the cloud, Noor realized. If only he could…

“Not even the sense to remove your lace finery before taking off into cloud!” he said harshly, his eyes on the instrument panel. The acres of silk and tulle surrounding his ex-bride didn’t make his task any easier. “In the water, it would drag you down to certain death. Get rid of it.”

His air of cold command was completely new. Noor gnawed her lip at that in the water, for it seemed to make the danger real. While he tried fruitlessly to raise air traffic control, she lifted her hands and frantically began to pull out the first of dozens of pins fixing the wreath of white roses in her hair, though if the plane broke up in the air it wouldn’t be her bride’s finery that killed her.

Abruptly, sea and sky and sun disappeared, and the little plane entered a world all grey. Noor heard a strange, quiet shushing. Droplets of water appeared on the glass.

Her fingers trembled and hesitated, then went on with their task. What else was there to do? Bari was in command of the situation as far as that was possible, and to offer resistance—or even help—now would be ridiculous.

Bari leaned over to peer at an instrument, and she distantly noted how a dark curl gleamed in the reflected glow from the panel. What a powerfully handsome man he was! Noor thought involuntarily. Not conventional, Hollywood handsome—he wasn’t even at handshaking distance with the bland, polished looks that passed for masculinity on a movie screen. No, Bari was one of Saladin’s warriors. Fierce nobility was what shaped his jaw, not pineapple facials and a perfectly judged beard shadow. If only…

But now was not the moment for such thoughts.

At last the flowers and tulle began to come loose, and Noor ignored the remaining pins and dragged at the headdress, wincing at the pain as hair came away with it. She tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor behind, where it sank into the nest of itself.

A faint, delicate perfume floated to her nostrils from the bruised roses. Her senses, it seemed, were heightened. Her fingers unconsciously massaging her protesting scalp, Noor picked out the pins that were still caught, combing through her hair, trying not to remember the excited, happy moment when the hairdresser had set the wreath on her head.

Without warning, a fierce gust of wind smacked them. The plane rocked, and so did her heart.

“Ya Allah!” Bari exclaimed, and the grey all around them abruptly turned dark. Another sharp slap of wind.

Then, much more ominously, a low rumble.

Horror shivered down her spine. Noor’s heart lurched in frantic denial and her mouth was suddenly dry as the desert. It wasn’t possible! Please, God, let it not…

Another crack of thunder cut her off. A thunderstorm. And they were in it.




Three


There are few things more dangerous than a thunderstorm embedded in cloud, and Noor knew it. It is the pilot’s nightmare.

She might have chosen death not only for herself, but for Bari. Her heart thudded with useless regret.

“Are you strapped in tight?”

His voice was so calm it shocked her, an incongruity her mind couldn’t cope with. It had the effect of setting her building panic at bay.

“No. My dress—”

“Damn your dress.” She could feel that the plane was still descending, but there seemed no bottom to the cloud. “Get your harness on. Fast.”

Though a stubborn part of her resented his autocratic tone, she knew it would be insane to resist. Noor twisted in her seat, groping underneath the swathes of silk for the webbing of her harness.

The plane was still losing altitude.

“Are we landing?”

“We’ll see,” Bari said dryly as another crack of noise drowned him out. She thought she sensed him adjust his heading again, but how he had any idea where they were, she couldn’t imagine.

She had never seen Bari operating under pressure before. It surprised her that such a passionate, hot-tempered man could be so cool under fire. For a brief moment the thought of her only experience of his—of any man’s—passion flicked across her mind. He hadn’t been cool then…or had he? That must have been faked, too.

Her fingers quickly found one buckle, but the other eluded her. Noor half stood in the confined space and groped the seat behind her.

Bari reached across and fielded the buckle of her harness, holding it for her in one strong, well-formed hand. Well, at least I won’t die a virgin! The thought rose unbidden, and a breath of laughter—and something else—escaped her. Her eyes brushed up to his as she took the harness from him with a murmur of thanks, but the look she met was hard and ungiving, and the only passion was rejection.

