Forbidden in Regency Society: The Governess and the Sheikh
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Jamil sighed heavily. ‘You just don’t give up, do you?’
Cassie took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. ‘It takes courage to change the habits of a lifetime, but courage is something you have in abundance.’
Jamil’s smile was twisted. ‘I’m not the only one. You have the courage of your convictions.’ He kissed her knuckles. ‘I’ll think about your suggestion.’
‘That’s all I ask.’
‘For the moment, at least,’ he said wryly. ‘Come, let us leave this place.’
Turning the key in the lock of the outer door, Jamil removed it and secreted it in his robes. Cassie watched him stride down the corridor, his tunic rippling in the slight breeze caused by his rapid gait. Poor, tortured Jamil. If he could but make a start by loving Linah, then maybe some day he would be capable of real love.
Why was that thought making her uncomfortable?
She had an absurd urge to run after him, missing him more with every step he took away from her, a premonition of a time when he would be gone from her for ever. She hadn’t thought about that until now. Until today. She didn’t want to think about it now.
It would have been naïve to expect that Jamil would be transformed overnight, but from that day on, Cassie did detect a marked difference in him. Awkwardly at first, but with increasing confidence as Linah responded, he began to allow his feelings for his daughter to show. Cassie looked on with a pride she took care to disguise. Knowing that she had been instrumental in effecting this change was enough; she did not want his gratitude, and she most certainly did not want Linah to guess the part she had played. Besides, it was a painful enough process for Jamil to override the years of pain that had beaten his reserve into him. She did not want him worrying about her witnessing his metamorphosis.
She was watching him with Linah one day. Jamil was standing in the middle of a bathing pool, teaching his daughter to swim. He had abandoned his cloak and igal, but retained his tunic. The water came up to his waist. Linah, lying supported in his arms, was giggling at something he had said. He looked over at Cassie and smiled. Their eyes met and her heart did a little flip flop. His tunic, damp from Linah’s splashing, clung to his body like a second skin, showing off his muscles, the width of his shoulders, the dip of his stomach. His hair was sticking up in endearing spikes. His eyes sparkled with good humour.
Father and daughter together. It was exactly the tableau Cassie had dreamt of creating, but though it was of her making, she felt excluded. Father and daughter. The obvious gap opened up before her like an abyss. They had been playing happy families, the three of them, but she was not really part of it. And yet she wanted to be, she realised. She wanted to be a lot. Because she loved Linah now, too. But mostly because she was in danger, in very real danger, of feeling something she should not feel for Linah’s father. And that would be a mistake.
Cassie turned away from Jamil’s beckoning smile, busying herself with packing away the lunch things. It was not too late. She had caught herself just in time. It was not too late.
‘The Council await you, Highness.’
Jamil looked up from the document he’d been perusing and gazed blankly at his man of business, who was hovering in the open doorway.
‘The betrothal contract,’ Halim prompted anxiously. ‘You rearranged the signing for today. It must be witnessed by the Council, so I took the liberty of organising the gathering. They are ready.’
‘The betrothal contract.’
‘Yes, Highness. You said—’
‘I know what I said. This alliance is advantageous to us, it is to be welcomed.’ But Jamil did not want to be married. He did not want to even have to think about marriage, about siring an heir with a female he had absolutely no interest in whatsoever. The idea of it filled him with repugnance. He was sick and tired of having to think about the endless matters of state that obtruded on his day, and sick and tired of having to spend his time resolving them, one problem after another. Sometimes it felt as if he was the only person in the whole kingdom of Daar-el-Abbah capable of making decisions. Jamil rubbed the bridge of his nose with long, elegant fingers. It had always been thus—why was it bothering him so much now?
With some caution, Halim approached the desk behind which his master sat. The prince had been behaving strangely of late, spending much time with his daughter and that English governess of hers. ‘You must be heartened by the improvement in your daughter’s behaviour,’ he said carefully, ‘the whole palace is talking about the change in her.’ And the change in Prince Jamil! ‘You will be able to hand over Princess Linah with confidence now.’
‘Hand her over?’ Jamil looked confused.
