The Governess and the Sheikh (12 page)

‘I've been in Lisbon for the last three weeks, at Castlereagh's behest. He has some notion of possible unrest in Portugal.'

‘More radicals!' Lord Torquil exclaimed, his eyebrows shooting up alarmingly, making him look like a startled rabbit, and betraying the accuracy of his old Harrovian nickname.

Lord Armstrong had know Bunny Fitzgerald since their schooldays. He shrugged. ‘Liverpool is reading conspiracy into everything, since Cato Street. I don't think it will come to anything. Managed to pick up a barrel or two of port while I was out there though, so it wasn't exactly a wasted journey.'

‘Heard congratulations are in order, by the way. A son after all this time. You must be mightily relieved.'

‘James. A fine boy.' Lord Henry smiled proudly.

‘A toast to the whippersnapper, then,' Lord Torquil said, helping himself to another snifter. ‘Be nice to have
another man around the house, I'll wager. Quite overrun with all those daughters of yours till now. Which reminds me,' he said, thumping his forehead with his glass, ‘bumped into Archie Hughes the other day, he was telling me that the fair Cassandra is rusticating.'

Lord Henry's genial expression faded. ‘Cassandra is visiting her sister in Arabia. I would hardly call it rusticating.'

‘A bad business, that entanglement with the poet. You must have been sick as a dog. Little beauty like that, she'd have gone off well.'

‘Cassandra will still go off well enough,' Lord Henry said determinedly. ‘When she returns, she will be betrothed to Francis Colchester. It is not quite the brilliant match I had intended, but it will do well enough.'

‘Colchester? That the boy who was one of Wellington's protégés? A younger son, I think, but a sound choice. He's predicted to go far. Provided, of course, you can tear her away from that sheikh of hers,' Lord Torquil said with a throaty chuckle.

‘Your brain's befuddled as usual, Bunny.
Prince
Ramiz of A'Qadiz is married to my eldest daughter, Celia. Had you forgotten?'

‘'Course not. Rich as Croesus, has that port in the Red Sea you did the deal on. No, I'm not talking about him. It's another one. Hang on a minute, it'll come to me. Jack—no—Jeremy—no—Jamil! That's it. Sheikh Jamil al-Nazarri. Principality next to A'Qadiz, I believe.'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about,' Lord Henry exclaimed. ‘What has this to do with Cassandra?'

‘Well, I heard it from Archie, who was just back from a stint in Cairo, and he got it from old Wincie
himself—though how he knew I'm not sure. But anyway, upshot is that the fair Cassandra is apparently cooped up in this sheikh's harem.'

‘What!'

‘For God's sake, Henry, keep your wig on, only passing on what I heard. Sorry to have dropped the cat among the pigeons, thought you knew. I'm sure it's all very innocent, though it doesn't look too good, does it?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Well. Cassandra's a lovely girl. Stuck alone out in the desert with a man who owns all he surveys.
Droit de seigneur
,' Lord Torquil whispered, tapping his nose.

Lord Henry drained his glass of brandy and got to his feet. ‘If you value our friendship, sir, you will keep this news to yourself. My daughter is visiting her sister Celia. When she returns, she will be married to Francis Colchester. Do you understand?'

‘No need to—that is, of course,' Lord Torquil blustered.

‘Then I will bid you goodnight.' Accepting his hat and cane from the major-domo, Lord Henry demanded a hack and instructed the driver to take him to Grosvenor Square. It was late, but that was of no matter. His sister, Lady Sophia, was forever informing him of her inability to sleep. If anyone knew what was what, and what was to be done, it would be Sophia. Strangely, it did not for an instant occur to Lord Henry to consult Bella, his wife.

 

Cassie endured a restless night after Jamil stormed off, her mind circling endlessly between anger,
mortification and regret as she tossed and turned endlessly on her sleeping divan. She was furious with herself for having succumbed to her own base desires, for had she not promised herself over and over again that she would not. And now she had made a complete fool of herself.

