CHAPTER TWO

      HER fears banished by the harsh reality of what was about to happen, Eleni stared at the sheikh with sheer hatred in her eyes—choking out the words as if they were sour berries.

      ‘I was just… just saying goodbye to my horse.’

      ‘Your horse?’ He stepped closer. ‘I think you forget yourself in more ways than one, girl. This is the horse I have just won from your master in a card game—and do you not curtsey when your sheikh appears before you?’

      Her hurt was such that Eleni was tempted to defy him—to tell him that she would rather curtsey to a camel than curtsey to him—but what would that achieve? Because—as her father himself had boasted before he had been taken for a fool—Prince Kaliq Al’Farisi was one of the most powerful men in the whole of Calista. Why tempt the fury of a man like that?

      ‘Highness,’ she murmured as she sank briefly downwards.

      Kaliq ran his eyes over her. There was something in her attitude which perplexed him. Something which did not quite add up. Why was a mere female servant bothered about what happened to her master’s horse?

      ‘Explain yourself!’ he commanded.

      His voice cracked out like a whip and instinctively Eleni flinched. He was no different from her cruel father, she thought bitterly. No different from all men with their harsh and domineering ways. Did he really expect her to speak freely to him? He, who was a man and a stranger and a royal prince—especially when one of his bodyguards was hovering in the background?

      ‘What is it that you wish me to explain, Highness?’ Eleni questioned woodenly.

      Kaliq had seen those huge eyes darting over at his bodyguard. And he remembered their alluring colour, too… As bewitching a colour as he had ever seen. ‘Be gone,’ he said, dismissing his bodyguard peremptorily.

      ‘But, Highness—’

      Kaliq turned to the burly minder, a look of contempt curving his lips. ‘You think that I need your protection against this tiny lizard of a girl?’ he questioned, elevating his black brows in arrogant query. ‘Or perhaps you think that she needs mine?’

      ‘No, Highness!’

      ‘Quite right—for a sheikh does not concern himself with scruffy little urchins like this! So be gone,’ Kaliq repeated, with an edge of anger to his voice, and the man slipped out of the stables.

      Eleni stood there, waiting for the interrogation to begin, but the sheikh was nothing if not unpredictable. Completely ignoring her, he walked over to study the horse, running his experienced eyes over the animal’s gleaming flesh and lithe limbs. Kaliq gave a slow smile of satisfaction. Up close the creature was even more magnificent than when he had seen it from a distance on the racetrack last week.

      He took a step forwards but Nabat gave a nervous whinny and jerked back into the corner. Anxiously, Eleni watched and waited to see whether the prince would show the same dominance and aggression as he had exhibited at the poker table, but to her surprise he did not. Instead, he turned around and subjected her to a long, slow scrutiny which suddenly made her feel very peculiar indeed. No man had ever looked at her in such a way before. And no man should, she thought weakly, wondering what had caused her heart to pound so distractingly, or her skin to tingle and glow.

      ‘Stroke the horse,’ he instructed.

      ‘But—’

      ‘Do not question me,’ he cut in icily. ‘Never question the sheikh—did they not teach you that in school, girl?’

      Of course they did. Basic instruction in protocol was part of the Calistan history course and taught in every village school in the country. And these days even lowly servants went to school—by order of Queen Anya, who had overhauled the outdated system and insisted that every child in the land should have the opportunity to acquire a rudimentary education.

      But, unsurprisingly, Eleni’s history lessons had not included a section on how a lowly commoner should behave when she was alone in a stable with a sheikh! And not just any sheikh, either—but the arrogant playboy who was about to take from her the only thing in the world which she had ever truly loved.

      ‘Forgive me, Highness,’ she said unconvincingly.

      Kaliq’s eyes glinted. In his thirty-six years he had heard enough variations on deference to know that such respect was distinctly lacking in this girl’s attitude. In fact, her whole manner simmered with a kind of suppressed anger. How dared she? And what lay behind such intolerable insolence?

      ‘Stroke the horse,’ he repeated silkily.

      This time she could not refuse him. Eleni approached Nabat, who immediately came trotting out from the corner, making little snorting sounds of delight as he began to nuzzle at her hand for sugar. And the warmth of his dear breath on her fingers was enough to dispel Eleni’s nerves and for her to momentarily forget where she was, and with whom.

      ‘No, no, my sweet!’ she laughed. ‘I have no treat for you today!’ She heard the intake of the sheikh’s breath and she looked up to find him watching her as a snake might fix its eyes on the charmer.

      ‘Who are you?’ he questioned slowly.

      ‘My name… is Eleni.’

      He shook his head impatiently. ‘Your name is of no interest to me.’ Staring deep into her distractingly beautiful eyes, he lowered his voice. ‘I want to know why you are so familiar with a creature of such value as this.’

      ‘Because…’ Eleni bit her lip. She could see the hard and forbidding lines of his face and her heart sank. What a fool she was. Did she really think that she would have been able to stow away and be smuggled into the royal stables in order to be near her beloved horse? Couldn’t she imagine how formidable this man’s anger would be when he discovered her, as discover her he inevitably would?

      No. So could she not risk telling him the truth?

      ‘Because I have cared for this horse since he first came to these stables!’ she declared. ‘When Nabat was little more than a badly treated young foal!’

      ‘Nabat?’

      ‘The stallion’s name. It means sweetness—like the pieces of yellow sugar you crush between your fingers on market day. He answers to that,’ she added stubbornly.

      ‘Go on,’ said Kaliq in an odd kind of voice.

      ‘I washed and brushed him and coaxed him to take food from my hand. It was I who first mounted him bareback,’ she said, a strange warmth glowing in her heart as she remembered that glorious day when she had ridden him around the yard. ‘And I who first put the saddle on his back.’ Eleni swallowed. ‘At first he did not like it—this is a breed of horse who instinctively wishes to be free. But, gradually, he allowed himself to become comfortable with it. And I… I—’

      At this, her voice broke as she tried to imagine a world without Nabat and suddenly all restraint left her as she forgot the rank of the dark-eyed man who stood before her. ‘I love this creature,’ she whispered, and her heart ached so much that she completely disregarded the first tear which slid slowly down her cheek.

      But Kaliq stared at her incredulously. A servant daring to show emotion in front of her sheikh! How dared she? ‘Dry your eyes,’ he ordered harshly, steeling his heart to the sparkle of tears which made her eyes look so huge and so brilliantly green. ‘And then answer my question as I wish it to be answered!’

      ‘But I just have,’ objected Eleni as she swiftly wiped the rogue tears away.

      ‘No,’ he said witheringly. ‘You have not. You have failed to satisfy my curiosity to know why you, a poor and humble servant girl who