Halim laughed nervously. ‘Well, you will hardly require the services of the English governess when you are married, Highness. Your daughter will be in the care of your new wife, as is right and proper.’
‘Eventually, perhaps, when I am actually married.’
‘But with the betrothal papers signed, there will be no reason to delay.’
No reason, save his own reluctance. ‘I’ve only met Princess Adira once, remember.’
Halim beamed. ‘And the next time you meet her will be on your wedding night, as is the tradition.’
Jamil thumped his fist down on the desk. ‘No!’ He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. ‘It is time both you and the Council recognised this is the nineteenth century, not the thirteenth. I won’t have my wife brought to me painted and veiled like some offering. I am not a prize stud camel, I don’t perform to order. And she—Princess Adira—she’s barely exchanged two words with me.’
‘You are hardly marrying her for her conversational skills,’ Halim said with a smirk, ‘she will be first wife, not first minister.’
‘First and only wife. Therefore it is, even you will admit, preferable that at the very least we do not hold one another in dislike.’
‘Indeed, but the Princess Adira—’
‘I am sure she has many excellent qualities, but that’s not what I’m talking about.’
‘What are you talking about, Prince Jamil?’
A beautiful face, a pair of turquoise eyes, a coral mouth curved into a welcoming smile.
‘Master?’
Someone to depend upon. Someone who would share and not just take. Cassie! The beautiful creature who had created a sanctuary in Linah’s apartments where he could be free from the cares of the world. Who saw him not as Prince Jamil, ruler of Daar-el-Abbah, nor as a provider, nor as a peace maker, neither as an enemy nor an ally. Who called him Jamil in that soft husky voice of hers with the quaint English accent. Who saw him as a man, not a prince. Who talked to him as a friend. Whose delicious body and delightful scent and coral-pink mouth haunted his dreams.
It would be pleasant there in the courtyard as dusk began to fall. An oasis of calm and peace, of seclusion from the world, even if it was just an illusion. He would go to her once he had, yet again, done his duty by signing away the little he had left of himself. He would go to her, and she would soothe him just by talking about the mundane details of her day. He would let her voice wash over him, and he would forget about everything else for a few precious moments.
The thought was enough of an incentive to force him into action. ‘Very well, let’s get this over with.’ Jamil grabbed the ceremonial gold-and-emerald cloak that lay waiting on the divan under the window and fastened it around his neck with the ornate emerald pin. The sabre next, then the ring and the head dress and the golden band. He straightened his shoulders and tugged at the heavy belt holding the sabre in place. Then he nodded at Halim, who flung open the door to the prince’s private apartments, and clicked his fingers to summon the honorary guard.
Six men, dressed in pristine white, formed up in the corridor behind their ruler. Halim himself picked up the trailing edge of Prince Jamil’s cloak, and the party set off for the throne room at a swift pace.
The double doors of the magnificent room were already open in readiness. Two rows of Royal Guards formed a pathway to the dais, their scimitars raised, points touching. Rays from the sinking sun slanted through the high windows and glinted on the polished steel. The waiting Council of Elders made obeisance as Jamil strode by, remaining on their knees, heads bowed, eyes averted, until he ascended the steps to the throne and bowed solemnly in greeting. The contract lay before him on a low table along with a selection of quills and a bottle of ink. Jamil picked up a pen, dipped it in the ink and signed his name, waiting impatiently for Halim to heat the wax before imprinting the seal from his ring.
It was done. His duty was done. He would not think of it now. He would not allow himself to dwell on the consequences. Jamil scattered sand over the wet ink and pushed the document aside. He got to his feet so quickly that he was already halfway back down the length of the throne room before Halim and the Council realised he was going.
‘Highness, the celebrations,’ Halim shouted after him.
‘I am sure you will enjoy them all the more for my absence,’ Jamil called over his shoulder. In other circumstances, the startled look on Halim’s face would have amused him. Right now, he could not have cared less. Without bothering to change out of his formal robes, Jamil took the now very familiar route to the schoolroom.
Chapter Six
As he had expected, he found Cassie sitting alone by the sun fountain. They ate early here in the schoolroom apartments and the remnants of dinner had already been cleared. Linah would be asleep upstairs, he knew, so familiar was he now with his daughter’s routine. With her governess’s routine.