At this point mortification took the upper hand. She had more or less thrown herself at Jamil! Celia would be horrified. Aunt Sophia would—no, she could not begin to contemplate what Aunt Sophia would think—accuse her of casting off her morals with her stays, for a start. Not that she had cast off her stays, or anything else for that matter. In fact, apart from her stockings and slippers, which she had discarded earlier, she had remained fully dressed. Yet she might as well have been naked.

Oh God!
Cassie's face burned at the recollection of Jamil's touch, her own uninhibited response. She was shocked, not by what she had done, but by how much she had enjoyed it, relished it. More, even, than she had imagined in those feverish dreams that had haunted her since first she had met Jamil. Dark, erotic dreams where his hand did more than rest, as it had earlier, so tantalisingly briefly on that most intimate part of her. Dreams where he kissed her more intimately, too, touched her more intimately, where his lips, his tongue, roused her to a shameless yearning for more. Dreams that made her nipples ache, which brought to life a throbbing pulse deep inside her. Dreams in which she and Jamil were naked, their bodies shockingly entwined. Dreams where Jamil—where she and Jamil…

She was a complete wanton!

She must be. Jamil obviously thought so. By kissing him in such a way she had quite obviously led him to expect—to expect more. Whatever more was. And she, she had been too caught up in the sating of her own passions to think about the fact that her behaviour could—should—be taken for encouragement.

That very first time they had met, all those weeks ago in the tent, Jamil had taken her for a woman who belonged not in the schoolroom but the harem. She had seen it for herself, in her reflection in the mirror, but had stubbornly chosen to believe that the real Cassie was Linah's responsible governess. She had been deluding herself.

She had not been fooling Jamil, though. He had known the truth all along. Cassie threw off the thin silk sheet that was her only cover and, wearing only her nightgown, padded out to the courtyard again. The sun and moon fountains tinkled at each other. A moonbeam shafted down, bathing Scheherazade's tiled image in ghostly light. The air was completely still.

The same illicit thoughts that had been keeping her awake at night had clearly been occupying Jamil's mind, too. Despite everything, Cassie found the idea exciting. The strength of his passion was so powerful, so all-consuming. He was not some weak, foppish excuse of a poet like Augustus, who expressed his emotions in sentimental doggerel, but a man of the desert, whose desires were as raw and fiery and elemental as the landscape he inhabited.

Regret came now. She would never be desired in such a way again, for she would never again meet
someone like Jamil. She wished she had not stopped him. She almost wished he had ignored her protestations. But of course he had stopped, the moment she asked him to. He, who was master of all he surveyed, would not stoop to take by force. He, who could so easily have overcome her resistance, had chosen not to. The latent power in that lithe body of his was kept firmly leashed.

Cassie shivered. What would it feel like were he to unleash it? Dear heavens, what would it be like to be the subject of such an onslaught, helpless to do only as he commanded? She shivered again, and felt the knot of excitement that had not quite unravelled tense again in her belly, felt the tinge of heat between her legs return. Was this what Celia saw in Ramiz? Did submission bring with it the sleepy, sated look she had observed on her sister's unguarded countenance? No wonder Celia preferred her desert prince to any Englishman. If Jamil had not left the courtyard, if she had not asked him to stop, would she, too, be feeling that way?

Oh, God!
There was no point in such thoughts. The chances were that in the morning Jamil would send her ignominiously packing. Though really, looking back, she remembered that he had been the one to initiate things. Such a strange mood as he had been in. Momentarily distracted, Cassie frowned. He had almost been intent on picking a fight with her.

Cassie recalled her sister's warning not to become either too involved or too attached and wished she had paid heed to it. As ever, Celia had been right. Why could she not be more like Celia?

Exhaustion hit her like a cold flannel. She stumbled
back to her divan and pulled the sheet up. Almost instantly, she fell into a troubled sleep, haunted by dreams in which she was pursued relentlessly by ravening wild animals, desperate to consume her.

 

Jamil had stormed back to his private rooms, angrily casting the wretched state cloak and head dress on to the floor of his dressing room. He paced the perimeter of the courtyard around which his apartments were built. It was twice the size of any other in the palace, with four fountains and an ornate pagoda-like structure in the centre built around a fifth, much larger fountain, on top of which perched, rather incongruously, a statue of the royal panther.

