The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (26 page)

He was Dhurahn’s ruler. It was impossible for him to father a
child, his first child, capriciously and outside marriage. How would he ever be
able to assuage the guilt he would feel towards his people and towards that
child—especially if it were a son—knowing he had deprived him of his
birthright?

There must be no such child, and therefore no more unprotected
sex. That meant no sex at all, since it was impossible for him to procure the
protection they would need unless he made an incognito visit to Zuran.

Now he
was
being ridiculous, Vere
told himself as he finished dressing and then strode towards the exit of the
tent without turning round to say anything to Sam. He knew that if he did he
would not be able to leave her.

He had gone and Sam was alone. Her eyes were burning with tears
she was determined were not going to fall. It was all her own fault. She
couldn’t pretend to herself that she hadn’t ached to know him as a lover because
she had—from the very first moment she had bumped into him. And now she did
know, she knew too that, no matter what happened in the rest of her life, no man
would ever be able to take her to the heights Vere had shown her. Nor the depths
of pain and despair she was now feeling because he had left her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘A
ND
as you can see from the shape of
the natural depression here, this must originally have been a deeper pool in the
riverbed. My guess is that the river must at one time have cascaded down into it
over this rocky outcrop to form a natural pool before flowing on.’

They were standing in the basin, in the shadow of the rock
above them. Sam knew that her voice sounded stiff and over controlled as she
underlined for him just why she was so sure that the course of the river had
been changed. She focused straight ahead of herself, instead of turning to look
at Vere. How could she behave naturally towards him now, after last night? She
had barely slept, and had been unable to eat anything before he had driven her
out here just as dawn was breaking. She felt so strung out by the intensity of
her own emotions that just having to breathe separately from him, when all of
her was screaming to be as physically and emotionally close to him as she could
get, required her total concentration.

She could feel herself shaking with need. In an attempt to
conceal it she bent down and picked up a handful of smooth pebbles.

‘These must have been worn smooth by the river,’ she told him.
‘There is no other way that could have happened. The river must once have flowed
into this pool and then out of it. You can even walk along what must have been
the riverbed to the marshy area where it would have joined what is now the new
course of the Dhurahni.’

It was obvious to Vere that she wasn’t going to be persuaded
that she was wrong—which meant he would need to find another way of neutralising
the information she was selling to the Emir.

‘We are over twenty miles from our border with Khulua, and you
are talking about a change of direction in the river of a matter of a few
hundred yards, if that. I fail to see what relevance it could possibly have,’ he
told her.

Vere’s voice was clipped, and like Sam he avoided any eye
contact. He had still noticed, though, how the breeze that sunrise always
brought had stroked her hair, and he had been filled with a fierce, irrational
need to tangle his own fingers in its silky length and bind her to him.

Her,
this woman it made far more
sense for him to despise rather than desire.

Last night she had given herself to him so sweetly and so
completely, with such trust, that just holding her had touched and soothed sore
places within himself, as though she possessed a magical ability to heal
him.

No. Last night she had acted as only the most skilled of
deceivers could act, and he was a fool for allowing himself to feel what he had
felt.

Swiftly Vere clamped down on the argument raging inside him. He
needed to think only as the Ruler of Dhurahn, and to remember the hard lesson
the death of his mother had taught him. There was no place here for the man he
had foolishly allowed himself to be the previous night—vulnerable, in need,
responsive to a certain woman’s hold on his senses to such an extent that
everything else was forgotten.

Sam couldn’t look at Vere. If she did... If she did, she would
end up begging him to hold her, and she must not do that. She had humiliated
herself enough already. Last night had shown her yet again that she meant
nothing to him. If he had used her to satisfy his lust then that was her own
fault, for loving him so much that she had allowed him to do so.

She had to focus on being professional. Sam took a deep breath
and then said firmly, ‘It must have had some relevance to whoever changed it,
and it’s that that fascinates me. Why would anyone want to go to the trouble of
altering it, especially in view of the work it must have involved? A new channel
would have had to be cut through the rock, and that would have been expensive.
To what purpose? No benefit could have been gained from it.’

‘To your western mind, perhaps, but the Eastern mind thinks
differently.’

