The Ice Maiden's Sheikh (3 page)

J
alia sat up with a jerk. A chasm seemed to be opening up before her, and without having any idea what it represented, she knew it was dangerous.

“What
are
you talking about?” she said mockingly.

The car stopped at a traffic light on the outskirts of Medinat al Bostan. Below them, in the magnificent tapestry that was the city, sunlight gleamed from the golden dome and minarets of the great Shah Jawad mosque and glittered on the sea. It was a heart-stopping sight, she couldn't deny that. Talk about your dreaming spires!

Latif turned and gazed at her for an unnerving few seconds.

“You know what I am talking about,” he accused through his teeth.

She didn't, if he meant from personal experience. No man had ever reduced her to adoration on sheer sexual expertise alone, and what he said was just so much masculine arrogance!

“So sex is a crucible in which to melt your wife's independence?”

“Her independence? No. Her dissatisfaction.”

“And how many wives are you keeping happy?” she asked sweetly.

“You know that I am not married.”

“But when you are, your wife will love you? Oooh, I almost envy her!” she twittered, while a kind of nervous fear zinged up and down her back and she knew that the last woman in the world she'd envy would be Latif Abd al Razzaq's wife. “I
don't
think!”

His eyes burned her.

“So what is the secret of eternal wedded bliss?” Jalia pressed, against the small, wise voice that was advising her to back off.

His jaw tightened at her tone, and he turned with such a look she suddenly found herself breathing through her mouth.

“Do you wish me to show you such secrets in the open road?” he asked, and she was half convinced that if she said yes he would stop the car where it was and reach for her….

“Not me!” she denied hastily, and a smile, or some other emotion, twisted the corner of his mouth. “But if you look around—well, it can't be well-known, or there'd be more happy marriages, wouldn't there? I can't help feeling you could make your fortune marketing this secret.”

She was getting under his skin, she could see that, and she pressed her lips together to keep from grinning her triumph at him.

He looked at her again, a narrow, dangerous look, and Jalia's eyes seemed to stretch as she watched him. “In the West, perhaps. But I think even a How To book would not help your fiancé.”

“I—what—?” Jalia babbled furiously.

Latif moved his hand from the wheel to where her hand lay on the armrest between them, and with one long, square forefinger fiercely stroked the three opals of her ring.

Jalia snatched her hand away in violent overreaction.

“Do you intend to marry this man?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you would be a fool.”

The light changed and he let out the brake and turned his attention to the road. Fury swept over her like a wave. Though he spoke perfect truth,
he
could not know it. She laughed false, angry, deliberately mocking laughter.

“How kind of you to have my interests at heart! But you don't know anything about Michael.”

“Yes.”

“What, exactly, do you profess to know? You've never even seen him!”

“I have seen you.”

“And you don't know anything about me, either!”

“All I need to know for such a judgement.”

“And what have you learned about me that allows you to prescribe for my future?” she couldn't stop herself asking, though a moment's thought would
have told her she would not come out of the encounter the winner.

He deliberately kept his eyes on the road.

“Your fiancé has never aroused real passion in you,” he said grimly.

Jalia jerked back as if he had slapped her. A rage of unfamiliar feeling burned in her abdomen, almost too deep to reach. She felt a primitive, uncharacteristic urge to leap at him, biting and clawing, and teach
him
a lesson in the power of woman.

“How dare you!” she snapped instead, her Western upbringing overruling her wild Eastern blood. She was half aware of her dissatisfaction that it should be so.

His laughter underlined the feebleness of her reply.

“This is what you say to your English boyfriend, I think! Do you expect it to affect such as me?”

“And what would it take to stop
you?
A juggernaut?”

“Ah, if I taught you about love, you would not want me to stop,” he declared, a mocking smile lifting one corner of his mouth, and outrage thrilled through her. She knew the last thing on his mind was making love to her. He didn't even like her!

“It'll be a cold day in hell before you teach me about love!” Jalia snapped, as something like panic suddenly choked her. “Suppose we agree that you'll mind your own business when it comes to the intimate details of my love life?”

He was silent. She looked up at his profile and saw that his face was closed, his jaw clamped tight. Disdain was in the very tilt of his jaw as he nodded formally.

“Tell me instead where your cousin will have gone.”

She didn't know how she knew, but she did: the words were a struggle. They were not what he wanted to say.

“I have told you I don't know.”

Although she had demanded it, Jalia was disconcerted by the abrupt change of subject. She had more to say, plenty more, but to go back now and start ranting would look childish.

