The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl (3 page)

‘Nabat?’

‘The stallion’s name. It means sweetness—like the pieces of yellow sugar you crush between your fingers on market day. He answers to that,’ she added stubbornly.

‘Go on,’ said Kaliq in an odd kind of voice.

‘I washed and brushed him and coaxed him to take food from my hand. It was I who first mounted him bareback,’ she said, a strange warmth glowing in her heart as she remembered that glorious day when she had ridden him around the yard. ‘And I who first put the saddle on his back.’ Eleni swallowed. ‘At first he did not like it—this is a breed of horse who instinctively wishes to be free. But, gradually, he allowed himself to become comfortable with it. And I…I—’

At this, her voice broke as she tried to imagine a world without Nabat and suddenly all restraint left her as she forgot the rank of the dark-eyed man who stood before her. ‘I love this creature,’ she whispered, and her heart ached so much that she completely disregarded the first tear which slid slowly down her cheek.

But Kaliq stared at her incredulously. A servant daring to show emotion in front of her sheikh! How dared she? ‘Dry your eyes,’ he ordered harshly, steeling his heart to the sparkle of tears which made her eyes look so huge and so brilliantly green. ‘And then answer my question as I wish it to be answered!’

‘But I just have,’ objected Eleni as she swiftly wiped the rogue tears away.

‘No,’ he said witheringly. ‘You have not. You have failed to satisfy my curiosity to know why you, a poor and humble servant girl who waits on the table of drunken gamblers, should be given access to care for such a valuable commodity.’

She wanted to tell him that Nabat was not a commodity but she sensed that such an indulgence would add fuel to an anger which was already growing more ominous by the minute. He wanted the truth, did he? Then very well—she would give it to him in pure and unvarnished form.

‘Because I am not a poor and humble servant girl, Your Highness.’ Eleni sucked in a deep breath. ‘I am actually the daughter of your host, Gamal.’

His daughter? Kaliq’s jaw tightened with disbelief. ‘So what was that charade I have just witnessed in there with you waiting on me?’ he demanded, his eyes searing over her with scorn. ‘And did you dress dowdily to make yourself look like a servant?’

Eleni said nothing for she would rather die than admit these were her normal clothes.

‘Did you beg your father for the privilege of waiting on one such as your sheikh?’ he queried arrogantly. ‘Did you wish to feast your eyes on a true man for once?’

Never in all her days had Eleni heard such an outrageous example of self-love. And no matter what his position in society—he had no right to cast doubts on her integrity and her purity as a woman.

‘No, Highness, I did not,’ she replied, staring angrily at the ground. ‘For such behaviour would not be fitting.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because—’

‘Look at me!’ he demanded. ‘When you speak to me.’

Slowly, she lifted her eyes, feeling as if she were struggling to free herself from a heavy weight which had been pressing down on her—for how could you suddenly abandon a lifetime’s teaching in one instant? To abandon the demureness which was drummed into every female and to stare into the face of one of the mightiest and most daunting in the land. But what choice did she have? ‘As you wish, Your Highness,’ she said reluctantly.

Kaliq found himself sucking in a deep breath as she obeyed him. He would never normally have told a woman to look at him and particularly not a woman such as this, but wasn’t there some inexplicable and insistent yearning to grant himself one more look at those incredible eyes? Like a man who had been given a fleeting glimpse of paradise and wanted reassurance that he had not simply imagined it…

He expelled the breath from a throat which suddenly felt dry and scorched as the light from the lamp illuminated the glittering eyes. They were the most remarkable hue he had ever seen—pale green as the strange colour which streaked the arctic skies and which were called the Northern Lights.

‘Explain to me your motives for pretending to be Gamal’s servant instead of his daughter,’ he said, and for a moment his voice was almost kind.

There was a pause. Their lives were so different—would he understand, even if she attempted to explain? ‘We do not keep many servants,’ admitted Eleni shame-facedly—for was not a family’s worth assessed by the volume of staff they employed?

‘Oh? And why is that?’

Was he deliberately wishing to make her squirm? Couldn’t he work out the reason for himself without her having to draw the words on the sand for him? What a cruel and arrogant man he was. ‘It is a question of finance, Highness,’ she said proudly.

