Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem (4 page)

‘I was beginning to fear you had drowned.’

Celia started up out of the water, then sank quickly to her knees under it. ‘How long have you been there?’

‘You looked like Ophelia, with your hair trailing out behind you like that. Only unmistakably alive, I’m relieved to say.’

The look on his face was also unmistakable. He liked what he saw. The knowledge was shocking, but it gave her a little rush of pleasure all the same. Ramiz was barefooted, and without his headdress or his cloak. Even as she noticed this he began to unbuckle the belt around his waist, which held his knife and scimitar. Then he tugged at the little pearl buttons at the neck of his robe, giving her a glimpse of smooth skin, lightly tanned. It was only as he made to pull the
thoub
over his head that Celia realised he intended to join her. ‘You can’t come in,’ she yelped. ‘Not while I’m still here.’

‘Then come out,’ Ramiz said.

‘I can’t. I haven’t anything on.’

‘I couldn’t help but be aware of that,’ he said with a crooked smile. ‘I’ll look away, I promise.’

Still crouched below the water, Celia considered her options. She didn’t even have a towel. The idea of boldly standing up and walking past him naked was horrifying, even if he did keep his eyes closed, but not nearly as alarming as the idea of waiting for him to take off his clothes and join her before she made her escape.

‘Celia?’

Ramiz sounded impatient. Bored, even. He had probably seen hundreds of women without their clothes. And she was getting cold. And feeling a little foolish.

‘Close your eyes,’ she instructed, and as soon as he did so Celia took a deep breath and stood up. Wrapping her arms protectively round herself, she splashed her way out of the pool with as much grace as she could muster, trying to persuade herself that she was fully clothed and not dripping wet and stark naked.

Her clothes were in the shade of the palms to Ramiz’s right. She just had to walk past him as quickly as she could. The sand was hot under her feet. She caught her toe on a stone and stumbled, only just retaining her balance. Glancing up she saw that Ramiz had kept his word. His lashes fanned dark on his cheeks. It was the strangest experience, standing there without her clothes, knowing all he had to do was to open his eyes. She felt exposed, and just the tiniest bit excited. Celia paused. What if…? Then she panicked, and headed quickly for the shelter of the palm trees.

He felt rather than heard her hesitate, so intensely conscious was he of her tantalising presence. He didn’t need to look. He could imagine her all too clearly as he heard the soft sigh of the water yielding her up, the shiver of the sand as it cradled her feet. Her retreating form, so tall and slender, would glimmer in the moonlight, her hips swaying like a call to pleasure. Her hair, dripping down over her shoulders, would be clinging lovingly to the pouting tips of her breasts. As her footsteps retreated quickly over the sand, he imagined her disappearing into the fringe of palms like a nymph into a forest.

The urge to follow her there, to enter the forbidden garden of such delights, was so strong that Ramiz took a step forward before he managed to stop himself. He opened his eyes. She was safely out of sight. She should be safely out of mind. As the widow of a British diplomat sent to discuss a treaty, and the daughter of an eminent statesman with influence across Europe, she was definitely not for him. Never before had it been so difficult to make his body do his mind’s bidding, but he managed it. Honour. His god. He managed it, but only just.

A few yards away Celia dressed hurriedly in a clean nightdress. It was cotton, with long sleeves and a high neck, and in combination with her pantaloons and a shawl was, she decided, perfectly decent for a night in the open—for Ramiz had, to her relief, left the tent behind. She could not bear the thought of sleeping in her stays again, and banished the image of Aunt Sophia’s shocked face by reminding herself that Ramiz had already seen her almost nude anyway.

Don’t think about that!
But she couldn’t help it. He found her attractive. There had been no mistaking that look on his face. It was dangerous, not something she had taken into account at all, but it was also exciting.

