The Desert King's Virgin Bride

For a moment Sorrel was tempted—and then some dormant streak of rebellion sprang out of nowhere. All her life, people had ‘guided’ her and helped make her decisions—and that didn’t happen to other people of her age. Why, how many other young women had never paid any rent, nor shopped for groceries—or had to cook their own supper? And were they given the benefit of the palace’s financial advisors?

Besides, what advice could they possibly give that was going to be relevant to her new life in England? They could hardly tell her how to make savings on the central heating bill!

‘Thank you, Malik—but no. I would prefer to stand on my own two feet.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘How stubborn you can be sometimes, Sorrel,’ he said softly.

‘It isn’t stubbornness, Malik—it’s called independence.’

He hesitated, and then asked the question, knowing that by doing so he was breaking protocol. ‘You don’t want my help?’

Sorrel shook her head, and as she did so she felt her veil shimmer around her shoulders. She had worn it for as long as she could remember, and yet soon the veil would be lifted and removed—her head bare in a way which was considered unseemly here. It would be freedom in more ways than one—and most important of all she wanted to be free of this one-sided adoration she felt for the Sheikh.

‘I want to do it my way.’ She should have felt excitement, but at that moment she felt the clammy clamping of fear around her heart as she looked up into Malik’s hard black eyes, realising that despite everything she wanted his blessing—his assurance that her actions would not damage their friendship. That once she had got him thoroughly out of her system a residual affection would remain. ‘If that’s okay?’

He shrugged, deliberately disdainful. ‘Do as you please, Sorrel,’ he said coldly, and picked up one of the documents he had been working on in a gesture which said quite clearly I wash my hands of you. ‘But if you don’t mind—I think we have exhausted the subject, don’t you? And I happen to be rather busy.’

Sorrel stared at him. She had been dismissed as he would a servant, and she had to bite back her rage and her pain as he deliberately bent over his work. Yet somehow she kept silent, her head held high as she walked towards her apartment, telling herself that his reaction to her news after a lifetime of friendship was nothing less than shameful.

Well, she would show Sheikh High-and-Mighty Malik! She was going to get right out there in the world and start living her life as it should be lived!

So why did her heart feel so heavy as she walked into her sumptuous apartment and looked around? At the delicate inlaid furniture and the paintings whose frames gleamed softly with gold. At the row upon row of beautifully bound and rare books she had inherited from her diplomat father. And at the view over the palace gardens—the emerald lawns leading down to a long rectangle of water, with a fountain pluming in feathery display in the distance.

Against the glittering silver surface she could see the flash of the orange-pink feathers of flamingos—birds so fantastic that they looked almost unreal. Wild ducks and geese landed here sometimes, en route to the wide Balsora Sea, and many times Sorrel had seen astonishment on the faces of Western visitors—as if they simply couldn’t imagine that such a variety of wildlife existed in a land which was dominated by desert. But Kharastan was a land of constant surprises—its beauty and richness and complexity seeped into your bones almost without you realising it, and she was going to miss it.

Sorrel turned away from the window and stared down at the group of photos which sat atop the baby grand piano. Among the old black and white collection of distant relatives there was a wedding-day photo of her parents, and a later shot of the three of them, laughing on a visit to the Balsora Sea—shortly before their death.

Yet one portrait alone dominated her vision, and she picked it up and drank it in, her heart beating fast as she looked at the formal coronation day study of Malik—his beloved face so stern and so determined beneath the heavy weight of his crown and his destiny.

Rogue tears pricked at her eyes, and a feeling of strange apprehension threatened to overwhelm her as Sorrel quickly put the photo down on the piano and turned away.

CHAPTER TWO

‘IT WILL not be as you imagine it to be. And people will treat you differently there. Come back to me if ever you are in trouble, Sorrel.’

Those remembered words echoed in Sorrel’s ears—the very last words that Malik had spoken to her just before the door of the dark limousine had closed and shut her off from him.

For ever?

Now she was just being ridiculous! Of course she was going to see him again—and she hadn’t come all the way to England and fundamentally changed her life around simply to spend her time thinking about Malik, had she?

The problem was that it was difficult not to think about him, not to keep comparing her new life in England, which was so different from the way she’d lived in Kharastan. After the enclosed world of an English boarding school and her cloistered life at court, for the first time in her life she was tasting freedom.

It was just that freedom seemed to come with a price…

Recognising that she was lucky to have the funds to do so—she’d begun looking around for somewhere to rent. She had rejected London—on the grounds that it was too big and too busy, and it would probably swallow her up and spit her out again—but she didn’t want to sink into obscurity in some tiny little English village.

In the end she’d chosen Brighton, because it was a bustling and beautiful seaside town, and she recalled spending a wonderful holiday there when she’d been a little girl.