“Even in the lion’s mouth,” he mocked her.

A jolt of turbulence wiped any retort from her mind. She tumbled back into her seat to the sound of tearing. Her arm hit painfully on something, but Noor suppressed the automatic grunt that rose in her throat and buckled herself in. The webbing abraded the delicate white silk across her breast, tearing the clustered pearl embroidery.

She was sorry about that—it was a beautiful creation.

A pearl fell like a teardrop. A second followed, landing in her palm. Noor’s fingers involuntarily caught it, massaged the cool little sphere between finger and thumb. How completely her dreams were being destroyed. And yet…

If they had gone through with the wedding, there would have come a point when they sat side by side in the plane like this. The thought gave her a curious sensation of being in two lives at once. Was there a parallel universe in which they had been married? That other life seemed so close. She could almost feel it, as if she might blink and find everything the same, but different.

Would she have gone on believing Bari loved her, living her fool’s dream? Would he have kept up the pretence once he had what he wanted, or would she have learned immediately that he had made a fool of her? Would she ever have guessed if she hadn’t overheard the truth…



“She’s so spoiled! All she cares about is clothes and jewellery and having a good time. She’s just totally frivolous!”

Noor had been standing at the mirror, layers of silk and lace surrounding her, her tanned skin and auburn hair gleaming like the rich heart of a white rose, when the bitchy malice filtered through from the room beyond.

“And I don’t believe she’s in love with anyone but herself!”

And just like a droplet of dew on the rose’s heart was the fabulous al Khalid diamond. Bari’s grandfather’s wedding gift to her had simply taken her breath away. Noor was used to wealth and all its pleasures, but Bari’s family fortune went beyond wealth. The diamond was the biggest single stone Noor had ever seen, and it lay against her hand with a dark fire that almost burned her—like Bari’s eyes, she thought with a delicious flutter.

“She is young yet.”

“She’s twenty-four. Why are you making excuses for her?”

Noor let it wash over her. She had heard it before, directly or implied. The women in Bari’s family were not uniformly delighted with his choice of bride, but what should she care about that?

“She has been raised by overfond parents, it’s true,” said the more placid voice of Bari’s aunt. “But she is an al Jawadi by blood. She has more depth than she knows yet.”

Of course they didn’t know she could hear. She was in the large, luxurious bathroom set between her bedroom and another. A moment ago Noor had been at the centre of buzzing activity, the hair stylist and the makeup artist competing with the dressmaker and her personal maid for her attention, but now, with the excuse of one last nervous visit to the toilet, she had stepped in here to be alone for a moment and catch her breath.

And she had heard voices murmuring together in bitchy comfort in the other bedroom.

“He’s only known her a few weeks,” the younger one was still protesting, and Noor wondered if this particular cousin, whoever it was, was in love with Bari herself.

“You are talking like a true Westerner. Why should a man know his bride? It is enough that his family knows her family.”

In a moment she would go back into her bedroom to face the renewed onslaught of perfectionism from her dressers and wait for Jalia and her bridesmaids to tap on the door to tell her it was time. Time to be escorted to meet the richest, the handsomest, the sexiest man ever to have deserved the title “Cup Companion,” the man who had known he wanted to marry Noor Ashkani—Princess Noor Yasmin al Jawadi Durrani—practically from the first glance.

“It’s different when the marriage is arranged, though, isn’t it?” The murmurs in the next room grew louder as the two women moved past the slightly open door, in complete ignorance of the fact that the subject under discussion was on the other side of it. “Then the families at least have—”

“How is it different? This marriage might not have been arranged in the traditional way, but it was your grandfather who chose the bride.”

“Really?” The younger voice sounded both shocked and deliciously intrigued, and Noor’s eyes widened with startled dismay. “You mean Bari isn’t in love with her?”

She sounded thrilled, Noor noted. Cow.

“He was very bitter when his grandfather told him what was necessary.” The voices faded again and she heard the opening of the door that led onto the broad, shady balcony.

