What the sheikh wants…

Discovering she’s inherited a long-lost Arabian antique is the biggest shock of Violet Hamilton’s life. That is, until delicious Sheikh Fayad al Khalifa turns up on her doorstep, demanding she accompany him—and his family’s heirloom!—back to his desert kingdom!

Whisking her away in his private jet is for her own protection, but one look at Violet and Fayad is more than happy to escort this English beauty back to his palace! Yet it soon becomes clear that Violet’s life is still at risk and Fayad can only think of one way to keep her safe—he’ll marry her!

Find out what happens when a man who always gets what he wants finally finds the woman of his dreams in these two short, sparkling stories from Mills & Boon Romance® stars

Patricia Thayer

The Tycoon’s Marriage Bid

and

Liz Fielding

Chosen as the Sheikh’s Wife

in

Becoming the Tycoon’s Bride

Praise for Liz Fielding

“The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella is without a shadow of a doubt one of the year’s best category romances! Liz Fielding has written an outstanding romantic tale that’s unmissable, unforgettable and unputdownable!”

—www.Cataromance.com

Chosen as the Sheikh’s Wife
Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise

Title Page

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

Copyright

LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between.

She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days—mostly—leaves her pen to do the traveling.

When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors and spends a lot of time wondering, What if….

For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com.

CHAPTER ONE

VIOLET had been waiting for what seemed like hours, but eventually it was her turn and she limped forward with the object she’d brought along to the Trash or Treasure roadshow.

She’d already been through the junk/interesting/wow! “triage” at the entrance, and since the object she’d brought along for assessment had received a unanimous “wow!”, and been red-stickered to indicate its status, a television camera zoomed in to film the expert’s reaction.

She was not carried away on a tide of excitement by all this enthusiasm. It only meant that her piece of “trash” was unusual enough to arouse interest—and not necessarily of the kindly variety. This show was, after all, primarily entertainment, and if you set yourself up as an Aunt Sally, you had to expect the knocks.

She hadn’t wanted to come. It was Sarah, her next-door neighbour, who’d insisted on dragging her reluctant bones along to the town hall so that she could be publicly humiliated for the amusement of several million viewers. Sarah who, just at the moment when she’d needed her for moral support, had disappeared in search of a loo.

Pregnancy was no excuse…

‘What have we got here?’ The “expert”—permanently tanned, silver-haired, a darling of the blue-rinse brigade—was familiar from the many evenings she’d sat watching this programme with her grand mother.

‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully, putting the brown padded envelope she had been clutching to her chest on the baizecovered table in front of him. ‘To be honest I feel a bit of a fool bringing it here—’ She felt better for getting that out, disassociating herself from any pretence to have found “treasure” ‘—but my neighbour lived in the Middle East for a while and she thought it was…interesting.’

Oh, lame, Violet Hamilton. Pathetic to blame someone not here to defend herself.

‘Well, let’s have a look at it, shall we?’ He tipped a rag-wrapped bundle out onto the table in front of him.

‘That’s just how I found it,’ Violet said quickly, not wanting him to think she routinely kept her valuables wrapped in rotted black silk. Not that she had any valuables. ‘This morning,’ she added. ‘When I put my foot through the floorboards.’ The cameraman pointed his lens at her strapped up ankle. Terrific… This was her “fifteen minutes of fame”, and already her ankle was more interesting. ‘It must have been there for years,’ she said.

Without a word he carefully unfolded the rotted silk to reveal an ornately deco rated dagger. Around them people crowded in to get a closer look.

That it was old was not in doubt. The handle had the patina of hard use, and inset in the top was a large, smoothly polished red stone the size of a pigeon’s egg. The sheath wasn’t straight but sharply curved and adorned with fancy silver and gold–coloured filigree work into which were set three similar tear-shaped red stones, decreasing in size as they reached the curved point and looking for all the world as if the stone on the handle was bleeding along its length.

The man said nothing for so long that Violet said, ‘If I’d seen it on a market stall I’d have sworn it was a pan to mime prop. Something the genie might wear in Aladdin.’ The crowd, obligingly, laughed. ‘All glass beads and plastic handle,’ she added.

