Desert Destiny Read online

  The tent flap was swept aside.

  ‘Go away, you bas——!’ Bethsheba broke off, her head raised and her eyes glittering with impotent fury as she saw it was Khalisha, and not the sheikh, who stood in the shadowy entrance to the tent.

  ‘My lord has sent me to assist you,’ Khalisha said. ‘You must dress quickly.’

  Bethsheba flung the clothes on the cushions furiously. ‘Well, I won’t do it!’

  ‘Undress quickly that I may help you,’ Khalisha said, moving to pick up the clothes, her dark eyes contemptuous. ‘My lord wishes to leave at once.’

  Bethsheba looked at her and saw the dislike in her eyes. So Khalisha was still jealous of her relationship with Suliman? Suddenly, hope sprang in Bethsheba as she realised that Khalisha would probably help her escape if she asked her to.

  ‘I—I don’t want to go with your lord Suliman,’ she said slowly, watching Khalisha.

  The girl gave an angry snort. ‘Why should any woman refuse a man such as he?’

  ‘But it’s true!’ Bethsheba said quickly. ‘I don’t! I want to fly back to Tangier with Chris!’

  Khalisha hesitated, then laughed. ‘You lie, Englishwoman!’ Bending swiftly, she undressed Bethsheba, tugging the gold caftan off her and starting to splash her with warm scented water from head to foot.

  ‘If I wanted to be with Suliman,’ Bethsheba said, ‘why did I try to escape last night?’

  There was a silence. Khalisha looked at her and said slowly, ‘Even if what you say is true—what can be done?’

  Her heart quickened. Lowering her voice, she said urgently, ‘When Chris awakes you can tell him where I am. Tell him how I am dressed and where I am headed. Help him recognise me from the air and——’

  ‘If I did that you would betray me to my lord Suliman!’

  ‘Not if I never saw him again,’ she said at once. ‘Not if Chris found me and took me back to Tangier.’

  Outside, the sound of activity in the camp was growing. Horses were being saddled and the excited babble of Arabic from the men was a sign that the sheikh was leaving almost immediately.

  ‘I will consider it,’ sitt,’ Khalisha said under her breath, ‘and we will discuss it no more!’

  Relief swamped her. She allowed the girl to finish washing her and dress her in the dark red robes. Her answer had been yes: not in her voice, but in her eyes. She had seen it and known at once that Khalisha would tell Chris where she was when he awoke.

  When she was dressed she stood back to survey herself in the mirror.

  A desert warrior queen stared back at her. Bethsheba caught her breath. The dark red turban, dark red silk yashmak, and dark red robes of a Hariff of the Auda Khazir lent her an exciting majesty she had never possessed before.

  Gold eyes rimmed with kohl appeared out above the dark red yashmak, and she stood with regal dignity and arrogance, the robes lending her character as she put her hands on her slim hips, turned this way and that, her long red oxblood riding boots flashing with gold spurs.

  Turning, she strode out of the tent. Her dark red cloak billowed behind her long-legged arrogantly feminine stride. Men flicked curious glances at her, gave deep salaams as she walked past them, every inch a warrior queen.

  A tall man was striding towards her in black. A gold iqal fastened his black head-dress, and beneath the black robes his arrogantly masculine body signalled to her that it was Suliman, and her body reacted with violent desire at the sight of him.

  He stopped in front of her. ‘Well, bint,’ he drawled softly, eyes intent on her, ‘you carry your robes as befits a warrior queen!’

  She looked at him through her gold lashes and said nothing; her heart was beating too fast to allow her to speak. She wanted him. She hated him. She yearned to both escape and surrender.

  ‘My she-cat,’ Suliman said under his breath, and ripped the yashmak away from her face to expose the passionate curve of her mouth. ‘My warrior queen!’ He dragged her to him without ceremony and kissed her hard on the mouth in front of his men, his arms binding her helplessly to his strength while her mouth opened with a low moan of hatred beneath his, and she allowed his kiss to knock her senseless.

  When he drew back his face was flushed and his eyes dark with possessive desire. Bethsheba swayed, consumed with fire and yearning and hatred. How could a man affect her this much?

  ‘Come,’ he said thickly, and took her hand, ‘we must leave at once.’