She had found an apartment on the seafront—with huge floor-to-ceiling windows which let the most amazing light flood in. It was one of several owned by Julian de Havilland, a very successful local artist, who only let the rooms out to people who had ‘good vibes’. Sorrel suspected that the stark and bare layout of the apartment, with only the barest minimum of furniture, would not be everyone’s cup of tea—but it was by far and away the nicest one she had looked at.

‘I’ll take it!’ she said, her attention caught by the sunlight dancing on the sea outside the vast windows.

‘There’s no curtains, I’m afraid,’ he said, raking hands which were stained with Indian ink through an already tousled mane of hair.

‘Who needs curtains?’ said Sorrel lightly, thinking that she would undress in the bathroom, which featured an enormous great boat of a bath and a noisy cistern.

‘Are you working in Brighton?’ he asked curiously, watching as she ran her fingertips along the edge of the marble fireplace.

‘No, I haven’t got a job,’ she said, and then, seeing the heightened curiosity on his face and not wanting to come over as some little rich-girl—which she wasn’t—and realising that only by working was she going to get to know people, she gave him a bright smile. ‘Not yet, anyway. I’m going to have to start looking.’

‘What do you do?’

Ah. That was the question. What did she do? Sorrel screwed her face up and came up with her one most marketable asset. ‘I can speak French. And German.’

‘Fluently?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She was determined to play down her knowledge of Kharastani. Sorrel had already decided that she wasn’t going to publicise her background—mainly because it wasn’t fair to Malik. He was powerful, and he was a king, and while some people might actually think she was fantasising about even knowing him she must never forget that others might wish to make his acquaintance for all kinds of reasons. And she could never presume on their friendship by daring to make introductions to him.

Friendship?

Some friendship!

He hadn’t bothered replying to her e-mails and neither had he once picked up the telephone, or in any way acknowledged the couple of jaunty postcards she had sent, with a deliberately cheerful tone—as if she was having the most wonderful time in the world with her newly acquired freedom. As if she wasn’t missing him and her life in the exotic and complex country which was Kharastan. But she did.

She missed it all like mad—the apricot-soft dawns and the fiery sunsets, the stark beauty of the desert and the warm, scented air of the palace gardens. And didn’t she miss her exceptionally privileged lifestyle there, if she was being completely honest? Hadn’t she become rather too accustomed to servants who acceded to her every whim? To having her clothes laundered and her meals cooked and served to her? Why, by the time she had left Kharastan she had actually had her own aide!

Most of all she missed Malik. The sight of his beautiful mocking face at state banquets—the sound of his rich, resonant voice as he made a speech to welcome visiting dignitaries. She missed the expectation of bumping into him. The thought that at any moment he might suddenly appear—sweeping through the wide, marbled palace corridors with his silken robes swishing and a cluster of aides scurrying in his wake, because his long stride seemed to cover so much more distance than anyone else she knew.

But didn’t that speak volumes about how hopeless her longing for him was? If she analysed the actual substance of her relationship with him, it was nothing. A few daily snatched glimpses of him and being a member of an adoring audience as he delivered a speech was not a real relationship—hardly even a friendship. She sounded more like a starstruck fan than an equal. For she would never be his equal. Not now.

In the years before the bombshell had dropped that he was the true and rightful heir to the Sheikh there had been hope that he might love her back. But he never had and now he never would. Perhaps deep down Malik had always sensed the true magnitude of his destiny, and she had to accept hers. And hers was here. Now. And she must learn to adapt to this completely different way of living.

It was a shock to the system—but one that she needed if she was to achieve any degree of contentment, she decided, as she signed a cheque and handed it over to Julian.

He took it, folded it, and slid it in the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Well, if you need a job and you’re a linguist, then why don’t you try the Alternative Tourist Office?’ he questioned, and saw her puzzled look. ‘It specialises in places of interest which are off the beaten track—as well as the usual attractions—but they get loads of foreign tourists who don’t speak much English. They’ve got a crazy little office down the road on the seafront.’

‘And they’re looking for someone?’

Julian grinned. ‘They’re always looking for someone! They don’t pay great money—but the atmosphere’s pretty relaxed.’

It certainly seemed that way. The office was situated a mere shell’s throw from her apartment, sandwiched between a clothes shop and a wine bar. A few wilting plants sat on the windowsill, and there was free coffee and a pile of magazines with most of the advertisements cut out—plus music playing from a deck in one corner.

Sorrel was asked a fairly basic question in French and given the job on the spot—mornings only and every other Saturday. She would be working with Jane, who had just left university and couldn’t decide what to do, and a very good-looking male model called Charlie, who told her he was currently ‘resting’.

‘Oh, you’re always “resting”!’ accused Jane, with a giggle.

It was such a relief to be in a friendly atmosphere with people her own age that Sorrel found herself relaxing for the first time since her plane had taken off from Kumush Ay airport.