Then, as he eased the knife out of the sheath and the lights glinted off the blade, the laughter died.

‘It’s not a theatrical prop,’ he said, unnecessarily.

‘No.’ And belatedly Violet wondered exactly how many laws she’d broken simply by carrying the thing in public.

‘You found it under the floorboards, you said?’ he prompted, with a keen, assessing glance. ‘And which floorboards would they be?’

‘My floorboards,’ she replied a touch defensively, although now that the equity release people had done their sums the floorboards—along with most of the structure—were apparently theirs.

‘I’m the fourth generation of my family to live there,’ she added. And the last.

‘Then it’s likely that someone in your family hid it?’

‘Unless burglars have started breaking in and leaving loot instead of taking it,’ she agreed, and raised another laugh from the people crowded round to listen to what he had to say. Maybe she should consider a career in stand-up…

‘Indeed,’ he agreed, his smile as fake as his tan. It was his job to make the humorous remarks. ‘Maybe we can come back to that.’ Then, turning back to the knife, ‘The Arab world has always been famous for its weapons and this is a khanjar, mostly worn now as a ceremonial piece in the same way as swords are worn with dress uniforms.’

He talked about the blade, about how the sharply curved scabbard was made, the skills being passed on from one generation of crafts men to the next. He knew his stuff and the crowd around them was quiet now, intent. They knew that when he took this amount of time it was because he’d found some thing a bit special.

‘This knife is exceptional,’ he continued. ‘Not only is the blade of the very highest quality, but the handle is made from rare, much-prized rhino horn.’

‘Eeeuw…’ Violet sat back, instinctively distancing herself from it.

‘It’s more than a hundred years old,’ he said reassuringly.

‘Does that make a difference?’ she asked. ‘The rhino still died just to furnish some man with a handle for his knife.’

‘The transference of power had a potent appeal. It was a different world…’

‘Not that different.’

‘No.’ Then, turning to a safer subject, he went on, ‘The filigree work is fine gold and silver, and the use of rubies—’

‘Rubies!’ Violet ex claimed, for get ting all about the poor rhino who’d given up his horn just so that some dumb man would feel invincible when he wielded this blade. Forgetting everything in her shock. ‘They can’t possibly be rubies!’

This time his smile was genuine. It was finds like this, reactions like hers, that made the programme compulsive viewing.

‘I mean, they’re huge,’ she said. Then, ‘I thought they were glass.’ And raised another laugh. This time for her foolishness. Everyone was an expert…

‘They might well have been,’ he agreed. ‘All kinds of decoration can and have been used on this kind of knife, but these stones are the real thing. Cabochon rubies—that is they have been polished rather than cut.’

Violet, aware that some thing more was expected, could only manage a slightly croaky, ‘Oh…’

Rubies…

‘What we have here is the kind of weapon that would have been owned and worn by a chief. A sheikh,’ he elaborated. ‘Maybe even a sultan. It needs cleaning, of course, but even in this state I can’t remember when I’ve seen anything quite so fine.’

It was rare for anything to reduce Violet to silence, but he had managed it.

‘The really interesting question is how it came to be hidden beneath your floorboards.’

Violet was well aware what it must look like. What everyone must be thinking. That it had been stolen and, too hot to fence, had been hidden away and eventually for got ten about. But her family had enough of a history without adding larceny to the list, so she said, ‘I suppose it could have some thing to do with the family legend.’

‘Family legend?’

‘The one about my great-great-grand mother being an Arabian princess who sewed her jewels into her clothes,’ she said, ‘and ran away from her husband with my great-great-grandfather.’

It was, gratifyingly, Mr Smooth’s turn to be reduced to silence—if only momentarily.

‘An Arabian princess?’ he repeated, with a touch of uncertainty. She could see from his expression that he wasn’t sure whether she was pulling his leg.

‘With blue eyes,’ she added, beginning to see the possibilities for entertainment herself. ‘I’d always assumed it was just one of those tales that had grown in the telling.’ She shrugged, leaving him to make up his own mind.

‘Most stories have some element of truth in them,’ he suggested. ‘Was he a soldier? Your great-great-grandfather?’

‘He was in the army. He was a medic. Stretcher-bearer,’ she explained.

