hands, his set expression. Only his eyes were bleak, with hatred for the English aristocrat who had fathered him, and for the two people who had raised him. He was wrong, surely he was wrong, to think that they did so simply because they were paid? Those childhood memories, not just of the Roman coin but of the snow, the sledding—they had been happy times. It tugged on her heartstrings to see him so tortured, for it was clear that he had not permitted himself to mourn either his lost history or the loss of his putative father, the kind surveyor.
Christopher thought it was all buried and forgotten with his amulet. Did he truly believe that? He desperately wanted to, and they had so little time, a matter of hours, before they parted for ever. Though he resisted when she tried to take his hand, she determinedly twined her fingers with his, pressing a lingering kiss to his knuckles.
‘I don’t want your pity, Tahira.’
‘I am shocked, and I am angry on your behalf, and very sorry indeed for your poor mother, but what I feel for you is not pity. Why would I pity a man who has for the last six months faced untold dangers, taken breathtaking risks, to do what he thought was right? A man who could easily have taken advantage of the connections which the likes of this Lord Armstrong could have given him? A man with such courage, such integrity, such honour, who has taken so much trouble to make our nights together so perfect. I don’t pity you, I feel...’
Overwhelmed she blinked furiously, bending her head to press another, more passionate kiss on Christopher’s hand. What she felt for him made her heart lurch. What she felt—no, she couldn’t let herself feel that. The ultimate taboo. The intensity of this night had whipped her emotions into a shape she mistook for something utterly inappropriate, which would unravel in the cold light of day. ‘I don’t pity you, Christopher Fordyce,’ Tahira said.
‘I don’t have the right to that name,’ he retorted curtly, though his expression had softened, and he no longer tried to escape her touch. ‘And as a bastard, I have no right to that other—nor any desire to claim it.’
‘What about your mother’s name? You chose not to ask it, Christopher, but...’
‘I already know more than enough of my mother to torture myself. She was sixteen,’ he said. ‘The same age as our princess. And he, Lord Henry Armstrong, was four years older, a man of experience, a man who should have known better. If you could see him, Tahira, so full of himself, so utterly callous, so completely untainted by his sin.’
‘But didn’t you say that it was he who arranged for these kind people to raise you as their own?’
‘And buy their silence. If my mother had not died, how different might things have been!’
‘What can you mean?’
‘You understand now why I compare you with her, surely? Her father and mine, arranging her life for her, forcing her to comply. Would she have surrendered me, had she lived? Are not the feelings of a mother so powerful, the duty of a mother to a child more vital than her duty to her family?’
‘As an unmarried mother,’ Tahira said gently, ‘she would have been cast out of the society in which she had been raised, and her shame visited on you.’
‘The shame was not hers. It was her seducer who should have been shamed,’ Christopher said tightly. ‘The man who bequeathed me my bastard blood.’
‘You must know that whatever blood flows in your veins, it does not change the man you are.’
He jumped to his feet, his face set. ‘I thought that knowing how I came into this world would ensure that I would never, ever act as my father did.’
‘You did not seduce me!’ Tahira exclaimed despairingly. ‘Despite every encouragement from me, you did not seduce me!’ She too got to her feet. Though she wanted to weep, to throw her arms around him, she dared not touch him. His logic was skewed by his misplaced anger, his interpretation of his history so tangled—but how to help him untangle it now, when the sands of their time together were down to the last few grains? If Christopher wished to imagine a better life, a different life with his mother, who was she to disillusion him? Hadn’t she fallen into the very same trap herself? And didn’t she know how painful it was, to realise that even a mother would not put her child’s wishes over her duty?
‘This is the last time we will be together, my last night free in the desert, your last night here in Nessarah,’ Tahira said helplessly. ‘I am afraid that whatever I say to you now will be the wrong thing, Christopher, but I can’t allow you to carry the burden of guilt for what happened between us—what so nearly happened, but did not.’
His arms were crossed across his chest. A light breeze ruffled his hair, blowing the soft, worn cotton of his tunic against the muscled contours of his body. His gaze was averted, fixed on the undulating contours of the desert sands as they formed and re-formed in an endless, shifting pattern of dunes. A dangerous man, she had thought him, from the first moment they met, and a wildly attractive man too. But she knew now that he was also a vulnerable man, a man who felt betrayed, rejected, and lost. A man desperate to wipe the slate of his history clean, yet a man who was set on dedicating his life to uncovering the history of others. Her heart felt as if it were being squeezed, watching him. She felt—she felt far too much. It was not safe to feel so much for a man she was about to say goodbye to, but from the moment she met him, Christopher had made her want to cast caution to the winds. Right now, safe was the last thing she wanted to feel.
‘Over there is where you took me sledding,’ Tahira said, stumbling over the English word, slipping her arm through his. ‘And over there, in the other direction, the oasis where we went swimming—though I never did swim.’
‘You floated very beautifully though. I won’t forget that image of you, with your hair streaming out behind you, the moonlight on the water, and you...’
Christopher pulled her into his arms, holding her breathlessly tight. ‘I have never wanted anyone so much as I wanted you tonight. The other times, the dune, the oasis, though you were temptation personified, I was always—I never once lost control of my desire for you. I was so sure, Tahira, so very much aware of that line my father crossed in begetting me, so certain that I never would allow history to repeat itself. Yet tonight—it was the fact that I didn’t think at all which frightened me.’
‘But it was the same for me, Christopher.’
‘No,’ he said gently but firmly, ‘it is not the same. The consequences are so completely, unfairly disproportionate. My loss of control would have been your downfall, just as my father’s was my mother’s.’ He shuddered, his hold on her tightening painfully. ‘If we had made love, what would have become of us, do you think? All very well for me to tell myself that I would do what they call the honourable thing, in England—marry you—but I will not tell myself that pathetic lie. We are from different worlds. I am a bastard with no name to call my own, certainly none to give to a wife or a child, while you, Tahira, whatever your name, it is obviously a good one. Your brother would never accept me, and you cannot marry a man unacceptable to your family.’
He let her go, only to clench his fists, his mouth curled into a self-deprecating sneer. ‘The parallels are painfully obvious. When that man explained the circumstances of my mother’s downfall, I thought he too easily dismissed the option of marriage, but though it makes my bile rise to admit it, by understanding how intractable your own family are in the matter of making a good match for you—which brings me back to my point. My act of selfishness would be paid for by you. What would you do, Tahira? What could you possibly do, save proceed with the marriage arranged for you, make a cuckold of your husband before you have even said your vows, and live for ever with
