Lord of the Desert

He caught her scrutiny and tensed. “You find the scars distasteful.”

She looked up at once. “Good Lord, no,” she said at once, and with obvious sincerity. “I was watching how you use your hands. Everyone in this part of the world seems to move gracefully, especially the men. It isn’t like that back home.”

He relaxed and finished his salad. It was his own guilt at deceiving her, he thought, that was bringing on these bad moods. He had to stop it. What was, was. Nothing in the world could ever change it.

“We move as we live, unhurriedly,” he said simply.

“I’ll bet you don’t have half the rate of vascular problems that we have in the States,” she remarked.

“That is most likely true.” He finished a last bite of salad and pushed the bowl from him. His dark eyes searched hers. “You go to a country vastly different from your own, much less sophisticated than Morocco. Many modern conveniences do not exist there, and even electricity is a recent addition. The people of Qawi were largely nomadic until the early part of this century. When it was parceled out among the Europeans, the people resisted and many families were decimated. It will require a great deal of tolerance for you to adjust to such archaic surroundings.”

She put down her own fork. “Do you think I should go home?” she asked bluntly.

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her to run, now, while she still could. But he looked into her eyes and felt as if part of him were sitting across the table. He couldn’t make the words come out.

“I know it’s a risk,” she said, glad that he hadn’t said anything immediately. “But I already love Morocco. I think I’m going to be very much at home in Qawi, if the sheikh is patient with my ignorance about local customs.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “I think you will find him patient, in all things.”

“I hope so,” she added fervently. “It’s like a leap of faith,” she added slowly. “A step into the unknown. Maggie said that I was vegetating in Texas, and I think she was right. I’ve never been anywhere or done anything adventurous in my life. I never realized the world was so big and its people so diverse. I’ll never forget any of this, whatever happens.”

“Nor will I,” he said quietly, and it sounded as if the words were torn from him. He was holding his wineglass so tightly that Gretchen wondered if the stem was going to snap. She wondered what was making him so broody, if it was his usual manner.