‘Quite.’ Then, ‘It’s more likely that he brought this back from the Middle East as a trophy,’ he said, apparently discounting the Arabian princess theory as pure fantasy. ‘Possibly from Turkey. This kind of elaborate decoration was favoured in the Ottoman dynasty.’

‘Actually,’ she said, refusing to allow him to dismiss her story in quite so casual a manner, ‘it was the princess and the jewels I always assumed were the tall stories.’ Her great-great-grand father had braved artillery fire to carry wounded soldiers to safety, had a Military Medal to attest to his heroism, and she wasn’t having him publicly branded a thief. ‘Great-Great-Grandma Fatima was real enough. I have a photograph of her.’

There was a stiffly posed sepia-tinted photograph of a tall, exotically handsome woman, standing behind her seated husband, in the “family gallery” on the kitchen dresser.

‘And a letter. In Arabic…’

‘Well…’ For a moment he appeared lost for words—twice in one day had to be a record. ‘Well, you have a real story. And a rich treasure. Knives like these are very much in demand, and if you were to put it up for auction in a specialist sale…’

He mentioned some ridiculous sum of money, and all around her she heard gasps. And she was the one left struggling for words.

It was, Violet thought, numbly, a bit like a fairy tale.

She’d been in her late grandmother’s bedroom, emptying her wardrobe, sorting out what was good enough to send to the charity shop, when she’d stepped back and gone through a floor board that had creaked for as long as she could remember. And then, having pulled out her foot, she’d seen the carefully wrapped black silk bundle.

Buried treasure.

She was still in shock when the photographer from the local newspaper said, ‘Smile!’ and took her photograph.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Fayad,’ the ambassador said, but the press attaché has just received a call from the news desk of the London Chronicle about a story they’re running tomorrow. It’s some thing I thought you might want to know about.’

Sheikh Fayad al Kuwani, grandson to the ruler of Ras al Kawi, looked up from his laptop. His cousin would not have disturbed him unless it was some thing important.

‘What scandal has my father visited upon us now?’ he asked, sitting back, prepared for the worst.

‘No… No, it’s nothing like that, insh’Allah,’ Hamad was quick to reassure him. ‘It seems that a young woman took a spectacular khanjar for expert valuation to some television programme that was being recorded this afternoon.’

‘That makes the national news in this country?’

‘There were rubies,’ he replied. ‘Very large rubies. And a story about a runaway Arabian princess and stolen jewels, which apparently makes it…’ He hesitated, then with distaste, said, ‘Sexy.’

Fayad stilled. ‘Go on.’

‘The local paper picked up the story and passed it along, and, having done some research, the Chronicle has inevitably come up with the mystery of the long-lost Blood of Tariq. They’re running the story using the photograph of your great-great-grandfather with Lawrence, along with the original 1917 despatch from the front line in tomorrow’s first edition. They were hoping for a comment from the embassy.’

‘Did they get one?’

‘Only that many fakes of the Blood of Tariq had been produced over the years, and this is undoubtedly one of them. That the value of the rubies is nothing compared to the value of owning the khanjar touched by Lawrence.’

‘Yes…’ Fayad sat back, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

The Blood of Tariq had a mystical power that put it beyond price. To hold it, possess it, was to hold the fate of Ras al Kawi in your hand.

A fake.

It had to be a fake. But in the present climate that might be irrelevant.

It was what people believed that mattered.

Lost, the khanjar was a legend, a tale for old men as they sat around the campfire recalling past glories.

Found, it was trouble.

His grandfather was failing in health, his father was a disaster, and in the wrong hands even a fake, especially one with such an incendiary story attached to it, could prove disastrous to his country.

‘You know who she is, this woman? Where to find her?’

‘Her name is Violet Hamilton. She’s twenty-two years old, unmarried. For the last three years she’s been caring for her sick grand mother. The old lady died two weeks ago. At present she’s living alone in her grandmother’s house in Camden, where the khanjar was found. The equity of the house is owned by a property company, however, so she is about to become homeless.’

Fayad raised an eyebrow and the ambassador smiled. ‘I don’t ask how he does it, but in any exchange of information you can be sure that our man came out with the better deal.’

‘Thank him for me.’

