Master of the Desert (10 page)

But if she hoped to soften him…

Hope springs eternal, Antonia remembered, gazing up into Ra’id’s cold eyes. But he held the key to turning her dream for the charity into reality. The old fort could only live again with Ra’id’s water supply, and that was one dream she wasn’t letting go of. And how better to find the chance to tell him the news about their baby than spending time with him?

No, she had no option. If she was to have a chance of success she must be as committed to her purpose as Ra’id was to his.

‘Your mother’s room?’ he prompted.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

H
E COULD
feel Antonia’s suppressed excitement as he led the way down gilded corridors to the east wing of the palace, where the shutters had remained drawn for years, and the rooms were neglected and cast in shade. He could feel her fear and apprehension too. He could feel everything Antonia was feeling in the same unspoken transfer of energy he’d felt between them on the desert island, when he had been Saif and Antonia had gone by the name he’d given her. But there had been a change in Antonia since then. She had matured. She might have trembled at her first sight of him, but the flame of purpose had returned to her gaze. This wasn’t the adolescent who had ransacked his yacht to claim her piece of bread and cheese, but a woman who would not easily be dismissed. Perhaps the sight of her mother’s room would change that, he mused as they reached the door.

Antonia could hardly believe she was really here, within touching distance of her mother’s room. It was hard to catch her breath when Ra’id halted outside the golden door. The workmanship on the jewel-studded panelling was more fabulous than anything she could have imagined.
‘Is it real gold?’ she asked naively as she admired the intricate workmanship.

‘Everything you see that looks like gold is gold,’ Ra’id informed her with no emotion in his voice. ‘Shall we go in?’

‘Oh, yes please!’ she exclaimed, hardly daring to blink in case she missed anything. Her sense of anticipation was indescribable, and she put all thoughts of Ra’id knowing something she didn’t—something unpleasant, maybe—out of her mind.

‘Could we turn on a light?’ she asked, hesitating on the threshold.

‘Certainly.’ Reaching past her, Ra’id switched on a cobweb-strewn chandelier. Even now he made her tingle, Antonia felt, touching her cheek as she walked deeper into the room.

Whatever she had expected after seeing that golden door, it was not this shadowy interior, with sheets draped over the furniture and dust motes floating in stagnant air. But what affected her most was the atmosphere of abandonment, she realised, slowly turning full circle. It was as if the walls were soaked through with loneliness and sadness. Her first impression was that this was not the happy nest of a pretty girl, but a prison, a cage—a gilded cage for the discarded mistress of a ruler who had tired of her and moved on. But her mother hadn’t moved on, Antonia thought sadly as she trailed her fingertips across the yellowing cover of a fashion magazine. She thought that the saddest artefact of all. ‘It doesn’t look as if this room has been touched since my mother left for Italy,’ she said, rallying determinedly as she turned to speak to Ra’id.

She thought he seemed surprised she was holding it
together. She raised an eyebrow, as if to say that nothing would shake her from her path—and that if anything this clearer picture of the young woman who had been her mother had only strengthened her resolve.

He watched her closely. Knowing Antonia’s background, he had been half-expecting this indulged child of a fabulously wealthy father to cross straight to her mother’s dressing table, where a tumble of priceless jewellery still lay in a careless heap. The valuable gems were awaiting collection and a detailed inventory by his team of assessors, and would have attracted most people’s interest. But Antonia had stood in silence when she’d entered the room as if she were battling some emotion greater than he could grasp. It was an emotion that made her shudder and clamp her jaw so hard a muscle jumped in her cheek.

The seconds ticked by while both of them remained quite still, and then, instead of crossing to the dressing table, she went to the wall of windows and started sliding bolts back on the shutters. ‘Can you help me?’ she called to him, as if this was just an ordinary task. ‘No need; I’ve done it,’ she said, spinning round in triumph when he was halfway across the room. She opened every window to its fullest extent and light streamed in; with it came the warm, scented air. ‘That’s better!’ she exclaimed, turning back to face the room.