‘Is it now?’ Kaliq wondered softly as he looked around him. Although in need of work and renovation, the stables were a good size, as was the living accommodation. He suspected that there had once been money enough for servants, but that Gamal had drunk and gambled most of it away.

He moved a step closer towards her and Eleni was suddenly aware of the raw and potent aura of his masculinity and her heart began to thunder with fear, and with something else, too—something terrifying and unrecognisable.

‘So what are you doing here?’ he questioned. ‘Why did I find you with your arms around my horse, and looking so guilty?’

It almost broke Eleni’s heart to hear that drawled and possessive question. My horse, he had said—and he spoke nothing but the truth. For Nabat was his horse—given up as a prize in a common game of poker! And soon he would be gone to a life of luxury in one of the royal stables and she would never see him again. Couldn’t he—even if he had a lump of stone for a heart—guess how much she was hurting at the thought of having to say goodbye to the only thing in the world that she loved?

The words burst out of her mouth as if she had no control over them. ‘I could not bear the thought of being without my…your horse,’ she corrected painfully. ‘And so I concocted a plan to ensure that I wouldn’t need to be.’

At this, Kaliq’s lips curved into an indulgent smile. ‘Oh? And do you want to tell me what your plan is, little lizard?’

She hated his sardonic tone, the mocking expression in those dark and glittering eyes, and she hated the way he had looked her up and down, as if she were some invisible lump of rags.

‘I was going to hide myself away—so that when you came to take him away, you would have to take me, as well,’ she told him, her brittle words daring him to taunt her, but to her surprise he did not—merely narrowed his eyes in thought as if she had said something entirely unexpected.

‘You do not think that you would have been discovered? That one of the palace guards would not have found you out and driven a sword through your heart, thinking that you might be about to make an assassination attempt on my life?’

She remembered him making her taste his juice in case it was poisoned and once again Eleni thought that, for all his wealth and power and status, his must be a very lonely and frightening position to be in sometimes.

‘I was not thinking of myself,’ she answered.

‘No. I can see that.’ He raised his hand to rake his fingers through his thick black hair and once again the horse gave a nervous whinny.

‘He doesn’t like men,’ said Eleni helpfully.

‘He will soon learn to like them.’

Eleni thought that he meant to use the whip, as her father had threatened to do so often. ‘And he doesn’t respond well to harsh treatment, either!’ she defended.

For a moment, Kaliq almost smiled. Standing there in her plain and dowdy clothes—barely higher than his chest—she nonetheless made him admire her courage. Few would have spoken to him with such candour and such passion unless it concerned wealth or ambition.

‘Horses are like women,’ he said softly. ‘And neither respond well to harsh treatment.’

And to Eleni’s horror she began to blush—from where her veil touched her scalp, all the way down to the tips of her toes. Not that blushing was a crime and nor was there anything in the protocol books which suggested that it might be discourteous, but to blush as a result of such a statement made it look…look…as if she were imagining how she would respond to the sheikh as a woman! And wasn’t she? Wasn’t she?

Now Kaliq did smile. ‘Do not worry, little lizard,’ he drawled. ‘You will be perfectly safe with me.’

The meaning behind his words was abundantly clear—even to someone of Eleni’s inexperience of the ways of men. Of course she—a humble girl from the country—would be safe from the attentions of the powerful and experienced sheikh. She would not have expected anything else. Yet stupidly and unexpectedly, it hurt—that he should be so openly dismissive of her. As if he would sooner cavort with one of the desert ravens than entertain the thought of being with a scruffy servant girl.

But Eleni forced herself to put such idle musings out of her mind. She suspected that he was mulling something over in his mind—something to do with Nabat, and perhaps to do with her, too. And something which she had thought had died many years ago began to flicker into life.

Hope.

Instinct told her to remain silent—as if her words might shatter possibility as she waited for the sheikh to speak.

‘You have nurtured the horse,’ observed Kaliq slowly.

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘He knows you and responds well to you.’

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘And how do you think he’ll behave without you?’