‘I will.’ Then, ‘You’ll make her an offer for it? You know it can’t be real, Fayad. The original was surely broken up for the gold, the stones, decades ago.’

‘Princess Fatima would never have done that. She knew that its worth lay in more than rubies and gold. Knew its power in the right hands. But, real or fake, it’s a bad time for it to come to light. There are tribal factions who will move heaven and earth to get hold of it.’

Because of the reclusive nature of his grandfather, and the lack of interest his father had shown in anything but money, Ras al Kawi had remained relatively untouched by the tide of offshore banking and tourism that had swept through neighbouring countries.

Fayad had such plans for it, and now, just when things were finally beginning to take shape and he was preparing to move the country into the twenty-first century, onto the international stage, he was being faced with some mystical symbol straight out of a medieval melodrama.

It couldn’t just be coincidence.

This had to be some elaborate hoax set up by someone planning to seize power. Except for the story of the runaway princess. And yet, for power, some disaffected member of the family might have betrayed them. Even his disinherited father…

‘It scarcely matters if it is real or not, Hamad,’ he said abruptly. ‘We have to secure this knife before the story gains ground. And the woman, too.’

‘The woman? You’re not suggesting you carry her back to Ras al Kawi as symbolic proof of the restoration of Kuwani pride? As your grandfather’s ambassador, I really could not allow that.’

‘As my grandfather’s ambassador I suggest you concentrate on the word “symbolic”. Forget the khanjar for a moment. How safe do you think Miss Hamilton will be once it becomes rumoured that she is a descendant of Princess Fatima? There will be people ready to use her as a cipher at best. At worst…’ He left that to his cousin’s imagination.

‘And you? What do you want with her, Fayad? Bearing in mind that I will be the one carpeted by the British Foreign Secretary if anything should happen to her.’

‘What could I possibly want other than to extend to this descendant of Princess Fatima the hospitality of our country?’ he replied wryly. ‘Invite her to discover her true heritage.’

Hamad gave him a look that suggested he could think of any number of things, but confined himself to, ‘And suppose she doesn’t want to go to Ras al Kawi?’

‘I will have to use all my diplomatic skills to persuade her that it’s in her best interests. Have no fear, Hamad. She will be treated with the utmost respect.’ Then, almost as an after-thought, ‘After all, if she genuinely is a descendant of Fatima al Sayyid, then she, too, is a princess.’

‘In other words she’ll be fêted and entertained and never notice that she’s in a gilded cage. What happens when she wants to fly?’

‘My grandfather is desperate for me to remarry,’ he said, without expression. ‘An alliance between the Kuwani family and a descendant of Princess Fatima al Sayyid would be right in so many ways…’

‘The Sayyid family might not take that view. Nor might Miss Hamilton.’

‘True. But possession, as they say, is nine-tenths of the law.’

‘You haven’t got her yet, Fayad. For all you know she’s already sold the khanjar to one of the dealers who undoubtedly take a keen interest in these events.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘HONESTLY, Violet,’ Sarah said, shaking her head, ‘that’s the first place a burglar is going to look for valuables.’

‘Then good luck to them.’

She’d wrapped the jewelled knife, still in its silk bundle, first in bubble wrap, then several layers of kitchen foil, and now, having carefully labelled it “chicken thighs”, was busy chipping out enough space in the thickly frosted freezer compartment of her ancient fridge so that she could jam it in behind the defrosted bag of peas that she’d used as a compress on her ankle to bring down the swelling.

‘As I know to my cost, an hour from now any burglar is going to need a blow torch to get past the peas.’

‘What if someone decides to steal the fridge?’

‘Oh, please! You’ve only to listen to it to know that it’s on its last legs,’ she said, looking around at a kitchen that hadn’t seen more than a change of wallpaper since the Formica revolution in the fifties. ‘Like just about everything else in here.’ She was going to miss it all so much… Then, because nothing, after all, had changed—she’d always known she’d have to leave, she grinned and said, ‘I mean, who would be that desperate? But don’t worry. I’ll hack it out and take it to the bank tomorrow.’

‘If I were you I’d cut out the middle man and take it straight to a dealer. Give that expert a call—he’ll know someone reputable. He gave you his card, didn’t he?’