“How—but why would Bari agree to something like that? He’s so independent!”

“Bari has no choice.” The other voice was matter-of-fact. “If he wants the right to the property in Bagestan and the money to restore it, he has to marry as he is instructed. Your grandfather wants an alliance with the Durranis. He will leave the property away from Bari if—”

The door shut, cutting the voices off, and leaving Noor stunned and as white as her veil among the broken pieces of her stupid, childish dreams….



A loud rumble brought her back into the here and now, with all its dangers. Oh, if only her father had never told them their history! If only she could return to her ordinary life, and never learn whose blood ran in her veins. Princess! They had been happy as they were! And now…her life had so changed that it might end here, miles from her home, in the next few minutes.

Another, louder crack of thunder, and she bit back a cry. She had seen flickering light within the roiling darkness. If lightning struck…

They hit turbulence and dropped for a few metres before landing with a sickening thud on a boiling air mass. Her stomach churned. Oh, let me not throw up! she begged feverishly.

Lightning danced perilously in the black cloud again, and the noise was deafening. They were at the heart of the storm.

Bari struggled against turbulence, hoping he had a heading towards the Gulf Islands as he came down, but he was far from certain. The instruments were jumping so much they were all but useless. And as a mere human he was in the maelstrom, archetypal Chaos, the place where the ordinary senses were powerless as guides.

Flying by the seat of your pants, they called it. On a wing and a prayer. The clichés recited themselves in his head, describing truths no one with sense wanted to discover for himself.

He had been acting like a fool for too long. His judgement had been faulty ever since hearing his grandfather’s ultimatum, and what a pity he could only recognize that now!

But this wasn’t the moment to fan the flames of his legitimate anger, either with his grandfather or with Noor. His mind needed to be clear of everything except the job at hand.

He could keep dropping lower to try to get below the cloud, but that was risky: some of the islands were high and rugged. And even at the coast the foothills were over a thousand feet high in places. So whether he was badly off course or right where he hoped he was, there was terrible risk involved in flying low.

But to continue to fly inside the storm invited even more certain disaster. He had to take the risk and try to put down, trusting that he would break out of cloud in time to see where he was and take evasive action if it wasn’t where he hoped.

Noor’s mouth was dry. Her heart beat with terror; the metallic taste of panic was on her tongue. She had never been afraid for her life before. They could be struck by lightning. Turbulence could break the plane apart. They could fall from the sky like a stone.

Or the earth could leap up in their path and smash them to atoms.

She wanted to lash out and hit something; her legs were tense with the need to run screaming from the scene. She wanted her heart to stop thundering in her chest and cheeks and temples. She wanted to wake up from this nightmare and find herself safe.

“Oh God!” she whimpered as a fist of sound punched the little plane and set it juddering. How was it possible one tiny act had set such a chain of events in motion? If she could have it to do over again…

“Pray for some common sense while you’re at it,” Bari advised with grim humour. He was fighting to hold the plane against the turbulence, and he seemed to have as good a grip on himself as on the controls.

The injustice of the comment infuriated her—or was it the justice of it?—and as if that fury somehow served as an antidote to the emotion that engulfed her, Noor gritted her teeth in sudden revulsion for her own fear. If this was death, she wasn’t meeting it as a coward! She wasn’t going to spend her last few minutes in a panic, pleading with fate or regretting her own stupidity or anything else.

The noise was deafening now—the shriek of wind, the rain and thunder and the protesting engine all conspiring together to produce cacophony. Noor ran her eyes over the instrument panel. Even if they hadn’t been leaping around like drops of water on a summer pavement, the instruments would have told her exactly nothing.

“There must be something I can do!” she cried over the noise.

Bari’s eyes were steady on her for a moment, clocking the shift in her state of mind. He indicated the radio with his chin.

“Try and raise air traffic control again,” he shouted, less because he thought it likely than to give her something to do. “Give them our stats. Height eleven hundred and descending. Bearing two two five. See if they have us on radar and can confirm our position.”