It was not until she was making her way back across the sand to the fire, carrying her portmanteau, and saw Ramiz standing under the waterfall that she realised something quite astonishing. The attraction was mutual. At least she thought it must be attraction she was feeling—this sort of fizzing in her blood at the sight of him, this little kick of something in her stomach. The way her eyes were drawn to him. She hadn’t felt it before. Ever. But she wanted to look. No, more than look—to devour him with her eyes.

He had his back to her, was leaning his hands against the rock and allowing the spray to trickle over his head, to find a path down his shoulders, his spine, to where she could just see the curve of his buttocks emerging from the pool. His skin gleamed, smooth and biscuit-coloured in the moonlight, stretched tight over the bunched muscles of his shoulders. She wondered how it would feel to touch. Then she realised she was spying on him, and decided that she didn’t want him to catch her in the act, so she forced herself to walk back to their camp without once looking back.

By the time Ramiz joined her, dressed once more in a
thoub
—a clean one, she noticed—his hair damp, smoothed like a cap sleekly to his skull, Celia had the makings of a meal ready, and a composed expression on her face.

She fell asleep almost as soon as she had eaten, curled up in a blanket by the fire. She slept deeply at first, but then the dreams came. Strange dreams, in which she chased George through labyrinthine buildings, up stairs with no end, through rooms whose walls suddenly closed in on her, across endless passageways with too many doors. And always he was behind the one she couldn’t open, or had only just closed. It was George, she knew it was George, but in the way of dreams he took many forms. All of them aloof from her. All of them despising her. In her dream she grew smaller. Frailer. More frantic with every attempt to find him, until finally she opened a door which proved to be in the outside wall of a high tower and she fell, fell, fell, waking with a startled cry just before she landed.

Strong arms held her when she was about to sit up in fright. A hand smoothed the tangle of her hair back from her face. ‘A dream. It was just a dream.’ A voice, soothing as the softest of cashmere in her ear. ‘Go back to sleep, Celia. You’re safe now.’

‘I tried,’ she mumbled. ‘I really tried.’ Her cheek rested on something hard and warm and infinitely comforting. Vaguely, she registered a slow, regular bump. Like a heart beating. ‘Safe,’ she mumbled.

A kiss on her brow. A fluttering kiss, cool lips. ‘Safe,’ the voice said, pulling her closer.

The nightmare faded into the distance, like a black beast retreating with its tail between its legs. She knew it wouldn’t dare come back. Celia slept the rest of the night dreamlessly.

She woke feeling much refreshed. Curled up under her blanket by the fire, she could see by the sky that it was not yet morning. The air was cool on her face. She had been dreaming of George. It came back to her now—the running, the never quite catching. She tried to picture her husband, but his image was blurry, like an old painting covered with the patina of age. The months of her marriage felt unreal, like a spell from which she had been freed, a play she had not meant to attend. Just as she had never quite seen herself as a wife, now she could not believe in herself as a widow. She was just Celia, neither Armstrong nor Cleveden, for none of these names meant anything here. Here she was alone in this desert wilderness, her fate in the hands of the man who lay sleeping on the other side of the fire. She was free to be whoever it was she chose to be, and no one in the real world would ever know. It was an intoxicating feeling.

As she crept carefully past Ramiz, heading for the washing pool with her clothes, she remembered something else. Could it really have been Ramiz who had held her so gently? It seemed so improbable. She must have imagined it. If she had cried out, which she thought she must have, it seemed much more likely that he would have woken her and bade her be quiet. But the arms that had held her had seemed so real, and she had felt so incredibly safe enfolded in them. Was Sheikh Ramiz al-Muhana capable of such tenderness?

Returning properly dressed, complete with the stays whose constraints she was starting to loathe, and a fresh pair of silk stockings she wished fervently to do without, Celia decided simply to pretend that nothing had happened and set about making morning coffee while Ramiz refilled their canteens. When he asked her how she had slept, she told him very well, and no more was said.