She was sitting on the cushions with her book. Her feet were tucked out of sight, but he knew they would be bare. She relished the coolness of the tiles on her toes. He liked to see them peeping out from under the hems of her English dresses. He had not thought feet could be so sensual.
Engrossed in a volume of Mr Wordsworth’s poems, Cassie had not noticed the courtyard door opening and did not look up until he was almost by her side. ‘Jamil,’ she said, closing the book and rising gracefully from the cushions, shaking out the folds of her gown. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. Linah is in bed.’
‘I know.’
He looked different. Not angry but—different. His eyes were stormy. A flush stained his cheek bones. He was looking at her strangely. ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked. ‘I could ring for some food, if you like.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
She hovered uncertainly on the edge of the cushions. During the day it was just about possible for her to disguise the pleasure she took in his presence, the attraction to him that she continued to deny, but in the evening, alone with him like this, it was much more difficult. Try as she might, she could not see him as a prince, only as a man. An incredibly attractive man, who, at the moment, looked as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘You’re wearing your official cloak,’ she said. ‘Have you come from the Council?’
‘Yes.’ Jamil tugged at the emerald pin that held the heavy garment in place. He’d forgotten all about it, another heirloom passed on from his father, who had received it from his. It fell with a soft whoosh on to the tiled floor of the courtyard. The priceless emerald pin he dropped with a careless clatter on top of it.
‘It will crease if you leave it there,’ Cassie said, stooping to retrieve it. ‘Let me—’
‘Leave it.’
Startled by the harshness of his tone, which she had recently so rarely heard, Cassie did as he bid her. ‘Is there something wrong?’
Jamil shrugged. ‘Nothing more than usual.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No.’
She could not read his mood. He had his Corsair face, impenetrable and remote. ‘I was thinking—wondering—if you had considered what I was saying about Linah. About her having some friends of her own age, I mean. I think she’s ready for it now, she hasn’t had a tantrum in ages, and it will do her good to have someone other than you and me to talk to.’
‘Is she bored with my company already?’
‘Of course not, I didn’t mean that.’ Cassie smiled, but it was a nervous smile, her lips trembling. She sat down on the edge of the fountain and trailed her hand in the cool water, trying to regain control of herself. He looked so careworn, she wanted more than anything to comfort him, but did not know how to start when he was in such a strange mood. She stretched out her hand invitingly. ‘Sit with me a while. You don’t have to talk, just sit and enjoy the night. Look up, the stars are coming out, they’re lovely.’
But Cassie herself made too lovely a picture for Jamil to be interested in the stars. Her dress was made of lemon-yellow silk, with some sort of complicated trimming on the ruffle at the hem. The colour brought out the fiery lights in her hair. The sleeves were shorter than she usually wore during the day, finishing just above her elbow, though a fall of cream lace covered her forearm. There was cream lace at the neckline, too, almost the same colour as her skin. An evening gown, intended to be worn in the formal drawing rooms of London and yet looking perfectly at home here, in the stark wildness of the desert. He could see the roundness of her bosom, rising and falling beneath the creamy lace. He could see one bare foot peeping out, balancing her on the edge of the fountain. He moved towards her, took the hand she was holding out, but didn’t sit down. It was a delicate hand, lost in his. Easily crushed. For some reason, this made him angry. He let it go, and regretted it as soon as he had done so, and that made him even more angry.
‘Perhaps it is you who are bored with my company,’ he said harshly. ‘Are you missing your poet, Cassie? Are you missing the simpering compliments and admiring glances of your gaggle of gallants? I warned you that life with Linah meant seclusion.’
Turquoise eyes turned on him, dark with hurt. He hadn’t meant to lash out, but he couldn’t seem to stop. ‘My daughter is a princess of royal blood. She must learn there is a price to be paid for that privilege. And so must you.’
‘Jamil, why are you being like this? It’s not like you.’
‘But you are wrong, Lady Cassandra, it is very like me. You don’t really know me at all.’
‘I don’t agree. In these last few weeks, I think I have come to know you very well.’
