The Ice Maiden's Sheikh (8 page)

A
fter the night in the valley, the relationship between her and Latif grew progressively more edgy. Their exchanges were barbed, and neither seemed able to say anything that didn't have a double meaning.

At night, though everything in him said he was digging his grave deeper with every moment they spent in loving, he could not resist her. However harsh their daily conversation, however determined he became not to succumb this time, when night fell in the tent and her soft breathing filled the silence, his voice called to her of its own accord, and his hands, driven by unbearable hunger, reached for her, found her.

And for Jalia it was the same. Whatever he said in the day to anger or upset her, however resentful her heart when she climbed into her sleeping bag, at the
first touch of Latif's hands all resistance melted, and she turned into his embrace with a sigh of need that always blasted the last of his control.

His lovemaking was fierce but tender, as if he never forgot that he was making love to his wife, the mother of his children. The deep respect, the reverence, almost, in his body's embrace meant that her whole being opened to him, and the trusting openness drove his passion to the wildest heights.

Then he called to her soul with terms of endearment he had never before used to any woman. Then he was like a man who has inherited a most precious jewel—touching it, stroking it, admiring its unmatchable beauty, and always his heart breaking a little with the knowledge that it could never be truly his own.

During the days, he punished her for that, for the way her beauty of soul and face and body remained remote and unattainable, for the fact that however deep his own knowledge that their love was the destiny of both of them, she could withhold a part of herself even in the depths of loving.

“You love me,” he would accuse her, as his body moved in hers, provoking her to a throaty song of gratitude. And
yes,
she would reply.

“You are mine—say it, Jalia! Tell me you are mine forever!”
Latif, please don't ask me that,
she would say, driving him to a frenzy of passionate lovemaking, his body certain that the way to break down this last resistance was through pleasure that maddened her.

Sometimes his body was right. Sometimes he heard her say,
yes, Latif, yes, whatever you want, oh, God, I've never felt anything like this….

Later, when the pleasure had faded, she always re
neged. Then she would blame him for trying to hold her to promises extracted under duress.

“Duress?” he had rasped the first time she used the word.
“Duress?”

“The duress of pleasure,” she said unapologetically. He laughed angrily, but she stuck to her guns. “It's not fair to ask me to change my mind when I'm actually out of my mind. Of course I'll say anything you want to hear, when I'm effectively drunk with sex.

“I've never felt before what I feel with you. I have no defences. So whatever you make me say in the heat of the moment, Latif, I reserve the right to retract it when I'm sane and sober again.”

Of course he was torn—between the satisfaction of knowing he gave her such unequalled pleasure, and the grief of that pleasure not carrying the conviction for her that it did for him, that through it they were united for all time.

 

Nowhere during the long journey did they hear news of a plane in trouble during the last big storm.

As they proceeded the task became really thankless, for as the mountains got steeper and more rugged, Jalia could no longer see very far from the road. They might be missing a wreckage that was only yards away behind a ridge or an outcrop.

And they could explore only so far on foot. The binoculars were virtually useless now, and though she still carried them around her neck, there was rarely any point in raising them to her eyes.

“When we reach Matar Filkoh airport, we'll turn around and start back,” Jalia heard Latif say one day.
“There is no real reason even to continue to the airport—if the plane had passed anywhere close, they'd have picked it up on radar. But we need to radio for news.”

Jalia heaved a sigh, and felt tears threaten. She knew in her heart Latif was right. They had covered all the territory they could by road. Either the plane had gone down in an area so remote that only search planes or climbers could hope to find it, or Noor and Bari hadn't flown this way.

And she couldn't be more glad to get out of this truck and away from Latif Abd al Razzaq Shahin if he were a real falcon daily tearing at the liver of her resolve. And yet…

“No!” she protested.

A wave of doubt and denial washed over her. What if the plane's wreckage was just one crag further on? It wasn't stretching hope too far that Noor and Bari could have survived a crash, might be waiting just beyond the next rise, praying for rescue.

Latif turned an emerald-chip gaze her way. “What are you saying?” he asked disbelievingly.

“We can't just give up!”

His jaw tightened, and she understood how much he wanted this to be over. Well, whose fault was it that they couldn't stand being in close confines together? Who had started the trouble?

“The road ends at the airport. After that it is little better than a trail leading to Joharistan.”

Joharistan was the tiny country whose name was practically synonymous with remote inaccessibility and tribal unrest.

But Jalia had become too guilt ridden, too sharply
aware of how much her own stupidity must be to blame for Noor's flight. She couldn't give up till the last ditch. Her heart quailed at the thought of having to face her family without having some news to give them.

And if staying longer with Latif was her penance—well, it was a just one, wasn't it?

“There must be something more we can do,” she said.

“Do you mean go on foot? What a futile exercise that would be.”

Latif waved his hand at the mountains beyond the windscreen. “Where would you go? What direction? You might only succeed in getting hurt yourself, and provoking another air search.”

Jalia gazed out the window at the rugged rock face above, and knew defeat.

“There must be something we can do!” she protested anyway.

“Not here.”

“I don't believe you! You don't like being with me. You want out of the situation, that's all it is!”

Latif slammed on the brakes and turned to her, showing his teeth.

“Of course I want out of it!” he shouted, as if goaded past his self-control at last. “Do you think I like the torment—every night believing that I have convinced you, and every morning learning that you are a woman who can be confused by my lovemaking, but never convinced by my love? Knowing all the day long that I will not be able to resist the compulsion to try again, learning to half accept that all I will have in the end is the memory of what one day you
will remember as a wild affair, and I as the crossroads of my life? Of course I want out!