They were approaching the city centre now: the golden dome appeared only in the gaps between other buildings as they passed.

“You must have some idea.”

“If you're thinking I'm a mind reader, you overestimate me. If you imagine I had prior knowledge, go to hell.”

His eyelids drooped to veil his response to that.

“I am thinking that if your cousin had made friends in al Bostan you would know who they are. Or if she had found a favourite place—a garden or a restaurant—she might have shown it to you.”

My manner is biting off heads.
The line of poetry sounded in her head, and he really did look like a roosting hawk now, with his cold green eyes, his beaked nose, his hands on the wheel like talons on a branch. A brilliantly feathered, glittering hawk, owner of his world.

And exerting, for some reason she couldn't fathom, every atom of his self-control.

“She is wearing a white wedding dress and veil, you know. She's not going to be able to just disap
pear. In a restaurant or any public place she'd attract comment.”

“Where would she go, then?”

Her imagination failed. Where could you hide wearing a staggeringly beautiful pearl-embroidered silk wedding dress with a skirt big enough to cover a football field and a tulle veil five yards long?

Latif put his foot on the brake and drew in to the side of the road, where, under a ragged striped umbrella, a child was selling pomegranates from a battered crate. At the Cup Companion's summons the boy jumped up to thrust a half dozen pomegranates into a much-used plastic bag, and carried it to the car.

As Latif passed over the money he asked a question, which Jalia could just about follow. The urchin's response she couldn't understand at all, but from his excited hand signals she guessed that he had seen Noor pass.

Latif set the bag of fruit into the back seat beside his sword and put the car in motion.

“What did he say?”

“He saw a big white car go past with a woman at the wheel and a white flag streaming from the roof,” he reported with a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “About half an hour ago. Another man in a car asked him the same question soon after. The white car hasn't come back. He's not sure about the other.”

“A white flag!” Jalia exclaimed. “Why would she be flying a white flag?”

“To signal her surrender?”

His dry voice made her want to laugh, but she suppressed the desire. She had no intention of getting pally with the man.

They were in the city centre now. Latif began cruising the streets, turning here and there at random. As best she could, Jalia monitored passing cars as well as those parked at the side of the road. She glanced down each side street as they passed.

Jalia sighed.

“Oh, if this isn't just Noor all over!” she muttered. “Turn a deaf ear to everything until it suits her! If she'd listened to me when I was talking to her—if she'd actually sat down and considered what I was saying, she would have come to this conclusion long ago. Instead she waits until it's almost too late and will cause the maximum chaos!”

Latif threw her a look. “Or you might say that if you hadn't tried to force your views on her so unnecessarily, there would have been no fear suddenly erupting in her and taking over.”

“You say unnecessarily, I say necessarily…” Jalia sang in bright mockery, then glowered at him. “Why are you right and I'm wrong?”

“I?” he demanded sharply. “It is Bari and Noor's judgement that you challenged, not mine! I have no opinion, except that when two people decide to get married they should be left to make their own fate!”

She whooped with outrage.

“And what were you saying to me not twenty minutes ago?” she shrieked. “Were you advising me not to marry Michael, or was I hallucinating?
You would be a fool to marry this man!
” she cited sharply. “Was that what you said, or do I misquote you?”

His eyes met hers, and she sensed a kind of shock in his gaze. A muscle in his cheek twitched, but whether with annoyance or an impulse to laugh she
couldn't tell. It
was
funny, but she was too annoyed to find it so.

“You blame your cousin for not giving serious consideration to your doubts about her engagement, but you do not listen to my doubts about yours. Who has the double standard now?” he said, with the air of a man pulling a brand from the burning.

Laughter trembled in her throat, but she was afraid of letting her guard down with him. Jalia bit her lip.

“Great! We're both hypocrites,” she said, shaking her head.

Instead of making a reply to that, Latif jerked forward to stare out the window.

“Barakullah!”
he breathed.

He had turned into the wide boulevard that led down to the seafront. At the bottom was the broad, sparkling expanse of the Gulf of Barakat, and miles of bright sky.

Jalia narrowed her eyes against the glitter. Off to the right a forest of silver masts marked the yacht basin.

“A yacht!” she cried. “Of course! I'll bet she knows someone on a boat—maybe some friend even sailed over for the wedding. The perfect hide—”

“Look up,” Latif interrupted. He stretched an arm past her head, pointing into the sky, where a little plane glinted in the sun as it headed up the coast towards the mountains.

“That plane? What, do you think—?”