  Together they strode in dark robes towards the waiting horses. In the flickering firelight the two black stallions were magnificent, their sleek muscles gleaming and water-bottles hanging on their saddles.

  ‘Is Chris all right?’ Bethsheba asked resentfully as they reached the horses. ‘Did the fall hurt him?’

  Suliman’s eyes flashed. ‘Do not be too concerned about him, Sheba, lest you sting me into the actions of a jealous man!’

  ‘Did you drug the pilot, too?’ she asked angrily.

  He laughed and drawled wryly, ‘The pilot is Auda Khazir, bint! We are an ancient tribe—older even than the Berbar. You will find us everywhere——’ the white teeth flashed in a smile ‘—even piloting helicopters in Tangier!’

  Suliman mounted his horse, took the reins in strong hands, and sat astride it, magnificent in black robes, the gold iqal gleaming in the firelight.

  Bethsheba trembled with resentment, watching him for a moment, rebellion in her eyes. Then she tightened her lips with determination and mounted her own horse, lifting her head proudly when she was astride the stallion and meeting Suliman’s intense gaze.

  ‘Here.’ With a hiss of steel he produced a long curving sword and handed it to her. ‘Take this. We face a dangerous wilderness, and you must arm yourself against it.’

  ‘I can’t take that,’ she said, staring at the scimitar in horror.

  ‘You must,’ he said flatly, mouth grim.

  ‘But I thought we were riding to your Great Palace of Suliman and——’

  ‘We are. But it is many hours’ ride from here, and we must travel alone to avoid detection.’ He held out the scimitar, eyes hard. Take it.’

  Her eyes met his in tense silence. Slowly, she took the scimitar, and when she realised that her hand was not even trembling she stared at it, at the slender fingers curved around the hilt.

  ‘Sheath it, bint,’ the sheikh drawled, his black stallion dancing beneath him. ‘You have a scabbard at your hip.’

  Unsmiling, Bethsheba looked at her hip and saw the black scabbard. Without saying a word, she sheathed the sword, felt it hard against hip and thigh, and then lifted her head to meet his gaze proudly.

  ‘We ride!’ Suliman said under his breath, and nudged his horse into a fast canter.

  Breathless, afraid and excited, Bethsheba nudged her horse into a canter too and followed him into the darkness, her booted feet thrust into the stirrups and her turbaned head bent to the wind.

  They galloped across blackened sand-dunes, neither speaking nor looking to left or right. The thunder of hoofs on the sand, the desert lit with jewelled stars and the receding light of the douar all combined to make Bethsheba feel a deep sense of exhilaration.

  After an hour they were in the middle of the wilderness, and the empty paradise of sand stretched limitlessly on all sides. Their only companions were the moon and the stars and the wind.

  It must have been close to midnight when the temple appeared on the horizon. At first, Bethsheba thought she was imagining it. The vast carved stone walls and the mountainous rocks behind it were just black shapes in the distant darkness. But gradually she realised it was real, and that they were heading towards it.

  ‘Is it the Great Palace of Suliman?’ she shouted to him.

  ‘No,’ Suliman shouted back. ‘But it is our destination tonight!’

  The temple rose up in ancient silence as they approached it. The crescent moon and jewelled stars glittering in the dark sky, illuminating the stone walls.

  A ruined temple, she realised, staring up in a
we. It could have been thousands of years old: the roof ragged with decay, the vast stone entrance scrawled with carvings and words and ornate symbols.

  The carvings were magnificent. Her eyes traced them, wishing she knew what they meant, the carved people bowing to carved Gods, and the lettering surrounding the door telling her something she did not understand.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked, haunted by its ancient beauty and the serenity of the silence that surrounded it.

  ‘It is the Temple of Sheba.’ Suliman’s voice echoed as he led the way, his horse moving with agile grace over the rocks and sand that were the path to the great arched doors.

  ‘Sheba!’ She stared at him, her throat tight, and halted the black stallion at once.

  Suliman halted too and turned his dark head. ‘Do not be afraid of your destiny, Sheba,’ he said deeply. ‘This is your sanctuary, and here your destiny is strong. In every carving, every wall, every ancient silence lies the truth of your birth. This is your temple, and it is the heart of you.’