But the radio responded with static. They were out of range, but that told them nothing with regard to their own position—except that a mountain might be between them and the airport. In the distance she heard the pilot of another plane saying he could hear her, but the signal faded and he didn’t respond to her call.

“Go to the distress channel,” Bari ordered, and a thrill of renewed fear zinged through her. Every pilot knew the channel number, but not in the expectation of ever needing it. Her mouth dry, Noor turned the dial to read 121.5. She coughed.

“Mayday, May—” she began hoarsely.

Suddenly there was a flash of light all around them, as though they had touched an electric grid. Then a curious silence, as if the rain were taking a breath, or her heart had stopped beating. Then rippling, cracking, booming thunder.

“Did that hit us?” Noor barely breathed the question.

Bari shrugged. “The electrics are still working.” He pulled back on the throttle, slowing the engine further.

“I’m going to put down. The sea will be choppy, but better to break up on the surface than up here.”

If the sea was beneath them.

Noor felt a sudden calm. Mash’allah. “All right. What should I do?”

“There’s a life raft in the rear.” He sounded doubtful. “Can you get it out?”

She set down the mike and unbuckled herself. “Right.”

“Be prepared for more turbulence.”

She hastily kicked off her shoes and got up, scrabbling her way between the two passenger seats behind and into the back of the aircraft as fast as she could, yanking at the voluminous skirt of her dress, clutching tightly to anything within reach. Meanwhile the plane leaped and bounced as the storm did its unholy best to knock her off balance.

Strange, she thought distantly, all this bucking wasn’t making her queasy now. Maybe having nerves at a fever pitch had something to do with that.

Still the wind howled and shrieked around the little plane. Lightning crackled within the clouds, and the answering thunder pounded and banged them almost physically.

In the luggage space behind the passenger seats, she saw a suitcase-sized container fitted to the bulkhead on a mounting. There were very similar items on the yachts of friends, and in her carefree life Noor had been miles from imagining she would ever actually need one.

She knelt into the cloud of her dress and wrestled with the clasps holding the case in the cradle. She noted only distantly that the tip of one perfect peach-coloured fingernail snapped off in the process.

“LIFE RAFT, 4 PERSON. DO NOT INFLATE IN AN ENCLOSED SPACE.”

Bari swore as the plane bucked again, and Noor fell against the seat and then the bulkhead as she dragged the case awkwardly off its mounting. It was heavy and hard and had a mind of its own, but with curses and tears she at last manoeuvred it to a position behind Bari’s seat. Two more fingernails tore in the process.

The sweat of struggle was on Bari’s forehead, and his face was white with strain. A black curl fell over one eye. “Sit down,” he called. “We’ll break out of cloud soon and I may have to take it back up fast.”

Fear rushed through her again at this stark statement of what she already knew—that they might be blindly flying towards a mountainside. Biting her lip, Noor struggled back into her seat and shoved her arms through the safety harness, clicking it home.

Rain pounded the metal body of the plane, and the wind screamed around them, in an intensity of sound she’d never heard before. Thunder rolled all around. She felt the noise in her skin, in her body, as if sound itself embraced her, a physical thing.

She picked up the mike again. “Mayday, Mayday, this is India Sierra—”

Suddenly they were out of cloud, driving through rain so heavy there was scarcely any improvement in visibility. But below she could see water, and she let her breath out on a long silent sigh. Thank God, thank God. Alhamdolillah. She glanced at Bari, but she saw no emotion other than fierce concentration on his face.

“Brace yourself,” he said briefly. The water looked choppy and unforgiving. Noor pushed her free hand against the control panel, pressed her stockinged feet against the floor.

“This is India Sierra Quebec two six, we are—”

He slowed the engine, dropping lower, trying to gauge the height of the chop by what he knew of the sea as a sailor. It was rougher than he had hoped.

