version. He would believe the worst and, in the circumstances, be glad to believe the worst of her if it made his half-brother’s wrongdoing seem more understandable and more forgivable.
It would undoubtedly not occur to Azrael that she was a good deal less experienced with men than most women in her age group. Had that not been the case, would there have been anything in Tahir’s attitude that she would have recognised as threatening? Could she somehow have averted that threat? How could she tell? Aside of the few casual dates she had enjoyed as a schoolgirl and the single boyfriend she had had since her grandfather went into care, Molly had had neither the freedom nor the time to explore the world of sex. The boyfriend had been short-lived because she hadn’t particularly enjoyed his kisses and when he had demanded more she had ditched him, reckoning that if he had been right for her she would have wanted to have sex with him, instead of being repulsed by the idea of it. There was the possibility, though, she conceded wryly, that she had a naturally low sex drive because she was not remotely bothered by her lack of experience and only very mildly curious about what she might be missing. Although, if she was honest, she reflected grudgingly, she had been considerably more curious since she first laid eyes on Azrael...
But what on earth did it matter what Azrael thought of her? Why would she even care?
Well, the unwilling prisoner was about to make a run for it, Molly decided. Recalling all those soldiers on the floor below, she realised she would have to wait until night fell and most people were asleep and then creep out. Buoyed up by the belief that she could thumb her nose at Azrael’s coercion and escape Djalia, Molly lay back on her bed, smiling for the first time that day. Throwing a spanner in the works of Azrael’s god complex held immense appeal for her.
Luckily she hadn’t unsealed the water bottle that had arrived with her very tasty meal. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that she could head into the desert heat without water, but she wondered how far and in which direction the nearest road lay. Positioning herself by the window for a couple of hours, she kept watch for vehicles, and there were several four-wheel-drive rough-terrain cars that rolled down the dunes but they all traversed the same route, she noted with satisfaction. She would follow their tracks out back to civilisation and freedom.
* * *
‘Tahir will be harshly punished by his father,’ Butrus reminded his monarch. ‘Prince Firuz is a severe man.’
‘As I have cause to know,’ Azrael reminded the older man wryly, for Firuz was his stepfather.
Some years after Azrael’s father had been executed in Djalia, Azrael’s mother had returned to Quarein and remarried. The following year Tahir had been born. A former princess of Quarein, Azrael’s mother’s marriage to the ruling sheikh of Quarein had been as much a political alliance to strengthen her teenaged son’s standing as a personal relationship. Always guiltily aware of that truth, Azrael had grimly tolerated Firuz’s tough parenting regime and pitied his kid brother for what lay ahead of him.
‘He will not escape a whipping,’ Butrus mused out loud with a faint but perceptible shudder. ‘You should tell Miss Carlisle that. Tahir will pay heavily for his stupidity. His father will ensure it. Prince Firuz makes no allowance for youthful mistakes.’
‘Unhappily for Tahir, this was much worse than youthful idiocy. It was a crime,’ Azrael pronounced stonily. ‘I feel dirtied by the whole business. For the first time in my life I have threatened a woman.’
‘Our country comes first and last,’ his advisor murmured heavily. ‘Occasionally there will be a need to face repugnant choices and choose the lesser of two evils.’
Azrael excused himself for the night. His brain recognised that Butrus was correct and that being a king would sometimes plunge him into contentious issues, but in his heart he was too conflicted to accept it. He had always tried to be an honourable, decent man but now he was utilising coercion on an innocent woman and the necessity of that treatment inflamed his pride and his own sense of justice. He felt guilty now.
About an hour before dawn, Molly crept down the spiral staircase carrying her shoes, the little tube of lip salve she had had in the pocket of her jeans and the bottle of water in a carrier bag she had found stuffed in the bathroom cabinet. She had tucked in a towel to cover her head from the heat because she had no hat to use. She had left her jeans behind, seeing no reason to burden herself with having to carry anything she couldn’t use. The forecourt, which had been so busy earlier in the day, was deserted but for one soldier stationed by the wall smoking. She lurked in the shadows until he began patrolling the battlements again and turned his back to the steps that led down to the next level. Then quick as a flash she darted out into view barefoot and sped down the steps.
There appeared to be no more guards but she still had to find her way out of the fortress. Fortunately for her, everywhere seemed to be deserted and she went down another flight of steps to find herself in a walled courtyard with closed gates and a pack of parked four-wheel drives. She wished she could steal a car and wondered what the punishment for that would be in Djalia. But starting up a car engine would attract attention, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Vehicles had been coming and going at all hours late into the night while she’d watched. At the same time she doubted her ability to drive up a steep sand dune and feared coming to grief at that first hurdle.
Picking her way between the cars while on the watch for anyone moving, she reached the gates and, with all the strength she had, she thrust down the iron bar on the gate to open it. As it creaked noisily open she slid out through the gap with a fast-beating heart and fled.
MOLLY RAN UP the dune through the deep pitted tracks left by the cars, desperate not to be spotted by guards at the fortress before she could get out of sight. She reached the peak and, because it was much colder than she had expected, she drew in a deep breath and kept on running, grateful that she was fit. Running was, after all, what she did for exercise at home, but running in a dress was another story altogether, she discovered, with the stretch of her legs restricted and her strides shortened. She thought about simply pulling the dress up to her waist but, although she could see no sign of life in the moonlit landscape, she didn’t want to expose herself in her underwear in a country where that was probably unacceptable.
She stayed on the tracks but they mysteriously petered out around the time the sun started rising and the glare of that alone made studying her surroundings a challenge. She was looking for a landmark of some kind to take as a direction to ensure that she didn’t get lost, but all she could see was marching lines of sand dunes. What did you expect? she asked herself irritably. A signpost to the airport?
Well, no, but she had hoped to find a recognisable road at least, only there wasn’t a road or tracks anywhere that she could see. Yet the cars must have travelled from somewhere, she thought in frustration, veering off to the left when she espied flatter land there because climbing a dune without tracks was too difficult and too tiring to get her anywhere fast. A stony plain stretched before her then, occasional small bits of vegetation appearing, which persuaded her that she was heading in the right direction and likely to draw closer to what she dimly thought of as civilisation. Buildings, roads, cars...people. It infuriated her that probably all those things were close by, but she couldn’t spot them because of the blasted dunes blocking her view. She stilled a few times and simply listened, hoping to catch sounds that would lead her in a certain direction, but there was nothing, only the soft noise of the light breeze in her eardrums and the fast beat of her own heart. While she was sipping her water, mindful that she needed to conserve it, however, Azrael was shouting for the first time in all the years Butrus had known him.
‘How could any woman be that