  He dismounted with masculine grace. His horse swished its black tail, and the harness jingled as it nodded its head. Bethsheba stared at it, then at its master, her mouth quivering with a deep-rooted fear she could not name.

  ‘Were you always going to bring me here, Suliman?’ she asked hoarsely.

  ‘Always.’ He walked to her, his strong hands went around her waist and he lifted her from her horse to stand before him, pressing her against his hard body as he looked down into her eyes. ‘It is written that here shall you understand all. Come…face your destiny!’

  They walked up the dark stone steps, and Bethsheba struggled to control the rising tide of nameless fear as she clung to his hand, and walked shakily up those crumbling stone steps. The arched entrance was high and broad, and she stared up at the ceiling, awed by its height.

  The corridor they entered was long and high. Carvings flanked the stone walls. At the far end she could see a fierce gold light shimmering with dust.

  ‘This is Sheba’s Walk,’ Suliman said beside her. ‘It leads to the heart of the temple—the heart of Sheba.’

  He walked beside her, taller, much taller than she, his head held high, his muscular body cloaked in black robes, the gold iqal gleaming on his regal head and his black riding boots echoing on the stone floor, gold spurs jangling as he walked.

  Bethsheba had never seen him more magnificent than he was now, and she tried to control her fear, matching his dignity with her own as she walked beside him, her mouth proud, her hand in his.

  Suddenly, light blinded her.

  ‘Oh!’ Stepping back, a hand shielding her eyes, she cried out.

  ‘Take my hand!’ Suliman’s dark voice urged. ‘Step into the heart with me!’

  Blindly, she groped for him. The light was dazzling, but as his strong fingers closed around hers she felt him tug her forward into the light until it hurt unbearably and she cried out, afraid.

  Then the light went.

  ‘What happened?’ she whispered, rubbing her eyes and peering around the room, eyes dazed. ‘The light went so suddenly that I——’

  ‘It is the Tunnel of the Moon,’ Suliman told her. ‘See—the light pours in through that tunnel in the ceiling.’

  Bethsheba lifted her head, gazing up in wonder at the high domed ceiling. A long spherical tunnel sent light pouring in from the silver moon. It landed on a vast gold statue.

  Her eyes widened as she stared at the statue, the woman with long golden hair and a split body: the head and torso of a woman, but the lower body of a golden cat with long gold tail.

  ‘Sheba!’ Suliman said beside her as she stared at the statue. ‘She blinds all who approach with her beauty. Only when you reach her heart are you safe from her light.’

  ‘Her heart…!’ Bethsheba looked down to see that they stood on a carved stone heart seven feet wide. ‘What does that writing mean?’

  ‘They are the dying words of Sheba,’ Suliman told her. ‘It means, “I shall return seven times”.’

  Slowly she looked at the statue, her lips parted.

  ‘Yes, bint!’ Suliman drawled, watching her eyes. ‘You are face to face with your namesake at last!’

  ‘This is her?’ she asked, turning to look at his hard face. ‘The one you think of when you call me Sheba?’

  He laughed softly. ‘Did you think it was another woman?’

  Hot colour flooded her face. ‘I—I wasn’t sure…’

  ‘And you were jealous?’ He took her shoulders in strong hands and turned her to face him, his eyes blazing with possessive triumph. ‘From now on you will show me your jealousy. Your pain. Your rage. From now on, Sheba, you will display your passions—and I will fan the flames or soothe your jealousy at will!’

  Tell me about Sheba,’ she demanded huskily, her pulses racing at the thought of what he could do to her if they spent much more time together. ‘I want to know about her! Tell me everything! Is she a goddess? A sphinx? A——?’

  ‘This is not Egypt, bint!’ he drawled. ‘We have no sphinx goddesses here. No, Sheba was something quite different.’

  ‘A queen?’

  ‘She was Queen of the Hafu,’ he said. ‘The Hafu was this area of the Sahara in ancient times. But Sheba was not of royal blood. It is written that she was born of the desert, born in the sands in a goat-hair tent among nomads. That she came out of Arabia in a ship of gold, and that her beauty and courage made her a queen.’

  ‘A romantic story.’ Bethsheba smiled. ‘But is it true?’

