Taken by Storm (ROMANTIC REALMS COLLECTION) (17 page)

“I will,” Tahj responded solemnly.

“She is my dearest one,” Kamran whispered, closing his eyes. He raised his voice one last time over Bano and Bibi’s sniffling. “Now, everyone out. An old man gets tired. Out!”

The brothers looked at each other and then sheepishly shuffled out. Bashea nodded to Bano and Bibi, and they followed. Tenderly, Bashea brushed Kamran’s hair back from his forehead. “Do you need anything more, Baba?”

He didn’t bother to open his eyes. “No, my child.”

Tahj helped Bashea as she staggered to her feet and left the tent. No one had gone much beyond the entrance to the tent, and they were gathered in a semi-circle, comforting each other. All eyes fell on the couple as they stepped out into the sunlight.

Bagrat immediately stepped forward and grasped both of Bashea’s hands in his own big ones. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Bashea gazed off in the distance, tears brimming in her eyes. She took a breath, seeming to gather herself, and looked at her brother for several seconds. She nodded her head.

Bagrat spun away from her and walked off a few steps. Everyone watched him. He turned back with a sigh, wiping a hand across his tired face. “It’s obvious that having all of us there is too much for him,” he said, taking charge for the first time in his life. “We will take turns caring for him. I’m first.” When a few mouths opened to object he thundered, much like Kamran had minutes earlier, “I’m the oldest. I’m first.” He ducked inside the tent, and the rest stood lifelessly.

Bashea turned to the sister beside her and took Bano’s chin in her hand gently. “You look tired.”

“I had nightmares last night. Maybe a premonition.”

She nodded at Bibi. “You two, get some sleep.” Seeming to anticipate their protest she added, “We’ll come get you if anything changes.”

“We’ll stay close,” Jahmeel’s wife stated, moving with Jahmeel toward the fire circle. The rest dispersed, already being approached by others who wished to comfort or find out more about what had happened.

* * *

Bashea took a couple of slow steps around the side of Kamran’s tent, harrying a loose thread on her garment. Tahj followed, his arm still around her shoulder. When she stopped, he came around in front and took her hands loosely in his. Bashea looked up, gazing into his eyes, her eyes darting from one to the other.

“You are not held to that vow.”

“What do you mean?” Tahj responded, his voice sounding shaken.

She looked away, blinking back tears. “Vows such as that…the obligation…”

“It is a vow I took freely. A vow I had already taken the night before.”

“Tahj!” Bashea cried in desperation. “You don’t understand what you’re saying—”

He cut her off angrily. “Was I the only one who took that vow last night, Bashea?”

She swallowed. She felt like her own heart was squeezing in her chest, much as she was sure her father’s was. “No, Tahj.” Her voice was raspy and fragile. “I took a vow with you, too.” She brought a hand up to touch his face tenderly. “I will never love another man. I pledged myself to you and you only. But that still doesn’t change the fact that you are a Prince of Avistad and I am a sheepherder’s daughter.”

“So what? We’re just supposed to love each other and go our separate ways?”

She tore at her shawl. “You’ll find someone new,” she murmured, looking down.

Tahj took her arm roughly, obviously too angry to care if he was hurting her or not. “There is no one else for me, Bashea. Why can’t you understand?”

She didn’t raise her head to look at him.

He released her and paced off, coming back to stand in front of her. “And what if the roles were reversed? You were the princess and I the shepherd. Would you love me less?”

“No.”

“If you had taken me to bed as a princess, would the love we made be any less real?”

Bashea thought about it. “I would not make a vow where one could not be made.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bashea lifted her head, and her eyes flashed with pain and anger. “I would not take you as my husband knowing you would be unhappy at my palace.”

He took her arms again, bending to hold her eyes. “Is that what this is about? You’re afraid of life at the palace? But I told you I wish to stay here with you—”

Bashea exploded, shaking her arms free. “Can’t you get it? Are you just too thickheaded to understand?” Her voice became a dangerous hiss. “This,” she gestured between them, “cannot happen.”

