into her white face. A face he’d been so impatient to see, never realising until too late that he’d seen it already, and so much more recently than the child Aziza he had been trying to remember.
Against the pallor of her skin, her golden eyes looked huge and dark, the lush fringes of her black lashes making them look even wider than before. He had been enchanted by those eyes that night on the balcony, he remembered. They had drawn him in like some witch’s spell woven deliberately around him. Was it then that the plan to deceive him had come to her mind—or was there some other way that this scheme had been created? A maid couldn’t have arranged all this by herself, could she? There had to be someone else behind all this. The answer seemed obvious.
How much had Farouk been planning all this time?
‘Who put you up to this?’
‘No one... I mean...’
For a moment it looked like she was about to get to her feet, then obviously thought the better of it. But the slight movement was enough to remind Nabil of the implications of the situation and to have him checking in the belt under his robe. Feeling the cool slide of metal there under his fingertips, he relaxed again and flung a repeat of the question at her with cold virulence.
‘I asked you—who?’
‘No one put me up to it.’
She’d regained some sort of strength in her voice and was able to make it sound as if she was actually defying him. He was glad to see that. He didn’t want to see her go down without a real contest. He wanted a worthy opponent to give him a chance to release some of the tumult of emotions he was feeling inside.
All he should be feeling was anger and betrayal. He’d been deceived again, trapped—this wasn’t Aziza, was it? But it was intensely disturbing to realise that there was so much more. The desire was only part of it.
‘It was you.’
‘Me! Are you mad, woman? Are you actually claiming that I...?’
Aziza—or Zia—or whatever her name was—had obviously had enough of being down on the floor. She put her hands to the floor and pushed herself upwards, scrambling to her feet as she faced him boldly, her neat little chin set into a firm declaration of defiance. Strangely, she looked even more defenceless standing before him like this when she had clearly tried to draw herself up to her full height.
‘You are the one who asked me—who picked me out as his prospective bride.’
‘Not you...’
He was remembering the moment when he had seen her and her mistress—Jamalia—through the two-way mirror, recalling the hot wave of physical hunger that had swept through him just from touching her, kissing her, on the balcony. The same hunger that had alerted him to the fact that something was not as he had anticipated when he had fed her the sugared grape at the banquet table.
When he had caught the scent of her perfume.
‘I never chose you.’
Aziza winced under the sting of that lashing dismissal. She had been so overjoyed to think that Nabil had chosen her. That he wanted her above all the other candidates. The beautiful women he could have chosen. Even her sister. But he had picked her. The one her father had always believed was second best.
But now Nabil was saying that he hadn’t chosen her—he didn’t even want her! Her mind flashed back to the scene in the crowded, brilliantly lit banqueting hall. The knowing looks of the guests who had watched as Nabil had stood up and grabbed hold of her hand.
She had thought she knew what that meant. She’d believed that very soon she would be a proper wife, sharing her husband’s bed. But now what would happen?
I never chose you.
How would she ever face everyone all over again and let them know that Sheikh Nabil—the man she had thought was to be her husband—had taken one look at her face and rejected her out of hand?
How could she go from being Queen one moment to a nobody—a rejected, spurned nobody—in less than a couple of hours? And how could she ever cope with knowing that Nabil had decided she was not the person he wanted? The thought of confronting her father’s rage at her failure was as nothing when compared with the prospect of having to leave now, when it had seemed that so much—her dreams and fantasies—had been within her grasp.
Her body still thrummed from the sensual tension that had seared through it. Every nerve was stretched so tight she felt it would snap if she moved, and the stinging, burning need that his kiss, his touch, had woken so newly in her refused to subside while he was still so near, so close that she only had to reach out her hand...
It was only when she saw the way Nabil’s head came up, the wary tensing of his long body, that she realised she had done just that, and somehow added fire to the suspicions he was already harbouring against her.
‘You asked for Jamalia’s sister,’ she managed, stumbling over the words.
‘And got her maid instead.’ Could he put any more darkness, any further rejection, into the words? ‘So what is this—some sort of plan to trap me, tie me into marriage with you?’
‘Oh, no, no! Why would I want to trap you?’
Just the horror at the thought that he might actually believe she had wanted to do that propelled her forward jerkily, both hands coming out this time, reaching for him.
She never actually saw him move; never even registered the sudden blink that revealed his reaction, the swift, flash of action that intercepted and reversed their positions so that suddenly, instead of facing him, she had been grasped by the wrist and twisted round against him. Her back was tight up against the hard strength of his chest, her body imprisoned by the iron-hard bands of his arms.
And in his hand was the polished gleam of metal, the narrow shape of a wicked, sharply honed knife held so tight in Nabil’s fist that his knuckles showed white where he gripped it hard.
‘Nabil, no!’
Aziza tried to turn to face him, realising her mistake when his arms tightened round her even more and she could hear the thud of his heartbeat against her ear. It was that rapid and uneven pulse that told its own story, making her realise the truth. She should have thought; should have remembered. Now, too late, the recollection of the way he had started when a door had banged in the banqueting hall came back to haunt her with a new and disturbing significance. The terrible memory of the day that he had survived the assassination attempt flashed behind her eyes.
‘You don’t need that—really you don’t.’
Immediately she made herself react, letting her body go limp against his as she held her own hands out in front of her, fingers splayed so that he could see there was nothing hidden there.
‘I’m sorry—I’m not really Jamalia’s maid—and there is nothing in this that was ever against you.’
At least she prayed not. Her father had seemed content enough with the marriage negotiations. He had never shown any inclination to turn his loyalties to the lingering group of revolutionaries who had threatened rebellion. But did Nabil suspect that he would?
‘I would never harm you—I