She had expected Balyrma to be a walled city, perhaps built into the mountains which were rising like huge sand dunes in the distance, but as Celia looked down on the capital of A’Qadiz from the vantage point to which Ramiz had led them, her first impression was of lush green, so vibrant and vivid that it looked as if the city had been mistakenly painted into the middle of a desert canvas. It was much larger than she had expected too. A patchwork of fields were laid out, stretching across the plain on either side of the well-formed track they were following, neatly bordered with what looked like cypress trees.

‘The mountains on either side protect us from the worst of the sun in the summer, and they provide the water which makes all this possible,’ Ramiz explained. ‘If you look closely, you can also see that they protect us from invasion. See the little turret there?’

Celia peered in the direction he pointed. ‘Are you under threat of invasion?’

‘Not for more than five hundred years,’ Ramiz said proudly, ‘but it is a wise man who is vigilant. There are many who envy us our wealth, and some who would mistake my own desire for ongoing peace as a weak ness. As you saw to your cost.’

They made their way with their caravan strung out behind them along the increasingly wide road towards the city. With her veil firmly in place, Celia rode behind Ramiz, and had ample opportunity to observe how he was received by his people. She knew he was a prince, of course, but over the last two days she had put his status to the back of her mind. It was impossible to do so now, as every one of the multitude of people with their mules, camels, horses and trundling carts who passed them on the approach to the city fell to their knees in front of Ramiz, uttering prayers and good wishes, keeping their heads bowed.

Once again Celia thought of the pharaohs, who had taken their status as gods for granted just as Ramiz seemed to be doing. She realised how much latitude he had bestowed upon her, and wondered how many hundreds of social solecisms she had committed. It appalled her, for she was used to thinking of herself as up to snuff on every occasion, and now here she was, entering a magnificent city in the wake of its prince with absolutely no idea how she should behave when she got there. Nerves fluttered like a shoal of tiny creatures in her stomach, making her feel slightly nauseous. She felt an absurdly childish inclination to turn her camel round and flee.

What would her father think of her?
Lily-livered, he would say. Highly unusual as the circumstances were, Lord Armstrong would expect his daughter to think and to act like a statesman. Celia sat up straight in the saddle. Whatever lay ahead, she was ready to face it.

What lay ahead was a startlingly beautiful city. Once they had passed through the fields, groves of lemon, orange and fig trees and terraced olive bushes, they entered the city of Balyrma itself. It was walled after all, she realised as they passed through a majestic portal, their path still bordered with devotedly kneeling citizens, into a city straight out of
One Thousand and One Nights
. Terracotta dwellings with slits for windows and turreted roofs, blank walls with keyhole-shaped doors behind which she imagined cloistered courtyards, fountains tinkling at every corner. Through narrow alleyways she caught a glimpse of a souk selling cloth, colours bright as jewels. From another came the heady scent of spices. As they progressed towards the centre of the city the buildings became more ornate; tiled walls patterned with mosaic, elaborate high shutters on the windows worked with intricate patterns of wrought iron.

The palace stood in the exact centre of the town. A high wall, too high to see over, with two beautiful slender towers marking each of the corners. The wall was pristine white, with a flowing border of blue and gold tiles along the middle, leading to the huge central entranceway protected not just by a set of doors of gothic proportions, but also by a grille plated with silver and gold. It was the sort of fairytale palace that normally stood at the end of a drawbridge, Celia wanted to say to Ramiz, remembering just in time not to blurt out her thoughts. But then, as first the gate and then the doors were flung open to receive them, and she caught her first glimpse of the royal palace of Balyrma, Celia lost the ability to speak anyway—for Ramiz’s home looked as if it had been conjured up by Scheherazade herself.

Chapter Four

T
hey left the bedraggled caravan of animals and luggage outside. An army of white-robed servants appeared as if from nowhere, it seemed to Celia, and led them down a short covered passageway dotted with mysterious doors, each with a guard armed with a glittering scimitar. The stark white of their robes was relieved only by a discreet embroidered crest depicting a falcon and a new moon, which she had noticed embossed on the entrance gates too, and by the red and white check of their headdresses.