“This—” He, too, gestured wildly. “—
did
happen!” he shouted back, apparently not caring who was hearing their conversation now.

She lowered her head and was silent for several seconds. “It was a mistake,” she said distinctly. “I was weak. And I wanted to have you.” She looked him straight in the eye. “But it was a mistake. I have to attend to my father.”

Tahj looked like he’d been kicked by a camel, but she couldn’t let that stop her. Taking one glance over her shoulder as she walked away, Bashea saw him standing in the same place, staring at the ground.He couldn’t even react when she walked away.

* * *

Bagrat entered Tahj’s tent to find him in the same position he had the last time, sitting on his cot, playing with his ring. Only the scene was vaguely different.

“You’re packed?”

Tahj stood. “I’m leaving.”

“What? Why? You promised my father—”

“And I intend to keep that promise,” Tahj asserted, stepping up. “But your sister is a stubborn woman.”

A twinkle found its way back into Bagrat’s eyes. “I never tried to hide that fact from you.”

Tahj turned and trod back to his bed, walking in a slow, wide circle as he talked. “And I’ve also been thinking about another promise I made.” He stopped briefly to look Bagrat in the eye. “A promise I made to my mother, as I held her, dying, in my arms.” He took up his circuitous route again. “I promised her I would return to avenge my father’s death and reclaim the throne.”

Bagrat nodded, suddenly serious. He stepped forward. “I will come with you, my brother.”

Tahj clasped the big man’s hand and put his other hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate the sentiment, Bagrat, I do. But your place is here now, while your father is sick.”

Bagrat nodded, but seemed sad. “I will miss you.”

Tahj was touched more than he would let on. “And I you, friend.”

“What about Bashea?” he asked, suddenly alarmed. “She will be beside herself.”

Tahj looked down for a second, wiping at something in the dirt with his foot. When he looked up, he was grimacing. “Actually, she ordered me to leave.”

“She…
ordered
…you?”

“Yes. It’s a long story, and I can’t say I even understand it much, but I think I know a way to fix it.”

Tahj left without saying goodbye. He was sorry for it, but he didn’t feel like his resolve would hold if he were face-to-face with the woman he loved.

* * *

Bashea’s heartbreak over Tahj’s leaving was soon coupled with the heartbreak of her father’s death. Looking back on that time, she often wondered how she would have pulled through it if it hadn’t been for her little secret.

The night was cold, and Bashea couldn’t sleep. She wrapped a shawl around herself and headed out of her tent. The sting of the wind had her pushing her shawl up around her wild hair as she walked, feeling sad and lonely. Her father had been buried months ago, but she still found herself turning during a story around the campfire with a laugh to ask for his comment, and finding the laugh dying on her lips.

And the hole in her life, which could only be filled with Tahj, became wider with each passing day, her longing a physical craving which left her edgy and irritable by day, sorrowful and sleepless by night. She trudged across the encampment, her head bent to the wind.

Shortly after her father’s death, they broke camp and came down from the mountainside to their lower camp, the colder weather in the mountains forcing the move.

Bashea had been glad to go—there were too many memories. But then she found, like their tents, the memories moved with them.

The cold air bore into Bashea and bit at her skin. She shook her head, wondering why, like most normal people, she wasn’t snuggled in her bed right now. Arriving at the edge of the encampment and the well that marked it, she reached out for the cold stone as a sudden blast of wind almost knocked her off-balance. Using her hand for support, she skated around to the far side of the well and leaned against it, facing the desert. With a sigh, she felt the ring that squeezed her heart loosened a fraction. How strange she would now seek comfort in the very spot where she had been abducted and dragged away from her family.

