Sheikh's Honor. ALEXANDRA SELLERS
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living in another century, afraid of everything new—could not be my family.” So his determination to force his real family to recognize him grew. He had collected followers to his standard—and eventually…he had taken a hostage.
“And the rest you know,” he said, in an ironic tone.
“The rest I know,” she agreed. “And now your life has changed all over again. Thanks to Zara, you’ve proven your bloodline, you have your father’s titles and property…and you’re so trusted by your uncles they’ve made you Grand Vizier and now you’re on a mission to—”
His head snapped around, and if his dark eyes had searched her before, they now raked her ruthlessly.
“Mission? Who has told you I had a mission?”
She returned his look with surprise. “I thought the reason you were coming here was to get a better command of English so you could study political science or whatever at Harvard in the autumn. I thought a summer with the rowdy Blake family was supposed to be the perfect way to do it.”
The guarded look slowly left his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “It is true.”
Clio turned back to the water ahead of her, her mind buzzing with speculation. What on earth was that about? Did it mean he wasn’t really here to learn English at all? That it was some kind of blind? But for what? What other reason could Prince Jalal possibly have for coming here to the middle of nowhere?
Three
Jalal stood and moved towards the stern, gazing around him as they passed into yet another lake. He lifted both arms, stretching out his hands in powerful adoration. “It is magnificent! So much water!” He breathed deeply. “Smell the freshness of the water! This water is not salt! Is it?”
A loud horn startled her, and Clio whirled to discover that she had turned onto a collision course with another boat. She waved an apology to the indignant pilot as she hastily and not very gracefully adjusted her course. Jalal half lost his balance and recovered.
“Dammit, don’t distract me when I’m driving!” she cried. She had been staring over her shoulder at him. He had a huge physical charisma, but she would get over that. “No, of course it’s not salt,” she said when the danger was past. “All Canada’s lakes are freshwater.”
“Barakallah! It is a miracle. And you drink this water!” He spoke it as a fact, but still he looked for confirmation from her.
“Yes, we drink it.” She smiled, and then, realizing how much she had already let her guard down with him, steeled her heart against the tug she felt. “For now. It may end up polluted in the future, like everything else.”
But his joy would admit no contaminants. “It must be protected from pollution,” he said, as though he himself might fix this by princely decree. “This must not be allowed, to destroy such rich bounty.”
“Yes, really,” Clio agreed dryly.
“Why do they pollute such beauty?”
“Because it is cheaper to dump than to treat waste.”
Prince Jalal nodded, taking it in. Was it his grandmother’s blood in him that so called to this place?
“My mother’s mother was raised in a country of lakes and forests.” He spoke almost absently, as if to himself, and he blinked when she responded.
“Really? How did she happen to marry a desert bandit, then?”
“On a journey across the desert, she was abducted by my grandfather, Selim. She spent the rest of her life in the desert, but she never forgot her beloved land of lakes.”
The result of that union had been only one daughter, his mother. Desert-born Nusaybah had heard many longing tales of her mother’s homeland as a child, and later she had passed them on to her son. She had also passed on the information that his grandmother was a princess in her own country.
That had seemed unlikely, until the DNA tests showed that he was more closely related to Prince Rafi than to Rafi’s two half brothers. Then a search of the family tree showed that Rafi’s mother, the Princess Nargis, was the daughter of a prince whose sister had been abducted and never spoken of again.
For centuries the family had spent every summer in the highlands, just as Jalal’s grandmother had always said. So it was deep in his blood, the longing for lake and forest, though he had not felt its force until he saw these sights.
Clio frowned. “She spent the rest of her life in the desert? She was never rescued?”
He shook his head. “In those days no one would have troubled. She had no choice but to marry her abductor.”
“You mean her family knew where she was but left her there?”
“I cannot say what they knew, only what was the tradition. A woman captured by a man in this way…her family would have ignored her existence from that moment.”
She threw a look over her shoulder at him. “And you accept that?” she demanded incredulously.
“There is nothing for me to reject, Clio. It was finished, many years ago. I am here because of it. My mother Nusaybah was the child of that union. What shall I say? Maktoub. It is written.”
“So that’s in your blood too, is it—abducting women? I suppose that makes it all right! Were you expecting my family and Prince Rafi to leave my sister Zara to her fate?”
He shook his head impatiently, but did not reply.
“But no,” she supplied for him. “That wouldn’t have served your purpose! You knew Rafi had to get her back—world opinion would dictate that. You probably thought he’d refuse to marry her, but that wouldn’t have bothered you. If you spoiled their love, it would be just their bad luck, wouldn’t it? So long as you got what you wanted.”
“I did not reason in this way,” he said levelly. “I believed that he would want her back and would make her his wife when I released her unharmed.”
She had succeeded in talking herself into deep anger. She could not trust herself to make an answer.
So he was a chip off the old block. Did her parents know this about Jalal’s genes? But she didn’t suppose it would have made any difference. If they weren’t concerned about what he had done to Zara, they’d hardly worry about what his grandfather had done to a nameless princess fifty years ago.
A few minutes later they arrived at a large, rambling brick house. It was on the shore of a very pretty lake, smaller than those they had crossed to get here. There were tree-covered hills rising high around one end of the lake, as if some spirit brooded protectively over the water. Fewer houses dotted the shore.
As they approached their destination, he saw a marina clustered with boats on one side, and a pretty painted sign high on one wall of the house that advertised homemade ice cream, a crafts shop and an art gallery.
Clio guided the powerboat in, cut the engine and expertly brought it up beside the dock. Meanwhile, the door of the house exploded outward, and at least half a dozen children of all ages, four dogs and a couple of cats erupted into the morning to cries of “Is he here? Did the prince come? What does he look like?” and loud excited barks.
Everybody raced down to the dock, except for the cats, who dashed up the trunk of a large, leafy tree that over-hung the water so picturesquely he felt he was in some dream, and clung there indignantly, staring at the scene.
“Calm down, yes, he’s here and he doesn’t want to be deafened on day one! Here, Jonah, grab this,” Clio commanded lazily, tossing the mooring rope as a tall boy ran to the bow. The dock beside the boat was stuffed with children and canines, all gaping at him and all more or less panting with excitement.
“Is that him? Is that the prince?” In the babble he could pick out some sentences, but most of what they were saying was lost, as always when too many people