Following in Ramiz’s wake, her head respectfully lowered, Celia felt more overwhelmed with every step she took. The huge courtyard they entered was perfectly symmetrical, the pillars and windows and doors which flanked it all mirroring each other, as did the mosaic design in blue and gold which formed the frieze around the walls, continued on the pillars which bounded the open space, and covered the floor of the courtyard itself. Two fountains played to each other. Risking a fleeting glance up, Celia saw another floor with a colonnaded balcony, and counted another two above that, all glittering white, trimmed with blue and gold.

Ramiz seemed to have forgotten her presence. Engaged deep in conversation with a man whose robes and bearing clearly proclaimed a higher status from the guards, Ramiz himself seemed to have metamorphosed as they entered his domain. His bearing now was remote and autocratic, that of a man who took his power for granted, as he did the obedience of others. She had no idea what he was saying, but even his voice sounded different—short, staccato sentences, none of the soft vowels and curling consonants she had grown used to.

She felt as if she didn’t know him. She forced herself to accept that she didn’t. What had happened over the last two days had been an oasis, an exotic interlude in the harsh, unyielding desert of reality. This was his real life. Suddenly she was a little afraid.

She hadn’t taken his threat to make her his concubine seriously. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about his harem. In fact, she had allowed herself to assume that it simply wouldn’t happen, that when they arrived here he would change his mind and—and what?

She was alone. Worse, she was a woman alone, which meant she had neither the right nor the power to choose her own destiny. It wasn’t a case of being forced to do Ramiz’s bidding. She didn’t have any other option.

Powerless. The full meaning of the word hit her like a sack of corn swung into her middle, so that she felt her breath whistling out, her stomach clenching. Celia began to panic, her fevered imagination conjuring up all sorts of hideous fates. It would be weeks—months, maybe—before she was missed. She pictured Cassie waiting anxiously every day for a letter which did not come, trying to reassure Caroline and Cordelia and poor little Cressida, and at the same time attempting to persuade Papa to take some sort of action. But what could he do, so far away in London? Nothing. And in the meantime she, Celia, would probably have been cast out into the desert and left to die.

Fortunately at this point Celia’s common sense intervened. If Ramiz had wanted her dead he would not have saved her life. If he’d wanted harm to come to her, he’d have left her on her own at the site of the massacre. She couldn’t claim to truly know the autocratic Prince standing a few yards away, oblivious to her presence, but she knew enough about the man to believe in his integrity and honour, and she knew enough of his hard-won and volatile peace to understand that he wouldn’t risk upsetting the British government by slaughtering the daughter of one of their foremost statesmen. She was acting like a hysterical female when dignity and calm were what was required. She was in a royal palace, for goodness’ sake! She was a citizen of one of the world’s great powers. Ramiz wouldn’t dare lock her in a harem and expect her to do his bidding.

Nodding to herself with renewed resolve, Celia looked up, but Ramiz was gone. She stood quite alone in the courtyard, with only the tinkling fountains for company. She had no idea which of the doorways he had gone through. Though the doors were all open, each was draped in heavy brocade and gauzy lace to keep out the fierce heat of the day. The keyhole-shaped windows of the salons, with their gold-plated iron grilles, stared out blankly at her.

‘Hello?’ she called out tentatively, feeling horribly self-conscious as she listened to her voice echo up through the courtyard. There was no answer. This is ridiculous, she thought, deciding simply to select a doorway and walk through it.

She was picking up her skirts and making for the nearest one when a voice halted her. Two men were approaching. Huge men with bellies so large they looked like cushions, dressed not in robes but in wide black pleated breeches and shiny black boots. Each had a vicious curved dagger held in the sash which marked where the waistband had once been. Under their black turbans each had a black beard and long black moustaches.