  ‘There is little evidence of her existence, save for this temple and the writings at the Great Palace of Suliman. But I believe in the power of her legend, bint. No legend springs from barren earth. I believe she existed, and that she was a warrior Queen of the Hafu.’

  ‘And her seven reincarnations?’ she asked, watching him through her gold lashes and feeling her heart respond to the smile that touched his hard mouth as he met her gaze.

  ‘It is written that my ancestor Suliman married Sheba in her third reincarnation in the fourteenth century. She was as beautiful and powerful as her namesake, and she ruled the Hafu with my ancestor Suliman the Great.’

  ‘A fairy-tale ending!’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Not quite,’ Suliman said flatly. ‘Sheba was poisoned by one of her enemies.’

  ‘Poisoned!’ She was horrified.

  ‘My ancestor Sheikh Suliman El Khazir built this temple in homage to her beauty and his love for her. He had the words of Sheba inscribed on this stone heart to remind future generations that the Sheba would return.’

  ‘That she would return seven times…’ Bethsheba said huskily.

  ‘Yes. And each reincarnation would occur in the lifetime of the seventh generation. Therefore each seventh-generation eldest son is named Suliman.’ His eyes glittered. ‘And I am he.’

  ‘But I am not Sheba!’ she said on an urgent whisper. ‘My parents were English! My father a British army officer! I was born in Bahrain, but——’

  ‘What were the circumstances of your birth?’

  ‘I…’ she stared into those dark whirlpool eyes and heard herself say hoarsely ‘…I was born in a goat-hair tent in the desert on a hot day in——’

  ‘July!’

  ‘Yes!’ Her voice was inaudible.

  ‘The seventh!’ His voice was deep, urgent, compelling. ‘You were born on the seventh of the seventh——’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything!’ she said fiercely, her voice a whisper in the echoing stone chamber of Sheba. ‘It’s just coincidence! My mother was supposed to give birth to me in hospital!’ Everything was arranged, but——’

  ‘You cannot arrange fate!’

  ‘No, you don’t understand!’ she said urgently. ‘It was an accident that I was born in the desert! There was an emergency! My father was missing in the desert and my mother——’

  ‘Was called by destiny!’

  ‘No!’ she cried again, heart pounding faster. ‘She had to go out
into the desert, even though she was heavily pregnant. She was so worried—so frantic! She became separated from the men she was with, her pains started, and she stumbled on an encampment where the women helped her and——’

  ‘And you were born,’ he said thickly, eyes flaring, ‘in the desert! On the seventh day of the seventh month in a goat-hair tent among nomads!’

  ‘Coincidence!’ she moaned, clutching his broad shoulders.

  ‘Sheba!’ he said thickly, and then his strong hands were pulling her towards him, his hard mouth closing over hers, and as she moaned in breathless excitement so he pulled her closer, and the moon shone down on the statue of Sheba and Sheikh Suliman El Khazir kissed his she-cat until her knees

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LATER, Suliman led Bethsheba out of the temple.

  It felt, as they walked through that great stone archway, that it was as it should be, as it would always be, and that she had no choice in what was happening to her.

  ‘We must sleep out here,’ Suliman said deeply. ‘The temple floor is too hard, and snakes live in the crevices of its walls.’

  She controlled a shudder. ‘Poisonous snakes?’

  He gave a curt nod, moved to his horse and untied the blanket from the saddle. ‘We will be safer and more comfortable here in the sand. The shade from the rocks will protect us better than any stone walls.’

  Bethsheba went to her own horse and untied the saddle-blanket. It was made of rough thread, coloured in dark blue and red; the royal colours.

  ‘Here.’ Suliman walked in his black robes to a niche of sands enclosed by rough stones. ‘This will be our bed tonight, Sheba.’

  She watched him through her lashes. ‘We will sleep together?’

  ‘How else?’ he said softly, and a smile curved the hard mouth.

  The prospect of actually sleeping in his arms all night sent her pulses rocketing. Lifting her head, she walked to the niche of sands and spread her blanket beside his.

  ‘You may wear your hair loose tonight,’ Suliman told her. ‘It pleases me. But tomorrow you must hide it. It will be a banner to your friend Burton, and I will not have him see it and stop.’