EXACTLY? Kal took a piece of bread, tore it in two.
‘Why would you think I have a problem?’ he asked, playing for time in the face of Rose’s unexpected challenge.
‘There’s a muscle just by the corner of your mouth that you’d probably be wise to cover when you play poker,’ she replied.
She reached out and touched a spot just below the right hand corner of his mouth.
‘Just there.’
As their eyes locked, he kept perfectly still, knowing that if he moved an inch he would be tasting those long, slender fingers, sliding his tongue along the length of each one, and food would be the furthest thing from his mind. That the only thing he’d be eating would be her.
As if sensing the danger, she curled them back into her palm, let her hand drop.
‘Should I ever be tempted to gamble, I’ll bear that in mind,’ he said. Took a mouthful of bread before he blurted out the real reason he had been foisted on her by Lucy and she sent him packing.
Rose made no move to eat, but continued to regard him. ‘Well?’ she prompted, refusing to let the matter drop. ‘I recall that you mentioned your family were personae non gratae at court and presumably, as a royal residence, Bab el Sama is an extension of that. Will Princess Sabirah’s visit be awkward for you?’
The breath stopped in his throat. Not suspicion, concern. She was anxious for him…
‘This was originally the site of the Khatib tribe’s summer camp,’ he told her, not sure where exactly he was going with this, but wanting her to understand who, what he was. ‘The mountains provided not only water, grazing for the animals, but a fortress at their back in troubled times.’ He looked up at the barren peaks towering above them. ‘They are impassable.’
‘So is that a yes or a no?’ she asked, refusing to be diverted by history.
‘Good question.’
And the answer was that, far from awkward, Lucy was using court etiquette for his benefit, putting him in a place where his aunt could not, without causing offence to an honoured guest, ignore him.
In London, in her elegant drawing room, it had all seemed so simple. Before he’d met Rose. Now nothing was simple and if this had been for him alone he would have stepped back, taken himself out of the picture for the morning. But this was for his grandfather.
‘Maybe you’d better tell me what happened, Kal,’ she said when he didn’t offer an answer. ‘Just enough to stop me from putting my foot in it.’
‘Your foot?’
‘I’m sorry. You speak such perfect English that I forget that it isn’t your first language.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not even sure what your first language is. Arabic, French…?’
‘Take your pick,’ he said. ‘I grew up speaking both. And quickly added English when my father married for the second time. I know what “putting your foot in it” means. But, to answer your question, the court is wherever the Emir happens to be, so I’m safe enough unless he decides to accompany his wife.’
‘And if he does?’
He couldn’t get that lucky. Could he? Or was the Emir, like everyone else, fascinated by this English ‘Rose’ who’d been orphaned so tragically as a little girl. Who, from the age of sixteen, had taken up her parents’ cause, devoted her whole life to the charity they’d founded, adding dozens of other good causes over the years.
‘I’m wherever you happen to be, Rose. And you are an honoured guest in his country. Who knows,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘he might be sufficiently charmed by you to acknowledge my existence.’
‘Whoa, whoa…’ She put down her fork, sat back. ‘Back up, buster. I need to know what I’m getting into here.’
‘“Back up, buster”?’ he repeated, startled out of his own concerns. ‘Where on earth did Lady Rose Napier pick up an expression like that?’
She blinked, appeared to gather herself, physically put the cool facade back in place. ‘I meet all kinds of people in my work,’ she said. Even her voice had changed slightly, had taken on a hint of steel, as if she was drawing back from him, and he recalled his earlier feeling that she was two separate people. The formal, untouchable, unreadable ‘Lady’. And this other woman whose voice was huskier, whose lush mouth was softer, whose eyes seemed to shine a brighter blue. Who used unexpectedly colloquial expressions.
The one he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off.
The selfish gene, the one he’d been fighting all his life, urged him to reach out, grasp her hand, stop that Rose from slipping away.
Instead, like her, he took a moment to gather himself, take a step back before, control restored, he said, ‘What happened is no secret. Google my family and you’ll find enough gossip to fill a book.’
‘I’d rather save that for when I’ve run out of fiction,’ she replied crisply. ‘The edited highlights will do.’
‘I wish it was fiction,’ he said. ‘My grandfather was hardly a credit to his family.’
He reached for a pitcher of water, offered it to her and, when she nodded, he filled both their glasses.
‘Kalil al-Khatib, my grandfather, was the oldest son of the Emir and, although a ruler is free to name his successor, no one ever doubted that it would be him.’
‘You have the same name as your grandfather?’ she asked.
‘It is the tradition. My first son will be named Zaki for my father.’ If he achieved recognition, a traditional marriage, a place in the society that had rejected his family.
‘That must become rather confusing.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, if a man has two or three sons, won’t all their firstborn sons have the same name?’ Then, ‘Oh, wait. That’s why Dena calls you “bin Zaki”. That’s “son of”, isn’t it?’
He couldn’t stop the smile that betrayed his pleasure. She was so quick, so intelligent, eager to learn.
The curl of desire as, equally pleased with herself for ‘getting it’, she smiled back.
Then her forehead puckered in a frown as she quickly picked up on what else he’d told her. ‘But I don’t understand. Why do you call yourself al-Zaki and not al-Khatib?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he said, forcing himself to concentrate on that, rather than the curve of her cheek, the line of her neck. The hollows in her throat that were made for a man’s tongue.
‘I have all afternoon.’
He sought for a beginning, something that would make sense of tribal history, the harshness of the life, the need for a strong leader.
‘My grandfather was his father’s favourite. They both loved to ride, hunt in the desert with their falcons. They were, people said, more like twins than father and son. They were both utterly fearless, both much respected. Loved.’
He thought of Dena. She’d called herself his sister, but she was not related to him by blood. Had she loved him, too?
Then, realising that Rose was waiting, ‘He was everything that was required of a ruler in those simpler times.’
‘Everything?’
‘Strong enough to hold off his enemies, to protect the summer grazing, the oases. Keep his people and their stock safe.’
‘That would be before the oil?’
He nodded. ‘They were still the qualities admired, necessary even in a charismatic leader, but it is true that once the oil started flowing and money began to pour into the country, the role needed a greater vision. Something beyond the warrior, the great hunter, the trusted arbitrator. A man to take the international stage.’
‘And your grandfather couldn’t adapt?’
‘Oh, he adapted,’ Kal said wryly. ‘Just not in the right way. He was a big man with big appetites and wealth gave him the entire world in which to indulge them. He spent a fortune on a string of racehorses, enjoyed the gaming tables, never lacked some beauty to decorate his arm and, as the heir apparent to one of the new oil rich states, his excesses inevitably attracted media attention. None of it favourable.’
‘I bet that went down well at home,’ she said with a wry look and he caught again a glimpse of the inner Rose. The one she tried so hard to keep suppressed.
‘Like a lead balloon?’ he offered.