She nodded.

‘Well, there you are. Sorted. It’ll make a decent deposit on a two-bedroom flat, and if you let a room you’ll have the mortgage covered. You could finish that design course you were taking…’

‘Get real, Sarah. Who in their right mind would give me a mortgage on the chance of me letting a room? Besides…’ She shrugged, shook her head.

‘What?’

‘She stole it, didn’t she? Okay, the jewels may have been technically hers, but the knife…’

‘Violet, sweet heart. It was nearly a hundred years ago. Who are you going to give it back to?’ She shook her head and Sarah frowned. ‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I am,’ she said, making an effort to pull herself together. ‘I guess I’m still in a state of shock.’

‘I’m not surprised. I thought the knife would be worth a bit, but that was an amazing result.’

‘Yes.’ That kind of amazing just made her feel uneasy. ‘Thanks for insisting on dragging me along to the T or T roadshow today.’

‘Oh, I just wanted to get on the telly. Trust me to miss the big moment. Never mind. I’ll get a thrill out of watching you when the programme is broad cast next week.’

Violet pulled a face, hating the thought. ‘I must have been mad to sign the release form.’

‘It would have made no difference. You’ll be front page news in the local paper tomorrow.’

This time she just groaned. ‘What on earth made me say all that stuff about Great-Great Grandma Fatima? I must have been mad.’

‘Was it true? Really?’

‘You think I could make up some thing like that?’ She nodded at the pictorial family gallery that her grandma had always kept on the dresser. ‘That’s her, at the top in the middle.’

‘Goodness.’ Sarah took the picture down to take a closer look. ‘You’ve got a look of her, Violet. Something about the eyes. Hers are light, too. That’s strange, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose…’

Sarah put the picture back. ‘I’d better get home and feed the brute before he chews through the table-leg.’ She stopped in the doorway, pausing to look back. ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Violet? Once this gets out… Well, a woman with a nice little windfall is likely to find herself the target of all kinds of smooth-talking men looking for a soft touch.’

More likely find herself the target for every local villain, she thought.

Then, realising that Sarah was waiting for an answer, she laughed. ‘You mean I might get a life?’

‘And not before time. You’ve spent the last three years as a full-time carer. No holidays, scarcely a break. Nothing in your pocket but your carer’s allowance and the little bit of money you make on your stall. Believe me, I know how hard it’s been.’

‘You’re wrong, Sarah. It hasn’t been hard. My grand mother was the one person in the entire world who was always there for me, who never let me down, and I loved her. I’m trying to tell myself that she isn’t suffering anymore, but what’s really hard is not having her here.’

Sarah gave her a hug, then, leaning back, said, ‘You’re so vulnerable just now. I’m afraid you’re going to lose that tender heart to the first man you meet with a killer smile.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ she said. ‘Getting a life is going to have to wait a while. There’s a ton of stuff to do here first. I’ve got to sort out Grandma’s things. Find some where to live…’—the finance people had given her until the end of the month—‘…and get a job.’

‘Well, at least now you’ll have some money behind you.’

‘Yes…’ Then, ‘Thanks again for rushing to the rescue this morning.’

‘Any time. Just scream.’ Sarah grinned, hugged her again, and finally left.

Violet closed the door and leaned back on it for a moment. Much as she loved Sarah, it was a relief to be on her own for a moment, to be able to think.

Could it possibly be true? About the exotic Fatima being a princess? She’d dismissed the idea as nonsense when Sarah had asked her, but was it? Really?

The TV expert had said the knife could have belonged to a sheikh or sultan, and it was worth a great deal of money. So why had she kept it? Hidden it beneath the floorboards when, presumably, her jewellery—according to family legend—had been sold to fund the purchase of this house?

As if it were too important, too precious, to part with? Hidden it and never told a living soul. Because if she had someone would have sold it long ago. If her grandma had known about it she wouldn’t have sacrificed the house to raise money when she’d needed it. Would have passed on the secret when she knew she was dying…

She sighed. She didn’t need more questions. It was answers she wanted. And upstairs, in the bottom of her gran’s wardrobe, was an old Gladstone bag, stuffed with the kind of stuff that women couldn’t part with. Dried flowers. Letters. Embroidered handkerchiefs. Bits of lace and ribbon. Wedding invitations, school reports—whoever would want to keep those!—theatre programmes. Greetings cards for every possible occasion. Great-Great-Grandad’s Military Medal.