But here, at least, she felt closer to Tahj. Bashea knew it was stupid—a hundred paces closer, at best—but somehow she felt connected to Tahj here. For he was out there, somewhere, and so she was drawn to this spot night after night. She didn’t even realize she had been crying when she felt her cheeks were wet. She pulled her shawl down to her shoulders and let the wind whip through her hair, closing her eyes and imagining him there.

Bagrat had let slip, mere days after Tahj’s departure, the prince’s intentions of retaking the castle, and how it all had something to do with proving his love for her. Since that time Bashea had been wracked with guilt and worry. What if Tahj were to lose his life in an attempt to win her over? Could she bear that? And how would she know? It wasn’t like they had daily visitors from Avistad who could update them on conditions there. Those visitors who did stumble into their camp were grilled by Bashea. Had they heard of any uprisings? Met a man of Tahj’s general description? Did they know anything that would settle her heart?

“Oh, Tahj!” she said out loud, rubbing a hand over her stomach without thinking. “What if I was wrong to have sent you away?”

That was the one thought that haunted her without ceasing.

* * *

Tahj paced outside his tent like a caged jackal. Sleep had evaded him again. He was just no good at waiting. It seemed like such a damned waste of time. He had spent five long months recruiting soldiers and was now back in Radeem’s hometown of Vadeed, where he’d started, on his way out to another town in search of those sympathetic to his cause. He was forced to be cautious, not knowing where Boltar’s strongholds were, but was pleased to have found a number of leaders who swore to back him. The fact Boltar was squeezing extremely high tributes out of these cities made it easier. Not to mention he was…personality-challenged.

But it wasn’t Boltar he was thinking about now. The fact was, he was missing Bashea horribly. It didn’t help that any number of leaders offered him slave women whose beauty rivaled the gods, since none of them, in his mind, came close to what Bashea offered. By Asman, he’d even found one in his room tonight. Completely naked, in his bed, and now all he could think about was the day he found Bashea trussed up on the floor, beaten and full of fight. He laughed now, to think of it. That should have been his first clue she was impossible, and impossible to live without. Besides, he felt sorry for the slave women. They had as little choice in this as Boltar and his men had given Bashea on the night she was abducted.

With a sigh he ceased pacing, putting his hands on his hips and looking up at the stars. He was already weary of this battle, and he hadn’t even drawn a sword once, except the time they made the mistake of propositioning one of Boltar’s closest friends. Being away for so long had its disadvantages, like being unfamiliar with the field of play.

He wanted so badly to be back in Tamook with Bashea. He never wanted this life of royalty, never enjoyed the responsibility, the weight of it, was not, in fact, cut out for it. The only reason he did it now was to keep a promise, and to prove to Bashea they belonged together. He prayed it would work.

He closed his eyes and tried to let his thoughts of Bashea soothe instead of ruffle him. He imagined her laughing over something he’d said, remembered her jumping and trying to get her poetry back from him, thought of the alluring fragrance of her skin and the way it felt beneath his fingertips…but tonight the comfort wouldn’t come. He stormed back into his tent, then stood still, wondering what to do now.

Glancing about restlessly, he went to his cot and pulled out a leather-bound book. He had taken it from Bashea’s tent before leaving. He untied the bindings that held the cover on and opened the pages, leafing through them until he found one of his favorites, which compared a desert storm to the whirlwind of Bashea’s emotions after her mother’s death. She must have been pretty young when she wrote this, he mused. What had she said…ten, eleven? He shook his head in amazement. The way she captured her feelings and put them on paper in such a way that they became so palpable…it was as if she were living and breathing in the same room with him. And finally, this, he found, soothed him.

*   *
*

“Go away!”

“Not a chance, Your Highness,” Radeem growled, pulling on the arm that was extended beyond the bed. “Now get your royal buttocks out of bed.” Tahj groaned but made no effort to move. Radeem scowled, looking at the papers scattered across the floor, seemingly from a volume just beyond the prince’s fingertips. “What is this anyway?” he mumbled, curious.