“It is Bari's plane.”

Jalia gasped hoarsely. “Are you sure?”

“We can confirm it soon enough.”

“But what—?” Jalia fell silent; there was no point
babbling questions to which neither of them had answers.

Latif turned the car along the shore highway. After a few minutes he turned in under an arched gateway in a high wall, and she saw a small brick-and-glass building and a sign announcing the Island Air Taxi service to the Gulf Eden Resort.

Out on the water several small planes were moored, bouncing gently in the swell. Latif stepped on the brakes and pointed again. Ahead of them on the tarmac, carelessly taking up three parking spaces, as if the driver had been in too much of a hurry to care, sat a large white limousine, parked and empty.

They slipped out of the car.

“Is that it? Is that the al Khalids' limousine?” she asked.

He nodded thoughtfully.

“My God,” Jalia breathed. She felt completely stunned. She stared up at the glinting silver bird in the distance. “Is Noor at the controls, do you think? Why? Where can she be going? And where's Bari?”

Latif turned his head to run his eyes over the half dozen other cars in the lot, then shook his head.

“His car is not here.”

She stared up at the plane as if the sight of it would tell her something. A gust of wind struck her, blowing the green silk tunic wildly against her body. She felt a blast of fine sand against her cheek.

Latif stiffened to attention beside her. He was still looking into the sky, but not at the plane. Frowning, Jalia turned her head to follow his gaze.

In the past few minutes a mass of cloud had boiled up from behind the mountains, and even as she
watched it was growing, rushing to shroud the sky over the city.

Over the water the sky was still a clear, hot blue, but that couldn't last. Jalia turned her head again to stare at the plane, watching anxiously for some sign that it was banking, turning, that the pilot had seen the clouds building and made the decision to put down again.

But the little plane, the sun glinting from its fat wings, sailed serenely on.

T
here was little sleep for anyone in the palace that night. The phones rang constantly, with family and friends in the country and abroad calling for news, calls from officials organizing the search team, and journalists around the world clogging up the line asking for details of Princess Noor's Fatal Peril.

Everybody felt worse when the couple's disappearance began to be announced on repeated television news bulletins in the early evening and the announcer's voice resonated with the kind of gravity that meant he thought Princess Noor was probably dead.

But they couldn't just turn it off. It was entirely possible that some reporter would get wind of a search team discovery and broadcast the news before the family was notified. The regular announcements
became a horrible kind of compulsive listening for them all as more and more journalists joined the fray.

On the breakfast terrace early the next morning, bleary-eyed but unable to sleep, and fed up with the constant insensitive badgering, Jalia delivered herself of a few blistering comments to one journalist and hung up the phone to find Latif watching her.

He was silhouetted against the morning sun, and she couldn't see his expression. She dropped her eyes and picked up her coffee.

“Is there any news?” she asked. The question had taken on the impact of ritual. They were all constantly asking it of each other.

“Have you heard that the Barakat Emirates have sent a couple of planes to join the search this morning?”

Jalia nodded.

Latif set something on the ground, then moved over to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Then there's no news.”

“God, how I hate sitting here doing nothing more productive than fielding calls from the media. If only there was something to
do!
” she exploded. Part of the emptiness she felt was the letdown after the blizzard of wedding preparations, of course. But Jalia was also missing the hard, rewarding work of her university life.

Latif remained standing, resting his hips back against the table, gazing out over the courtyard. He swirled the coffee in his cup.

“Well, why not?”

Jalia looked up, and his eyes turned to her with a hooded expression she couldn't fathom. “What do
you mean, why not?” Suddenly her eye fell on the case he had set down by a column. She frowned in sudden dismay.

“Are you leaving?” How could he go when they were in such trouble? Bari was one of his closest friends!

He took another sip of coffee. “I'm going to drive up into the mountains to ask in the villages whether anyone saw or heard a plane coming down in the storm.”

She stared at him, the fog of a sleepless night abruptly clearing from her brain. “What a brilliant idea!” she breathed. “I wish I could do something useful like that!”

Latif shrugged as if she impressed him not at all. “Why don't you?”

“It would take me a week to decipher the answers.” The mountain dialects of both Bagestani Arabic and Parvani, Bagestan's two languages, were very different from what was spoken in the cities, and Jalia had trouble enough even in the city.

Latif said nothing, merely turned, set down his cup, and rang the bell. A servant came out and asked what he would eat. Latif shook his head.

“I don't want food, thanks, Mansour,” he began in Arabic. “You have a son named Shafi.”

