Sheikh's Ransom

Sheikh's Ransom
ALEXANDRA SELLERS

“Am I A Hostage?” (#u250d77d1-6deb-5847-a7a0-bf92a5bb28e6)Letter to Reader (#u4c78a66a-c3e7-55b5-a815-bd2785b32e79)Title Page (#uf17394de-d177-5a2d-96cf-e0421fb81233)Dedication (#ud58063f8-e63c-5a8e-8e00-78e2b264168e)About the Author (#u6df13195-cdd1-500d-bca5-8cabd542e73c)Karim’s Inheritance The Jewel Seal of Shakur (#ud2d59aca-36c4-59fa-83a9-89a6290fa7d7)Chapter One (#uafba754e-8eed-54a6-8b2f-960b8a0fd4c4)Chapter Two (#ua9e272ac-20b9-5264-acb3-c92a1053f060)Chapter Three (#u6542b283-1c9a-57d4-8d88-32b542f7a364)Chapter Four (#u50ff1f91-effa-5763-becf-e9421ed726d2)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“Am I A Hostage?”

Caroline stared at Karim while a million unnamed dreams shattered into dust.

“It is natural that you will feel anger.”

“Why do they say you are a prince? Are you?” Her voice seemed to be coming from a distance.

“Caroline, come upstairs where we can talk in comfort,” he urged her. “There is much to tell you, much for you to understand.”

“If I have a choice, it is to leave this place now. If I have no choice, I await Your Majesty’s order. But I will not pretend that I go anywhere willingly in your company.”

“Then I order you upstairs,” he replied calmly.

Without a word she turned and preceded him through the arched entry that only a few hours ago had seemed like the doorway to magic to her....

Dear Reader,

April brings showers, and this month Silhouette Desire wants to shower you with six new, passionate love stories!

Cait Lordon’s popular Blaylock family returns in our April MAN OF THE MONTH title, Blaylock’s Bride. Honorable Roman Blaylock grapples with a secret that puts him in a conflict between confiding in the woman he loves and fulfilling a last wish.

The provocative series FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE BRIDES continues with Leanne Banks’s The Secretary and the Millionaire, when a wealthy CEO turns to his assistant for help in caring for his little girl.

Beverly Barton’s next tale in her 3 BABIES FOR 3 BROTHERS miniseries, His Woman, His Child, shows a rugged heartbreaker transformed by the heroine’s pregnancy. Powerful sheikhs abound in Sheikh’s Ransom, the Desire debut title of Alexandra Sellers’s dramatic new series, SONS OF THE DESERT. A marine gets a second chance at love in Colonel Daddy, continuing Maureen Child’s popular series BACHELOR BATTALION. And in Christy Lockhart’s Let’s Have a Baby!, our BACHELORS AND BABIES selection, the hero must dissuade the heroine from going to a sperm bank and convince her to let him father her child—the old-fashioned way!

Allow Silhouette Desire to give you the ultimate indulgence—all six of these fabulous April romance books!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Sheikh’s Ransom

Alexandra Sellers

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For Lilia

who looks just like a Greek statue, and

who understood because her mother is an artist

ALEXANDRA SELLERS was born in Ontario, and raised in Ontario and Saskatchewan. She first came to London to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and fell in love with the city. Later, she returned to make it her permanent home. Now married to an Englishman, she lives near Hampstead Heath. As well as writing romance, she teaches a course called “How To Write a Romance Novel” in London several times a year.

Because of a much-regretted allergy, she can have no resident cat, but she receives regular charitable visits from three cats who are neighbors.

Readers can write to her at PO. Box 9449, London, NW3 2WH, England.

THE BARAKAT EMIRATES

SHEIKH’S RANSOM, Prince Karim’s story, April 1999

THE SOLITARY SHEIKH, Prince Omar’s story, May 1999

BELOVED SHEIKH, Prince Rafi’s story. June 1999

Available only from Silhouette Desire.

Karim’s Inheritance The Jewel Seal of Shakur

There was once a king of ancient and noble lineage who ruled over a land that had been blessed by God. This land, Barakat, lying on the route of one of the old Silk Roads, had for centuries received the cultural influences of many different worlds. Its geography, too, was diverse: it bordered the sea; then the desert, sometimes bleak with its ancient ruins, sometimes golden and studded with oases, stretched inland for many miles, before meeting the foothills of snow-capped mountains that captured the rain clouds and forced them to deliver their burden in the rich valleys. It was a land of magic and plenty and a rich and diverse heritage.

But it was also a land of tribal rivalries and not infrequent skirmishes. Because the king had the ancient blood of the Quraishi kings in his veins, no one challenged his right to the throne, but many of the tribal chieftains whom he ruled were in constant jealousy over their lands and rights against the others.

One day, the king of this land fell in love with a foreign woman. Promising her that he would never take another wife, he married her and made her his queen. This beloved wife gave him two handsome sons. The king loved them as his own right hand. Crown Prince Zaid and his brother were all that he could wish for in his sons—handsome. noble, brave warriors, and popular with his people. As they attained the age of majority, the sheikh could look forward to his own death without fear for his country, for if anything should happen to the Crown Prince, his brother Aziz would step into his shoes and be equally popular with the people and equally strong among the tribes.

Then one day, tragedy struck the sheikh and his wife. Both their sons were killed in the same accident. Now his own death became the great enemy to the old man, for with it, he knew, would come certain civil war as the tribal chieftains vied for supremacy.

His beloved wife understood all his fears, but she was by now too old to hope to give him another heir. One day, when all the rituals of mourning were complete, the queen said to her husband, “According to the law, you are entitled to four wives. Take, therefore, my husband, three new wives, that God may bless one of them with a son to inherit your throne.”

The sheikh thanked her for releasing him from his promise. A few weeks later, on the same day so that none should afterwards claim supremacy, the sheikh married three beautiful young women, and that night, virile even in his old age, he visited each wife in turn, no one save himself knowing in which order he visited them. To each wife he promised that if she gave him a son, her son would inherit the throne of Barakat.

The sheikh was more virile than he knew. Each of his new wives conceived, and gave birth, nine months later, to a lusty son. And each was jealous for her own son’s inheritance. From that moment the sheikh’s life became a burden to him, for each of his new young wives had different reasons for believing that her own son should be named the rightful heir to the throne.

The Princess Goldar, whose exotically hooded green eyes she had bequeathed to her son, Omar, based her claim on the fact that she herself was a descendant of the ancient royal family of her own homeland, Parvan.

The Princess Nargis, mother of Rafi and descended from the old Mughal emperors of India, had in addition given birth two days before the other two wives, thus making her son the firstborn.

The Princess Noor, mother of Karim, claimed the inheritance for her son by right of blood—she alone of the wives was an Arab of noble descent, like the sheikh himself. Who but her son to rule the desert tribesmen?

The sheikh hoped that his sons would solve his dilemma for him, that one would prove more princely than the others. But as they grew to manhood, he saw that each of them was, in his own way, worthy of the throne, that each had the nobility the people would look for in their king, and talents that would benefit the kingdom were he to rule.

When his sons were eighteen years old, the sheikh knew that he was facing death. As he lay dying, he saw each of his young wives in turn. To each of them again he promised that her son would inherit. Then he saw his three sons together, and on them he laid his last command. Then, last of all, he saw the wife and companion of his life, with whom he had seen such happiness and such sorrow. To her willing care he committed his young wives and their sons, with the assistance of his vizier Nizam al Mulk; whom he appointed Regent jointly with her.