She stood quite still for a moment and then proceeded to examine everything in orderly sequence. Having apparently satisfied herself, she made for the large double bed on its plinth in the centre, walking past the jewels flashing fire on the dressing table and on across the room. She ignored a silk gown glinting with rubies, that drooped
sadly from a padded hanger, until she reached the bed, where she stared down for a moment until inch by inch she sank into a heap on the floor, as if the bones were slowly melting in her legs.

He was a hard man, who had made many hard decisions since taking the throne, and had seen many things in his lifetime that should have affected him but had left his factual mind largely untroubled. Yet when he saw Antonia weeping by her mother’s bedside he had to turn and leave the room.

He was showing respect, Ra’id reasoned, leaning back against the door. He drew breath to steady his emotions, but however hard a face he turned to Antonia he could not stand by and see her broken. Her defiance was so much easier to deal with, he reasoned, knowing deep down he had hoped she would exclaim with pleasure when she saw all the pretty things in her mother’s room. But instead she had got to the heart of the matter.

The heart of the matter…

Yes; the heart of the matter was the searing sense of loneliness and rejection Helena must have felt before Antonio Ruggiero had arrived and rescued her. He could see that now, thanks to Antonia.

But he could not hark back to a happier time on the desert island, because that was stolen time, time he still regretted. His life, every moment of his existence, was devoted to a country and its people, and that was where his duty lay; on that there could be no compromise. Antonia was not simply a girl he was attracted to, she was a threat to his people’s future happiness, with those documents granting her land in Sinnebar. He would not allow chaos to return to his country. He would bury the past, whatever it took.

Pulling away from the door, he opened it and stepped inside the room again. Whatever he had expected it was not this—Antonia seated at the dressing table, calmly reading letters.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about these letters, Ra’id?’ she asked him in a voice that was calmer than he might have expected.

Had he anticipated hysteria—a broken woman, crushed beneath the weight of grief? Had he forgotten the virago who had confronted him on the yacht with a knife? This was no girl to be easily dismissed, but a strong and determined woman, even if that woman resided in a young girl’s body.

‘I had no idea my mother even had a maidservant in whom she confided,’ she said, flourishing the bundle of letters she’d found. ‘No letters were ever forwarded to Rome.’

‘That might be because your mother wrote to her maidservant in English.’

‘And the maidservant could only read Sinnebalese,’ Antonia murmured, understanding. Then her face hardened. ‘The maidservant might not have been able to read English, but she would have understood these.’

She was looking at photographs of herself as a baby in her mother’s arms.

‘I imagine so,’ he agreed.

‘You
imagine
?’ Antonia bit out, springing to her feet. ‘So why didn’t I receive them?’

‘They were overlooked, perhaps.’ He made a dismissive gesture, but felt a surge of arousal as they confronted each other, both with passions raised. ‘Are you finished here?’ He held the door for her.

She shook her head slowly and her expression suggested
she detested him. ‘You have absolutely no heart, do you, Ra’id?’

He neither agreed nor disagreed with that assessment.

‘I give up!’ she flared. ‘And don’t think we’re finished here.’

‘You are finished here,’ he told her coldly, pointing to the door.

She saw his shadow cross the courtyard from the window in her room and felt a pang of regret. Standing in her chaste, cotton pyjamas watching Ra’id stride purposefully towards some unknown destination, she realised he still had the power to take her breath away. If anything, the deep blue robes of office and the Arabian headdress, with its gleaming gold
agal
holding it in place, only added to Ra’id’s menacing appeal. Though she had tried to hate him, that emotion was far too close to love. But how cold Ra’id had been when he’d looked at her, Antonia remembered; how dismissive.

And he was the father of her child…

As dusk thickened into glutinous night, she agonised over how to tell him. Was he visiting a lover now—perhaps some glamorous and frivolously dressed ladies in his harem?
The father of her baby.
The thought made her sick—sick and angry. Swallowing deep, she turned away.

Shutting the window to give the air-conditioning a chance to work, Antonia realised sleep was out of the question. How could she sleep with Ra’id in her head? But she had no rights over him; they were practically strangers, strangers who owed each other nothing, and who knew less about each other now than they ever had.

But she missed him, she realised, angrily biting back tears. And what would it bring her, this love of hers, other than distractions and more unhappiness? Antonia Ruggiero in love with the Sword of Vengeance? It sounded ridiculous even to her.