“God be thanked. Fifteen years old, a strong healthy boy. A very good son.”

“I am going into the mountains to help the search,” Latif explained. “I will need another pair of eyes. Would you allow Shafi to accompany and assist me? I may be gone several days.”

Mansour's expression was pained as he clasped his
fist to his chest. “Willingly, Lord! But alas, he is not at home! As you know, he—”

“Thank you, Mansour,” Latif interrupted him.

The servant turned to go, but Jalia called him back.

“I beg that thou be so good as to bring His Excellency some food wherewith to break his fast, if it please thee,” she said in her formal, antiquated Arabic. And to Latif, “You ought to eat something if you're going on the road.”

Latif laughed aloud and turned to the servant. “An omelette, then, Mansour.”

Mansour bowed and went back inside. In the tree a bird sang entrancingly, but could not lighten the gloom and worry in Jalia's heart.

“What are you going to do?” Jalia asked.

Latif pulled out a chair. “I have no specific plan,” he said, sitting down opposite her. He reached for the warmed bread left on her plate with a kind of intimate assumption of her permission, and tore a bite-sized piece off with long, strong fingers. “The mountain villages don't get television and they don't have phones. So the only way to—”

“I meant, who will you take with you to be the extra pair of eyes?”

He shrugged. “It's not important.”

But of course it was. How could his search be effective if he had to watch the road the whole time?

“I'm not doing anything. I should have been going home tomorrow, but I can't leave with Noor missing,” she offered hesitantly. “I could go with you, if you liked.”

Latif's mouth tightened. “I expect to search until
something definite turns up,” he said stiffly. “I may be away several days.”

“Where will you sleep at night?”

“Sometimes in village rest houses, sometimes under the stars. Whatever comes. It won't be comfortable. And there may be fleas in the rest houses.”

Maybe it was his obvious reluctance that hardened the momentary impulse into determination. This was her chance to get away from the media, the phone and the helpless speculation and do something actively useful.

“Better fleas with a chance to help,” she said, who had never had a fleabite in her life, “than sitting with my mother and aunt, worrying uselessly.”

She could see that Latif didn't like the idea, and of course she didn't relish being with him, but what would that matter if they found Noor and Bari?

“Don't you think you'll do better with another pair of eyes?” she pressed.

His eyes rested on her face with an unreadable expression.

“She's my cousin, Latif.”

“And he's my friend. But conditions will be primitive.”

“What gave you the idea I expect to be pampered?”

“There's a lot of ground between primitive and pampered, Princess.”

A glint in his eyes made her think he was deliberately baiting her as a way of resisting her suggestion, but his resistance only fuelled her determination. She stifled her irritation, always so quick to ignite in his presence.

“You won't be able to look around for signs of the plane as you drive if you go alone. You'll need your concentration for the road—especially those twisty, rugged mountain roads,” she argued. “And even supposing you did find them, how would you cope with…”

She trailed off. In a sudden moment of clarity, as if she had come out of a trance, or lifted her head out of water, the thought appeared in her head:
Travel around the countryside with only Latif Abd al Razzaq for company? Are you crazy?

What demon had possessed her?

“Oh, never m—” she began. But she had come to her senses too late.

“No, you are right. Two will be much more effective than one. Thank you, I will be glad of your help. Pack something warm. It gets cold in the mountains at night,” said Latif Abd al Razzaq as the trap closed on her. “We will leave in an hour.”

 

“Do you have a plan in mind?” Jalia asked as the road began to climb and the mountains rose over them, dangerous and seductive, like Latif himself.

Jalia was lying in the bed she had made, though she had done her best to unmake it. She had rushed to tell her mother about the trip, hoping for a reprise of the old
this is not the West, this is Bagestan, and we must not offend people by violating their customs
argument. But when she had gently hinted that people might be shocked if she drove around with a man not related to her, her mother had only shrugged.

“Ghasib ran a secular government for over thirty years, and people here have more casual attitudes
now. If you meet someone disapproving, just say Latif is your husband.”

“Thanks, Mother!” Jalia snapped. “And then they'll put us in the same bed! I don't think so!”

Her mother lifted her hands. “Then say he is your bodyguard. For goodness' sake, Jalia, who would have guessed you would be so old-fashioned? Noor is missing. Your aunt is out of her mind with worry! If you have to put up with the company of a man you don't like for a few days to help find your cousin, surely that's a small price to pay?”