Like two of Ali Baba’s forty thieves, Celia thought a little hysterically as the men stopped in front of her. Then they bowed, indicating that she follow them, and with her heart in her mouth she did, through a myriad of doors and cool dark passageways, until they came to another large wooden door set in another white-tiled wall. One of the men produced a large key and pulled the door wide. Celia stepped through into a courtyard almost a mirror image of the one she had left. She thought at first she was back where she had started. Then the door behind her closed, leaving the guards on the other side, and she realised where she was.

Just as Ramiz had told her she would be, she was in his harem.

It was everything she had expected, and yet nothing like it. For a start she was quite alone aside from the two maidservants who tended to her, bringing delicious foods, exotic fruits she had never seen before, fragrant meats cooked in delicious spices, cooling sherbets and tea served sweet and flavoured with mint.

Adila and Fatima were shy at first, giggling over Celia’s clothes, astonished at the layers of undergarments she wore, and utterly confounded by her stays. In turn Celia, who allowed her dresser to look after her hair for grand occasions, but otherwise was used to managing for herself, found their care for her embarrassing—waving them away when they first attempted to bathe her, submitting only when she saw that she had offended them.

By nature modest, Celia had never shared such intimacies as bathing, even with her sisters, but within the seclusion of the harem it seemed less shocking, and she very quickly began to enjoy the pampering of baths strewn with rose petals and orange blossom, having oils scented with musk and amber gently massaged into her skin and preparations for her hair and for her face, which left her whole body glowing and more relaxed than she had ever known.

The harem itself covered three floors, its upper terraces reached by tiled staircases which zigzagged up through the towers, marking the four corners of the courtyards. These upper rooms were empty, echoing, as if they had not been used for some time. The lower rooms, which led one into another in a square around the terrace, were opulently decorated, with rich carpets on the floors and low divans draped with lace, velvet and silk, the jewel colours of blue and gold and emerald and crimson reflected in the long mirrors which hung on the walls. The only windows looked out onto the courtyard, and the only exit was the one through which she had entered, but once Celia had recovered from the shock of her incarceration and accepted there was nothing she could do save wait for Ramiz to return, she found it astonishingly easy to surrender to the magical world of the harem. She had nothing to do save surrender her body to the ministering of Adila and Fatima, and surrender her mind to the healing process.

As the days melded one into another Celia quickly lost all track of time, so strangely did the tranquil seclusion of the harem play on her senses. She had never been so much alone, never had so much peace to simply be. As the eldest, and having lost her mother not long after her youngest sister Cressida was born, it was second nature to Celia to put others first, to be always thinking ahead and taking responsibility for what happened next. Indulgence and inactivity such as had now been forced on her were quite alien. Those who knew her as always busy, always planning, managing at least ten things at once, would say without hesitation that such a life as she was now experiencing would have her beside herself with boredom or screaming for release. Celia would have said so herself. But right now it was the antidote she required to recover not just from the trauma of losing her husband, but from the trauma of realising she wished she had never married him in the first place. If Ramiz had intended this as a punishment, he had been mistaken.

Almost without her noticing a full month passed, marked by the changing of the moon, whose growth from flickering crescent to glowing whole reflected the healing process taking place in Celia herself.

Then, just as she was beginning to wonder if she would be left forgotten here for ever, and her temper was beginning to recover enough to resent Ramiz’s extended and unexplained absence, the man himself appeared without warning.

It was evening. Dinner had arrived—a much more elaborate meal than usual, which required an additional servant to bring it. Out of habit Celia was dressed in an evening gown after the daily ritual of her bath and massage. She stared in consternation at the plethora of little dishes in their gold salvers, wondrously appetising but far too much for just one, set out on a low table in the largest of the salons, around which banks of tasselled and embroidered cushions were strewn.

‘I can’t eat all this,’ she said helplessly to Adila, miming that they should take some of it back, but the maid only smiled behind her hand and backed out, shaking her head.