‘You see only one aspect of me. You know nothing of my life as a ruler.’
‘Perhaps, but I know what you are like as—as …’
‘As?’
‘A man.’
‘You think so?’
He took a step closer to her. The air seemed to crackle with tension. Cassie’s hand lay so still in the water of the fountain that one of the little golden fish which lived there brushed against it. She couldn’t understand how the conversation had taken this turn, nor why it felt so—so … precarious? Precipitous? Was that even a word? Pre-emptive? But of what?
‘Tell me, then, what am I like, Cassie. As a man?’
Jamil had taken another step towards her. In fact, he was standing so close to her his knees were brushing her thigh. She could almost feel the anger pulsing from him, and something else burning there behind his tawny eyes that gave her goose bumps. ‘Jamil, stop this.’
‘Stop what, Cassie?’ He pulled her to her feet, holding her there, almost in his embrace, with his hands lightly on her waist. ‘Stop pretending that I don’t find you attractive? Stop pretending that I don’t think of you as I first saw you in the tent in the desert? Stop pretending that I don’t remember our kiss? Stop pretending that I don’t want to kiss you again? That every time I see you I see only an English governess? Why should I? Was it not you who told me I should acknowledge my feelings?’
‘I didn’t mean that. Please don’t do this.’
‘Why?’ He pulled her closer. She did not resist, nor did she comply. She dropped her gaze, closed her eyes. He didn’t want that. He gave her a tiny shake. ‘Look at me, Cassie. Tell me honestly that you don’t feel it, too. Tell me that you don’t think of these things. Tell me you don’t want me and I’ll let you be. Only, look at me when you say the words.’
For a long moment she did not move. Then, with a small sigh that could have been resignation, but might have been something quite different, she met his gaze, and all the secret thoughts, the shameful night-time dreams that she bundled up and held securely in the back of her mind during the day, tumbled forth as if the knot that held them had been untied. He knew. He saw it in her eyes. His gaze raked over her, her eyes, her mouth, her breasts, then her mouth again.
He was going to kiss her, unless she stopped him. He was going to kiss her and she couldn’t stop him. She wanted him to kiss her again, she had been wanting him to ever since that last unsatisfactory, cut-short kiss, though God knew she had tried not to.
‘Cassie.’ He pulled her close, his hands tight around her waist, pressing her hard against him. ‘Cassie, let us have no more of this pretence.’
She closed her eyes in an effort to try to regain some sort of hold on reality, but it was already too late. Too late for calm, rational thinking. Too late to release herself from his hold. Too late to think about how wrong, how utterly wrong, this would be. It couldn’t be wrong, not when it felt like this. Not when she had been wanting this, just this, for weeks now. There was no point in pretending any more that the pleasure she took in his company was for Linah’s sake. No point in pretending that the urgent ache consuming her, the thing that held her fast to him, made her lips long to cling to his, was anything other than base desire. He wanted her. Her wilful heart wanted him. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, not really knowing what she was agreeing to, save only that she was agreeing. ‘Yes.’
Jamil hesitated. Lovely, delicious, irresistible as she was, honour and duty dictated resisting. But for once, for just this moment, Jamil had had a surfeit of honour and duty. He wanted the pleasure she could give him and he wanted the oblivion such pleasure would grant him. To be, just for a while, merely a man, not to have to think, lost in the sweet delight of a woman. This woman. He tilted her chin up with his finger. Angled his mouth towards hers. And kissed her.
He kissed her softly, lingering on the soft pillow of her luscious lips, tasting her. She was so sweet. So heady. Like peaches and English strawberries, laced with fire. His kiss deepened. His manhood hardened. Pliant in his embrace, she was soft, lush and ripe for the taking. He kissed her harder.
Cassie moaned softly under the onslaught. Kisses such as she could never have imagined, dark delights such as she could never have dreamed, consumed her. Her body was on fire. His kiss demanded things from her she didn’t know how to give, though she wanted to. She wanted to so much. His lips moulded hers into a response she hadn’t known she could make. She opened her mouth and his tongue slid in, touching hers, sparking like a shooting star, sending echoing shivers out to the extremities of her body. Her fingers curled into his robe, her toes into the cushions on which she stood. Now she knelt as he eased her down, now she lay as he eased her further, still kissing, kissing, kissing, dark and hot and velvety.