Which was quite true. Noor's parents had been hugely kind to Jalia all her life, giving her fabulous holidays in Australia every year since she was a child. They had always treated her very kindly on those long childhood visits.

Of course she was grateful to them. Noor was like a sister to her—spoiled and exasperating, but nevertheless loving and loved.

And yet, it was with a feeling of somehow having been outmanoeuvred that Jalia had joined Latif and tossed her pack into the four-wheel drive.

“Plan?” Latif responded now. “My plan is to follow the advice of Mulla Nasruddin.”

The name was familiar: it signified a joke figure in folktales, but Jalia hadn't paid much attention to the ancient stories since she was a teenager.

She frowned a question, and Latif explained,

“One day one of his neighbours discovered the Mulla on his hands and knees under a street lamp near his house and stopped to ask what the problem was.

“‘I am looking for my house key, which I have dropped,' said the Mulla.

“The helpful neighbour immediately dropped to his knees and joined the Mulla in the search. After some time, the key had not turned up.

“‘Where exactly were you when you dropped your key?' the neighbour asked at last.

“‘Standing at my front door,' said Mulla.

“The neighbour stared. ‘But in that case why are you searching here in the street, yards from your house?'

“Mulla Nasruddin drew himself up. ‘Have you not noticed,' he said, ‘that
this
is where the
light
is?'”

One corner of Latif's mouth curved up as he finished the tale, and Jalia laughed. He told the story well.

“But I'm not sure I get the point,” she confessed.

Latif flicked her a smile. “We don't know where the plane went down. But we will look for it where we
can
look.”

Jalia laughed softly; they exchanged a look; and suddenly a powerful connection was flowing between them that was very different from the suppressed hostility she usually felt.

A jolt of awareness socked through her. For the first time she realized how deeply attractive a man Latif was—not just physically, with his black hair, his falcon's looks and his smoothly muscled body, but mentally.

But what did that matter? She wasn't attracted to him, and even if she were, nothing would induce her to turn her back on the life she had created for herself and come to Bagestan.

She knew without asking that Latif Abd al Razzaq was inextricably bound to Bagestan. He had worked
and struggled for years to assist the Sultan to the throne.

So there was no need for her heart to start beating as if she had discovered danger.

 

The woman moved smilingly around her simple house, dressed in one of the most gorgeous outfits Jalia had ever seen anyone make mint tea in—a wine-red velvet skirt and long tunic trimmed around neck, hem and cuffs with gold braid and shimmering gold medallions, almost as elaborately beautiful as the bridesmaids' outfits at Noor's wedding.

Over her waist-length black hair a gauzy black scarf glinted with more medallions. Her arms were circled with dozens of bracelets; black, kohl-rimmed eyes breathed the power and mystery of the feminine.

The mountain tribeswomen were known for the luxury of their daily dress, and Jalia couldn't help wondering what effect it would have on the psyche to get up every morning and dress in such finery. In front of the house a young girl, similarly dressed, expertly kept her veil in check as she pounded spice in a stone mortar. The sharp, pungent odour filled the air.

“It is well that the Sultan has come back,” the woman was saying, and either this village dialect was extremely pure, or her own ear was acclimatizing after a few days, because Jalia could understand her with little problem. “Please tell him that whenever he wishes to call he, too, will be an honoured guest in our house.”

She was laying out a huge meal for them, on the traditional cloth spread on the ground under a tree.
Jalia was horrified by the amount of food being prepared for them, for these were obviously poor people. The woman's husband, she had told them, gathered firewood and sold it in the village to eke out the living from their farm.

“But what will they eat tomorrow if we eat all their food today?” she demanded of Latif when the woman left them alone.

He lifted his eyebrows at her. “God will provide.”

“After three years of drought,” she pointed out dryly.

“You are too Western,” Latif said. “Do you think we have adopted Western generosity here—to give only what does not cost us? Here in the mountains, generosity is generosity. Do you not know the story of Anwar Beg?”

She sometimes felt with him that she was in a book.

“Tell me.”

“He had a magnificent horse, which a friend of his wished to buy. But however high the price, however hard he negotiated, Anwar Beg would not part with his prize beast, and at last the man was forced to give up.

“Then one day he heard that Anwar Beg had fallen on hard times, and hardly had food to put on the table. He said to himself, now he will have to sell that wonderful horse of his, and he went to Anwar Beg's house.

“Anwar Beg invited him in, and his friend sat down and tried to open negotiations. But Anwar Beg stopped him. ‘You are my guest. First there is the matter of hospitality,' he insisted.