And then the last woman approached, a flamboyant raven-haired beauty in her twenties. She was sheathed in an emerald-green gown, and her full pink mouth had a hard, sullen curve. The tension in the room was electric.
‘I am Prince Tariq’s first cousin, Majida. I offer you no compliments.’ Her sultry eyes flared over Faye with derision. ‘I say you are no virgin!’
The silence was ruptured by stricken gasps. Shocked faces were cast down, covered. An older woman rose heavily to her feet and wailed like a soul in torment. Faye’s cheeks glowed red. How on earth was she supposed to meet such a very personal accusation flung at her in public? And why should that nasty brunette question whether she was or was not a virgin? How could such a thing be of interest to anyone?
At her feet, Shiran buried her face and moaned. ‘This is a grievous insult, my lady. The woman crying is the lady Majida’s mother. It is her way of expressing her shame at her daughter’s behaviour.’
The wailing woman sank back down as if she had been disgraced. The food arriving was a very welcome diversion. Every dish was presented to Faye first but her appetite had died. As the lengthy meal ended, Majida approached her again and proffered a smooth apology. Feeling that the apology was as calculated as the insult, Faye responded with a tight smile of strain.
In that all female gathering, she was disconcerted when Tariq made an entrance to be greeted by a series of equally surprised but uniformly delighted cries of welcome. Looking at him, Faye drew in a sharp breath. Magnificent in silks as rich with gold decoration as her own, Tariq had never looked more exotic or more stunningly attractive. But, unable to forget the bitter anger he had shown her earlier, she stiffened and averted her attention from him to the other men filtering in behind him, some smiling, some looking a little awkward. Latif entered last, his wide smile suggesting that he was in the very best of good humour.
No fan of being ignored, Tariq took the seat beside Faye and leant towards her to murmur with the pronounced air of a male priding himself on his generosity, ‘Let there be peace between us now.’
Faye compressed her generous mouth. ‘I shouldn’t think there’s much chance of that breaking out tonight. According to you I’m so wicked, it’s amazing a heavenly bolt of lightning hasn’t struck me down—’
‘In the name of Allah do not say such a thing even in amusement.’
‘Not much amusement where I’m sitting,’ Faye said stonily.
‘We will exchange no more recriminations.’
‘Well, you would be repeating yourself if you said anything more.’
‘I am trying to mend bridges.’
‘It’s fences actually and you blew the bridges to kingdom come.’ Having paraded into the centre of the room, musicians were beginning to play but it was very discordant stuff.
‘It is not like western music but it is a traditional melody always played at such occasions,’ Tariq volunteered, sounding just a little defensive.
A singer came on. She had a gorgeous husky voice but Faye took extreme exception to the suggestive way in which her lithe bodily undulations seemed to take place exclusively in front of Tariq. ‘You’re in with a good chance there,’ she whispered, a poisonous, exhilarating edge to her tongue such as she had never before experienced and could not resist. ‘There’s a woman just gasping to get into your harem.’
‘I do not have a harem,’ Tariq gritted close to her ear.
‘Too many women breaking out of it? Bad for the macho image?’
‘One more word from you—’
‘And you’ll what? Have me delivered back to the airport? Well, I’ll need to be carried because I’m literally weighed down by my fancy trappings. Tell me, do you only sleep with virgins?’
‘What has got into you?’ Tariq demanded in a shaken undertone.
‘I’m coming to terms with being a concubine. Tell me, do I get sown into a sack and dropped into the Gulf when you get bored with me?’
‘A sack would be very useful right now. You want me to apologise, don’t you?’
‘Oh, no, even you couldn’t apologise for the embarrassment of a complete stranger stating that I’m not a virgin in front of so many people. Allow me to tell you that I found that weird and kinky and medieval—’
Both lean hands suddenly clenching on the arms of his chair, Tariq rounded on her like an erupting volcano. ‘Who said that to you? Who dared?’