She padded barefoot across the room to her lonely bed. Some might think it generous of Ra’id to allow her to stay in such splendid accommodation, but she suspected it was his way of keeping her close so he would know what she was doing. He was orchestrating her every step, and what hurt the most was the knowledge that she was carrying his baby and couldn’t tell him.

How much closer could they be than parents of a baby? Yet how much further apart? Antonia wondered, trailing her fingertips across crisp, white linen sheets on a bed she doubted she would spend even a moment on.

During the lonely vigil of the long night, Antonia considered what she had learned from looking through what remained of her mother’s possessions. Helena had been very young, both in age and attitude, although she’d already had a son by the ruling sheikh when she’d moved to Rome to marry Antonia’s father. Helena had never been allowed to see her son again. Poor Helena; a girl who had liked pop music and fashion, and who had traded on her looks, believing they were the key to happiness. She had discovered that in the end those looks were her downfall—for no one, especially not the ruling Sheikh of Sinnebar, had wanted beauty without substance when the novelty had worn off.

And, though Ra’id could never be called weak, he was his father’s son, Antonia acknowledged, and that was the type of heartless individual she was dealing with. He
couldn’t even look at her without self-loathing, because she represented his one and only failing. Antonia was Ra’id’s one breach of duty, and now she must be punished and driven away. Whatever was waiting for her at the fort, she suspected it was something Ra’id believed would end her quest once and for all and send her flying back to Rome in a panic. In one last act of cruelty, he was determined to be there to see her reaction for himself.

He drove his stallion hard. The horse was well-named Tonnerre, which meant thunder in French. When they galloped from yielding sand to a firmer path leading directly to the mountains, Tonnerre’s hooves struck sparks off the moonlit track.

Then the horse smelled water and it took all Ra’id’s riding skills to persuade the stallion to slow. When Ra’id mastered him, the stallion consented to walk, whinnying and snorting his disapproval. Ra’id loosened the reins, allowing Tonnerre to amble the last half-mile or so to cool him down.

When finally they reached the icy spring that emerged at the foot of the cliff, he sprang down, and, murmuring praise into one alert velvet ear, he removed Tonnerre’s tack and allowed the horse to go free.

Free…

Something he would never be, Ra’id reflected as he leaned against cold, black granite watching his mount suck in water. He had chosen this path, though he would never be free from the ache in his heart. He thought of Antonia, asleep in bed, and had to wonder how one young girl could affect him so deeply. There was no future for them, and she was nothing but trouble. He had decided that the best
course of action was to show her what awaited her in the desert, and then she would be pleased to go home, where he hoped she would fight some other cause.

Unwinding the black
howlis
from his face, he shrugged off his robe and dived into a pool turned frigid by snow-melt from the mountains. His last image before he sank deep was not that of a young girl sighing with passion in his arms but of an aircraft soaring into the flawless Arabian sky, as it carried Antonia and her foolish fantasies back to Rome.

By the time dawn peeped through the shutters, Antonia had drawn up a plan. She would use her own money to convert the citadel she had inherited without having to take anything from the charity’s resources. She could only hope Ra’id might want to contribute his expertise and that of others around him to the project. Without their help, it could just be her best stab at an Arabian retreat, and she wanted it to be authentic down to the last detail. But before she could do any of that she must persuade Ra’id to give her the precious water supply.

She would have to appeal to his better nature and hope he had one, Antonia concluded, drying her hair after her shower. Startled by the sound of approaching hooves, she put down her brush and crossed to the window. Her apartment was on one of the highest floors of the palace, and she could see Ra’id returning to the stables. She knew it was him before she even focused on the man springing down from the ferocious-looking stallion. Even severe black robes only added to Ra’id’s glittering majesty, but it was his barbaric vigour that had called to her before she saw him.

She shrank back. He stared directly at her. Could he feel
her too? It was as if he knew she was looking at him as surely as if she had called to him.

Pulling further back inside the room, she grabbed a steadying breath. She was right to think there was some invisible link between them, and wrong to believe it was fading when it had grown.