Stalking through the front door, she walked into a bower of flowers. Maggie got up from amongst the beribboned baskets of white roses. ‘These came half an hour ago. Aren’t they gorgeous? Raschid does have style.’
‘Raschid sent them?’ Polly gulped, and swallowed. If Chris hadn’t been standing there guiltily ill at ease, she would have sobbed her heart out in absolute despair. It was incredibly hard now to recall that she had once believed she loved Chris.
‘Who else?’ Maggie eyed her sister’s drawn pallor curiously. ‘He may not phone much, but he knows how to employ the language of flowers!’
* * *
‘If everyone would remain seated please,’ the stewardess called unexpectedly while Polly was trying to don her aba without elbowing the passenger beside her.
‘Is this lady…Her Highness?’
As Polly triumphed over the aba she recognised Seif and Raoul, dwarfing the stewardess in the aisle. Startled, she stared. Both men bowed low, then Seif motioned a hand. Why were Raschid’s bodyguards collecting her off her commercial flight? He hadn’t tried to prevent her return, and she had clung feverishly to that favourable omission. She had phoned the palace. Medir had told her that Raschid was unavailable. Pressed pitilessly on a third call, he had revealed that Raschid was in the desert at some place called Jebel Kaddish. Polly had duly announced her arrival time at Jumani airport.
Outside the heat of midday engulfed her. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘To the plane.’
‘We’ve just got off the plane!’
No answer. Her anxiety level was reaching elephantine proportions. They led her on a long trudge round the airport buildings. A curious little craft sat there, a cross between a helicopter and a seaplane without floats.
‘I wish to go to the palace,’ Polly declared tautly.
‘Princess go join Prince Raschid.’ Seif made idiotic stepping motions into the empty cargo hold facing her, much as though he was trying to coax a bashful sheep into a truck. ‘Long flight, must leave…pronto,’ he produced with a gold-capped grin.
She boarded with her case. Where her wishes ran contrary to Raschid’s Seif and Raoul became uniformly deaf. A rough bench seat adorned by an incongruous cushion was indicated by the pilot. The two guards remained on the tarmac. Raschid was still in the desert. Did he want to see her somewhere more private than the palace? Or did that whistling pilot have instructions to push her out without a parachute above cloud cover? Polly, get a grip on yourself, she told herself. You’re facing a battle royal, not an execution!
CHAPTER EIGHT
WITHOUT a view the flight was endless. The pilot chain-smoked, making conditions doubly unpleasant. When they landed Polly stumbled gratefully out into the open air. The plane was overhung by a massive black outcrop of jagged rock that protruded like broken teeth into the sky. It screened them from even a whisper of a breeze in the intense heat. Jebel Kaddish was a desolate landmark, surrounded by a barbarously bleak and magnificent landscape of dunes. In the changing light the sands gradually shaded from beige to ochre as they marched in undulating succession into the horizon.
A shout burst from the pilot and Polly spun round. She had to shade her eyes to see the tribesmen, precariously perched on camels, travelling towards them at speed. The dust they were churning up almost obliterated her glimpse of the rider on the black stallion in their midst. As they approached they spread out and finally reined in, encircling the plane. Steady-eyed Bedouin with thin, weathered faces, they were a ragged collection, yet they possessed the intrinsic dignity of a proud people in their erect carriage.
Marzouk pranced, reacting to his rider’s fierce tension. Burningly blue eyes slammed into hers. Beneath the aba she couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t break that savage stare either. The pilot broke it, hurrying forward to bow low and engage with gusto on the ritual and lengthy greetings that betrayed his desert origins. Mortified by Raschid’s failure to acknowledge her, Polly studied the ground with burning cheeks.
A tribesman dismounted and took her case to strap it on to a lone baggage camel while a second led another camel forward and with a practised flick of his cane made it kneel. On its back it bore a basketwork litter draped with bright cloth. Raschid at last walked Marzouk over to her and sprang down.
‘Look, I didn’t expect a welcome mat, but—’ she began huskily.