Sam turned towards him, forgetting that she had promised
herself she wouldn’t look at him.

‘So there
was
a reason?’

Her mouth looked soft and swollen still from his kisses, and
the khaki shirt she was wearing couldn’t conceal the aroused thrust of her
nipples. Her face wore a tell-tale paleness that spoke of a night’s sensual
languor. The ache that was tormenting him immediately became a dervish-driven
whirlwind of torture. He wanted her. He wanted to claim her now, here. He
wanted— He stopped, knowing he wasn’t free to feel like this, to need like
this.

‘Yes, there was a reason,’ he agreed, forcing himself to deny
the images that were tempting him. ‘But it has nothing to do with protecting our
right to the river, because that has never been necessary. The Dhurahni River
belongs to Dhurahn. That is a legal reality that can never be changed or
questioned.’

‘Then why?’

Sam’s persistence reactivated Vere’s suspicions, and reminded
him of why they were here.

It was plain to him that she was digging for information so
that she could pass it on to the Emir. There was no need for him to answer her.
But then neither was there any need to conceal the truth, since it was obvious
that she was not going to allow herself to be persuaded that she was wrong.

Sam thought that he wasn’t going to answer her. He was looking
towards the rocks from where the water must once have flowed, down into the now
dried-out pool in which they were standing, sheltered from the growing strength
of the morning sun by the shadows cast by the rocks.

‘There is a story that has been passed down through our family
by word of mouth...’

The air had gone still, waiting for the sun’s warmth—hungering
for it, Sam guessed, in the same way that she hungered for Vere. Why had this
happened to her? Why was fate subjecting her to this cruelty? Why couldn’t she
have loved another man? A different man? A man who might love her in return?

‘When the borders between our states were originally drawn up,’
Vere continued, ‘my great-grandfather claimed as his wife the daughter of a
British diplomat. It is said that after their marriage my ancestor and his bride
spent their first night together as man and wife here, on their journey to
Dhurahn city. A camp was set up, and my great-grandfather and his bride swam
together alone here—for, as you have said, this was the course of the river
then. It flowed over those rocks behind us and down into a pool here.

‘The story goes that the pool was one of great beauty, fringed
with all manner of plants and flowers, with an olive grove beyond it. The newly
married couple consummated their vows to one another here in privacy, and it was
here that their first child, a son, was conceived.

‘Such was my ancestor’s love for his wife that he commanded
that the course of the river should be diverted, so that no other man could ever
look upon the pool that held within it the memories of their love and her
beauty, or imagine what anyone but him had the right to know. It was their
special place, and he preferred to destroy it rather than let anyone else look
upon it.’

‘He must have loved her very much and...and very passionately’
was all that Sam could manage to say.

‘Yes,’ Vere agreed.

Vere watched Sam from the protection of the shadows that
cloaked his own expression. Last night, in giving herself to him, she had taken
a part of him he could never reclaim. He had to admit that to himself because
there was no way now he could evade that knowledge.

Without him knowing quite how, she had managed to touch his
carefully protected emotions. But she was not someone with whom he could ever
share his life, or to whom he could ever make a commitment. No matter how much
he wanted her.

How could he do that when she was in the Emir’s pay? Whatever
his personal feelings, his duty was to his people and their best interests. The
days were gone when a man like his great-grandfather had believed it was right
to put his love for a woman above all else.

His
love
for a woman?

He did not love her. He could not—would not. It was impossible,
unthinkable.

When he had guarded his heart against love he had thought he
was protecting it from a woman who would know him as a man, a poet—someone to
whom the desert was a sacred well from which he refilled his inner being—and
that it would be her knowledge of this true essence of himself that would bind
them together in mutual love. She would love him
despite
the fact that he was a prince, not because of it, and she
would share his belief that true honesty and trust were essential components of
their love for one another. The woman would love him as his mother had loved his
father—before and beyond anything or anyone else, even their children.

That woman was not this woman. He did not love this woman.

But his heart was thudding in sledgehammer-like blows, beating
out a message that said he was lying to himself.