Generations of the stuff.

There had been a time, when she was a little girl, when it had been a magic bag, and being allowed to “tidy” it had been a special treat.

Then it had become an emotional ambush to be avoided at all costs. Full of things that just to look at, hold, brought tears welling to the surface: a postcard from her mother on honeymoon in Venice; a Mother’s Day card she’d made when she was so little she’d needed her gran to help with the letters; a button from her father’s jacket that she’d hidden there.

At the bottom, hidden by a false base, was the big envelope that she had not been allowed to open. The one containing family documents. The certificates—birth, marriage, death—that said who they were, where they came from. An envelope that her grandma had said she could open “when she was older”.

Except, of course, the temptation had been too much for a curious ten-year-old. Which was how she knew about the Arabic letter, although at the time she hadn’t realised what it was. How she knew why her grand mother had had to raise money in such a hurry…

She had a new document to add to the family archive, but she’d been putting it off. She’d been ignoring the bag ever since her grand mother had died, delaying the moment when she became the family matriarch. The keeper of its history. Its awful secrets.

Now she needed the letter from Fatima—there was an Iraqi woman who worked in the market who might be able to translate it for her—but she couldn’t bring herself to simply dump the contents of the bag on her grandmother’s bed.

It was not just the trivia of their lives, but the small tokens of love and remembrance that women clung to. Family history was written in the names of men, but this bag contained the women’s story. In cards, tiny treasures, a crumbling corsage worn by some unknown girl with her heart full of hope.

It was only when the hall clock struck one that she realised how long she’d spent reading old letters, scanning cards that had nothing to do with her hunt for the truth about Fatima but everything to do with her life.

Her mother’s life.

A school exercise book full of gold stars. An old blue passport. School photographs full of hope and promise that was never realised.

She put them to one side and pulled out the envelope. The certificates were all in there. And the letter written in flowing Arabic script that made her heart beat faster just to hold it. Only Fatima herself could have written it and she held it close to her heart as if she could feel the words, make some direct connection with this extraordinary woman.

She did not open the last envelope. The one containing the equity release documents that her grand mother had signed and the letter from her father.

Being old enough made no difference, and, as she had done when she’d defied her grandmother’s ruling and opened it, she crawled into bed, pulling the ancient quilt over her. Except that this time there was no one to come and find her and comfort her.

It was the phone that woke her. Dragging her from some where so deep that she was certain that it must have been ringing for some time.

She ignored it and finally it stopped, allowing her to concentrate on her headache, and the fact that her eyes felt as if someone had been shovelling grit in them all night.

The bright sunshine didn’t help.

With her hand shading her eyes, she made it to the bathroom. She was in the shower when the phone began to ring again. Sarah, she thought. It would be Sarah, worrying about her. She’d call her back…

She washed her hair, brushed her teeth. Decided to forget about getting dressed until she’d had coffee.

The local newspaper was lying on the mat. Her gran had liked her to read the local news to her…

She bent to pick it up, groaning as the headache she thought she’d defeated slid forward and collided with the back of her aching eyes.

Then she groaned again as she saw the front page. It must be a slow news day, because she seemed to fill the front page, staring like a rabbit caught in the media head lights, with the Trash or Treasure expert beside her displaying the khanjar. In full colour.

The headline read: ARABIAN ‘PRINCESS’ AT ROADSHOW.

What?

The doorbell rang and without thinking she wrenched the door open, certain that it would be Sarah. She’d taken to dropping in every morning over the last few weeks, to see if she needed anything. She usually came round the back, letting herself in with her “good neighbour” key, as she had yesterday when she’d heard her cry for help when the floor had given way.

Clearly the fact that the phone had gone unanswered was causing her concern, but since she’d bolted the back door last night the key would be useless.

But it wasn’t Sarah, who was tiny—apart from around the middle, where she was spreading spectacularly—and fair; the figure that filled the tiny porch was her opposite in every conceivable way.