She was tempted to embellish and paint a dramatic picture of how Nabat would play up without his mistress—but Eleni realised that she didn’t have to do anything except speak the truth.

‘He will hate it, Highness.’

‘He will go off his food, you mean? Pine?’

‘Yes, Highness.’

‘Like a lovesick fool?’ he scorned.

Briefly, her eyelids shuttered her eyes before she remembered his command and lifted her gaze to his face. ‘I wouldn’t know about that, Highness.’

‘You think perhaps that he will die without you, little lizard?’

She wished he wouldn’t call her that—just as she wished that she could make herself sound completely indispensable. But that would be a lie and she guessed he would see right through it.

‘No, Highness,’ she said softly. ‘I do not, for the desire to live overpowers everything—indeed, it is the strongest force in all the world.’ She wondered why his hard face had suddenly tightened into a harsh mask and she rushed on, afraid that she had somehow angered him but still determined to state her case. ‘The horse will not die but he will be miserable without me, and a miserable horse does not win races.’

He nodded. ‘So what do you suggest as a solution for this particular problem?’

It was strange how fear could give you courage. Or maybe not so strange at all when you considered that Nabat was her only friend in the world. ‘The only solution you have, Highness,’ she said boldly. ‘You take me with you.’

It would have been almost funny if it had not been so preposterous. ‘You? A tiny upstart of a girl? Why, your mother would never forgive me.’

There was a pause. Her gaze flew to a zigzag of hay which lay on the stable floor and she stared at it with fierce concentration. ‘But I have no mother, Highness.’

At this, Kaliq stilled—for was there not a more brutal and defining bond than the loss of a mother? He had been just nine when his own mother had died giving birth to his brother Zafir, and that first and terrible loss had seemed to bring tragedy in its wake for Kaliq and his twin brother. His mouth hardened.

‘What happened?’ he questioned softly.

Eleni shrugged her shoulders as if she was trying to shrug away the intrusive question. It was funny—you could tell yourself that you had come to terms with something which had happened years ago, but still that rogue little edge of abandonment could make your heart catch with pain. ‘My mother died,’ she said woodenly.

Kaliq’s eyes narrowed. ‘Died of what—a desert fever?’

‘I don’t believe so, Highness.’

‘Then what?’

Eleni hesitated. He was very persistent—but when had anyone last shown this kind of interest in her? Come to think of it—when had anyone last bothered to mention her green-eyed mother who had found it so difficult to adapt to married life? Her father certainly never did—he had obliterated her from his memory, and, even if he hadn’t exactly banned the use of her name in the Gamal house, Eleni didn’t dare to speak it for fear of his reaction.

‘My father was displeased with his dinner,’ Eleni began, vaguely recalling the noise and the drunken shouts and the mess of lentils splattered all over the floor. ‘He sent my mother to market to buy a chicken and on the way back she stumbled, and fell.’ Eleni swallowed. ‘They think that she was bitten by a snake—but by the time they found her, she was dead and the vultures had long taken away the chicken.’

By the muscular shafts of his thighs, Kaliq’s hands clenched into two tight fists. He had been accused by women of having not a shred of compassion in his hard body but for once he found himself touched by this urchin’s plight. ‘And how old were you?’ he demanded.

‘I was…ten.’

Ten? Almost the same age as he had been when his mother died in childbirth. Kaliq turned away from her troubled and trembling face, unwilling to acknowledge another fierce spear of recognition which burned through him—because some things were better buried away, deep in the dark recesses of memory. Royal and commoner—united by a strange bond. Each and every one of them had their burdens, he recognised bitterly—it was just that some were darker than others. With an efficiency born out of years of practice, he pushed his thoughts away.

Logic told him to dismiss this motherless little stable girl with a curse in her ear for her presumptuousness. As if she would have any place in his stables!

And yet undoubtedly she spoke the truth about the horse. Would he not perform better if she were taken along, too? Would not it be infinitely more preferable to spare his stable staff the trouble of having to break in a highly strung horse who might still sulk and refuse to race properly?

He turned back—seeing that this time she had not dropped her gaze, but was meeting his with a steady question in her eyes. The little lizard grew brave for the love of her horse! ‘Your father will miss you,’ he commented.