The door to the outside world opened. Not just the usual tiny crack, barely enough to allow the staff to slip in and out, it was flung wide open. Ramiz strode in, resplendent in a robe of opulent red.

She had forgotten how incredibly handsome he was. She had forgotten how tall he was too. He looked a little tired, though, with a tiny fan of lines crinkling around his eyes. He wore no headdress, no belt, and his full robe was more like a caftan with wide sleeves, flowing loosely down to his feet which were clad in slippers of soft leather studded with jewels. The robe was open at the neck, but for all his dress was obviously informal he looked even more regal, more intimidating than she remembered.

She was nervous. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was bumping a fraction too hard against her breast. Celia dropped a curtsy. ‘Your Highness.’

‘Ramiz,’ he said. ‘While we are alone, I am Ramiz.’

Alone. She decided not to think about that. Having imagined this moment many times over the last few days, she decided to act as if it were any other social occasion, and to treat Ramiz as if he were an honoured guest and she the hostess. And not, definitely not, worry about being alone with him in his harem.

‘Are you hungry? Dinner is here. I wondered why there was so much of it. Now I see you were expected.’

‘You would have preferred some warning?’ Ramiz asked, picking up immediately on her unspoken criticism.

‘It is your palace. It is not for me to dictate where you are, and when,’ Celia said tactfully, preceding him into the salon in which the food was laid out, waiting until he had disposed himself gracefully on a large cushion before she sat down opposite him.

‘I’ve been away. I’ve only just got back,’ Ramiz explained unexpectedly. ‘I told you I had urgent business to attend to.’ He lifted the cover from a dish of partridges stuffed with dates and pine nuts and sniffed appreciatively.

‘You mean only just got back as in today?’

‘An hour ago.’

Celia was flattered, and then alarmed, and then nervous again. She poured Ramiz a glass of pale green sherbet and pushed a selection of dishes towards him. ‘May I ask if your business was successful?’ she said. ‘I presume it was to do with the other prince—Malik, I think his name was?’

Ramiz looked surprised. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you—were you—did you have to fight with him?’

‘Not this time.’

‘What, then?’

‘You really want to know?’

Celia nodded. ‘I really do.’

It was not the custom to discuss such matters with a woman. It was not in his nature to discuss such matters with anyone. But it had been a difficult few days, and there was something about this woman which encouraged the sharing of confidences. ‘My council all urged swift and brutal retribution—as usual, since I inherited most of them from my brother.’

‘But you ignored them?’

‘Yes. I don’t want to follow that path until there are no other options left.’

‘So tell me—what did you do? How do you go about negotiating a deal with a man who wields power through fear? Come to that, how do you set about persuading your own people to accept such an alien approach?’

Ramiz smiled. ‘You forget I am a prince too. I don’t have to persuade my people of anything. They do as I bid.’

‘Yes, that’s what you say, but I’ll wager that you try all the same,’ Celia said, with a perception which surprised him. ‘You don’t really want to rule in splendid isolation, do you?’

‘Splendid isolation? That is exactly how it feels sometimes. You can have no idea how wearing it is, trying to break the ingrained prejudice of years,’ Ramiz said wearily. ‘Sometimes I think— But that is another matter. With Prince Malik…’

He went on to tell her about the events of the last few days, spurred on by her intelligent interest into revealing far more of his innermost thoughts than he had ever done. It was a relief to unburden himself, and refreshing too, for this woman who talked and thought like a man had a knack for encouraging without toadying, and her shocking lack of deference lent her opinions a credibility he would not otherwise have conceded.

By the time the meal was over the weight of responsibility which was beginning to feel like a sack upon his back had eased a little for the first time since he had so unexpectedly come to power. This woman understood the cares of governing. She would have made an excellent diplomatic wife. George Cleveden had chosen well. But George Cleveden was dead, and Ramiz could not regret it, for the woman who was now his widow deserved better. Much better. Not that it was any of his business.