Without a word he scooped her up and settled her into the litter, indifferent to the ill-tempered camel’s vicious attempts to snap at him. His prompt response to his wife’s reluctance provoked many covert smiles, and Polly’s anxious eyes brightened with indignation.
The camel lumbered upright and the world lurched sickeningly. As they moved off at a steady pace, the swaying movements of the litter sentenced her to motion sickness. It was some time before she realised that by relaxing her body and keeping her attention off ground level, she could banish it. By then the only sounds were the crunching footfalls of the four-legged beasts of burden and the riotous clamour of her own heartbeat.
They came upon the camp suddenly over a rise, a cluster of around twenty black tents and bush fires sending up smoking grey spirals. Darkness was falling now with astonishing speed and her muscles ached in every joint. The logic behind bringing her here evaded her, but she was very grateful that the journey was over.
As she clambered stiffly from the litter, two manservants she recognised from the palace bowed low. Raschid trailed her unceremoniously past them into the shadowy depths of the nearest tent and pressed her round behind an interior wall of intricate leather and beadwork. Rugs and quilts were heaped there on a low rope bed, and she sat down immediately. Her legs were shaky supports.
‘Remove the aba. Only the elderly women mask their faces here.’
Obeying, Polly glanced up, wet tendrils of hair clinging to her brow. And neither the searing intensity of his stare nor his dangerous stillness could quell the treacher-ous rush of excitement seizing her. It was a dark en-chantment that stripped her of pride and principle. If she had ever been strong with Raschid, she had never been weaker than she was now. The silence tortured her. ‘Say something!’
A lean hand clenched to show the white of bone. ‘Keep yourself from my sight!’ he said icily.
She scrambled up, blocking his exit. ‘At least hear what I have to say!’
‘Cry it to the wind. You are as likely to hear an answer there,’ he gritted in caustic derision. ‘With every hour that passes you will regret the insolence and the false confidence which encouraged you to disobey me.’
A creature recognition of cold threat enforced her retreat. And he was gone in a flicker of movement with the soundless grace of a hunting animal. Nervously Polly looked around. Her surroundings were basic. She was not surprised. The servants were a necessary sacrifice to status, but Raschid wouldn’t flaunt his wealth here. In a corner she espied a radio apparatus and two elaborate bronze oil lamps. Beyond the dividing wall she found tinned goods and sacks and a second doorway. She knew that the very front section of the tent was reserved for the all-male bastion of the traditional coffee hearth where the men entertained. From outside drifted the aromatic enticement of cooking food.
He couldn’t ignore her presence indefinitely, could he? Yet he must want to do just that. The most expensive bride in the Middle East had given the poorest satisfaction. In one way or another she had fought him every day of their marriage. He could have strung her along, he could have pretended it was forever and by now she would have been eating out of his hand. But while she acted on her emotions, Raschid acted according to his principles. He would not have lied to her.
How much had her bloody-minded behaviour before he saw her in Chris’s arms contributed to his distrust? Oh, how childish she had been! Out of her depth and trying to keep her head above water, she had used the only means of defiance at her disposal. In some ways, she acknowledged unhappily, it had almost been a game to her while she tried to raise a real live emotional reaction from Raschid. But w
here did all that inappropriate groundwork leave her now? He didn’t want her here. So what’s new, Polly…? Her thoughts were bitter. But he would believe her, surely he would? If he didn’t…no, she refused even to think of that eventuality. This was just a stupid storm in a teacup, she reminded herself. It was just that he hadn’t realised the fact yet.
Mahmoud brought her a savoury meat and rice concoction and a frothy cup of milk, and she ate hungrily. He reappeared with a shallow dish of water in which she was evidently expected to wash. Doing her best, she dressed again, frowning over the tightness of her waistband. Her mother was right and the scales were wrong. She was putting on weight. As a long shadow darkened the magazine she had taken out to read, she glanced up apprehensively.
‘You should be in bed. Before dawn we break camp.’