Sheikh's Castaway

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….