For the first time since his entrance, Faye focused on him in shock for he had not troubled to lower his voice. Outrage glittered in his flaring golden gaze, dark colour scoring his superb cheekbones. ‘For goodness’ sake, calm down—’
‘After such offence is offered to you?’ Tariq growled like a lion ready to spring. ‘What man would be calm in the face of so great an affront?’
‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘You will tell me the name of the offender.’
‘Not the way you’re carrying on, I won’t. There’s been enough drama for one evening.’
‘This hurts my honour,’ Tariq informed her doggedly.
Faye closed her eyes. It had been a day in which culture shock had made itself felt on several occasions. In fact she had been in almost continual shock from the day of her arrival in Jumar for absolutely nothing seemed comprehensible to her. Not the way she was treated, not the way Tariq behaved. He reached for her hand and gripped it in emphasis. ‘My honour is your honour.’
‘But I have no honour…you’ve said as much.’
At that far from generous reminder, Tariq sprang upright. He lifted an imperious hand. The music stopped with a mid-chord crash. He spoke a few words in Arabic. Then he swung round and swept Faye up out of her chair and into his arms to an astonished chorus of more gasps and strode from the reception area, leaving a screaming silence in their wake.
CHAPTER SIX
‘WARS have broken out over lesser insults,’ Tariq breathed with brooding darkness as he strode down canopied passageways. ‘You do not appear to understand how high is the regard for a woman’s virtue in my culture.’
Now, had Faye been his new bride, she would have understood his fury, but she was totally bewildered by his smouldering rage on such a score when she was not his wife. She was to be his mistress and there was nothing respectable about that, was there? Indeed, in her humble opinion, it was entirely his fault that she had been insulted in the first place! It was madness for her to have been treated as a guest of honour in the presence of women who had to believe she was a totally wanton hussy. True, with the exception of his cousin, Majida, she had received nothing but smiling courtesy, but no doubt that was the effect of Tariq’s feudal power as a ruler. What else could it be? In fact, if his late father had once had a hundred concubines, it was quite possible his people thought having just one was the ultimate in self-denial and restraint on his part.
Regardless, here she was right now, being carted off very publicly to his bed, past innumerable guards saluting and standing to attention, past servants flattening themselves back out of his path. Faye was aghast. How could Tariq do this to her? Speeding up as he thrust his aggressive passage through a number of interconnecting tent rooms that convinced her that she would never in a million years find her way back to where she had slept the night before, Tariq finally came to a halt. He settled her down with immense and unexpected care. He smoothed down her dress where it was rumpled and stepped back from her.
‘That you are not a virgin is my business alone,’ Tariq announced, hard, stubborn jawline set like rock.
Faye reddened and attempted to walk away. It involved taking tiny, tiny steps and she wobbled on the unfamiliar heels. She was in a huge tent room, even more opulently furnished than her own and distinguished by a beautiful carved wooden bed large enough to sleep six. She studied it, butterflies suddenly flying loose in her tummy.
She flinched as about ten feet from her something metallic flew across the room and buried itself with a thud in the carved headboard of the bed. Her lips parting company, she
gaped at the ornate dagger she had last noted attached to Tariq’s sword belt. Now drawn from its jewel-studded sheath, the dagger was lodged halfway up to its hilt in solid wood.
‘I will cut myself and smear blood on the sheet,’ Tariq murmured in the most unnaturally calm tone she had ever heard. ‘No more needs to be said.’
With difficulty, Faye dragged her attention from the dagger still twanging in the wood. She opened her mouth but no sound would emerge from her throat. It was finally dawning on her that virginity appeared to be a major issue on all fronts as far as he was concerned. It was medieval but there was something terribly, strangely, crazily sweet about his equally barbaric solution to this lack he believed she had. Her desert warrior was prepared to shed his own blood and mount a cover-up on her behalf.
His tawny eyes rested on her with raw intensity as if he believed she must have been distressed by the same insult which had sent him up in volatile fireworks. Finally, Faye was recognising the pronounced change in him. The angry bitterness he had revealed at the outset of the day had vanished along with the icy forbidding distance he could assume at will.