The belly of the plane touched down with a hollow thump, and then another and another as they hit the waves. Bari wrestled to keep the plane from nose-diving, the muscles of his arms bulging with the effort. As he slowed to a standstill, a bigger swell grabbed the starboard wing. With a sharp, terrifying scream of metal the plane slewed around, bounced up, smacked down, pitched forward and then dropped back.




Four


The high scream stopped. The propellers stopped. The pounding rain increased in ferocity, but still it sounded like silence to the two in the cockpit. Bari slapped his harness open.

“Are you hurt?” His voice was harsh.

“No,” Noor said faintly. The truth was she was so shocked that if she did have broken bones she wouldn’t have known.

“The hull is damaged,” Bari said, flinging open his door onto driving rain and waves that slapped against the belly of the plane, stretching greedy fingers into the cockpit. “We’ve got a couple of minutes before it goes under.”

Noor, dizzy and shaken, struggled out of the harness and her seat again.

Bari was in the open doorway, the rain slashing at him, staining his jacket dark, plastering it to his skin. He tied the cord from the life raft to a metal brace with quick expertise. Somehow he did not look incongruous in his wedding finery. The purple silk jacket that was dress uniform to a Cup Companion only emphasized his physical power and masculinity. Around his hips the jewelled belt of his sword glowed dully. He looked like an ancient painting of a noble warrior, ready for anything.

Lightning crackled behind his head, and thunder exploded around them like a small bomb.

“Take your dress off,” he shouted.

Her hand went unconsciously to her throat. “But I’m—”

“Now!” His voice was harsh. “Do you want to drown?”

She was too stunned by events to argue. He was right. If she fell into the water, the dress would drag her down. Anyway, what did she have to hide from Bari? He had been so intimate with her body he practically owned it.

Bari didn’t waste time watching to see her obey. He dragged the life raft through the opening and heaved it onto the water.

Noor reached up behind her neck and her fingers tugged at the first of the dozens of tiny silk-covered buttons that ran down her back. She managed to undo three or four, watching as Bari jerked at the cord of the plastic case now riding the waves a short distance away, but the dress was too tight for her to reach further.

“You’ll have to undo me,” she said hoarsely, and so quietly he didn’t hear against the sudden hissing and snapping as the life raft opened. Noor coughed. Since trying to make the Mayday call she seemed to have no voice.

“You have to undo me!” she cried louder.

He looked at her. She was offering her back, her head turned to look over her shoulder into his face. Bari’s eyes took in the lifted shoulder, the fall of glowing auburn hair, the partly opened neckline of the dress, the soft skin of her back as it disappeared under the delicate white silk.

Even now, with danger crackling all around, the thought of the might-have-been passed over them. Wordlessly his hands rose to the buttons, and moved against her back to undo her wedding dress…as he might have done in a hushed bedroom somewhere, their hearts beating not with fear but desire….

He undid two of the tiny, impossible buttons, and then muttered something she didn’t hear. His hands clenched against her skin for a moment before he wrenched them apart. The fabric screamed its protest at the violation of the should-have-been, and he tore the dress open from neck to hip. Buttons flew like little pellets, landing all around with a sound that was curiously distinct against the noise of the storm.

They said not a word. Bari lifted his hands and turned back to his task with the raft. It was nearly fully inflated now, and he quickly picked up a small satchel as water began to seep into the plane, staining the carpet with a warning that time was short.

Noor dragged the dress off, down her arms and over her hips. Clutching hard on the seat back against the rocking of the waves, she let it drop with a swoosh to the floor and stepped out of it. Now she was wearing nothing but a teddy and stockings.

She dragged the heavy weight of the dress up and flung it over her arm, and then stood waiting for his signal.

There was a loud pop as the bright red canopy snapped into place over the raft. Bari held the raft close to the battered plane, and she watched him toss the sheathed sword and the satchel through the canopy entrance. The eyes that glanced over her were clinically impersonal. Not even by a tightening of his mouth did he seem to remember that the last time he had seen her like this lovemaking had followed.