Having listened to Vere, Sam found that she was averting her
gaze from the pool, not wanting to see the images Vere’s story had brought to
life. The young bride, her pale skin covered only by the water, and her husband,
his skin darker, his body hardened by the desert and by tribal warfare, his
passions aroused by his love for her. Their faces were concealed from her but
their feelings were not.

To let her thoughts go further was too intrusive, and yet the
images and the emotions they aroused in her couldn’t be dismissed. Sam closed
her eyes to shut them out, but when she opened them again the figures were still
there, inside her imagination. Only now she could see their faces, and they
belonged not to two unknown people but to herself and Vere. A shudder of naked
longing racked her whole body.

The sun was fully risen now, its light sharpening the shadows
glittering on the pebbles in the dried-out pool, now no more than an empty husk
of what it had once been. It held no indication of the beauty it had known.

Vere looked at it and then looked away. His great-grandfather
had loved passionately and intensely, and he had loved only one woman. To love
like that was in his genes, a fate he could not avoid. But he must avoid it. He
must not love this woman whom he could never trust.

Sam made a huge effort to redirect her thoughts to where they
ought to be.

‘If you knew the story behind the river, then why did you
insist that I was wrong and that the course
hadn’t
been changed?’

Her voice sounded low and strained in her own ears. She prayed
that Vere wouldn’t guess how difficult she was finding it to focus on what she
was saying and the reason they were here.

‘Why was it of so much interest to you that it had?’ Vere
countered, without answering her.

‘Because I knew that I was
right
that it had been moved, and I knew that there had to be a reason.’

She was being very persistent. The Emir must have paid her very
well indeed. So at least she had some kind of loyalty. Vere could feel the sharp
acid bitterness of his own anger. It raked at his heart like wickedly sharp
knives, driving him past caution.

‘But of course you would have preferred that reason to be
political rather than emotional?’ he accused Sam bitingly.

Sam stared at him, not understanding his anger or his
attack.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Why do you think I say it?’

He was talking in riddles now, and Sam had no idea what they
meant.

‘I didn’t have
any
preconceived
idea about why the river had been re-routed. In fact that was part of what made
it so intriguing. Logically there was no reason to move it. It isn’t as though
it forms part of a border, or is disputed in any way, but there had to be some
motive. Everything must have a motive...’

What had been his for keeping his knowledge to himself and
withholding it from her? she wondered. What had his motive been for sharing it
with her now? Her instincts were warning her to be on her guard.

She was lying, of course. Vere knew it. She had to be. The only
reason she had been interested in the changed course of the river was because
the Emir was paying her to cause trouble for them. He knew that too.

How much had she told the Emir already? Had he, or those who
had hired her on his behalf, suggested ways in which she might manipulate the
facts to fit in with his personal agenda?

Had she hoped that by giving herself to him she could learn
something that would aid the Emir’s cause? The mere fact that he had slept with
her so casually would be enough to discredit him and, via that, damage the
reputation of their country. He had been a fool to let his desire for her
overwhelm his judgement.

Vere thought quickly. He needed to protect Dhurahn against its
current exposure to the Emir’s schemes, and to negate the effect his
relationship with the Emir’s paid pawn might have. He needed to turn the tables
on the Emir, and fast, and he thought he knew exactly how to do that.

If he were to establish Sam publicly as his official mistress,
then who would place credence on any claims the Emir might try to make off the
back of her investigations? No one.

Vere had no idea how such a plan had come to him. To take a
person and use them without their knowledge for his ulterior purposes was
ethically against everything he believed in. He wasn’t doing this for himself,
though, he reminded himself. He was doing it for Dhurahn.

Sam had shown herself willing to share his bed privately, so
why should it make any difference to her if she shared it publicly? And their
relationship would have to be shown publicly in order for it to benefit Dhurahn.
The Heads of State would need to know that the ‘expert witness’ the Emir
believed was secretly in his pocket was publicly in Vere’s bed.

Publicly taking a mistress went against everything Vere held
most dear, for he was a deeply private man, a man of pride and honour, but he
knew that the only criticism of his actions would be his own. Drax would be more
amused than shocked—all the more so if he believed that Vere genuinely felt
desire for Sam—and Vere would keep from him the fact that his affair was a
premeditated plan to outwit the Emir.