Tall, spare, broad-shouldered, male, there was nothing soft about him. His features were austere, chiselled to the bone, and his olive-toned skin was positively Mediterranean against a snowy band-collared shirt, fastened to the neck. His hair was thick and crisply cut. But it was his eyes that held her.

Dark as midnight and just as dangerous.

He looked very…foreign.

He was also stunningly, knee-wobblingly handsome.

Violet was suitably stunned. And her knees dutifully wobbled.

Just her luck that she’d emerged from the shower pink of face, with her hair in its usual wet tangle, and with nothing between her and decency but a film of moisturiser and a faded pink bathrobe that could only be described as…functional. ‘Miss Hamilton?’

Oh, and guess what…? He had a voice like melted chocolate, delicately flavoured with an exotic, barely there accent.

Whatever he was selling, she was buying it by the crate…

Except, of course, that he was far too expensively dressed to be a door-to-door salesman. She knew clothes. And what he was wearing did not come off a peg in the high street.

Oh, well. She was expecting a visit from a representative of the finance company to call any day, with the release papers for her to sign so that they could sell the house, recover their money.

This had to be him.

‘Miss Violet Hamilton?’ he repeated, when she didn’t answer.

‘Who?’ she asked, just to hear him say Violet again. Long and slow.

Vi-o-let.

Pronouncing every syllable, turning a name she loathed only slightly less than the hideously shortened “Vi” into the most desirable name in the entire world.

‘I’m looking for Miss Violet Hamilton.’ And, taking the newspaper from her hand, he held the front page up for her to see. ‘I believe I’ve found her.’

No point pretending to be the lodger, then. Asking him to come back when she’d gussied herself up, straightened her hair, applied some make-up, was decked out in one of her more creative outfits. Oh, well…

‘And here I was kidding myself that the photograph is so awful that you couldn’t possibly tell,’ she said. ‘Clearly I was fooling myself.’

He looked at the photograph and then at her, for rather longer than seemed necessary just to confirm the likeness. Then, clearly thinking better of commenting one way or the other, he returned the paper and said, ‘I am Fayad al Kuwani, Miss Hamilton.’ And he held out a visiting card—as if they couldn’t be printed off by the dozen in any name you cared to dream up by anyone with a computer.

Except that this wasn’t a do-it-yourself job, but embossed on heavy ivory-coloured card.

If he was from the finance company, he certainly wasn’t one of the foot-soldiers.

The front of the card gave no hint, but contained only his name: Fayad al Kuwani. Unusual enough. She turned it over. The back was blank. No address, no phone number.

Obviously this was a man whose name was enough for those with the wit to recognise it. Which did not include her.

‘Nice card,’ she said. ‘But a trifle shy of information.’

‘The Ras al Kawi Embassy will vouch for me.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right, then,’ she said. Her friends would have recognised sarcasm. He apparently did not, but merely nodded. Good grief, he was serious…

Ras al Kawi? Where was that?

‘I need to talk to you about a khanjar that I believe is in your possession,’ he said. ‘It is possible that it once belonged to my family.’

‘Oh?’ Then, realising that he’d come to demand it back, ‘It’s amazing how fast good news spreads.’

‘You have no idea. Perhaps I should wait in my car while you…?’

He made the vaguest of gestures, resolutely looking at her face, avoiding her bare legs, the shabby bathrobe that had a tendency to gape at the neck. It made no difference. Every inch of her skin tingled.

‘Dress?’ she offered, lippy to the last. Except that the word didn’t come out quite as she’d intended, but thick and throaty. More to avoid those eyes than because she was interested in his choice of trans port, Violet looked past him.

A black Rolls-Royce was parked at the kerb. The little green and gold flag on the bonnet stirred in the breeze.

She barely stopped herself from letting slip an expression that would have brought her a rebuke from her grandma.

Her breathless, ‘Who are you?’ wasn’t a whole heap better.

‘If your story is true, Miss Hamilton, then your great-great-grand mother, Princess Fatima al Sayyid, was once married to my great-great-grandfather.’

At which point she did let slip a word that she used only under the most extreme pressure.

She would have been embarrassed about that, but a scream from rear of the house—Sarah’s scream—obliterated the sound.

CHAPTER THREE

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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