Lightning crackled between earth and sky, and the black clouds roiled as thunder echoed across the water. A gust of wind smacked them, causing the plane to make a terrifying shift.

“Shoes?” Bari shouted.

“Off.”

“Jump onto the canopy.”

She clutched her dress and prepared to leap. “What the hell’s that for?” he demanded harshly.

“It’s all the clothes I have!” she screamed against the turmoil. Without waiting for his approval, she leaped out, and landed spread-eagled on the canopy. It collapsed under her, and she banged her knee painfully on something underneath.

Noor almost panicked then, but when she looked towards Bari he was unmoved by the accident. The life raft rose and fell on the waves for a few seconds while the drenching rain came down, and the heavens roared and flashed.

“Get over!” Bari called. Her dress was everywhere, and she feverishly grabbed at it, rolling it into a bundle with one arm as she clutched desperately to a rope with the other and tried to make room for him.

Her bundled wedding veil landed with a thump, so Bari had seen logic in her decision. A moment later, he landed beside her.

“Get through the entrance—we’ve got to get the canopy up!” he cried, and for a moment she stared at him in confusion.

Under his rapid-fire direction, dragging her dress and veil with her, Noor slithered through the entrance hole and under the flattened canopy as if into a sleeping bag, while Bari clung on precariously. Rain poured unmercifully into her face where she lay looking up at the churning black sky. There was something hard and uncomfortable under her thigh.

Bari edged closer, then slid headfirst through the hole beside her. To Noor’s amazement, the canopy popped back into place, and suddenly they were inside.

Bari instantly jackknifed up, grabbing at her butt, and choking the sigh of relief in her throat. “What—?” she began.

She saw him heft the sword in the scabbard. He shoved it out the entrance and drew out the sword, tossing the scabbard to fall inside.

The action, the speed of it, choked her.

“Bari!” she screamed hoarsely.

With his free hand he reached for the rope that tethered them to the downed plane, and lifted the sword over it.

A huge swell slapped against the plane without warning, shifting it violently, dragging the rope out of his hand. Bari, the sword held high, was suddenly hanging precariously over the water. A wave lifted the little raft.

“Bari!” Noor shrieked again, in a very different tone. She flung herself on him, grabbed the jewelled sword belt he still wore, and held on tight. The raft slipped dangerously down into the lee of the wave.

He twisted in her hold, his back arching out over the swollen sea, his sword upraised, with rain pouring over him, looking like some ancient painting of a blood-crazed warrior. He stared at her in disbelief as she clung shrieking to his hips. The rain was so drenching she could hardly see, but she got the outrage in his eyes.

“Get back! You’ll overturn us!” he ordered furiously.

Noor lifted her hands as if the belt were hot, and slid back inside, wiping the rain and hair from her eyes, her heart beating in tumult as she watched him.

Bari cut the cord that tied them to the plane and moved back inside. He wiped the sword uselessly against his wet sleeve, sheathed it carefully in the confined space and set it down.

Something beside her head on the canopy caught her eye. Her eyes sparkling, she said, “There appears to be a little knife stuck to the canopy here, Bari. I suppose not everyone is expected to be carrying their own ceremonial sword.”

She caught the glimmer of a smile, of the old, humorous Bari, but there was no time for laughter. The sea smashed over them, the little raft rose with a sickening swoop, and the moment was lost. With a loud, terrifying complaint from the torn wing, the plane shifted again. Would they be dragged with it?

A red polythene bag was tied to the floor. Bari wrestled the neck open, then drew out a small plastic scoop and fixed a metal handle to it. Everything he did was quick, with an air of urgency that only heightened her anxiety. A breath of nervous laughter escaped her.

“What’s that for?”

Bari tossed it down.

“Never used a paddle before?” he asked. “You’d better learn fast.”

With a neat economy of motion he pulled another one out of the sack and fitted that together.

“Shouldn’t we close the entrance? We’re getting a lot of water in here,” Noor complained.