Little kisses on her eyes now, then her throat and her neck. Her hands fluttered over the breadth of his shoulders, feeling the heat of his skin through his tunic. Daringly, she pushed his head dress back, touching his hair, then his cheeks, with their faint traces of stubble.
His lips fastened on hers again and Cassie closed her eyes. His hands traced the line of her waist through the silk of her gown, making her shiver with expectation. She could feel his legs pressing against hers now. She could feel something building inside her, a knot of something that wanted to unravel. His tongue touched hers again, and she bucked under him. He pressed her back against the cushions, stroking her, her waist, the side of her breast, making her jump again, making her nipples ache in the confines of her chemise, her stays, her dress. Her clothes felt too tight, she felt too hot. His tongue touched hers again. Should she like it so much?
She didn’t care, she did like it. His hand moulded her breast now, and she liked that, too, though her nipples strained, hard, tingling, exciting. Should she feel that? Like that? And that?
She didn’t know. All she desired was that he do it again. Fingers brushing her breasts, lingering on the place where her nipples pressed into the fabric. More sparks. More yet as he stroked down, over her belly, her thighs, cupping the roundness of her, as if to show her how different she was, for at the same time her own fingers were boldly exploring his back, his arms, the dip of his stomach, wondering at the sheer delight of male heat and male muscle and male otherness. He was so different. So very, delightfully, different. She felt as if she was melting.
Jamil kissed the mounds of her breasts, but the lace of her dress got in the way. The fastenings were at the back. Complicated fastenings. Too complicated for now. Need, raw need was taking a hold on him. He kissed her with a new urgency. He was hard, more than ready. Still kissing, he found the hem of her dress and pushed it roughly out of the way. Toe. Ankle. Calf. Knee. The skin so soft, the shape so curvaceous. She was panting under him, her hands clutching at his robe, seeking skin. Above her knee was some sort of undergarment. He hadn’t expected that. Her thigh beneath the cotton was smooth and creamy. His hand roamed higher, to the apex, and found to his surprise the undergarment was split. Curls. Damp and warm and inviting.
Through the delicious haze of her growing excitement, the words leapt unbidden into Cassie’s head, delivered in that familiar clipped, censorious tone. Remember, child, once a female has abandoned her corsets, there is no saying what else she will abandon. Aunt Sophia’s parting words to her. The effect was instantaneous; the fire of Cassie’s passion was extinguished as effectively as if she had been doused in cold water. ‘No! Stop!’
Jamil froze.
Cassie began to wriggle free of his intimate embrace.
He released her immediately. She pulled her dress down over her legs and sat up, her breath coming fast and shallow. ‘I’m sorry—I …’
Jamil got to his feet, tugging his tunic back into place. Sitting before him on the cushions, her hair falling down in long golden tresses over her breast, Cassie looked a picture of abandon. He had never wanted anyone so much in his life, never felt such frustration.
‘Jamil, I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.’
But he was in no mood to listen. He was in no mood, either, to question his own motives. ‘There is no need to apologise,’ he said, gathering up his cloak, his head dress, his emerald pin. ‘You have my gratitude, you have spared us an experience we would both ultimately regret,’ he said tersely, as he strode off.
The doors closed behind him with a snap. Cassie made no attempt to stand up. Her knees wouldn’t hold her. She was appalled. Not at Jamil, but at herself. The liberties she had granted him. The liberties she still wanted to grant him. The wanton way he made her feel, as if to abandon all restraint was her heart’s desire. She was mortified. She sank slowly back down on to the floor and covered her head with her hands.
‘Ah, Henry, my dear fellow, how the devil are you?’ Lord Torquil Fitzgerald strode over to where his old friend was seated alone in the library of Boodle’s, enjoying an after-dinner snifter of brandy. ‘Haven’t seen you for an age.’
‘I’ve been in Lisbon for the last three weeks, at Castlereagh’s behest. He has some notion of possible unrest in Portugal.’