Prowling dangerously in a manner very like that of the big cat, first in one direction and then in the other, Jamil swore colourfully in his native language and then, when this proved insufficient, resorted to summoning up curses in the other six languages in which he was fluent. It didn't help. His heart still pounded too fast. His fingers still curled tight into fists. His shoulders ached with tension. He flung himself down on the curved bench in the middle of the pagoda and made a conscious effort to still the emotions raging inside him.

Anger was a weapon, one which Jamil had been taught to harness. He was not a man given to losing his temper easily, yet of late it was becoming much more of an effort to control it. Everything frustrated him or irked him or felt like too much effort. His life, which had been tolerable until Cassie came along, now seemed burdened with more cares than he wished to carry.

Had he ever been content?
Jamil cursed again, more
viciously than before. Cassie again. Why must she question everything? Why must she force
him
to do the same, to confront things long buried? Since that day in the east wing, more and more memories of his childhood had begun to rear their ugly heads, not just in the middle of the night, but at odd times during the day. He remembered, as he had not allowed himself to do before, the overwhelming loneliness of his childhood. He remembered how much he had missed his mother. He remembered crying, alone in the panther cub courtyard, when everyone else was asleep, not for the pain his father had inflicted with his whip, but for the deeper hurt of feeling himself unloved. He remembered. He tried not to, but he did. And that was Cassie's doing.

Anger, his habitual release, helped only fleetingly. After anger came the bitterest doubt. That his suffering had a purpose had been his consolation. That it might have been unnecessary made him furious, for he had no way to revenge himself. His father was dead. The damage—if damage it was—was done. Jamil was the man his father had made him, moulded in his image. He could not change.
And why should he want to?

He was confused, and he had no way of achieving understanding. To discuss with Cassie the turmoil she had stirred up in him was unthinkable—he had neither the words, nor could he consider the blow to his dignity such a discussion would entail. But sometimes, more and more often, that is what he longed to do. She had started it. It was up to her to help him end it. She
owed
him the succour he sought.

Jamil got to his feet again and resumed his relentless pacing. If he was honest—and Jamil prided himself on
his utter honesty—it was not really Cassie's fault, save indirectly. He had not realised, until she had rejected him, just how badly he wanted her. His anger should be directed not at Cassie, but himself.

What had he been thinking! His ways were not hers. Even before he succumbed to the temptation of kissing her, he had known it would be a mistake, but he had chosen not to listen to the warning bells ringing in his mind. For once, for perhaps the first time since he was a child, he had allowed his passions to hold sway. There was no way of avoiding it. Unless he apologised to her, she would leave, and he did not want her to leave. For Linah's sake, obviously.

No, not only for Linah's sake. With a heavy sigh, Jamil retired to his divan, a huge circular bed with gilded clawed feet covered by day in green velvet edged with gold
passementerie
. The organdie curtains hung from a coronet suspended from the ceiling, forming a tent-like structure. Jamil cast aside his tunic and slippers and threw himself naked on to the soft silk sheets, but he could not sleep. Images of Cassie pliant in his arms heated him. Her untutored kisses and beguilingly naïve touch had aroused him as no other woman ever had. The combination of innocence and sensuality promised untold delights. Delights which would, for him, have to remain for ever unsavoured. He knew that, how could he not, after tonight. But still, he groaned in frustration.

Cassie was no coquette, but she was no strait-laced English rose either. Underneath the layers of buttons and lacings that guarded that delicious body of hers slumbered a soft, sensual woman with a passion crying
out to be awoken. Jamil's manhood stirred into life once more. The fleeting touch of her damp sex on his hand was seared into his memory, rendering all other future pleasures pale by comparison. He must not tread that path, could not tread that path if she was to stay, and she must stay. He was not ready for her to leave. Though he was not prepared, either, to question why.

In a few hours from now the three of them would head out for their customary early morning horse ride. After his daughter's lesson, when he and Cassie were alone in the desert, he would explain, put her mind at rest. Satisfied with this, Jamil lay awake, counting the hours until dawn.