“There’s work to be done first. Pick that up and come and help me.”

All her life Noor had been pampered. The only girl, and the youngest child, she had always been special. No one made real demands of her. Her needs were always met through someone else’s work—servants, her parents, her brothers, even her cousin Jalia had all conspired to cushion her against the truth that life required effort. Any effort Noor made went in the direction of fun.

And no one—including Bari—had ever spoken to her in the tones he was using now.

“What’s the point? Where are we trying to get to? We don’t even know where we are!”

“We know we’re too damned close to the plane, and it’s sinking,” he informed her flatly. “We have no time to argue. Try to spread your weight as much as possible. It’s dangerous to have all the weight on one side, but we have no choice.”

Bari pushed his head and shoulders out into the rain and began to paddle, fighting to get the raft away from the downed plane. It lay helpless in the water, with its ugly broken wing, and their position was dangerous—a wave could smash them against the hull. Or they might be caught by the wing, or hammered by the tail, as the plane went under.

Or simply sucked down with it when it went.

After a moment, to his surprise, Noor moved up behind him and put her head out, paddle at the ready.

“What do I do?” she shrieked against the storm.

His biceps bulged under the soaking-wet jacket. “We’ll aim to get around the nose and out that way,” he shouted.

Noor could hardly see, hardly breathe in the downpour, but he had challenged her and she wasn’t going to give in. She wiped her hair out of her eyes and tried again.

“Watch my paddle,” Bari ordered, and that made it easier. Looking down she could follow the direction of his paddling, and she got less rain in her eyes.

They paddled together, side by side, wordlessly battling the waves that tried to drag them towards the sinking plane. Then suddenly, pushed close and then swept on by a high swell, they were past it and out of danger.

“That’s good enough,” Bari said. They drew back inside, and he rolled up the door flap and sealed it, and now at last they were cocooned against the storm. Soaking wet, Noor reflected, and chilled, and in a tiny space that was awash with water and bouncing like forty miles of bad road, but suddenly it seemed like comfort. She slumped down against the rounded side of the raft, panting, her heart drumming in her ears, and realized what a relative thing comfort was.

For a minute or two they rested in silence as their breathing calmed. Then Bari opened the flap again and looked out, using the paddle to turn the raft around and get a wider view.

They had been carried well away from the plane, now half-submerged. It would disappear soon. Gazing past Bari’s head into the grey seascape, Noor caught no sight of ship or land. Still, such heavy rain might easily disguise land that was quite close.

Bari closed the flap again.

“No sign of land?” Noor said, hoping to be contradicted.

“No, but with a little luck we’re near the Gulf Islands.” He reached for the emergency pack again and pulled out a plastic-covered sheet of paper whose bold title read “Immediate Emergency Procedures.”

Lightning flashed and flashed again, throwing an eerie orange glow over the interior, and making it hard for Noor’s eyes to acclimatize. Bari frowned down at the paper for a moment, then lifted a hand to the centre of the canopy and turned on a little light.

Noor, uncomfortably curled in one corner, her shoulders resting against the edge of the raft, felt light-headed with the constant motion. Water was trickling down her back from her soaked hair. Her lacy stay-up stockings were slipping on her wet thighs, and she lifted a hand to strip them off as Bari pulled some rope and a curiously shaped piece of plastic out of the red sack.

“What’s that for?” she asked, but he only shook his head as if her question were a bothersome fly. After a moment, her eyes fell on the wedding dress damply scrunched up under the satchel. It was slowly absorbing the water sloshing around the floor of the raft, but it was better than nothing. Noor reached out and pulled at the hem.

She knew she was being foolish and stupidly sentimental as she avoided using the beautiful overskirt and instead lifted one of the flounced underskirts and bent to wipe her face and hair on the impeccably hand-stitched silk. It came away blotched with black, green and tan, so no doubt her face was a mess. She tried wiping her hair and her arms, because she was starting to feel chilled, but the dress was too soaked to make any difference.