“You are my future, one way or the other, Jalia—either as the memory of what I could not make mine, or as my wife and the mother of my children. Do you think I don't know that the longer I am with you now, not resisting what I should resist, the harder the memory of the loss will be? Do you think it makes me happy to feed on scraps, constantly hoping for a meal, knowing that after this, any other food will be tasteless to me?”

She gasped under the assault, while feeling charged through her like hot tears in her blood. Without another word he turned and put the vehicle in gear.

“I'm sorry,” she faltered. “I didn't—”

He gestured once with an angry hand. “Do not tell me you—”

The truck's wheels slid dangerously into the massive rain-ruts he had been avoiding, and in the next instant he was totally absorbed with preventing the truck from sliding backwards into a gully.

Jalia watched his hands on the wheel, hard and expert, and felt a thrill of remembered delight. Just so did he guide her body when it was at the edge of an abyss of soaring pleasure.

For a crazy moment she wished that he would stop struggling and let them go over the edge now, and relieve her of the daily torture of not knowing her own mind. Sometimes it did seem to her that only death would resolve the dilemma in her heart.

It was tearing her in two. At night, in his arms, she was secure in the conviction his loving closeness induced in her—that love could conquer all. Then she
was filled with a divine certainty that her true future lay not in England, but here in the land of her forebears, side by side with this strong, loving man, struggling to make a new life for herself and him and the country.

In the bright light of morning, all the opposing certainty came rushing back, and she called herself a fool for imagining that she could forget all her life to date, make a new self of herself, pretend she belonged in this rugged land.

Then she felt he cheated, took advantage of her sexual susceptibility, gave her the wild pleasure she experienced in his arms only as the means to an end.

And yet, now that he was offering to end the ordeal, she had refused. Did that mean she secretly wanted this torment to go on?

Jalia wasn't at all used to second-guessing herself like this; it made her uncomfortable in her own skin. Until now she had always felt a measure of certainty over her choices, a certainty that was unassailable.

Or, perhaps, had never been deeply challenged. When she had made up her mind to reject her parents' life map, they had given in with sadness but little argument.

When she had made her life-directing decisions—to be an academic, for example—life had given in without much fuss. She hadn't found a position at the prestigious university of her choice, but she had been hired at a small, reputable university, a post that could easily lead to the greater things she still envisioned.

Life hadn't ever really fought back. Now that it was doing so, Jalia made the discovery that self-doubt is
an enemy so potent and crippling no other may be necessary.

So for a moment now, watching with fascinated detachment as Latif brought the truck under control, she didn't reject the thought of oblivion as an end to her disquiet.

Or perhaps it was just that she was now dealing with almost unbearable guilt—the guilt of having tried so hard to convince Noor that she was making a dangerous, foolhardy leap in marrying Bari al Khalid. As long as she was here, searching, she didn't have to face what perhaps they had faced days ago at home—that hope diminished with every passing day.

If she had recognized what was really frightening her, if she had faced her own dangerous weakness relative to Latif instead of transferring it…Noor might never have had the second thoughts that had caused her flight.

“There is another road from Matar Filkoh that leads down to the plain and takes a different route back to al Bostan. It is not a good road, but I will ask at the airport if it is still passable after the rains. If it is, we can return that way. But it is futile to talk of going further into the mountains.”

Jalia nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Never had she been so filled with guilt and self-doubt. Never had she been so unsure of her course.

 

They radioed home from the airport, but learned nothing new. The air search hadn't yet been abandoned, but only because of who was missing. For less high profile people, the search would have been given up long ago. Latif and Jalia reported their own lack
of success, and both sides were more depressed after the call than before.

The road down was terrifyingly rugged, with the truck bouncing and jolting and threatening to pitch over the edge every five miles.

If she had had to drive it herself, Jalia would have turned tail (if there had been any room to do so) and fled back up to Matar Filkoh and the other road home.

Worse, the terrain made it impossible to pitch the tent, or even to find a comfortable spot for a sleeping bag. They spent their nights cramped and uncomfortable in the truck, while a wolfish wind howled around outside, battering their tiny haven and screeching into every crevice.

Jalia, lying on the back seat while Latif slept half-sitting in the front passenger seat, listened to the wind for hours in the night, where guilt and doubt took renewed strength from the darkness.

Each night she wrestled with the urgent need to sit up, bend over Latif, kiss him awake, and beg him to comfort her, to love her, to decide her terrible dilemma for her.

It was a massive relief when they finally found themselves back on the plain, with brown and gold and green stretching flat for miles ahead. And how glad she was to see villages again, and discover that for other people, ordinary life had gone on during her ordeal.

Still they got no news of Bari's plane.

Every day was making it more likely that the plane had headed out over the sea, for in not one village anywhere did Jalia and Latif find anyone who had
heard or seen any sign of a distressed plane on the day of the storm.

“If they did come down over water…” Jalia began hesitantly, when at yet another village they had drawn a blank. She broke off, and Latif glanced at her.

“There is no way to say. It depends on how they came down. If they were hit by lightning, or they broke up in the air, then it is as God wills. But if Bari was able to bring it down with some kind of control—there is a life raft aboard the plane.”

“But then why wouldn't they have activated the plane's EPIRB?” she pointed out sadly. “Or at least set off some flares.”

The signalling device from Bari's plane, which would have allowed survivors to be found within hours, had never been activated, which was the single biggest argument against the couple's survival. If they had both been so hurt they couldn't find and activate the EPIRB, how long could they have lasted without rescue?

Jalia had begun this search full of hope and the determination that two such vibrant people as Noor and Bari couldn't just die like that, just disappearing into nothing. They would have had to leave some trace.