For several minutes as Bari got his bearings there was silence between them. Noor sat straighter and tried not to feel sick. Normally she was a good sailor. The raft was stamped with the information that it was for four, but it was a small enough space even for two when one of them was a runaway bride and the other her furious ex-bridegroom, she told herself with grim humour.

It was moving up and down with the stormy swell, the waves slapping it, the water on the floor sloshing around to produce deep discomfort. Once they felt a heave and a toss and then water pounded down on them, pushing at the canopy, and she knew a wave had washed right over them. The incessant drumming rain and the silence within made the little space even more claustrophobic.

Noor shivered. She had never been so close to the elements, so profoundly at their mercy.

And in this mood, that included Bari himself.

“How long do you think it will be before they find us?” she asked nervously.

Bari lifted an eyebrow and looked up from what he was reading.

“Who do you imagine will be looking?”




Five


There was a heartbeat of shocked silence. Thunder cracked and rolled again, but now, Alhamdolillah, it was moving off.

“What?” she whispered.

“Who knows we were on the plane? Who knows it went down?”

“But—radar!”

Bari shook his head. “We were probably flying underneath radar most of the time.”

He began to unravel the sea anchor rope. “Even when people do discover that we went off in the plane, will there be any reason to assume that we have not arrived safely at our destination, whatever that might be?”

She stared at him. Did he really mean this might go on?

“Unless, of course, someone is expecting you somewhere.” His eyes were hard as he spoke.

She didn’t know what that meant. “What about our hotel booking? Won’t they ask questions when we don’t turn up?”

A crack of laughter escaped him. “Who will be expecting us to take a honeymoon when we didn’t get married?”

He went on with his task, as if he could forget from moment to moment that she was there. She hated that. Bari had never ignored her before, and although now she knew his intense interest had been an act, still she missed it.

She suddenly began to wonder what had happened after she ran. When had the alarm been raised? The guards at the gate must have noticed as she went roaring past in the bridal limousine, but what had they actually seen?

“Did people know what happened? Did they…” She faded off.

“Did they know my bride had changed her mind?” Bari supplied in harsh mockery, and abruptly the cool veneer dropped and his raw anger surged up again. “I don’t know what they knew,” he growled. “What does it matter? Insulting our families, our friends and all our guests! No reason on God’s earth could justify such behaviour!”

No one ever criticized Noor, and in her current fragile state the stinging rebuke hit her hard.

“You were my reason!” she flared. “Easy for you to feel you should be allowed to walk all over me, but it’s a bit much to expect me to agree!”

She was all the angrier, perhaps, because now that events had overtaken her, she was suddenly feeling very guilty. In countries like Bagestan and Barakat, hospitality was taken very seriously. It was practically a religious duty. And she had grown up in a family of exiles determined to maintain such traditions. It was in her blood almost as much as his.

“Walk all over you? Easier to walk over a bed of nails!” he snorted.

“With a soul as calloused as yours, no problem!”

“Not so calloused that I don’t know when I’ve been lucky.”

“Oh, I don’t think so!” Noor snapped furiously. “A few minutes ago you were all for forcing me to the altar! Anyway, you weren’t marrying me for my sweetness and light in the first place, were you? You had other mo—”

“Not even for your self-control under stress,” he agreed. “Do you never consider pulling your own weight, Noor? Whatever you want is right?”

That was so outrageously unfair she gasped. “What do you know about it?” she demanded. “You’ve only known me for a few weeks! Ask my real friends if you want to know!”

Bari only shook his head and opened the hatch again. As more rain drove inside, he pushed something down into the water, then began playing out a line. Noor watched in silence. Not even for ready money would she now have offered her help. It would seem like giving in to his opinion of her, trying to win his favour. Not for a world!

But it irked her that he seemed not to have any expectation that she would be of help in what he was doing. Maybe he really did believe that she couldn’t pull her weight; in any case, it seemed he could dismiss her completely from his field of consciousness.




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